Pate Brisee

Or as us normal folk call it, pie crust! In case you forgot, let me remind you, I hate baking. The same holds true again today. I challenge baking to make me like it. I did figure out that I have a fear of flour. That's why I hate baking. It gets so messy and goes everywhere and the texture is weird. The worst part of baking is that it is so specific and scientific. Cooking isn't like that, you can get so creative. I am really struggling with the baking aspect. Yes, I do it and I do it fine, but it's not as fun being there....but, enough about that.

We had a fairly long lecture today about pie crusts and the uses and variations of the master recipe. Again, we did some savory recipes and a lot of sweet recipes. The recipe I did was the Raspberry Fruit Tart with a Walnut Crust. My crust was ok, the butter in it got too warm and the nuts were too finely crushed so it made it more crumbly then it was suppose to be, but we all still ate it none the less!

Tonight I had the first of four ServSafe seminars. At the 4th class, I take an exam and if I get a 75% or better, I am certified. Essentially, this means that I can prepare and serve food legally. All I can say is BOOOOORING. I knew it would be, but it was a long 3 hours. It felt longer than the baking class. Tonight we discussed food born illnesses. How fun discussing vomiting and bloody diarrhea right after I had a ton of food! Next week should be just as boring, but at least she promised it would go quicker!

Today's Recipes: Tomato, Goat Cheese and Pesto Quiche, Sanbusak (ground lamb, pine nut and raisin turnovers....soooo yummy!), Strawberry Lime Tart, Pear Tart with Almond Cream, Blueberry Turnovers, Strawberry-Kiwi Tart with a Pistachio Crust, Raspberry Tart with a Walnut Crust, Strawberry-Kiwi Tart with an Almond Tart, Carrot Upside-Down Tart, Roasted Red Pepper and Poblano Quiche, Three-Nut Pie, Italian Rice Tart

The Look!

Our chef's coats came in today....this is what I look like all suited up! It's funny to me. I also think it's funny how opposite my school life is compared to my work life. For school I don't put any makeup on, don't dry my hair fully, and couldn't care less how I look. For work, it's the complete opposite as I am required to wear and maintain my makeup and have my hair down and styled. At school, I am in mostly white. At work, I am in a head-to-toe black suit.

For some weird reason, I really enjoy the 180 between school and work. It makes me feel like I have 2 identities or something (Sasha Fierce!). I think it gives balance to play two characters....it's really fun!

Soufflé

Today we talked about soufflés. This class was a continuation of last week's egg theme. There were 4 savory soufflés and 4 sweet/dessert soufflés. I worked with another girl and we made the Amarene (Wild Cherry) Soufflé (1st picture) and the Savory Vegetable Soufflé (2nd picture). We had a 2 hour lecture about how to cook them. A lot of people are scared to cook them since there is a perception that they are hard to keep perfect. It's not hard to cook them, they just need to be eaten as soon as they are out of the oven. You also want to make sure that you have everything set before you whip the egg whites. Once you have the egg whites whipped to a stiff peak, there is no turning back. So, yes, I had to whip egg whites to a stiff peak today. It took a little while even though I was using a copper bowl. My arm was killing me! In today's class I felt pretty confident and every thing seemed to flow together nicely. It was a pretty calm day. Everyone seemed to be in sync and there were no major issues. We also discussed what we can expect to see on our quiz next week. This will be our first Food Basics quiz. It should be pretty short since it will only cover 3 classes. Chef Jim is very good at making sure we know what we should know. I am pretty confident I will do well on it.

Today's Recipes: Cheese Souffléd Roulade with Ham Salad, Watercress and Cheddar Soufflé, Four 'Lily' Sweet Potato and Gruyere Soufflé, Savory Vegetable Soufflé, Banana Chocolate Soufflés with Chocolate Cinnamon Sauce, Amarene (Wild Cherry) Soufflé, Lemon Souffléd Pudding with Blueberry Sauce, Creme Caramel

Pâte À Choux

It's the second day of baking. The pastry we made is what is used in eclairs and cream puffs. It's a very easy pastry to make and Chef said it's one of the most forgiving in pastry, that is why we are starting with it. It takes about 15-20 minutes to make the dough, but it's mostly stirring and your arm hurts terrible after! I also noticed that I had a small blister right below my pinky from stirring so hard. It's gone today though, but I should learn how to hold the spoon better.

To make the dough you bring your liquid (water or milk) and butter to a boil. Once it's there, you remove it from the heat and stir in all of your flour. Once that's incorporated, you put it back on the heat for about 3-5 minutes to remove any moisture. You can tell you have done this correctly when you see starch on the bottom of the pan and the spoon can stand up in the pastry. From there, you transfer it to a bowl and let it cool. Once it's cool, you start adding the eggs in. The eggs should be added in 4 sections. Once they are all incorporated, you can start piping them to bake! The master recipe is something that I will need to know, not only for my quizzes, but also for my mid-term and final in case I should get this pastry. The master recipe is 4 eggs, 1 cup of liquid, 1 cup of flour, 4 ounces of butter and a little salt. Once you have this down, you can add whatever you would like to it.

