Tarte A La Creme Banane

Here is my tarte a la creme banane in pate sucree, filled with creme legere, and topped with piped rosettes of creme chantilly. Or, if you are not at the French Culinary Institute, I suppose you would call it a banana cream tart, made with a sweet pastry dough, lightened pastry cream, and piped sweetened whip cream. It always sounds better in French, though, doesn't it :). I took this picture before I dusted on cocoa powder to finish it off.

We started today with the second half of our lecture on food safety by learning how to properly receive and store food in a commercial kitchen. We then made a gingersnap dough and left it chilling in the fridge overnight. We also prepared pate brisee, which is the classic french pastry dough. It is similar to pie dough and uses a bit of salt and very little sugar. We will use it tomorrow to make 2 tarts: a fresh fruit tart and a poached pear and almond tart. We will also be making chocolate pots de creme and baking the gingersnaps.

With respect to the apple tart I made yesterday, we finished the tart with apricot nappage to make it shiny. Apricot nappage is used by pastry chefs for that shiny finish you see on most fruit tarts, pies, etc. It is made by reconstituting the thick nappage over high heat with a liquid. You can achieve almost the same thing by cooking down apricot jam with a liquid and a bit of corn syrup, I think. One thing I love about this program is all the technical information we are learning about food. We don't just learn the recipe and then make it. We discuss the basic ingredients, the proper ratio of the ingredients, how they interact with one other, the purpose of each ingredient, and possible substitutions.

Now, I'm off to the gym.