Chef’s pumpkin gnocchi with girolle mushrooms, a mushroom sauce and parmesan tuile

The fourth and final restaurant service. And it’s a busy one. Boys against girls too. A few people didn’t come so, for shits and giggles, chef put us boys in a team of 4 and the ladies in a team of 5.

A quiet kitchen. The calm before the storm

The starter was Gnocchis au Potiron, Girolles et Tuile au Parmesan to start. Pumpkin gnocchi with girolle mushrooms and a parmesan tuile. Technically it was butternut squash and not pumpkin. I’m not complaining. I frikkin’ love butternut squash. Just thought I’d clarify that pumpkins are a type of squash but not every squash is a pumpkin. Enough with the pedantry.

Main course was Timbale de Sole aux Langoustines, Sauce Champagne. A lemon sole and langoustine timbale with a champagne sauce. According to Larousse Gastronomique, “timbale” is the name given to small preparations cooked in plain, round, high-sided moulds.

Chef’s lemon sole and langoustine timbale

Chef de Partie put me on the Gnocchi. The squash was peeled and diced, seasoned, drizzled with olive oil and baked in the oven on a bed of rock salt, En Papillote—in a foil envelope. Meanwhile, the spuds were peeled, quartered and cooked from cold salted water. And it’s not news anymore than potatoes should never boil. In this case you need the potatoes cooked reasonably quickly but they can’t be cut too small for risk of losing all their starch.

Grated Parmesan was sprinkled onto a hot tray and baked in the oven to form tuiles.

Onto the langoustines.

Chef showed us the classic way to present langoustines. This involved twisting the claws behind its back and stabbing them into the abdomen. Not forgetting to mention, the langoustines are alive at that point. Chef likened the end pose to that famous scene in the movie, Titanic, with Kate and Leo at the front of the ship. So, yoga langoustine was now called Kate. And where there’s a Kate, there’s a Leo.

We decided to keep our presentation humane so the langoustines went straight into simmering water. Well, kinda humane.

The lemon soles were filleted, skin removed, and cut to size to line the walls of a ramekin. The trimmings were used to make a mousse with cream, cayenne, and chervil. The mousse was piped into the ramekin bottom and pushed up the sides with the back of a wet spoon. Langoustine tails were curled and placed into the middle, then more mousse around and over the top to seal. That’s the timbale for you.

BTW Leo langoustine was a head stuffed with mousse.

Time to make the gnocchi.

The cooked potatoes were drained, left to air dry and then pushed through a ricer. The squash was more tricky. Scolding hot, it was loaded into muslin cloth and squeezed to remove the moisture. Even with hands double-gloved it was a right sod. Hot. Hot! HOT!! The riced potato and squash pieces were placed onto a baking sheet, which was used to combine the two by folding each half over the other repeatedly. This helped avoid overworking the dough. Once I added the egg yolk and flour things got messy. The dough was wetter than it should’ve been. I guess I didn’t get all that boiling moisture out. Chef said maybe the potatoes were overcooked and lost starch. What to do? Add even more flour—but that means working it more, which makes it wet apparently. Hmm. Sod it. More flour. And more flour. I eventually got it to stop sticking to everything long enough to roll into sausages and cut gnocchi. A short spell in the blast chiller then they were blanched. Thank god they didn’t turn into mush. Fridge.

Beautiful girolle mushrooms were scraped and wiped clean for the starter. A mushroom sauce was made with the trimmings, veal stock, and that damned liquid from the pumpkin.

The main course had 2 sauces. The first used langoustine heads and shells, cardinalised in a hot pan. Garlic, onion, carrot and leek were added. Then tomato paste and tomatoes. Finally, Cognac flambéd, white wine, and fish stock. The second sauce started by sweating shallot and mushroom trimmings in butter. Champagne was added with fish stock. When the sauce had reduced by half it was passed through muslin cloth, reduced to a syrup, cream added and then finished with butter. Monter au beurre, as they like to say in France. At one point, even chef lost track of his 3 sauces during the demo.

Ça marche.

The troublesome gnocchi were fried in butter. The girolles were quickly fried in butter over a high temperature to stop them oozing liquid, and the mushroom sauce was finished with butter. Butter. Butter. Butter. And some chives. Oh, and the tuile. 8 plates were at the pass 2 minutes late. Chef liked our presentation and said everything tasted good. Even the gnocchi turned out fine.

Our twist on the pumpkin gnocchi served with girolle mushrooms, a mushroom sauce and the parmesan tuile

No time to rest. Straight onto the main course. 20 minutes. Nope. Chef came and told us to serve in 15 minutes because the made-up customers were in a rush. Buttered cartouches went over the timbales then into a Bain Marie and into the oven. Baby leeks were cooked in a little oil and water—l’etuvée. Nowt fancy. Sauces were ready to go. We served 7 minutes late. 2 minutes under normal circumstances. Felled by an intricate plating and one particular prawn head that just kept rolling off the timbale. Leo’s drunken uncle, perhaps?

Cocky with gnocchi