Day 7: The Duality of Pastry
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| One Group's Finished Spinach Quiche |
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| One Group's Finished Fruit Tart |
Today began with a brief gathering before we split into groups and Advanced headed off to the Bissonnet Campus. As we all filed into the kitchen, Chef Jessica began to explain that the process of making dough for Quiche and Fruit Tart is very delicate. Because of this every group started by fully reading through the entire recipe a couple of times, and preparing for a busy day.
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| Talulah and Mackenzie making custard |
The first thing we all began working on in the kitchen was the cream for our fruit tarts. It had to sit in a bath of ice water before use for quite a long time, so we got right to it. Every group had some difficulty with boiling ingredients down for the custard. My group did not have a sufficiently powerful cooktop so the dairy ingredients just slowly started to separate. As for the other two groups, theirs cooked too quickly which caused it to burn. Once Chef Jessica helped us find the right temperature on the cooktops, we were all able to move on with our second or third batch.
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| Isa C. making our dough |
Once our custard was in the ice bath we were able to start making the dough and fillings for our quiche. It was a typical recipe for a dough/crust, except that warm temperatures and kneading,can be very harmful to the dough. Both of these processes create a less flaky dough because they mix and melt the butter into it. We had a large selection of fillings to choose from, which included spinach, peppers, onions, various meats, seasonings, cheeses, and many more items. We just sauteed them all together with some olive oil, and creased the dough into the pie tin.
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(left to right) India, Ms. Al Karkhi, Isa P.
and Aiden weighing down their dough |
A very interesting part of making the dough for the fruit tart and quiche was that we had to weigh down the center of the dough and do a “blind-bake”, meaning we wouldn’t really be able to see the progress until we fully removed it from the oven. The point of adding this weight is so the crust does not “puff up” in the oven, and it instead stays compact and flaky. This was scary, because we didn’t know if the dough we had worked so hard on would come out intact, but they all came out quite nicely.
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| Talulah Sautéing our vegetables |
Finally, we created the egg mixture for the quiche, filled it with toppings, and put it into the oven along with the empty crusts for the fruit tart. This process was very fast, and required all hands on deck in the kitchen. Since the quiche and tart crust were in the oven, and we had already made our tart custard, we were all able to take a break.
Today was my favorite day of cooking so far. Not only did we have a great rhythm with our entire group cleaning throughout the day - we also all created beautiful and delicious meals. Every day of this course teaches us something about the beauty of making food, and sharing it with the people around you, and today our work paid off when we sat down to enjoy our art.
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