How do you like them apples?

I knew I should’ve ordered it the second I found it, but that’s chef life.

Apple struddle with apple sorbet, blackberry caramel.

I had made the decision to go with the sorbet 3 weeks before hand, after finding it on one of my suppliers websites. I hadn’t heard of anyone using it, in all honesty I’d never even heard of it or even though about an apple sorbet before, so it should be something completely different for the new menu. I should’ve ordered one ASAP, but anyways.

I’m now one day before my new menu, and my show stopper element for a dish is unavailable, on back order from Europe. I swear they had 7 tubs, or was it 3? I hesitated though.

The chef gods seem to be trying to piss on me, I had better get moving and go find some, worst case I’ll just make it.

I set off back to town to pick up an Epson 277 black print cartridge, and I had found a pasta professional that did a nice brew of ice-creams and sorbets to order.

Turned out that an Epson 277 is a bit like my sorbet, hard to find and not to popular.

The pasta guy wasn’t home, but by the sounds of the lady behind the counter, he makes to order Wednesdays, tomorrow, she just had to make a call.

A few minutes later and they’ve got everything I could dream of, except an Apple sorbet.

I was standing there drooling over this huge Ice-cream machine that I could see just through what appeared to be their kitchen. This thing was monstrous, about the same size as a one armed bandit, or better known as a dishwasher, the type you pull open and close with one arm.

No Apple sorbet for me.

Ill got their details, as they did mine and I organized for them to send through a product list.

Be stuffed if I wanted to make my own sorbet I thought. I’ve got one of those manual frozen churn pot things, but no blade attachment. They take 3 day to churn a 5 litre tub anyways, plus after laying eyes on the frozen bandit, I was feeling depressed as to what I was going to conjure.

I had 35 confirmed bookings on my first night back, kitchens been shut up shop for a week, new menu to roll out, and I’ve next to no mis en place.

Any cobwebs from holiday mode need to cleaned up quickly.

I knew walking back into the kitchen that I wouldn’t be able to pull of the whole menu in 1 day, I’ll just go hammer and tongs and get up the staples, plus what ever else I can make work. As long as it isn’t shit.

Having myself and a 1st year, time will be limited, and I have got to trial, record and taste all the new menu items as I go.

Ill have a few days to tweak the dishes, but I would rather explain our situation, then put poor food up.

The apple strudel would be no exception, this dish must be prime.

I had put a banana 3 ways dish on, with a banana nougat, so I thought I would combine 1/4 of that recipe, minus the banana, with a parfait recipe I had, then mix through some apple puree and see how it turns out. You never know when your doing something like that, either it works or doesn’t, and I’m pretty good at pulling rabbits out of hats so to speak.

An apple strudel is a popular Australian sweet pastry, traditionally Viennese, and apparently belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Keeping as many traditional aspects in place as possible will be the plan, but making it distinctively my own dish will also be vital.

I headed into the bakery next door and hit up the pastry lads to see if they would be keen to make the pastry and crème patisserie for me. Two time consuming components that I want as fresh as possible.

These rigs work 10pm until 6 am, so seeing them face to face is going to be near impossible. The lady got me to write them a note, and said they’ll get back to me.

These guys cook out of a wood fired oven, so anything I can get from them I will, as getting eucalyptus or wattle infused product is pretty hard to come by. Consistency is an issue, buy quality will over ride that problem 8 days a week.

My inquiries for there product were meet with denial. Same problem as me, no time to do it.

It seems every little issue I come across with this dish is meet with another. Maybe the chef gods are trying to piss on me? That’s ok though, I’ll just throw a big fuck you back at them, garnished with some challenge accepted.

Ill just make the crème patisserie, and use puff pastry as a substitute until I’ve got time to master the traditional pastry.

I’m a chef by trade, not a pastry chef. Ill let the bakers bake the bread, or in this case, let pampas make the puff pastry.

The parfait turned out pretty good, nowhere near a sorbet though. A sorbet by definition is flavoured ice water, not a set cream with chunks of crystalized apple puree in it. I liked it though, I had been thinking I needed a cream element to the dish, and I had just found one.

I had come across a pear shaped cutter months ago, and had decided to use it for some sort of garnish tool.

Although they are a different fruit, they are closely related. They come from the Pome fruit family, from the plant family of Rosaceae, sub family of the Pomoideae. So google says anyways.

I’ve always rated apples very highly, they were great to eat growing up, as they were in abundance everywhere near where I grew up. I’ve even got an apple tree an my shack where I spent many weekends and school holidays growing up.

This is a previous special I had produced a few months ago, Moscato poached pear with custard and puff pastry. I truly love my pears and apples.

They would probably be my last meal request, if I was ever in that situation.

