Today is cooking time!!! So we joined a cooking class at Shangri-La Hotel Jakarta with their Executive Pastry Chef, Frederic Scailteur
Said to be an award-winning pastry chef, the Belgian started his career at the age of 15. Numbers of his achievements include a gold medal in Premier Patissier de Belgique (Best Pastry Chef of Belgium) competition, a gold medal for Artistic Showpiece during Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie (Pastry World Cup) in Lyon, and a gold medal in Coupe d'Europe de la Patisserie (European Pastry Cup) in Rome. His main inspiration of the art in pastry comes from elegance and sexiness in a feminine way. Inspiring, huh?
Look at these beautiful ingredients! Just looking at them alone is already pleasing to the eye, and you could let your imagination go wild in pondering what would happen when all of these are combined together!
Our first creation is....
VERRINE PINEAPPLE AND RASPBERRY WITH CRUMBLE COCO
Ingredients above are: Coco crumble, orange juice, cream cheese, vanilla, roasted chopped almond, Joconde sponge, raspberry, sugar, raspberry puree, powder sugar, pineapple (cube), mango puree, cocoa butter, pistachio.
During the cooking class, we are taught the complete process, from raw ingredients to a complete dish. This is a very fresh and new point of view for most of us, since we are used to only eat at the restaurants without ever knowing the whole process :p
First step is making the FRUITS MARMALADE
We took the pictures from Chef Frederic's cooking demo of course, since his movements were so flawless and awesome!
This is a really simple dish and easy to make, so the first thing you have to do is just mix the raspberry and pineapple by adding the orange juice little by little on medium heat until it became some sort of a puree.
Then we add the coco crumble..
You can see that the dish is still incomplete! We still have more layers to work on, so shall we continue?
Here it is, the CREAM CASSANDRA that'll top our sour fruits marmalade and crunchy crumble coco! It's just a mix of the cream cheese with mango and raspberry puree to get the pretty soft pink color, add vanilla bean and powder sugar for taste. I couldn't concentrate already on this part as I was so dying to wait for the tasting time!
To top of everything is a thin layer of white chocolate that'll become our canvas for decorations! Now, here goes the real deal: decorating time!
...wait, what does he have to do with this beautiful rose bouquet???
Well, well. I was out of words. Simply elegant, yet stunningly beautiful.
We absolutely love how Chef Frederic does it: He really lives up to his root of cooking philosophy, sexy and elegant. And that touch of gold makes the dish a proper five-star-hotel-worthy!
Moving on to the next set of ingredients: what we see here is a mix of yummy nuts; almond and pistachio... what would it become in just a short amount of time??
It might not be clear in this picture, but we were mixing these ingredients and stick everything with cocoa butter and caramel, which we made ourselves as well by boiling water then add sugar and vanilla bean and wait for it to caramelized. Remember, water first, cause if you put the sugar first, it'll burnt and taste bitter, which is not what sugars do. You can use any nuts for this and make sure it's cooked.
Waiting for the caramel to set and cool... See what's happening here? After it cools, put it in a bowl and add the white chocolate, mix them thoroughly. Compound chocolate is recommended for better results.
A mountain of nuts with white chocolate is ready to be cooled of in the fridge!
Ta-da!! Decorate it however you want in a plate and you're ready to serve this ROCHER ALMOND AND PISTACHIO! Easy and delicious!!
And…..this is our creation, not as perfect as Chef Frederic's but we're still proud of it!! Even though we forgot to put the sugar in the Cream Cassandra.
Even without explicitly telling you, we are still obligated to do so: we had so much fun!!! This is a truly fascinating experience for us, thank you Chef Frederic Scailteur!
Shangri-La Hotel Jakarta
JL. Jend. Sudirman Kav. 1
Went there for an evening of party planning. After arrival we were immediately greeted with appetizers and cocktails in the room with the fireplace and baby grand piano.
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