The oven is my partner and friend…

Monday of week seven and it’s all systems go. After a busy week prior to this, there is no such thing as a break (a vodka and lime on Saturday night was my celebratory treat). Back in kitchen 3 for my fifth week, I was ready to hit the ground running. On my agenda I had tomato and basil soup, spotted dog and profiteroles with hot chocolate sauce.
I’m a big fan of tomato soup and for some strange reason I can remember quite distinctly the first time that I had it. As a six or seven year old boy, if tomatoes were anywhere other than on pizza or spaghetti hoops then I wouldn’t eat them, particularly if they were those gloopy looking things that my mother had roasting in the oven. Anyway so this one day I had forgotten my packed lunch, a horrible occurrence second only to forgetting your P.E. kit on the scale of school time disasters. This day I must have been starving for me to have told my situation to the scary dinner lady. In fact, just because somebody might look like a character from Rold Dahl’s novel ‘The Witches’, it doesn’t mean that they are quite that mean and witch-like. Behind the wild, scraggly hair, the tightly pursed lips spread into a smile and I was told not to worry and I soon found a polystyrene cup of soup in front of me. In that moment, a lifelong friendship had been created, not with the dinner lady, goodness knows where she is and what she is up to, but with tomato soup. It is not a soup that frequents the kitchen table at home given that y father is not a fan, and so it is only on occasion that I might get it when eating out. Recently they served it to the students on a Wednesday when we don’t cook in the morning. It was delicious and I have looked forward to making it since, and here I was, tomatoes at the ready.
As far as soups go, this one was quite simple. Blending it is essential in my opinion. That lovely smooth texture goes hand in hand with the big tomato flavour, but it also allows the flavour to mellow out a little. I left out the basil as well in this recipe for the simple reason that it isn’t entirely necessary, it is delicious without it. In basil season though, in July and August, I wouldn’t dream of leaving it out: that’ll be basil at its best, the second rate basil can be kept for more subtle flavour combinations. I found on completion of the soup that my flavoring wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that I was missing exactly. Usually I am cautious with salt but something stopped me from adding more and so I had to get a second opinion which led me to the answer: sugar. Tomatoes need sugar, it’s a concept that I’m still getting used to, yet embrace whole-heartedly. Indeed my soup took a pinch and mm mm mmm!
Becoming so engrossed in the tomato soup, the choux pastry of the profiteroles has found itself somewhat neglected. It’s a bit of a big deal. The technique is quite intricate with making the choux, the chantilly cream and the Creme patisserie. It requires constant (emphasis on the word constant) attention.  You don’t want lumps in your cream or your pastry and you don’t want overcooked pastry. Oops. The pastry balls are cooked for fifteen minutes and then a hole is skewered in them so that you will later be able to pipe your cream in. Once skewered, they are baked again for another five minutes or so. Although I followed this technique exactly, the fact that I used a smaller top oven resulted in the pastry getting an Essex tan (just a little too much). It was a valuable lesson to learn as my teacher told me ‘you need to get to know your oven’. Wise words. The oven is my partner, a crucial member of my team and from now on I will consider it as just that. However at that particular point, I had no time to rectify the situation, I continued to pipe in my cream and pour hot chocolate sauce over the top of my profiterole stack. By this time the chocolate sauce had cooled and was almost beginning to set an so as I poured, it lacked that rich oozey effect that I desired and that excited eaters by the sound of it alone. In order to achieve this runny sauce again, all I had to do wash add a little boiling water. Simple as that. These little things add up and give you great confidence in no time. A kitchen disaster is so easily avoided. Having said all this, it was decided that I would remake choux pastry the following day as there would be little or no other opportunity to try it later in the course. Better to get it right, right now. The oven is my partner and friend…