This Waif Cooks

BOH lingo!

2008-07-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

It's been a week of back of the house saute station action for me. Its kinda fun going to school and not having formal classes anymore, i am thrown into a real cooking environment. Its like when i was in high school, i always sat in my boring pre-calculus class, and thought, "I god, when i am i ever going to use the practicality of this seriously! i mean i know how to add and subtract!". But here, we are put in the real world, shown that what we learn IS valuable in real life. I must say i was lucky to be in the back of the house, my peers that got in the front of the house told me its kinda boring, and that there are sick of smiling at people and getting them their lattes. And apparently, the saute station is the most sought out for because the chef asked who wanted to work next week and everyone jumped to it. As hard as it was on busy nights, i must say it was fun. I think the chef put me as a runner next week which i am not to happy about, but we'll see, at least its not front of the house (or FOH). speaking of which (pun intended), theres a whole set of words i picked up this week. If any of you have ever worked in a restaurant or cafe kitchen, you may be familiar with the terms. I don't like them all, but here they are (Merriam Webster, shame on you for making EVOO an official word):
-"all day": i got yelled this a lot from the sous chef who was expediting. when i got slammed with orders he'd yell out, "yo, you got 4 Alfredo's all day". Its basically how many dishes i needed to get out total. So if table 12 orders two orders of salmon and table 19 orders four orders of salmon, that's "six salmon, all day."
-"on the fly": usually, yelled not by the sous chef but by the chef. This could be a special order, or maybe an order that got messed up and needs to be replaced ASAP. When i did orders, i did them in the order they were issued, but "on the fly" had first priority to get made.
-making a dish "sexy": this term is relative, sometimes it means to make it look really nice by adding s nice garnish like chopped parsley, this was the case in my station. but sometime, people use it when they add some kind of really indulgent product like extra cheese, bacon pieces, or truffles. hmm which is sexier bacon grease or parsley???
-"Mise en Place": Essentially, it means everything in its place, very crucial to have your mise set up so you have everything you need handy so you can bust out dishes as they get ordered.
-cambro: its a large plastic bin when i throw in used saute pans once i finished with them, the runners then bring the cambro to the dishwasher (yay, i dont have to do dishes!)

these are just SOME terms, i only listed those we actually used A LOT because some "official" terms are just not used, at least not in our kitchen.

Back of the House!

2008-07-08T23:17:00.000-07:00

so the first day of my first rotation began. Each rotation is three weeks. So i was placed at the cafe. I was a little disappointed i was placed there becuase i figured it would be like working in any old joint or starbucks. Thankfully, its really not so bad. My chef put me at the saute station which is basically just the pasta station. there are three pastas on the menu: alfredo, mariniara, and grilled veggie penne. I wouldn't call what i do real cooking because the sauces are sort of alread made. I just need to reduce the cream and add cheese and seasonings to make alfredo, saute some garlic and heat up the marinara sauce, and caramelize the veggies for the veggie pasta. I thought i might need ten pans at most. Boy was I wrong. I must have went through 20. The cafe opens for dinner at 6:30pm and oddly enough, it got busy in my station right away. I must have gotten five different orders for pastas in a matter on seconds. I messed up a lot, i felt a bit like Lucy in that famous epissode where she boxes chocolates like in an assembly line. Because there were a lot of steps i needed to complete for each order. heat sauce, re-boil pasta (thankfully they are already part boiled and portioned), season the sauce, toast the barlic bread, heat up the plate (hot food must always be served on a hot plate), plate the pasta, add the garnish (cheese and parsley) and slice the garlic bread on a bias and place it on the side. To-go orders are a hell of a lot easier (no plate heating). At first, my chef asked me if i was ok at the station alone and i was like "o yea, i can handel it!". I wanted to seem all macho because i was already happy he put me, a girl, the cafe's most active part of the kitchen. But i just couldn't handel it alone, i got like ten orders in a matter on minutes, so another girl jumped in to help me. It was cool then, i think we worked together nicely. Which brings me to another thing, the people are not all from the class i was in before because the rotations are all mixed up. So i met some really nice people and most seem cool and collected. I had dinner with this one girl that said, "for so pretty, you should be on T.V." and "wow, your such a tiny person, but you have such a big ass personality". To be honest, i dont take complements well, and i haven't gotten one in a while, so i sorta shrugged it off and said, "are you kidding, i am in my ugly phase right now, i haven't done my eye brows, i am not wearing any makeup, my hair is greased up under the chefs cap we wear. But as i drove home, i thought, "why didn't i just say thank you". I dont think i am pretty, but i am glad i made an impression on someone, that she thought i had a true soul and personality. maybe i should give myself more credit, i could sure use the confidence boost because the lack of it can bring me down. So tomorrow, i am going to bust out those pastas and i'll now know how to handel seven or eight orders better, and i am going to thank that girl and say "thanks, you very pretty too!".

