Ashburton Cookery school: Day 3

Baked smoked haddock on spinach with a poached egg, Gruyère cheese and curry oil

The curry oil was a surprisingly good addition here as were the "sun-dried" cherry tomatoes. Surprisingly the cheese did go with the haddock (as the salmon did with the Parmesan in the risotto on Monday). I may have to revise my stead-fast adherence to the "cheese doesn't go with fish" rule after this.

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Pork tenderloin en papillote with apple and mustard mash with honey glazed carrots and celeriac

A mixed bag this dish. Having medium-rare pork was a revelation (apparently now that pig welfare conditions have improved and feeding is strictly controlled, pigs no longer have ring-worm so it's OK to eat the meat less than well done). Finding out how to do the roasted vegetable was brilliant. The mash was not good: way too much mustard which killed the other delicate flavours. I'm also not convinced by deliberately mixing lumps into beautiful smooth mash. It just doesn't do it for me.

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Coconut and lemongrass sorbet with tuille biscuits

A delightful sorbet made into a full dessert with sweet chilli sauce, hazelnuts and Chantilly cream.

Lessons from the day:

• The water content of pastry is critical. The less water there is the shorter the pastry will be. However, water makes the pastry more complaint and easier to work with.
• Sweet pastry can be made without even touching it (until rolling out).
• Allowing the water to evaporate from egg whites will create stronger whites resulting in better meringues.
• Draining spinach on kitchen paper in a must to remove excess moisture.
• Fish is cooked when the protein start to leach out (this is evident as a white residue).
• Freezing diminishes flavour. So frozen desserts must be packed with flavour before they are frozen.
• -15°C is the optimum temperature for making ice-cream and sorbets.
• Tuilles need to be manipulated while they are still hot so it's best to do any moulding in the hot air of the oven.
• Eggs poached in red wine go well with duck.
• Oil for heat, butter for flavour.
• When blanching veg use 6g salt for every 1l water.
• Keeping mash warm in a bain marie makes it über fluffy.