We had easy and free access to Plums, Nectarines, Lemons, Apricots, Peaches and the cream of the crop, the Green Gages.

We would tuck our shirts in, jump peoples fence’s and load up with our desired pick, then do the bolt before anyone caught us.

Heaps nicer than jam on toast after school.

When the crew and I were around 16 we created a game called Apples. Whoever was in had a cricket bat to protect themselves with, and everyone else could peg apples at you as hard as they wanted, one at a time.

The catch was though, if you hit someone, they were out and you HAD to bat.

Made your hand eye co-ordination very good, or you got hurt.

Apart from pissing everyone else in the neighbourhood off by covering the park in broken apples, our little brothers found out the hard way why sometimes its not wise to play with the big boys. Poor bugger only lasted 2 throws from memory.

He went down hard, and stayed down.

I feel pretty privileged to have grown up in that kind of neighbourhood in those days.

I’ve eaten apples until I couldn’t move, paralysed with a gut ache and the thought of why did I do this again, and I’ve never lost the appetite for it. The best apples I have ever come across are Fuji’s. There small, red and sweeter than Joey from Dawson’s creek, unfortunately they are hard to get.

You can find them at the Launceston Harvest market when they’re in season, and it is apple season.

My sorbet needs two main components. The syrup and the meringue.

I combined water, sugar and apple for the syrup, brought it to a simmer, and reduced it until a medium syrup was acquired. The syrup velocity will help me prevent ice particle’s forming. I want my sorbet silky like Victoria’s secret’s best underwear.

The meringue was stock standard. Sugar syrup drizzled into peaked egg whites.

I froze the syrup on the Thursday, and was finally combining the two on the Friday morning

I had not other choice but to beat together the 2 elements and hope for the best. Lots of things sound great in theory, but the proofs always in the pudding in my profession. Ill leave it alone for 4 hours. I put a deadline on the whole menu being sorted by 5.30pm that night, and this was my only concern.

I went back to enjoying some of the dried pear skin I’d tossed with some port sherbet I had been playing with. The garnish was prime, I started to think I could call it apples 4 ways, or more accurately Rosaceae 4 ways. Then another voice told me to settle the fuck down.

The sorbet turned out prime. Velvet ice I would describe it as. I would have never guessed on the Tuesday I would be making it myself, let alone it being something to be proud of!

Time to make sure this dish fits well together.

I had made the strawberry caramel earlier in the day, and filled the strudel with a braise of apples, pears, currents and a nice dollop of crème patisserie.

I used the pear cutter to cut a hole in the top of the puff pastry, of which I used the cuttings to make a pear sandwich. Puff pastry stuffed with crème patisserie, prime time.

I plated my first complete dish just before service, and by all accounts it tasted great, but needed some sort of strong colour. I had some kiwi fruit left from the previous menu, which I simmered, puree’d and coloured with green food colouring.

Good thing my first plate up was for the boss, as I missed the Blackberry caramel, what a week I was having.

The endeavour to produce a menu with as much house cooked product as possible has never wavered for me, even in this day and age where chefs are leaving the industry left, right and centre.

I am 1 chef with a first year apprentice, I have to be careful not to make to much stock on site, as when I get busy, I may not be able to keep up, or end up working myself into the ground doing 60+ hour weeks.

I’ve got house made gnocchi, Galantine, confit duck, among other things, all produced on site with a small crew.

Producing a menu that’s all prepared on site is great, it’s what I’ve always endeavoured to do, but without solid back-up for when I start to get crazy busy, I could find myself working excessive hours with a baby on the way. I’m divorced once, I wont be doing that again if I can help it.

At the end of the first week of the new menu I had only sold 3 serves, but to great response.

I had posted a rough picture on my favourite chef community, chefs arse, as my chef brother’s and sisters will never shy away from honest feedback.

Ill look to make a smaller Strudel when producing my next batch, but overall extremely happy with the outcome.

Flavour, texture and sex appeal are all vividly present. All I need to do now is get bums on some seats for what will hopefully be a solid cold season.

Without doubt one of the most enjoyable things for me is being able to overcome obstacles like this one. When countered with setback’s in my endeavours to produce the best food I can with the resources provided, holds a special feeling when you overcome it that I cant describe. Sort of like I’ve been blessed with a pedigree to overcome the trials and tribulations that my industry can throw at me.

Or maybe it’s just my pedigree learnt from the great chefs that took the time to teach me.

I think I’ll go with the later.

Turned out my faded memory had evaded the fact that I had previously spoken to someone else about an apple sorbet previously, but I am not paid for my memory skill set, only my cooking skills.

I hope you enjoyed my tale of building this delicious dish.