My fairy godparents

2008-07-04T22:32:00.000-07:00

I know, this is a little unrelated to cooking school per se, but I was pondering this yesterday. There are some people i just feel inspire me but also give me a sense of safety and positive energy. Thinking of them brings my spirits up when i am down and really serve as sort of "fairy godmother" to my Cinderella side. heres the list:

-Julia Child: also one of my heroes, but whenever i mess up in the kitchen i think of Julia that despite her culinary brilliance, didn't take herself too seriously and embraced screw-ups. Plus, i think she actually COULD turn a pumpkin into something magical, maybe not a carriage, but soup perhaps???

-Carson Kressley: famous for being the fashion guru on "Queer eye for the straight guy" and his new show "How too look good naked", I truly this guy could get me out of a beauty/fashion/body slump. He's helped so many women learn to love the bodies they were born with and I think his efforts are revolutionary in the body acceptance movement. I also think every straight girl needs a bff of sorts. Tim Gunn (from "Project Runway") seems nice, but he always wears the same thing! I know Tim's got a good eye for fashion, but shouldn't he practice what he preaches? Carson always dresses different, and he seems like a genuinely nice guy. That, and I don't think Tim would like my enormous collection of sweats...

-Morgan Freeman: I dont know if he in genuinely i nice guy, but he's such a fantastic actor that he sure puts on a great, grandfatherly image. That and I am in love with his voice (as you may well know, he narrated numerous documentaries and books on tape). If he came out with a cd where he reads the dictionary, I'd probably buy it! Being Jewish, i never really had a memory of a Santa Clause type figure, but I'd imagine Morgan Freeman would suffice.

-Rivkah, my second grade Hebrew teacher: yes, i went to a Jewish elementary school so we had to take Hebrew and Jewish studies course. When i was in second grade i switched to a new school and was terrified. But from the first day of class this lovely, smiling woman welcomed me. She was more than a teacher, she really connected with her students. another girl in the class had a piano recital (not connected to the school) and Rivkah not only came to show support, she offered to take me. she had this cupboard in the class room where she held "prizes" for when you did well on a test or something. bizarre but cute prizes like alphabet soups, glitter tooth paste, and silly putty. kinda odd but practical, fun things. I don't know what she's doing now, we actually kept in contact but last i saw her was about a year after my mother died. she was fairly old, i hope she'd still alive, but my mom and I both loved her.

there you have it, my list of fairy godparents, who's yours?

The final!

