Cook and Bake Along with Master Chef Renae Smith at Food Consulate, Velachery, Chennai

Having been invited to the Cook and Bake Along event with Master chef finalist Renae Smith, I was eager to go see her in action finally. I used to watch the odd Masterchef Australia episode but not all of them, however I do remember a tattooed contestant in one of the episodes! It was probably her. This event would be held at Food consulate an interesting new venture started by Mr. Mohammed Ali, founder of one of Chennai's popular food groups, Chennai Food Guide or CFG.

Disclaimer:
The cost of ticket has been waived for me since I was invited. I will offer my unbiased view in spite of this as constructive criticism. I have not been paid to cover the event doing it out of my own interest to see how this kitchen concept is and also because I cook for myself and would like to see how someone like Renae does it and learn something from her techniques. And of course taste the dishes! Also, such a concept may help spawn new methods of cooking in Indian cuisine so encouraging such startups is ultimately good for the average foodie.

First off, I reached at 10:30 am and found almost everyone assembled in the cafe adjoining the FC [Food consulate] kitchen. The sun was absolutely blazing then and I had to sit for a few minutes to catch my breath. In a few minutes we were ushered into the kitchen and Renae was fitted with a handsfree microphone so she could explain what she was doing and why. There was also two flat screens setup so those in the back rows could see what exactly was happening on the cooking range. But the camera was pointed at the wrong place for most of the time unfortunately. Wish it was showing the food being cooked properly.

Dishes to be prepared for the day:

Tomato tart
Crispy Salmon and roasted fennel salad
Baked chicken and porcini risotto
Creme Brulee

Now many of the ingredients for these dishes had to be brought in from abroad and other places so the dish could be accurately recreated. For example, the crispy salmon and roasted fennel salad required the actual cumin bulb and not the seeds we are used to. Apparently this had to be brought in from abroad and then with a stopover from Mumbai!

Starting off..

Chef Renae started with making the Creme Brulee since that takes a longer time to set and needs to be done carefully. We had a printed copy of the recipes of each dish along with the basic steps. But she did give us a continuous commentary as she was making the dish. The brulee is a delicate dish she said and needs a lot of attention while heating the cream and vanilla. Too hot and it will curdle and render the dish useless. Too cool and you won't get the desired thickness in the end product. She switched off the flame at the right moment so that the dish cooks in the leftover heat. Once the egg yolks and sugar were mixed in, they were put out to bake for some time while she got busy with the next dish.

Then she got started with baked chicken and porcini risotto for which again the porcini mushrooms were brought in. Risotto apparently is made with a different variant of Italian short grain rice called Arborio that is more sticky and shorter in length because of it's higher starch content as wiki tells me. It reminded me of the Seeraga samba variety used at you know which biriyani chain but this has a much more intense taste of "rice" in it. ;D But the booklet mentioned it is Arborio rice.

                                               Baked chicken and porcini risotto

Once, this went into the oven, she immediately got started with the crispy salmon and roasted fennel salad dish. This was one I was looking forward to since I was curious to see how her preparation of fish would be.

Rapid multitasking

One of the takeaways to me was how she juggled multi tasking many dishes which were at various stages of preparation and somehow they all turned out perfectly. I'm sure this is par for the course in any restaurant's kitchen but I was pretty impressed how she did it even while talking to us, answering queries and remembering to take dishes out from the oven at the right time amidst all the buzz.

So, the salmon pieces were sliced Indian style and fried for a few minutes on each side. In the meantime the other ingredient of the dish, the fennel was sliced up, sprinkled with orange zest and baked. Finally the onion pieces and the toasted almonds were arranged nicely along with the fried bite sized pieces of salmon. As another blogger attendee, Shankar from the Green Gastronomist blog says, it really was the "killer dish" of the lot. I assumed it would be tasty but when I bit into the first toasted almond along with the orange flavored crispy salmon and chewy fennel strips, I felt like Emile does in the movie Ratatouille as he bites into the cheese and really feels the combination of the cheese and grape hitting him! :D Great great dish!

                                      Crispy Salmon and roasted fennel salad built up

 

                                  

The work on the Tomato tart had begun with the pastry dough being rolled with chilled butter. She gave plenty of tips while preparing for example the butter has no structure of it's own hence needs to be chilled in the fridge before dunking it into the oven suddenly. If the butter was not chilled beforehand, the final baked pastry would be misshapen.


She encouraged experimentation and told us to use ingredients which we thought would add a unique twist to a dish. On a question by Chef Willi about whether the masterchef participants would have an idea or warning of the dish/ingredients beforehand, she replied that they had no clue and had to make do with whatever ingredients was left in the pantry. Sometimes there was hardly anything left after the others took their choice of ingredients. Also her familiarity with so many combinations of ingredients could be attributed to her reading every cook book she could lay her hands on during the masterchef program she said. For six months they had no access to internet or other distractions and spent their entire time reading and understanding recipes and techniques. During the trials, she saw a lot of food being wasted after the cooking sessions were done and they got the excess food delivered to the people around the area.

For the tart, they had cherry tomatoes brought in which was fried until it was chewy and the raw flavors is removed. The balsamic vinegar was meanwhile being reduced and sugar added. The baked pastry was plated and the sweet vinegary syrup drizzled around the dish. I didn't get a good bite of this dish since everyone had almost finished it off but the tomatoes were fudgy almost and the pastry light.
                                                              Tomato Tart

Now that all the dishes were done, it was tasting time and everyone gathered around her to have a small bite. The creme brulee remained hidden in the oven and I forgot to take a bite unfortunately. I'm sure it would have been awesome as well.

                                                               Creme brulee

                                

                                                     

                                              Mohammed Ali with Chef Willi

                          Mr. Keshav Krishna & Ms.Suzie helped out Chef Renae throughout.

                                                        Other Chefs in attendance

        Chef Willi answering some questions

A final observation about Chef Renae is she has a message to try and eat vegetarian food with some regularity. Most of her dishes has plenty of veggies and fresh produce. She has a PR firm and also has designed the menu for restaurants in Australia. All in all it was a very nice event as you might have guessed. She gave out lots of advice on cooking style every minute which was almost too much to digest for an amateur like me. Also we were all standing during the 3 hour event. I asked Mr. Ali if there was a reason seats weren't provided, he said it is a sign of respect to the chef who is standing and working and that if any guest had issues they would be provided with seating. However, I feel seating would be good since it is easier to pay attention if you're comfortable. It is one thing for young catering students to stand and work in kitchens quite another for unhealthy people to be standing for hours. :D  In the first session, there was no cooking along everyone was only watching but the second session in the evening did have all participants cooking the respective dishes along with the chef. I bet that would have been a lot of fun! Now I am excited to experiment more with ingredients that we get in Chennai and give it a fresh twist.