The recipe I made (at the top and bottom of the picture) is a small, savory appetizer. This is a good example of adding ingredients to the master dough. I also stirred in dill, parsley, Gruyere, scallions, salt and pepper. I piped about 50 little puffs about 1 inch in diameter. They bake until they are a dark golden brown and crispy. Once they are out, I cut the tops off and let them cool. Once cooled, I piped in a filling of chive cream cheese and topped with a Spanish olive for a little salt. They were so good. The pastry tasted like a really flavorful cracker and the filling was nice and creamy. It was one of the hits of the day with the rest of the class too.

To be honest, today was the first day I wasn't thrilled to be there. I chalked it up to a few factors. I think I was irked just because it was the first true baking class and, again, I HATE BAKING. The other reasons include that it wasn't the teacher it was suppose to be as she called in sick (the one I was expecting was the one that competed on some Food Network Challenges). The other reasons were because I missed the inauguration for something that I had no desire to participate in and that there are just way too many students in this class. That gets annoying, not to mention unsafe, when every time you turn around you run into someone! Ok, I feel better now!

Since it was Tuesday, I also had my seminar. Tonight's was Tasting and Finishing. It was fun to learn how you are tasting things and was proper seasoning can do to a dish. We started by tasting and comparing tonic water with salted tonic water. The first was very bitter (also, I found it to be missing Gin!) and the second was salty, obviously, but then there was also a sweetness too. However, there was no sugar added just salt. It's amazing how salt and remove bitterness and change the flavor all together! Next we had bitter greens with mild greens and 2 vinaigrettes. We tried radicchio with a vinaigrette less salted and meant for something soft like spinach. The bitterness took over the whole dressing, but, then we tried it with a heavier salted vinaigrette and it completely made the radicchio a subtle and a lot less bitter. We also tried a soup that was left chunky compared to the same soup that was blended to compare textures. I usually like chunky soups, but not this time. The blended soup seemed to be more creamy and rich. It tasted Delicious! The last dish was a medium-rare steak compared to a well done steak. I think that one is easy to figure out! Well done is not the way to go people!!! We also discussed plating. Basically, what I got from that was always try to use a white, unfancy plate, and don't do a pyramid of food, it doesn't look good. The seminar was short today, but still fun!

Today's Recipes: Pâte À Choux, Eclairs with Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream, Eclairs with Orange-Ginger Party Cream, Cream Puffs with Chocolate Pastry Cream, Cream Puffs with Cinnamon Pastry Cream, Profiteroles with Strawberry-Rhubarb Sorbet, Gougère with a Cheese Soufflè Filling, Cheddar Pearls, Paris-Brest, Savory Cream Puffs with Caponata Filling, Pâte À Choux Strawberry Shortcake

Eggs, Eggs, and more Eggs!

Guess what today's lesson was about! That's right, eggs. Eggs in every way imaginable. Chef said there is an old tale that states a chef's hat has 100 pleats, 1 for every way you can cook/use an egg. Today we did a lot with them and tomorrow, during baking class, we will learn even more. There is so much more to learn about eggs that next week's class will cover them as well! I love eggs, but I felt like today was too simple. I am anxious to get into the meats and other hearty items. There are things I learned though. I never used to poach eggs before, but today was great to learn how to do them correctly. It may be a new cooking technique in our house!

During our lecture, chef used the egg yolks to make a homemade mayonnaise. It was quite good, however, chef reminded us that an original mayonnaise was used as a sauce, not the way we use it now. Lesson of the day: When eggs are first laid, they come out coated in a sticky, slimy substance called the cuticle or bloom. If this remains on the egg, it can remain out and unrefrigerated without harm. The cuticle blocks the pores of the eggs which means oxygen cannot get into the egg and break it down. Commercial producers wash this cuticle off and then coat the egg with mineral oil as Americans are too stuck up to have 'sticky' eggs.

Today we learned a lot about the properties of the egg and how it works in cooking. Today we did fewer recipes than in the past. I think this is because they factored in the time it would take to show us some of the techniques when using eggs. We broke down into teams and my team made the Beggar's Purses of 3 Cheeses and the Bread Pudding with Lemon Rum Zabaglione Sauce. I made the crepe batter for the 'purses' and blanched scallion greens to tie the 'purses' together. I also helped flip the bread pudding out of the pan and serve it up. While I though today's lesson was a little simple, I loved at least one part of every recipe we made. Today is one of the days where I will make a lot of this food in the future.