2008-07-03T22:39:00.001-07:00

I didn't talk much about the final, but this was a very simple one. I actually didn't do as well as I had hoped, given that it was a breeze compared to our other finals, but i ended up getting an A in the class which is all i really cared about in the end. I had a day of prep and an hour and a half to turn in a soup (mine was hot and sour soup), an appetizer (mine way chicken and peanut satay), and an entree with a starch and veggie (mine was osso bucco with risotto and rapini). Most everyone had a different menu combo, but i definitely thought i got a harder menu. Osso bucco is a "low and slow" type of Italian dish. I remember when i visited Italy when i was in ninth grade with my friend whose family was Italian (and in the mob mind u, but i didn't care, i wasn't on their hit list so they just fed me and were happy that i ate what they gave me!). anyhow, her grandmother spent all day tending to her osso bucco. we had only a day of prep and then an hour before service the day of. Hence i was left with a fairly over-braised veal shank in the end. The chef liked my peanut satay which completely strayed from the recipe, but that's what i liked about this class, you didn't necessarily needed to follow the rules, but it just had to simply taste good. It was really cute in the end, i needed to use cucumber and red onion as a garnish so i made a cup out of the cucumber and used it as a vessel for the satay. My soup was "good but too sour" according to the chef. I agree with him, i knew it was sour, i tasted it many times, but i honestly never had hot and sour soup very often so i figured it was supposed to taste like that. next time, i'll go easy on the vinegar. anyhow, i've been working on my resume for my externship search which is a bit strange. I begin to reflect about all my previous education and odd-ball job experiences. I've worked and interned nearly everywhere. I was a movie set P.A. (very cool actually, i met Glenn Close and Dakota Fanning), a fashion house assistant (a horrible experience, i was an intern and not paid, but you could say they basically fired me. i think they didn't like my outspoken-ness...but i still wonder why they asked me not to come back...), a barista, a baby/dog/house/fish/hamster sitter, etc. what odd ball jobs have you had? share them, i am sure some of you could out do the next. (BTW, the picture here is actually of the very first dish i made in this course, my "steak au poive" practical quiz which i actually did well on, i didn't post my final pictures because as you can imagine, i was too busy worrying about getting the dishes out on time).

Useful info picked up in my international class!

2008-06-29T22:23:00.000-07:00

l.b. mentioned i should post some tips of the Latin cuisine i delved into last week, which got me thinking, i picked up a lot of useful info in this course and i'd be more than happy to spread the love! here's some key things i learned:
-most countries have their own "salt" medium. In the U.S., for example, salt is usually used to give items some taste. but say in south east Asia, they use fish sauce which is a good medium if your sick of using plain old NaCl (sodium chloride or salt, for those unchemistry oriented folk). Italians tend to use salty cheese like Parmesan or peccorino. The french like sea salt and items like capers. But try not to use too many salt sources in one dish. If you make a Parmesan risotto, don't add salt, or at least go easy on it. And i suggest trying sea salt. it might seem like a minor difference but don't think so, i think it gives this nice, fresh taste. Now that its summer, there really is nothing like biting into a fresh heirloom tomato with some sea salt (strange, but i swear, delicious!).
- just like every country has a preferred salt medium, they also have a preferred fat medium. In the U.S. (unfortunately) we tend to use a lot of criso and shortening. But in France they use really good quality butter, but they are also big on using the animal's own fat to cook a product (otherwise known as the "confit" method). In Greece, Spain, Italy and other Mediterranean countries, they use olive oil. In Mexico they use pork fat (aka, lard) and in Asian countries, they use nut oils like sesame or peanut oil. So when your making a dish, think about you fat medium. Don't think all oils are healthy. In South America they use Dende oil (or palm oil) which is actually very bad for you. I like flavorful fats, so i try to avoid bland ones like shortening. I prefer butter to crisco any day, even for the flakiest of pastries. Also, and i didn't really pick this up from class, i like to use naturally fat fill foods to substitute for stuff like butter. For example, i like to make cookies with 100% peanut butter or avocado.
- There are sooooo many ways to thicken sauces and soups! We made a very nice sauerbraten sauce when we did Germany and its made with prunes and thickened with ginger snap crumbs! for the Indian dishes, we used chickpea flour (mind you a very good substitute if you need a thickener and want something healthier than white flour). For my final menu, i need to make a hot and sour soup (although its also knows as egg drop soup) which is thickened with a slurry (a teaspoon of cornstarch and water poured in). So you see, thickeners can very so try a different thickener to give your dish another dimension.
-cooking methods really differ from region to region. I noticed a lot of the south east Asian dishes were made very quickly (e.g. pad Thai ). Most of the cooking time is just prepping the ingredients. Italians i think prefer the "low and slow", like osso bucco (also on my final menu) which requires a braise of a couple of hours. I think its pretty neat how Indians use the tandoor (a clay oven) to not only cook chicken but also their bread (naan which is actually pictured, its from the buffet so i didn't make it myself, but i can atest it was very tasty!) which they stick on the outside of the oven like a magnet.
-degreasing soups. ahh well i should have posted this in the beginning way back in intro I where i first learned how to make consomme. a good consomme is grease free and as we all know, water and fat are not friends, so when fat falls in the pool, its easy to spot. Although the method of making consomme does a good job of degreasing the broth and concentrating the flavor, sometimes grease still gets there. Even after to strain it through a coffee filter, you might still spot some grease so here's what i do when this happens: at this point, the soup is already nearly grease free so i would not recommend this if your soup is really greased out. take a couple strips of parchment and just run them through the soup very quickly. If you let it stay in the soup to long, the grease come off the parchment, initially, it sticks right to it so do this a few times very swiftly.

so those are some tidbits i picked up this term. I interviewed my chef so stay tuned for the quick Q and A i had with him!

catching you up...

