Apprentice Commis Chef Chloe off-site training days
Commis Apprentice Chef Chloe had two off-site training days this week. We caught up with Chloe, who blogged her experiences of each training day.
"I started in Newlyns Farm on Monday doing a game and offal masterclass, game and offal is not for the faint-hearted, I started by cutting up some beef cheek to be then put in a stew which the trainer chefs prepared for us for our lunch after this we moved on to the lamb kidney, we prepared the kidney by cutting it in half and then taking out the renal pelvis as this can alter the taste of your dish massively, I then cooked it into a dish called 'devilled kidneys'."
"Next, we moved on to the pheasant, which was a lot smaller than expected, I separated the pheasant into the breast, legs, and fillets and took out the wishbone. Then we used the cavity as a brown stock for the next class so there would be no waste, I made a pheasant dish which included wrapping the breast in smoked bacon and slow cooking it in the oven with dry cider, then garnished with apple cider sauce, red cabbage and honey roasted parsnips."
"The last thing we covered in this course was sweetbreads, which are the glands of an animal such as pigs, lambs, sheep etc. We started with parboiling the sweetbreads so the skin could be easily removed. Finally, we made a starter dish of breadcrumbed sweetbreads served with blackcurrant and brandy sauce with a slice of lemon."
"On Wednesday I was at a different site in London St Luke for a masterclass in baking and patisserie, to start my day we made custard tart from scratch, we started with the sweet pastry which I found especially hard as it was my first time, we then moved on to making the custard, filling the pastry then cooking in the oven on a low heat for 45 minutes."
"Secondly, we made a brandy snap, we made the classic brandy snap which was garnished with white chocolate mousse made from scratch and left to chill in the fridge for around 2 hours."
"Finally, we made a vegan sticky toffee pudding which I am familiar with however we made it vegan to show us trainer chefs that it will reach a larger range of customers and you could never tell the difference, it was made with freshly chopped dates and pralines for extra flavour, and finally garnished with our take on sticky toffee sauce."
The food looks amazing. Well done Chloe!
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