The Curdle Hurdle

Last night was exhausting. And draining. And hot. Exhausting because we cooked/baked a lot. Draining because it was somewhat confusing and Chef seemingly spoke in circles when giving us instruction. There was a lot of head scrathcing. Hot BECAUSE THE AIR CONDITIONING BROKE AND WE WERE USING INDUSTRIAL OVENS. At least i wasn’t assigned dish duty. Now that the complaints are aired, I can continue.
We began by making cheesecake. I have made cheesecakes before, but last night I made a mascarpone based cheesecake. Mascarpone is kind of like Italian cream cheese. It has a bit less tang- more of a mild flavor, and is used in such pastries as canolies and tiramisu.
When making cheesecake, it is important to have all of your ingredients at room temperature. This ensures easy incorporation of all ingredients, resulting in a smoother cheesecake. To this end, we prepped our Mise En Place (MEP), meaning we got all of our ingredient out and measures and preprared before beginning to bake. This MEP thing is new to me. I usually grab things as I need them, only to find out half way through a recipe that I’m missing a key ingredient, like butter or eggs, and now need to scramble around to either substitute or procure these ingredients. Setting your MEP beforehand makes baking so much easier and more enjoyable.
Once the MEP was set, we moved on to making our crust, made from Sablee dough. Sablee means sandy in French, and this dough has a sandy and crumbly texture prior to being rolled out and pressed into the cake pans. The dough is made primarily from powdered sugar (“10X” in the biz) and egg yolks.
Once the dough was in the ovens, Chef said that our ingredients still hadn’t come to room temperature, and we should begin our Crème Anglaise. Or Ice cream base. They are the same thing. There are two separate recipes with different measurements, but the same ingredients. This is where chef began making less sense and the room reached eighty degrees. Things were getting hazy. My partner and I were assigned caramel ice cream, but by the time we got our milk and cream infused with vanilla bean, another team had started on their caramel. I guess we weren’t assigned caramel, though I could have sworn.... Anyway, we went with the flow and decided to change things up and make lemon ginger ice cream base instead. Unbeknownst to us, adding lemon to half and half (half whole milk, half cream)would separate the milk- the lemon should be added to just the cream because cream has a higher fat content and is therefore more stable. Our base curdled.
By now, so many people were having problems with their Crème Angalise, that chef told us to ignore it and continue on. I think most of the confusion came because Chef and our recipes often contradict one another. Adding to this, Chef himself will do one thing in the demo, then tell us to do another (probably because what he did takes more skill which we are yet to develop). Let me stop here to say that Crème Angalise is simple. Any pastry Chef knows how to make it. It’s part of the ABCs of pastry. I will have to execute it perfectly for out final exam. I have made it before. But for some reason I couldn’t do it last night. When do you strain the custard? Do you add the hot cream to the yolks or the other way around? Do you wait for it to cool before doing anything? Why is Chef saying NOT to let it cool- didn’t he say we need to have an ice bath at hand? (Around this point we decided to get back to our cheesecake-partially to regain some confidence and partially because our cream cheese was slowly melting. Our cheesecakes were finished, placed into a hot water bath, and baked until just barely set. They have been chilling in the fridge over night, and tonight they will be sliced and devoured). We rallied and finished our Creme Anglaise/Ice cream base, making something that looked respectable by the end, but tonight (or is it tomorrow? Chef wasn’t clear) will be the true test, when it is churned into ice cream and sampled by all. Mostly All.
-Fazed by Creme Anglaise