2008-06-27T21:54:00.000-07:00

i know, i haven't updated in a while, and so much has happened. too much to cover in one post, so real quick I'll just first explain that today was my last day at my International, the last day of the term where all we do is clean the lab (or kitchen as normal people might call it) and get our final grades and such. so yes, this was finals week, but you missed a hell of a week last week so I'll fill you in about that week now.
Our lovely chef had a family reunion and was out for all of last week. We knew this when we first started the class but didn't think much of it. We've had substitutes before and they've been nice enough. Hmm, maybe we got spoiled. The sub was the chef that teaches our class but on a different schedule (as you may remember i do the "c" schedule which runs from 6pm to 11pm, she teaches from 12pm-5pm). A friend of mine in class (yes, believe it or not even after the whole class finding out about my blog, some people apparently still think i am cool enough to talk to) told me her boyfriend had that particular teacher and that she was scary. how bad could it be???
I guess bad, real bad. On the surface, she was quite friendly. But she ran the class in such a way that EVERYONE was getting upset and angry. and angry and negative atmosphere is terrible for an effective. She was super strict, which i suppose is good, but I've had strict chefs before and there was this unfriendly aura about the way she followed "the rules". She spent a lot of class time lecturing about the recipes which really didn't need it so we got out very late. She would not let us really venture out of the recipe. Our regular chef told us before, i don't care how you make it, but make it taste good. This is our last formal class in the program so we're fairly advanced, this should be our time to glance at recipes to get an idea, and sort of build our dishes on our own. Everyone, and i do mean EVERY student in the class was very unhappy with this teacher. the class seemed like work or a boot camp and the joy of cooking that we had before was gone. As a result, people started to get snappy, no one was relaxed and everyone could have used some Prozac (me included). I didn't actually go on the last day she was teaching (last Thursday) which is rare because I've never missed a day of class throughout the whole program. Apparently, people got so on edge that there was a actually a physical fight between the students! i wasn't there thank god, bu i know enough simply from this blog not to get into peoples business so i am forever going to stay on the sidelines when it comes to personalities clashing.
The animosity aside, the theme of the week was south America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. this is my dish from our south American day, its a achiote marinated pork chop (which the chef referred to as so overcooked that it was "dead")with grilled cactus (not so bad tasting, and apparently very rich in vitamins!), and rice. the one good thing she said about my dish was that the rice was nice. And i suppose that was good enough for me. If you may remember, rice was the first dishes we learned way back in our Intro I class and people forget how to do it right. And its fundamental, i think every eatery serves rice of some sort. anyhow, more about finals week in my next post. thanks guys, for those still reading this!

South East Asian!

2008-06-20T13:45:00.001-07:00

There are quite a few South East Asian students in my class, actually they make up about half the class i think. this is cool, but when we did South East Asia last week, i was so freaked out because clearly, they were in familiar territory. Case in point, the lumpia. its a egg roll, of sorts, but i asked a few of my classmates to show me how to roll it properly because once i hit the fryer, it sort of came apart on me. Actually, its quite simple to make, but i suppose there is a magic "southeast Asian" touch i lack. I served it with a hot sweet and sour sauce. I dont think my chef actually tried all of them, thats a lot of lumpias to try, but he said mine ok. I have loads more to dish about this week, it was a whirlwind like no other!

China!

