Dave's Culinary Adventure: charlotte aux pommes 5

charlotte aux pommes 5, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Hello everyone, I had class today at 7pm the latest class possible in any given school day. At first I thought it was going to suck, since most of my classes generally end at 6pm or 3:30pm. Other than having such a late class, my day went by pretty good, watched some TV and played some games. At 6pm Josh comes to pick me up and off we head to school, today we did the practical lesson. As I mentioned from my last blog post, I learned to make Charlotte aux pommes, crème anglais au calvados. This recipe seemed quite simple, since the only things you needed were, bread, apples, eggs, calvados, butter, milk, sugar and vanilla extract. I walked into the practical room quite confident and ready to rock and roll. The class quickly got settled down and off we went to gather materials and begin the recipe. First thing I did was cut out the bread pieces I needed, then melted some butter and cored/peeled some apples. After that I took the bread pieces and dipped in the melted butter and placed them into a shallot pan. Then I sliced up the apples into square and cooked them in butter till they were somewhat mushy on the outside but still solid in the inside. I however made one small mistake which lead to my crust fall apart afterwards, the mistake was that I prebaked the bread a tiny bit before I added in the apples. Since I did the prebaking thing, my crust got a bit over cooked and didn’t stick together like it should have. After that I took out the shallot pan out, filled it with apples and back into the oven it went! This was the easier part of the recipe, the next part is a tiny bit trickier, but I managed to do it alright. We had to make a crème anglais, to make this I took two egg yolks, sugar, vanilla extract, milk and calvados. So first you have to bring the milk to a boil, beat the two egg yolks quickly with sugar and vanilla extract. Then combine the egg mix with the hot milk, add the milk slowly so the heat doesn’t cook the egg mix and mix the two together with a wooden spoon (not a whisk, I made the mistake of doing that, but fixed it in the end). Afterwards pour back into the russe and let it slowly cook, while stirring with the same spoon till it reaches the right thickness. When that is done pour out the crème anglais, pour into a bowl in an ice bath and then add in some calvados to give it an extra kick (trust me adding in the calvados add so much flavour!). By this time the charlotte aux pommes should be pretty much done now, so take out let chill, chill the crème anglais. Then when chilled enough flip over the charlotte aux pommes onto plate and serve with the crème anglais on the side. This dish is supposed to be served in between the courses of the meal, it’s not really meant to be a dessert dish. I was able to finish the recipe before the allotted time and was allowed to bake the puff pastry I made the other day. I forgot to add egg wash on the dough before sprinkling it with cheese, but it didn’t make a huge difference.

I had a really great day today in practical class, as I think about it now it feels like as the days go by and classes completed, I feel more and more confident. The first week I was insanely excited about going to school, then the second week I lost a bit of that excitement and some of my self confidence. Now with the third week coming along, I’m feeling great, getting my confidence back up and loving school way more than before. I just hope that the rest of the session goes on like this, I have a feeling it will and every day I will love school more and more and more.

Charlotte aux pommes with no sauce