Level 2, Lesson 14 Aug. 23, 2010
The air was filled with panic.
Everyone was on overdrive rolling out dough to make the pastry shell for a quiche.
We had to make the quiche with bacon and Gruyere cheese, as well as falafel, spaghetti squash with tomatoes and capers and a watercress salad all before 10 p.m.
As a class, we had failed to bake our apple tarts and quiche lorraines on time a couple weeks ago. Chef X was making us do the quiche again--- only we had to bake it from memory.
I checked the thickness of my dough with my fork. The edge fit between the prongs. Lifting the dough carefully, I gently laid it over a buttered metal ring and black steel bottom. I crimped the edge of the shell and put it in the refrigerator.
Pete and I began blanching tomatoes to peel off the skin. We started cutting other vegetables.
When the temperature of the oven reached 400 degrees F, we put in our tart shells. The shells were filled with baked beans wrapped in industrial plastic wrap. We had to pre-bake the shells before adding the custard filling.
I pulverized chickpeas, herbs, garlic and cumin in a food processor to make falafel. Pete rolled the mixture into the size of walnuts. I fried them later.
When the pastry shells looked chalky white around the edges, we removed the beans and plugged the holes in the bottom with eggwash. We put the tart shells back in the oven to bake all the way through.
Chef assistants had already roasted the spaghetti squash for us. All we had to do was saute shallots and tomatoes, add olives and capers and layer the tomato mixture with the roasted squash.
A few minutes had passed by. I looked at my pastry shell and saw it was golden brown on the edges. I showed it to Chef.
“Good,” he said.
Pete showed his tart shell and came back to our work station with a worried look.
Chef had noticed tears in the shell. The custard could leak if Pete poured the filling into it. Pete had had trouble rolling out his dough. It was so thin that it had ripped when he placed it over the metal ring.
“How can I fix this?” Pete said. “Maybe I could use the cheese.”
“Eggwash?” I said.
The custard filling called for egg yolks, and we had leftover egg whites. Pete layered cheese on the inside edge of his shell and brushed his tart shell with egg whites.
“Just go ahead and do yours,” Pete said. “I’m not even supposed to be doing this.”
Pete put his tart shell back in the oven. I filled my tart shell with bacon, Gruyere cheese and the custard filling and slid it in the oven.
For the watercress salad, Pete deftly cut slices out of a grapefruit, cutting between the fruit’s membrane to get pristine pink wedges.
I turned an artichoke in my left hand, while I cut off the spikes with a paring knife. I hacked away at the artichoke as discarded layers piled up in my bowl. I scooped out the choke with a melon baller and dunked the artichoke heart into water laced with lemon juice. The lemon juice was supposed to prevent the artichoke heart from turning brown. I started all over again with a second artichoke.
I frantically sliced the artichoke hearts and a fennel bulb on a mandolin. It was getting closer to 10 ‘o’ clock.
Suddenly I remembered the quiches. I opened the oven to see large bubbles coming out of the tarts.
“I think they’re done,” Pete said.
I took the tarts out.
“Die down,” I muttered to my quiche.
It deflated once it hit the cooler air. I set the quiche aside to rest.
We layered the squash with the tomato-shallot mixture and arranged a pile of falafel over a yogurt dip on the plate. We tucked the watercress salad inside the squash shell. Pete and I presented the plate of food with our quiches.
Chef looked at Pete’s quiche. “Good,” he said, but he noticed the custard had cooked outside the shell in a spot.
Chef approved of my quiche, and hardly glanced at our plate.
On the train home, I felt different, more confident. I baked that quiche from memory, and I knew what to do for those three other recipes. In the beginning of Level 1, I didn’t know what I was doing. But somehow a gear in my brain had turned, and I felt all right.
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