Today has certainly been meatilicious! It included marinating two loins of venison for consumption tomorrow, preparing ducks for certain dishes today and tomorrow and using the beef stew we made yesterday. The first job of the day was to sort out the duck. With my new partner, Jess, who has just graduated from Exeter University with an English degree, we got stuck into removing the legs, breasts and wings. Luckily, the ducks were 'oven ready', meaning that the heads and legs were off and had been gutted. The livers, heart and neck had all neatly been put into a plastic bag. What lovely butchers! We marinated the legs for duck confit tomorrow- that's cooked infat you know. More calories! But oh so worth it. I hope! Then we took off and trimmed the breasts for lunch which was roasted honey and szechwan duck breast with shredded mangetout salad and a honey, soy and ginger dressing.
Before lunch, Phil also showed us how to take the loins off a saddle of venison. Goodness, deer are huge. Just the saddle was ginormous! As a group, we put together a marinade for the venison and left in a clean bucket in the fridge for tomorrow.
Back to the quack quack, after pan frying the duck until crispy on the outside, we finished it off in the oven for a few minutes. Phil used his noggin and showed us an extra thing to do- make a brown duck stock out of the carcasses. Getting every bit of use out of the animal and getting more for your money, as we've been taught to do. Anyhoo, after putting the dressing together, which was absolutely delicious in itself, an oriental flavour, to give you an idea. We then plated up for lunch, after shredding the mangetout and dressing the salad leaves, adding a few edible flowers to make it look pretty. Oh my goodness, such a tasty lunch. I do love duck. And the dressing. Oh, heaven. Yum yum yum.
Honey and szechwan pepper roasted duck breast with
shredded mangetout salad and honey, soy and ginger
dressing.
After lunch, it was onto the dauphinoise potatoes for tomorrow and a pastry cream for the fruit tartlets for pudding. James informed us that in the pastry section of a professional kitchen would have a big bowl of pastry cream, ready to use itself or as a base for certain puddings. Then, it was go go go with preparing supper.
We lined individual pudding moulds with a thin layer of suet and packed it full of the beef from yesterday's prepared beef stew, mushrooms and sliced shallots to make our beef and mushroom suet puddings. We then steamed the puddings for 40 minutes.
After the cooking time, they had puffed up beautifully. We collectively made a parsnip puree, parsnip and carrot crisps and a beetroot puree, peeling the beetroot once cooked, which were boiling hot! Even though we had rubber gloves on to protect against the heat and staining our hands, the painful heat was definitely felt- I don't have asbestos fingers yet!
To finish off supper, we wilted some spinach and added...yep, you guessed it, butter and reduced the beef cooking juices for a tasty jus. So, here's supper:
Beef and mushroom steamed suet pudding with wilted buttered spinach, parsnip puree, beetroot puree, parsnip and carrot crisps, and a reduced beef jus.
Delicious! I love any savoury suety thing. Dumplings, steamed suet pudding... Not to blow my own trumpet, but I'm rather impressed with my swirls of puree.
So, the final job of the day was to finish off the pudding. Here's a handy tip for you all- to remove cooked pastry overhang, get a (clean) vegetable peeler and shave away at the pastry edge, keeping all crumbs out of the centre of the pastry case and you will have a clean edge and saved yourself a lot of time.
Individual fresh fruit tarlet
It was good, but, I wouldn't normally order it in a restaurant. I would just prefer to have other things. Like chocolate cake. Or more lemon tart. Oh, yes please! Anyway, to finish today's blog entry, I shall leave you with Portugese vascular surgeon, José, who decorated his pudding with cream squirts, that rather resembled, as Margaret said 'white dog turds'. Hasta mañana.
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