Day 5: The big cook up

Hi everyone. Yesterday we had our big cook up, we made a three course meal, we did an appetizer plate which had, chilli salt squid with chillli jam, (squid replaced for fish for Andrew) herbed cream cheese with smoked salmon and parmesan tuilles. Sonia cleaned the squid for me, gutting, peeling and chopping it. Then we floured it with a chilli salt four, deep fried it in oil and then served it with a tomato chilli jam, which was very delicious. You may not be able to see on the picture but Sonia also made quinelles of cream cheese for on the crackers and salmon. We had a small incident with the crackers as we had bought crostini but when we opened the packet we found that it was sugared, luckily we had crackers in the drawers so we were saved.
For the main course we made a Baklava on top of a eye fillet steak on top of garlic potato mash on top of creamed spinach.
First off we made the oxtail baklava,this was done by browning the oxtail meat and then putting it into a casserole dish , although we lessened the amount of dishes by browning the meat in the casserole dish instead of transferring it. After the meat had cooked in a beef stock and some spices and things for around 2 hours we picked all the meat off the bone and laid out 2 sheets of pastry with butter in between. we then cut this into 3 pieces and spread out some of the meat on each piece, we then rolled this up and cooked them for about 15 minutes.

Next we made the potato garlic mash, we boiled the potatoes and then pushed them through a tamis with cold butter, we then whipped them till they were fluffy and left them until a later time after we had finished the creamed spinach. To do this we put cream and garlic puree in a small saucepan and reduced it down till it was thick and creamy. The first attempt I had at this I got a little distracted with my book and almost reduced it till there was nothing left but luckily Sonia came to the rescue and told me that it was almost gone, as there was barley anything there e added a bit more cream and brought it back to the boil. After this we added Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper, we melted the cheese into it and then left it there until we were ready to serve it. When the time came we blanched the baby spinach leaves and put them into the cream mixture.
Just before we started to plate up we cooked the meat and heated some cream with garlic, then while I whipped the cream into the potatoes Sonia made a gravy. We plated it up in a professional manner and sat down to eat a delicious meal.

For the dessert we made a meringue type roll which we filled with with chocolate mousse and topped with a spoon of the same chocolate mousse and candied limes. At first it was quite a disaster as when we went to take the meringue off the baking paper it broke then when we filled it with chocolate mousse and tried to roll it, it broke even more. So we unrolled the meringue and tried cutting it into little circles and stacking them on top of each other, we then tried topping it with a bit of chocolate mousse bu tit fell over. So we tried just cutting circles and putting them on a plate, this didn't work either because when we put it in the fridge it started to let all the liquid out. Because they looked so unpleasant we decided that we would make another batch. This time it did work and we spread a thin layer of the chocolate mousse over it and rolled it up. By this time it was time to plate up, we chopped the log of meringue type stuff and placed them upright on the plate, we then scooped a scoop of the chocolate mousse and put that on top of the log. Lastly we laid a couple of pieces of lime and drizzled the syrup they were candied in over top and around the
plate. The end result was very delicious.



















The highlight of the day however was that Sachi now considers me her friend...