2008-06-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

so after Japan, which we did on Monday, we went over to china. Japan was a buffet style day so i volunteered to make desserts. My friend and i went online to try to make those mochi cakes. we did a few batches and needless to say, they were not very pleasant tasting. Not to mention, a total pain to clean, the gummi-goey-ness was stuck on all the pots which we had to scrub for about an hour and then try to boil down. Anyhow, we still needed a dessert so at the last second, we simple chopped some berries and wrapped them in won ton wrappers and fried them up. then we served it with wonderful fruit infuse gastrique (a sugar vinegar reduction which is actually used more for savory foods). Anyhow, we all had individual work when we did china. We needed to do two appetizers and an entree. So here's my won ton soup. There are some Asian kids in my class that folded their won tons impeccably, i asked one of them to show me, but still, mine looked a bit pathetic next to their little cute pockets of pork. They were very easy to make and i am wondering why people dont make these more often at home? seriously, try it, used group chicken, pork, beef, turkey, hell even tofu or veggies. Season in with some soy sauce and herbs like coriander or scallions, wrap them in won ton skins and boil in a good broth. tadah! no need for greasy American Chinese takeout!

Middle East? if you say so...

2008-06-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not updating you about last week. After doing Great Britain, we did Russia (lots of Borscht, caviar, and blinis), and then Middle Eastern, or at least what's middle eastern in Le cordon Bleu's Book. My mom being Israeli and visiting Israel and parts of Egypt, i can tell you they might snub their noses at some of this Middle Eastern recipes we were given. What was cool about this day though was that we did something called an "order fire exercise". For those not in the restaurant biz, this means its basically simulating a restaurant situation. Threes an expediter (in our case, the sous chef) who calls out down the line for orders as tickets keep coming in. So for our "simulation" our chef would give an order to the sous chef, like say, two kabob plates, one moussaka, and three desserts. Then our class (most of which were working in different stations down the line) would have to get those meals out, all looking beautiful, identical, on hot plates (if its a hot dish), and FAST. ten minuets in the kitchen is like a hour to the customer. My friend an I made the desserts which was baklava (this is not that middle eastern if you ask me...). To make look pretty, we decided to make two different colored sauces, a pistachio creme anglaise and a yogurt honey sauce (My friend and i couldn't stop snacking on the yogurt sauce! we dipped all this fruit that we used as garnish in it and it was divine. anyhow, the baklava was a little over baked, so to compensate, we agreed the plate really needed to at least look magnificent. so we made about 16 caramel cages (very time consuming, but we had help thanks to some awesome peers that risked their fingers to work to make these cages (because hot sugar burns are terrible, and lord knows i left with a few battle scars that night). Our chef was impressed and it was overall a fun exercise. The one of the quickest hours of my life. It was stressful, but in a good way, kind of like working out, icky when your actually doing it, but the adrenaline is awesome and you don't regret doing it.

London Calling!

2008-06-08T21:35:00.000-07:00

Wow am i sorry for not updating, and A LOT has happend. I've been very busy with work and school and not to mention had to deal with some personal stuff this week so its been a bit of a whirlwind. Anyhow, let me fill you in on this last week. We covered England of Tuesday and each student needed to present a beef wellington a cottage pie or pastie (pronounced pah-s-tee, not PAY-s-tee). I did the cottage pie (FYI, its a Shepard's pie not made with deer meat) and the wellington (that's the wellington pictured). Thank the lord we didn't need to make our own puff pastry! We were allowed to do whatever design we wanted and we needed to present it with tourneed potatoes and haricot vert. I was so proud of my sauce! it was reduced enough that it was super rich (you can tell by it's dark color) and it didn't break down on me (you know, when the fat and water separates..yea, no very pleasing on a fine dining plate). I thought my design was cute, but i saw some stuff the other students made and was a bit humbled, they really went all out and churned out some pretty neat wellingtons. I think that's the most expensive meal I've cooked, you know, it being a fillet Mignon, topped with mushroom duxelle, and foie gras. I should have pawned it! hey, i could use the money!

Gambas!

