Warning: You may want dessert after reading this...

Croquembouche

Well, I though I would share a few photos of what I've made in my Intermediate course thus far.  Above is a Croquembouche constructed out of hand-made truffles.  "Croquembouche" in French translates as "crunch in the mouth," as it is traditionally a tower of profiteroles (choux filled with pastry cream) bound together by caramel (the crunch).  As you might imagine, the truffles didn't remain on the tower very long before I began to deconstruct it...and now I'm hoarding them in the freezer.

Gateau Mille Feuille

Here in Australia this cake is usually called "Vanilla Slice," which seems to me overly simplified and insufficiently descriptive (thanks, Wilson thesaurus).  "Gateau Mille Feuille" means "Cake of a Thousand Layers" in French, and appropriately so, as it contains several layers of pastry cream sandwiched between puff pastry.  The top is glazed with fondant, and the sides are covered in toasted flaked almonds. Yummmmmmy!  I took several pieces to the cafe, which was a mistake, as several people are begging me to make it again.  Little do they know that it took an entire 3 1/2 hour class to produce this one cake, even after making the puff pastry a day in advance.

Tart au Chocolat Noir

(Dark Chocolate Tart)

This tart is comprised of a chocolate short pastry crust (it resembles chocolate shortbread)  and a simple filling that consists of dark couverture chocolate, cream, milk and an egg.  It wouldn't be difficult to make at home, but the short pastry is a bit fragile and easily overworked.  The secret to a good chocolate tart, of course, is good chocolate - Dutch process cocoa powder for the crust and high-quality dark chocolate for the filling.  

Gateau Concorde

I realize that this cake may appear rather complicated, but it isn't nearly as difficult to produce as it may seem.  The interior of the cake consists of layers of baked meringue alternating with chocolate mousse.  The exterior is covered in the same mousse, which serves to adhere the meringue "sticks" that line the side of the cake, and any remaining meringue is piled in the center of the cake in a random fashion.  Wilson has renamed this "Fort Cake" and insists that I make it again at Christmas (it is really tasty).  

The chocolate mousse recipe we used for this cake was as simple as they come, but also delicious, so I though some of you might like to try it:

8 ounces high-quality dark chocolate, melted

1/4 cup milk, warmed

2 cups heavy cream

Combine melted chocolate and warm milk and stir until smooth.  Whip cream until it is 3/4 whipped (very soft peaks) and place in the refrigerator.  Bring chocolate mixture to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) over a double boiler or water bath.  Remove whipped cream from the fridge and pour in chocolate, whisking until partially combined (this prevents the mixture from splitting).  Then, using a spatula, gently fold the chocolate and cream together until just combined.  The mousse will begin to set as the chocolate cools, and it should be kept in the refrigerator.

Weekend Update

So . . . let me begin with a little anecdote about how small the world is.  Callie and I were on the bus to Bondi Beach on Saturday to enjoy the beautiful weather and the Sculpture by the Sea exhibit when we were passing through a charming neighborhood called Paddington.  Paddington is a posh, yet naturally affable, suburb on the southern side of the harbour- a place where you might expect to see a mom dressed in Dolce&Gabanna jeans driving a Maserati convertible down shaded streets past hip boutiques and terrace homes.  Needless to say it is quite a nice place, and while we were enjoying the trip, our bus stopped by one of the many corner bakeries.  As I turned to say something to Callie, out walks someone who had on an Alabama football shirt.  Now I don't want to make this into a partisan Alabama-Auburn thing (it would be just as exciting to see an Auburn shirt), but it was pretty remarkable to be over 9,000 miles away from home and see a fellow fan of the Crimson Tide.  

Following this surprising encounter, we spent the afternoon at Bondi enjoying the sun and the artwork along the beach.  I should also mention that we had visited the Powerhouse Museum in the morning, so our Saturday was quite eventful.  On Sunday, we attended the Rotary District Conference at the University of Technology Sydney, a celebration of the incredible work local clubs have been doing over the past year and an opportunity to find inspiration for the work ahead.  The ambassadorial scholars in the district had a chance to briefly introduce themselves, and we were each reminded of the call to "Service above Self."  

This week is fairly normal for the most part: Callie is enjoying the more complicated tasks associated with her intermediate studies and I have finals coming up in the next few weeks.  It's hard to believe that we'll be returning home for Christmas so soon, but I guess that time just moves more quickly when you really enjoy what you're doing.  Given how much we've liked Australia thus far, we'll be back before we know it.

On the Road Again

Happy Birthday, Gran!  I started writing this post on your birthday, but I got a little distracted...

It's actually been a fairly eventful couple of weeks since we return from our trip.  The LSAT and Basic Patisserie now behind us, and Wilson is actually in the final few weeks of his semester.  While he somehow manages to crank out paper after paper on topics such as Australian diplomacy, Asia-Pacific relations, or Fijian crises, I'll be tempering chocolate for truffles, pinning and turning puff pastry, or sifting flour and whisking eggs for a sponge.  Wilson claims his lectures are stimulating and intriguing, but frankly, he can't be having as much fun as I am.  All hailing from different parts of the world (France, England, United States), the new chef teachers in Intermediate offer entirely different perspectives and teaching styles.  They are knowledgeable, experienced, and have a sincere desire for us to learn and improve our pastry skills.

We're continuing our tourist activities here in Sydney as well - last Monday was a public holiday, so we ventured into the city to explore Paddy's Market.  Frankly, I've never seen so much junk in one place in my life.  And by junk I mean everything from Australian paraphernalia to suspect seafood to knockoff handbags.  So we decided to ride the monorail around the city for a slightly different perspective.  On Saturday, we returned to Darling Harbour to view the some of the worlds most expensive and luxurious vehicles alongside bizarre concept cars at the Sydney International Motor Show.  There were vintage Mustangs, Volvo station wagons, Holden "utes," Maseratis behind glass fences, and a $2.1 million "supercar" from Sweden.  My favorite part was eating lunch on the waterfront afterwards.

