Cooking French

There he was chatting with two ladies as I stepped in.

Francois Mermilliod, Executive Chef at fine dining outlet Flutes at the Fort, was the guest chef for my first attempt at the classic french cuisine at Palate Sensations. The owner of the cooking school, the petite yet gung-ho Lynette, was hospitable and chatty. It turned out I was the second to arrive. Another student Doreen had arrived early and was easing herself into cool beats of the music and the comfortable lounge. We hit if off immediately, rattling off about work to travel to bosses to food. Lynette had come around to serve us some white wine, which was a pleasant surprise but a real delight. More people had turned up in the next 10 minutes and we decided we could start.

We were divided into three groups, with three seperate tables. I thought the island tables were cool, as they could be moved around in any formation and doubled up as the chopping board and a good surface for rolling the dough as I discovered later. There was Doreen who works in the banking industry and Marlene the sociologist in the army and a mother of three. Joanne and Yen joined our team later. One thing for sure, all of us who congregated at this class loves good food, maybe good wine, good company and cooking.

And the recipes of the day :

1. Quiche Lorraine
2. Bouillabaisse
3. Creme Brulee

It was unmistakenly a FRENCH cookout.

Don't we all have this romantic idea about the french - their culture, food and people. Francois is french and speaks with an accent which adds to his charm after a while. We started off with the creme brulee as it required time for the oven and also for the tuile (the actual definition was thin almond biscuit) to set for some time before it goes into the oven. It was rather disorganised at first as not all utensils were on our tables. We had to go around borrowing and asking for cutlery and ingredients (well it would be a perfect chance for a guy to approach a sweet young thing for sugar or vice versa) but it was good fun watching what others were doing abiet our own mess and actions. The process of making the creme brulee was interesting. I learnt that the creme had to be in bain marie (the ramekins soaked in a water bath in the baking tray) and found the silicon mat which we created our blobs of tuile on fascinating. When cooled from the oven heat, the tuiles came off from the mat and we could roll them into any shapes using whatever tools available around us. It served as a side decoration for the classic french dessert.

Next we moved on to make the bouillabaisse. I realise most of us were excited about the classic fish soup as we probably had tried it in restaurants and wondered how the rich texture of this flavourful soup could be achieved in the kitchen. Francois explained that we do not have the same source of seafood as in france and he could not find crabs today, hence the version we were making was a modifed version. An important point to note was that we should choose the boney parts of the fish to make the stock. We replaced crab with prawns instead. The initial steps were easy. It involved chopping the various kinds of vegetables, throw them in with the fish and prawn shells and sautee for a few minutes, followed by the herbs. It was also the first time i saw and used saffron in cooking. Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of the saffron crocus (Crocus sativus), a species of crocus in the family Iridaceae. The flower has three stigmas, which are the distal ends of the plant's carpels. Together with its style, the stalk connecting the stigmas to the rest of the plant, these components are often dried and used in cooking as a seasoning and colouring agent.

Francois came by to start spicingup each group's pot of soup with pepper and salt. As a chef, he is used to eyeballing the quantity. I could not resist asking for guidelines, like how much salt or how much pepper is needed. He looked at me straight in the face and casually answered that there was no need for guidelines. It really depended on what was the taste we were trying to achieve, it's got a lot to do with the feel. And know what, we girls being girls who mostly abide by the steps in the kitchen, started counting the number of tabs he made whenever he poured something from the spice container into whatever we were making. It really made him laugh.

After all that boiling, processing and adding in the seafood, the end result was a soup that was extremely balanced in texture, with a beautiful and distinct orange that appears in a successful pot of bouillabaisse.

It dawned on us we still have the final challenge - the quiche lorraine. we started with the short crust and then moved on to making the egg and bacon filling. Marlene was mortified that we had to make our own crust from scratch and innocently remarked that we could have gotten the pre-made frozen ones from the mart. 'Oh yah, and you could also have the ready ones from delifrance' said Francois. We all burst out laughing. It was the best joke from cet homme francais. I did not have much confidence handling the dough. We had to make sure it do not fall apart when rolling and that we had enough to pinch the overflow on the sides of the tart mould so as to prevent it from shrinking during baking. I think I did a rather marvelous job with the dough eventually. We were not quite involved in making the filling.

Then it was time to turn our attention to the baked tuiles and shaped them to our fancy. It was interesting seeing how Francois torched the sugar layer on the dessert as well.

As with any cooking lessons, the finale is probably what everyone looks forward to with much enthusiasm (some say saliva) - tasting their creations after all the hard work. We had some chilled red wine to go with our early dinner and exchanged comments from the appetiser to the dessert. We were also savvy enough to bring our cameras. Well, what does a food blogger do anyway?

The entire experience felt like relaxed weekend in outback Australia with good food, great people, stimulating conversations and guess what, nothing else mattered.

Palate Sensations
1 Westbourne Road,
#03-05 (entrance via Whitchurch Road, off Portsdown Road and opposite Col Bar)Aden, Singapore 138941
Tel: 64799025
Fax: 64796285
E-mail : info@palatesensations.com