Grande update #1

Yes yes, I know I haven't posted anything in ages.
To be honest it's been hard to do anything but work at the moment. Completely new menu going in, staff leaving, training new staff, position changes, potential long term high class positions opening up, meetings, boardroom catering events. I've been doing it all lately....aaaaaand I'm tired as dog's balls to be honest.
But I was just sitting here relaxing, playing some starcraft 2 HotS when I thought, why don't I update my blog, since I'm being a lazy bastard and not doing anything.

So continuing on from the last entry, I'm going to do a recipe for the Strawberry and creme tartlet.
It's a nice simple dessert, but is oh so elegant and a classic at that.

I'll say it now, my recipes are always written in short hand for chefs, because I've basically got hundreds of recipes that I have to sift through and write up for dumb apprentices to read. So I do the basics so they can follow it. But for here I'll posh it up a bit :D

Pre-heat your oven to 150 degrees Celsius

Strawberry and Creme Tartlet

So lets start with the pastry. There are so many short crust pastry recipes now days that you can't just pick one and go with it. Over the years I've created many different ones, but through experimentation I've come up with the perfect (well I like to think so) recipe. And now I'll share it with everyone :D

This recipe will make 6 tartlets by using 4 inch tartlet flans.

Pastry

160g icing sugar
250g plain '00' flour
150g unsalted butter, room temp, cubed
4 egg yolks, fridge temp

Method:

Sift together the icing sugar and flour into a large mixing bowl. Add the cubed butter and start working the butter into the dry ingredients with your hands, rubbing it in until resembles fine breadcrumbs. You want it to be dry and light. Now add the 4 egg yolks and combine it all with your hands until you have a soft dough. Don't overwork the dough.

Now don't bother about resting the dough before pushing it out into the tartlet flans, do it after you have pushed it out, this way the dough rests and holds its shape for baking.
So break the dough up into 6 pieces and grease your 6 tartlet flans. Don't bother doing the old, roll the dough out into flat circle and placing over the flan, it's a pointless and time consuming job that does nothing. Simply start pushing the dough in the flan and working it up the sides, keeping it all in once peice. If you have to much dough coming up the sides, just level it off with a knife.

Now once you have finished that, place the flans in the fridge for an hour to rest.






Ok now it's time to make the creme patisserie. Creme patisserie (or creme pat for short) translates to pastry cream, it's basically milk thickened with flour and egg yolks over a low heat and then chilled and usually piped into desserts, such as eclairs or profiteroles.

Here is a simple recipe that I use all the time which is easy as.

Creme Pat

500ml milk
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
4 egg yolks
130g caster sugar
60g plain flour

Method:

Heat milk and vanilla beans on low, meanwhile beat egg yolks and caster sugar until pale and thick, mix in sifted flour.

Once the milk has boiled pour it over the egg mixture and combine, return mixture to the pan and on a low heat continuously mix with a heatproof spatula until mixture has thickened considerably. Once thickened, chill over ice water.


Ok now that we have that made lets cook the pastry, it should be close to an hour or so now, so pull those flans out and we are going to blind bake the pastry. Blind baking is cooking the pastry with weights in it so the sides dont fall down while it is baking. I do this with a mixture of rice and sea salt flakes. The salt heats up super fast so yeh end up with a nice crisp base early on during the cooking process.

So cover the tartlets with baking paper and fill them with salt flakes and rice, just fill them until they are just to the sides.

Cook in the oven until the tips of the sides are just starting to colour, and pull out the tartlets, remove the baking paper with the weights and pop the tartlets back into the oven to further dry the base. You want it to just colour slightly, lightly golden. Then pull them out and allow them to completely cool.

While the pastry is cooling we can start work on the chocolate ganache.

Simply ganache is always the best. I like to do somethign a little different with mine though.

So here is the recipe

Chocolate ganache

150g milk chocolate
150g dark chocolate
pinch of sea salt
310g cream
1tsp glucose

Method:

Place the cream, salt and glucose into a pot and heat until boiled, and simply pour it over the two chocolates and allow it to stand for a few minutes, then mix to combine. And that's it! simple ganache, but the salt brings out a lot more flavour in chocolate than people would realise. Allow it to cool to room temp.


Ok so we have everything done and made. Time to assemble.
Grab one of the tartlets, spoon some of the chilled creme pat into the tartlet until it's 3/4 full. Slice a strawberry into 6 slices, and place another strawberry straight into the middle of the tartlet and arrange the slices around the centre one.

Drizzle the tartlet with the chocolate ganache.

DONE! She should look beautiful now, and should taste as good as well. Now go and make the other 5 and then scoff them down.....that's what I do :D


Hope you enjoyed this recipe. I'm going to start updating more often. As matter of fact I will have another post up shortly :D