2008-05-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

I made this dish with another classmate. I needed the help peeling all those shrimp which was murder for my fingers since the package they came in was frozen. they were simple to make, sauted in olive oil, chili flakes, and a spanish paprika. We had a little lecture about spain afterward with a whole break-down of the way they eat their meals. Actually, they eat a lot like me. they have a light breakfast or sometimes no real breakfast because they like to wake up late (like me). then they have a light lunch around 2, followed by a nap. then a little tea break around 4 or 5pm. then a little light dinner around 7 pm (like tapas and little appetizer sized portions) and then a real full course grand meal around 9 or 10pm. It seems like they must eat so much that they must face some obesity problem but not that what they do it is wholesome and fresh. They have wonderful local produce, wines, olive oils, seafood, etc. I've been to most of Europe but not Spain so i really hope to visit sometime in the near future. I'd also love to see more Spanish resturants. i only know of two "semi-decent" ones in LA and i know of a few in New York, but i think its a very tasty cuisine thats a bit underrated.

Paella!

2008-05-31T16:54:00.000-07:00

We did a whole spanish buffet/banquet spread on tuesday. This reminded me a lot of my Garde Manger class because it was everyone in class kind of working together towards a big buffet, its not like individual plated dishes. However, the banquet was supposed to be for 16 people and we henceforth needed to make little tapas plates that all look indetical. The paella was the exception (because no one eats an individual paella, its meant to be a communal dish). Its gorgeous (and yummy!) but sadly i cant take credit for it because other people in the class made it. I did make the shrimp "gambas" which will be in the next post...

Aww, poor thumper!

2008-05-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

ok so this is the rabbit. Its actually a rabbit roullade (with the leg/thigh meat) and rabbit loin which was crusted with bread crumbs (i know its a bit hard to tell). After the frogs legs, i was hesitant about try anymore out of the ordinary proteins, but i was pleasantly surprised. i actually am not to keen on duck, but i actually really enjoyed this, i am ashamed to admit. I fabricated poor bugs or thumper on Tuesday and it just looked so much like a rabbit, that it freaked me out a bit. But oddly enough, and not to sound too cliche, its a lot like chicken, maybe a little "meatier" perhaps leaner although i am not sure. Actually, i think its maybe more comparable to pork, hmm maybe a cross between the too. There is a fava and mushroom ragu with i think came out nicely beside it, with fried sage as a garnish, because anything fried is better, right?
Anyhows, I am really digging this class. Since there are little to no cooking demos we (the students) are really getting our chance to execute creative control and as the chef said "we're letting you fly". Garde Manger and baking were ok and the lessons were invaluable, but i really enjoyed my intro II class and i feel like this is like a big, grown-up, up-grade from that class. Next week we do Spanish, German, Belgian (my dad's Belgian, we'll see what HE has to say about the authenticity), Swiss, and Italian cuisine. I am lucky to have visited most the countries so we'll see how "authentic" they really are.

Frogs legs!

2008-05-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

bleh, apparently a delicacy right? i know some people who actually like them, but they look too much like human muscles, and they taste like overcooked fish (or maybe i just overcooked mine?). We needed to serve it with a starch and veggie (like most entrees) so i chose polenta and baby carrots, still, I couldn't manage to make this look appetizing....

Bouillanbaise

2008-05-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

Here's my Bouillabaisse, a provincial south of France fish stew. I've actually had some in Cannes and it was way better. Our recipe was a bit different because the end result did not have a lot of vegtables left and i remember the loads of stewed veggies in the Bouillabaisse i had in France. My Chef said it needed more salt, i am not going to argue, the truth is, i made a big batch so didn't realize i might need a lot more salt for the individual bowl to taste ok. I could have done better but i don't think it was a total disaster.

Welcome to International!

2008-05-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not updating daily, its been a jam packed week. Anyhow, Garde Manger is over and on to the last formal cooking class because after this class i start to do a rotation where i work at the school's cafe, res truant, receiving, etc. I must say though, this was the class i was most physicked about when i heard about the whole program. Of course, every class gets harder and harder, and yes, this class is challenging and a lot of work (besides cooking) but its interesting to learn about different cuisines and we cover about 30 countries! Everyday is usually a different country, with this week being the except. This week was a lot about French food although some days we primarily focused on classical dishes and while other were provincial. I have loads of pics to share so with each picture of the dishes i made this week, I'll share some info about the class and the feelings that brewed in me. This was the first dish we had to make, nothing fancy but this was actually a practical quiz, we needed to make steak au poive with three tourneed potatoes with beans. I am not sure how i did. my sauce could have been darker but i think i did ok on the doneness which was supposed to be medium rare. I freaked out a bit because i thought initially it was overdone because i got a very thin piece compared to the others around me, but i think it turned out ok, i saw the color inside and it look medium.

my final buffet!