A drive along the coast south of Sydney with John and Kathy consumed our Sunday.  Stopping first at Coalcliff, we walked along the $52 million Seacliff Bridge for an expansive view of the Tasman Sea.  Supposedly, the view is so vast that you can actually see the curvature of the earth...but I'm still skeptical.  We traveled along to Wollongong, stopping for a scrumptious seafood lunch, and then drove several miles south to Kiama, which is known for natural "blowholes" created by ocean swells shooting up within rock formations.  The seas were calm, however, and there were no blowholes to be seen. Oh well, maybe next time.

The Great Red Center, the Great Barrier Reef, and the World's Oldest Rainforest

Over the past several days, Callie and I have been on mid-semester break, and in order to gain a broader appreciation of Australia, we decided to take a little trip.  Granted, "little" is a relative term in a country where everything is much larger and further apart than you would initially think.  But, undeterred by Australia's vast and sparsely populated emptiness, we left Sydney bound for Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, and the world's oldest rainforest. 

Our first destination was the Ayers Rock Resort in the Northern Territory.  Ayers Rock (or its more appropriate Aboriginal name, Uluru) is the world's largest monolith, which is located in the dry, baked nothingness of the Outback.  Beyond the sheer size of Uluru and the peculiar fact that it rises over one thousand feet in the middle of a flat desert, the rock itself is an incredible geological phenomenon.  Composed of a super-hard and weather resistant sandstone known as arkose, Uluru was formed as the surrounding rock eroded over the course of the last 400 million years.  What remains is a captivating presence that dominates the surrounding landscape.  Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to spend in the park, but we did enjoy dinner under the stars and a guided walk around the base of the rock with a native Aborigine- both of which offered a unique narrative on the creation of the natural environment.  We stayed in a quaint accommodation called the Outback Pioneer, (which reminded Callie of Camp Mac) and while we managed to avoid any serious encounters with the wildlife, our first experience in the Australian Outback left a distinct impression on the both of us, the kind of impression that compels one to return.

From Uluru, we traveled to Cairns (pronounced "cans") and Port Douglas, which is in Northern Queensland.  We arrived in Cairns early Saturday evening and, no thanks to some erratic and incompetent local driving, managed to find Port Douglas.  Port Douglas is about 70 kilometers north of Cairns and is a gateway to both the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest.  

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest living organism- composed of 2,900 individual reef formations, populated by 1,500 species of fish, and is visible from space.  Needless to say, it is quite an imposing and beautiful part of the Australian environment, and given the fact that we only had one morning on the reef, it is impossible to do justice to its scope and diversity.  Leaving from Port Douglas early Sunday morning, we made the one-and-a-half hour journey to some of the reef's outer sections aboard the "Aristocat," a local dive and snorkel operation.  Having been a scuba diver for several years, I could hardly sit down, which was quite distracting to Callie, as she was preparing for her first introductory dive.  Despite somewhat limited visibility, the reef was absolutely amazing.  While we didn't see large wildlife, the coral structures were unlike anything I had ever witnessed.  Most reefs have sections of well-developed coral, but they tend to be limited in their size and maturity.  The reefs that we saw, however, were simply loaded with all kinds of corals in every shape and size imaginable.  I'm sorry that we don't have any pictures to validate such claims, but . . . trust us.

Following our day on the Barrier Reef, we spent the better part of Monday exploring Port Douglas.  We walked along the beach, around the town and through the harbour, generally enjoying the absence of structured vacation that had thus far occupied our trip.  We wandered amidst the abundance of local shops, frequented the pool, and enjoyed an early dinner in the anticipation of the next day's adventure to the region's ancient forest.

The Daintree Rainforest is roughly 60 kilometers north of Port Douglas and is basically the last remnants of an ancient forest that covered all of Australia before the last ice age.  As Australia began to warm, the forest retreated in the upper-most reaches of Queensland and the Northern Territory.  Today, the Daintree is one of only a few of these prehistoric environments that remain.  

Our experience in the Daintree began with a beautiful drive through the small agricultural communities that dot the Queensland coast.  Sugarcane is second only to tourism in supporting the local economy, and the region is dominated by paddocks of tall, thick cane that thrive in the area between the mountains and the shore.  We drove by Mossman Gorge, past Snapper Island, over the Daintree River and found ourselves on a spectacularly unspoiled stretch of beach called Cape Tribulation (appropriately named given that Captain Cook ran aground there on the Great Barrier Reef).  Following morning tea complete with lamingtons (more on those later  from Callie), we went sea kayaking, as the barrier reef actually comes right into the shore at Cape Tribulation.  Afterwards, we went swimming in a exquisitely clear freshwater creek, hiked through a privately-owned section of the forest, and took a Daintree River cruise to look for saltwater crocodiles.  Needless to say, it is impossible to recount each of these experiences in such a way that captures the natural majesty of the area, but it is certainly an understatement to describe both the rainforest and the barrier reef as spectacular.  Beyond that, I'm not sure any written description is sufficient.

Now that we have returned to Sydney, we have a few free days left before returning to school and our normal routine.  Callie will begin her intermediate session this week, and I'll return to class for the last weeks of the semester.  We can't say enough about how much we have enjoyed our time thus far in Australia, and having a chance to see more of the country this past week simply adds to our appreciation for this opportunity.  We'll be sure to post more pictures from our trip, but I'm not convinced that any picture or story or experience can capture how truly inspiring and expansive Australia is.  We will try nonetheless . . .