Today's Recipes: Roberta's Eggs II, L'Omelette Nature, Savory Waffles with Piperade and Scrambled Eggs, Beggar's Purses of Three Cheeses, Vegetable Torte Custard, Grilled Asparagus with Poached Eggs and Orange Dill Mayonnaise, Bread Pudding with Lemon Rum Sabayon (Zabaglione) Sauce

Baking - Fruits and Spice

Today was my first baking class. As most of you know, I don't care for baking, I'd rather cook savory dishes. However, I knew I had a good teacher and can learn a lot from her. One of my baking teachers is Lisa Raffael. She's been on 3 Food Network Cake Challenges and owns her own bakery here in MA. It was really cool to see her in person since I had just watched her compete on national television!

This baking class is the 2 Food Basics classes put together. I am a little disappointed by this simply because the kitchens are small. You are always running into someone, which is not the safest thing in the kitchen. The class started out with a lecture on fruit and spices. Then we got our recipes and started cooking.

My dish was the Prosciutto and Brie sandwiches with Rosemary Fig Confit. I've made something similar to this on my own. So, it wasn't much of a challenge. It was also a very simple dish, so I was washing and drying dishes most of the day. Some of the recipes were savory, not so much into baking yet. The chef's said it will be a lot more baking soon. I am kind of excited about baking and decorating a cake!

There were so many sweet recipes today that it was hard to eat the ones that came out later in the day. By the end, we all felt like puking and the thought of anything sweet made our stomachs turn. I think we need to learn to pace ourselves!

I also had my 3 hour seminar tonight. It was the knife skills class. This is where we get our chef's knives. We had to choose between the 8-inch or 10-inch. I picked the 8-inch. The 10-inch was too much for me to handle! This seminar was fun because it was all chopping and that is what I love to do! My brunoise was right on point, which shocked the heck out of me since it's difficult and I had never done it before.

At the end of the day, I am exhausted and my feet hurt, but I still am so in love with it!!!

Today's Recipes: Poached Pears with Caramel Sauce, Fruit and Spice Granola, Bananas Foster, Blueberry Cobbler, Strawberry-Rhubarb Sorbet, Filled Baked Apples with Fruit Coulis, Peach Fritters with Spice Infused Whipped Cream, Applesauce, Dried Fruit Compote, Gratin of Fresh Berries with Creme Fraiche, Candied Citrus Rind, Caramelized Pear Crisps, Hum-Zinger, Passionata Smoothie, Grilled Chicken with Spices Kumquat Chutney, Mango-Tomatillo Salsa, Guacamole, Fried Plantains

Vegetables and Herbs

Today was my first day. It went really well and I am still really exciting about cooking, so I guess that is good! There are 9 students in my class. We started out having a 2 hour lecture about vegetables and herbs. We saw a demonstration on how to blanch green veggies and then we tasted a variety of herbs. After the lecture, we were pretty much right into the kitchen cooking our dishes. I was teamed up with another woman because our recipe was a larger quantity, so the Chef had us divide it in half. I was a little disappointed in the recipe I as given because it was something that I have made a million times. It was a frittata (mine is pictured above). I wanted to have a recipe that was either something that I had never made before or some technique I don't use. Oh well, there are still 36 more classes, so I am sure I will get my opportunities.




We had to set up our mise en place and have the Chef's approval before we could begin cooking. When it was time to cook the frittata, Chef said we could run upstairs and broil it, bake it in the oven or flip it in a pan. This was 12 eggs, in a 12-inch skillet he was expecting me to flip!!! When I told him that I would flip it he gave me two more options. I could be brave and flip it in the same pan or I could be a wuss and use another hot pan and turn it into that. Of course I said I would be brave an flip it in the same pan. Well, the time came to flip. Everyone in the class was watching. I am thinking to myself 'I've done it will 2 eggs before, how much harder could 12 eggs be?' Well, I flipped that bitch like a pro! I even got a round of applause with some 'oohs' and 'aaahs' as well! It was good to show some of the more experienced people that I had skills of my own too.




The cooking was cool. We would all collect around some one's dish when an important technique was being applied or to taste and adjust seasoning. The Chef was really good about asking our opinions of the seasoning and explaining to us what we are tasting. We ended up eating at 3 different times as some dishes were done before others. Chef did warn us though that this was our 'easy' class and to expect things to get much more difficult. I personally cannot wait! We are also expected to have one sit down mean where all of the dishes are made and ready at the same time by the 5th week. We'll see what kind of challenge this poses.




Anyways, I had an awesome day and I am sure I left a lot out. Below are pictures of all of the dishes we made in class. The Old-Fashioned Grated Sweet Potato Pudding is already in high demand at my house! Enjoy!

Today's recipes: Gazpacho Juice, Fresh Green Beans with Basil and Tomatoes topped with a Garlic Basil Dressing, Hungarian Mushroom Soup, Herbed Frittata with Herb Salad with Dressing, Pasta Primavera, Baby Beet Salad with Mint and Tarragon, Old-Fashioned Grates Sweet Potato Pudding