Bosch Masterclass with Chef Ian Curley
Disclosure: I attended the Masterclass courtesy of Bosch.
A few weeks ago I visited the Bosch Experience Centre for a masterclass with Chef Ian Curley, executive chef of The European.
You can actually visit the Bosch Experience Centre and have a guided tour for a closer look at their appliances – though unfortunately you won’t have a chef cooking you dinner there like we did. 🙂
After having a quick introduction to the appliances, we went into the back showroom/kitchen where we were introduced to Chef Ian Curley.
The night started with a demonstration – surrounded by photo snapping food bloggers, Chef Ian Curley performed well under pressure and quickly filleted a John Dory for the first dish.
The fish fillets were quickly seared in a hot pan, and afterwards some witlof was added in to braise.
The end result: John Dory with cauliflower puree and braised witlof.
After the fish was plated (and we’d all had a taste), we split into three teams to cook the rest of the food for dinner.
On the menu was crab linguine (Team Pasta), beef Wellington (Team Beef Welly) and seafood paella (Team Paella).
Team Pasta made this incredible – super incredible – crab linguine topped with toasted garlic breadcrumbs and shaved bottarga.
It was dish of the night – so fresh, spicy, and stuffed with sweet crab meat. Delicious.
I was on Team Beef Welly with Daisy and Lianne.
Beef Wellington duty mostly involved taking photos. Good way to cook, hey?
Instead of making one large beef Wellington, we made smaller individual serves, with the meat already cut for us. The eye fillets were quickly seared on each side in a very hot pan.
After searing, they were topped generously with Dijon mustard.
And covered with a chopped and flavoured mushroom mixture.
The next steps was to cover them with strips of proscuitto and brioche pastry (a change from the more traditional puff).
They were brushed with egg yolk before going into the Bosch Combi steam oven.
Of course, a regular oven works too, but if you have a combi steam oven, you want to use it right? A combination steam oven combines the benefits of steam cooking (ie moisture) with the regular dry browning heat of a convection oven.
While the beef Wellys were cooking, we made a button mushroom sauce (well, Daisy, Lianne and I observed the sauce making). The sauce contained button mushrooms, shallots, cream, red wine sauce, fresh peas, baby cos lettuce leaves, and baby brussel sprout leaves.
After about 20 minutes or so, the beef Wellingtons were ready to come out of the oven.
The beef Wellys were plated up with pea puree and the mushroom sauce.
And topped with a touch of grated fresh horseradish.
Ta dah! I’d be pretty pleased to be served this at dinner anytime tbh.
And the last savoury dish – seafood paella. There was so much seafood in the paella we could barely see the rice.
I’d also like to state that I noticed that Team Paella didn’t seem to be doing much hands on cooking whenever I looked over. My team and their team were both slackers.
For dessert, we all wandered back into the kitchen for an olive oil, polenta and ricotta trifle. Layered in the glasses were pieces of olive oil polenta cake and ricotta mousse.
The trifles were topped with puff pastry straws, an extra drizzle of olive oil and grated candied walnuts.
I loved that extra olive oil in it – it gave an grassy savouriness that was really interesting.
It was a fun night: shiny appliances plus good food and company always gets a tick in my book. Thanks to Bosch for the evening!
For more, see I Eat Therefore I Am, Second Helping, Food Made with Love and Kimba’s Kitchen.
Hannah
July 6, 2013 @ 6:16 am
Um yes. The crab linguine and dessert in particular, please.
Agnes
July 10, 2013 @ 9:17 pm
I’ll have it FedExed over pronto.
Iron Chef Shellie
July 6, 2013 @ 9:48 pm
WHAT? what do you mean Bosch appliances don’t come with a fully qualified chef? That’s a deal breaker man 😛
Agnes
July 10, 2013 @ 9:17 pm
That would be one good way to sell appliances. :p
msihua
July 6, 2013 @ 10:37 pm
Two things. Ian Curley’s name always makes me think of curly fries and he always looks so scary with the knife 😛
Agnes
July 10, 2013 @ 9:10 pm
Okay, now *I’m* also thinking of curly fries. Thanks DD.