2008-05-17T23:26:00.000-07:00

so i ditched my Dr. Seuss idea (sorry leslie, i know you were into that after the whole Horton who pancake fiasco) and went with "garden of eden". That tree there in the background is the tree of life made out of salt dough. Its not my proudest achievement but at least i made it through and it looks decent. I did the best i could, given the circumstances. My next class, International cuisines. This should be fun since i love to travel and have been almost everywhere. let see how authentic a french culinary school can be....

Final Freakout!!

2008-05-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed how i haven't been posting lately here or over at Nutritious Junk, but that's because I've been super stressed with finals!!! I can finally breathe a little now that i get an hour and a half break while my buffet is being graded (btw, my chef knows about this blog so if he's reading, please be gentle, this was a tough one). For those of you who aren't in my class (because since now the word is out about my blog, i suspect people check it to see if i wrote any nasty things about them), let me break it down how the Garde Manger finals work. We had a written final on Monday, then we have to prep for a buffet of our very own (individual, NO TEAMS like before) with 3 different canapes with 12 of each and a chicken galantine. With four and a half days of prep, you'd think this is easy, right? well thats not all. On tuesday, we drew out of a hat two assinged salads and needed to present two appetizer portions of each at the alloted time. On Wednsday, we drew a sandwich and needed to present 12 tea sandwiches of our choice (i went with egg salad, i felt if i went for something too simple like cucumber or watercress, i'd be graded more harshly). I am sure you guys think sandwiches are super simpel and they are! but not when you have to make your own mayo, grill/roast your veggies, cook your bacon, make you spread etc. and today (thursday) we need to be clean and present our themed buffet at 8:30. I chose my theme to be "The Garden of Eden". I had the tree of life (sans apples, i guess eve ate them all) made out of salt dough (which is the culinary term for play dough, now i know why play dough tastes so salty, and yes, i was the adventuerous child who actually tried play-dough). O yes, and of course we need to present 10 vegtable carvings and a melon carving. I feel like i am about to collapse. tomorrow i also am just loaded with personal stuff i need to take care of (two doctors appointments, 1 job interview, laundry, groceries, etc) and i still need to go to school to help clean the lab before the next term and recieve my final grade. Gahh! i will take a picture when i can get back into the lab in about an hour and you guys can give me feed back. Not my best work, but lord knows i tried the best i could and given the circumstances, i am not completely dissatisfied, at least all my components are there (i hope?). anyhow, i am going to get some grub, strange this is all really about food and i forget to feed i have a growling stomach.

