Hi Substackers. It’s my last week of culinary school in Goa and I’ve been in my head a lot lately. And by that I mean I’m starting this entry in my notes app on my lunch break, sitting on a mossy curb, hiding from the sun, and thinking about what I’ve done and what I haven’t done on a very small and a very large scale these past two and a half months. I keep remembering things about myself when I was younger since being here. Instead of preoccupying myself with all of the things that normally keep me busy or distracted, I’m thinking about what my favorite snacks used to be when I lived in Illinois, which was 15 years ago, and other unrelated but somehow similar topics of that sort. And what that sparked this blazing trail of of deep thought and sidewalk contemplation? Caramelized bananas.
We made deconstructed banoffee pie in class during Dessert Week, which was a combo of vegan whipped cream, vanilla gelato, a buttery short crust and caramel, and I was talking to my friend about deja vu while the guest instructor Gayana was lighting slices of bananas on fire. My friend said that she felt like she had experienced this before (the torching of the nana) but couldn’t remember when, or any details about the circumstances in which she might’ve. She couldn’t think of the word for it, so I told her it was deja vu, and she shook her head “no.” Then I started experiencing it, too. Isn’t it funny that something so small can trigger a train of thought that’s something like:
She was definitely talking about deja vu.
What’s first memory I’ve ever had?
Oh my god, there’s so much of my childhood that I don’t remember.
I have an uncle on my mom’s side who had a brother with a potassium deficiency, so his whole life my uncle was force-fed bananas as to not make his sibling feel left out in his yellow-leaning diet and now can’t stand them and gags at the smell.
Bananas and soy sauce could taste nice together.
I have both of those things in my fridge.
I should be paying attention right now.
What am I going to do with all of the new things I’ve learned here? I think I’ll see the banana uncle over Thanksgiving. I’m going to ask him about his brother.
What keeps me focused?
Is my internal monologue is as loud as everyone else’s?
At lunch, I will write in my notes app.
My grandma is doing much better and I’m feeling less weird when I wake up. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, especially this week, but I think it’s a temporary problem that writing is helping with. I cut my bangs with cuticle scissors and am partnered with a classmate who studied patisserie, so it’s been an incredibly decorative week from a personal and culinary sense.
Back to Dessert Week.
I am obsessed with pastry. I don’t think I’m used to being precise in the kitchen, and my new partner had studied pastry prior to taking the vegan course, so he and our teachers slow me down throughout the week and helped me think through things before getting too experimental. It was restrictive and very necessary, and I had some of my favorite dishes with their metaphorical handcuffs around my wrists. Learning about desserts was a different ballpark because there isn’t much room to roughly measure ingredients or test your luck with flavors. You either make something the way it’s supposed to be made and nail it, or you don’t, and you wish you had because whatever you ended up with isn’t even close. The first episode of Great British Bake Off aligned perfectly with this week, too — I ate my leftovers while watching the season premiere.
You guys loved the look of this cream tart on Instagram, so I’ll teach you how to make it. I think the vegan crust would work so well to hold pumpkin or apple filling, and I’m trying it out with my grandma at Thanksgiving. She has a recipe she’s been using for 60 years, so I doubt she’ll change her ways now, but it will be nice to compare the differences and see what my dairy-loving relatives think.
Vegan Cream Tarts
The Crust
2/3 cup flour
2-3 tbsps powdered sugar
1/3 cup vegan butter, cold and cut into small pieces
1-2 tsps vegan milk
pinch of salt
Add all ingredients to bowl except vegan milk, rub butter into dry mixture with fingers until you reach a wet sand consistency
Add 1 tsp of plant milk and incorporate with a claw hand (pretend you’re a cat about to scratch something — that’s what your hand should look like when stirring the milk into the butter/flour mixture)
Pour mixture onto one half of long sheet of parchment paper, fold remaining half over crumb pile
Roll out into even layer, 1/2 cm thick, place in fridge for 15-20 minutes before lining cupcake tray or mini pie tarts
Freeze lined tray for another 15-20 minutes
Bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes
The Cream
1 part vegan whip (Truwhip, Cocowhip, or dairy-free equivalent)
1 part homemade almond pastry cream*
*Method
1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsps sugar
1 pinch salt
3/4 cup almond milk
Mix 1 tbsp almond milk with cornstarch to make slurry, set aside
Add remaining ingredients to pot and heat until sugar dissolves
Remove pot from heat and add slurry, mix until thick
Chill in fridge
Once pastry cream is cold, fold in equal amount of vegan whip
Once tart crusts are baked and cooled, overfill each one with almond cream, use back of knife to remove any excess cream, creating a smooth, flat layer
Plate with fresh fruit or compote
Other vegan desserts we made…
A few people in my class got new tattoos. One of them looks like a butterfly, another is cooking-related, and I know there’s another on the back of my classmate’s neck but she wears collared shirts and I have yet to ask for a sneak peek.
My friend asked one of the needled people about their tattoo.
“New tattoos?! Did you get a tramp stamp?”
“No. It’s a religious symbol that means there is one god.”
No one spoke for a long time.
We also revisited out fermentation projects from almost two months ago, and my group and I made sauces out of our beet-chili-ginger concoction. They were delicious, and we reused them at the end of the week for Canapé Day. Here’s that, along with some food I’ve eaten and other things I’ve seen. I have to make Munish’s curry this week. I have to.
Happy November.