All about my mother

2008-05-11T16:25:00.000-07:00

Happy mothers day, Ive had a terrible/stressful weekend but I'll carve (haha no pun intended) out a little non culinary face time to talk about my mother. I haven't celebrated mother's day with her in for nearly a decade. She died in 2000 when i was just entering my teen years, a fragile time to loose a mother. She had cancer since i was in her womb. Her doctors told her once i came out, she should start chemo on her breast and forgo breast feeding. but my mom was no match, she was like, "no way will me daughter grow up on formula! I'll breast feed her until she's ready to eat on her own!". And so she did, and completed a round of chemo successfully after she breast fed me for nine months. My mother was a bit of an astronaut, as my dad called her. Loving to explore new places and meeting new people. Its amazing how many friends she knew! very different from my dad who was a bit of an extrovert and less social. She told me she always wanted to be a flight attendant, she loved flying (i totally didn't get THAT gene, i hate flights!) and loved traveling. But she actually had a masters in urban planning although never really did that. She bounced around doing marketing for various companies. She was in no way a housewife, she always worked even when she had chemo again when i was in their grade when her breast cancer came back. She lost her hair completely the second time around. In that time, cancer wasn't very chic like it is today with Melissa Ethridge proudly shaking her bald head at the Grammy's. So she was very shy and upset about being bald. But it was fun going with her to the wig shop (note, i should NEVER be platinum blond!) and trying on crazy wigs. she was very healthy about it though, she ate well and exercised every morning. and I honestly never remember her in pain of i bed a lot. she wasn't "sick" to me. She was so cool in that as healthy as she was, she would take me every so often McDonald's and order a Big Mac, one of her prized foods. she knew this wasn't healthy, and mind you, she did take off the third bun on it (which is perfectly good to do, who needs three buns!). Anyhow, she did have a great appetite. she never restricted junk food at all, but she also wasn't inclined to buy unhealthy snacks like sugary cereals and those kiddie fruit by the foot stuff. That's why my lunches in school were so odd. I had stuff like pita with hummus or a tuna and corn salad (a very good salad, mind you!) with literally a hunk of chocolate for dessert! how weird, right? Its strange though because i found all these diet books on her book case (old diet books, like "fit or fat" and Susan powder books) but i never remember her following them. Anyhow, fast forward to when i was about 12 when the cancer came back again. This time it was breast cancer cells in the lung. This time, it took her life about a year and half later. She was only bed ridden about a month before she died, and i don't even think she thought she was dying. So when she did die, it was a bit of a shock to everyone, despite the fact that people knew breast cancer and her were on a on/off relationship for a while. I cried i a lot before she died, but no so much after, strangely enough. It was like a weight was lifted. We buried her near where she grew up in Israel. Its actually a lovely cemetery with only about 20 graves, not like a death row most cemetery's resemble. Its in the outskirt hills of Jerusalem, and it looks more like a hidden cove than a cemetery. I hated the funeral, simply because i didn't want to see people cry and get all sappy because i find that contagious and it made me that way too. My mother's absence has unfortunately stirred up some problems with my mental health. For a while, i was so scarred for my dad's life because i was afraid to be an orphan. I think loosing a mother before you enter high school can be daunting. I didn't have a mother primp me for prom or "lunch" with, or go bra shopping. I dragged my dad, poor thing, but he's been awesome, he's had women around him all his life so he's in the know with female issues as opposed to most fathers. I actually usually give my dad a gift on mother's day because i think he's been great at trying to be mom. This is getting long and i to be honest, i am beginning to tear up writing this so I'll wrap this up. Have a wonderful mothers day everybody!

Galantines, Pates, and Terrines: french Jell-O

2008-05-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

so this week was fairly easy going (although still for me, pretty harsh, i think there must be some hex that the classmates put upon me). we made chicken galantines which is a chicken forcemeat mixture that covers a carrot, spinach, and mushroom inlay, wraped boned chicken breast, wraped in its own casing (as in, chicken skin), and the THAT is covered in edible chaud froid, which is basically a bechemel sauce with gelatin so it hardens up. sounds delicious, doesn't it!? well no, even the chef told us he'd pay to NOT eat it. This is very classical french and really for the sake of presentation. Its like taking meatloaf and giving it a Jell-O coat (scarry thought). Needless to say, mine was horrible. My inlays were alll different sizes and got all mushed when i poached them. Finals are next week so I am a bit stressed, but i must get this gallantine right for th final (i did terribly on the last quiz, i think my lowest grade in my whole culinary school career). Finals are crazy hard, and i thought the baking II finals were stressful! I have to make my own buffet (no more groups) and have 10 vegtable carvings plus a melon carving. the thing is, i suck (i'd use a nicer word but, i plainly just "suck") at carving. maybe my fingers are deformed. Its weird cause i thought i might be good at it cause i knit a lot but i suppose being "handy" has nothing to do with your veggie carving skills. I still think i cook veggies, as opposed to making them look like roses. I wonder which lasts longer? anyhow, yesterday we had a test run for next week cause we had a little mini buffet (with only three items though)and my theme was my mother, for mothers day. speaking of which, my next post will be about my mother, she was such an amazing person, i would love to share with you her story.

In the Grinder

2008-05-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

here is the picture of our "sausage buffet" since we made a whole batch of different sausages. Our theme was Las Vegas which actually suited us well since we made use of the "wienies" which is sort of like poker food. On top of the whole fiasco in class (which, and to be honest, i am scarred to come back too because i feel so hated by nearly everyone)i got my rejection later from the theater program at ucla. I felt it coming, i didn't think my audition went well, but this was the wrong time, i feel like along with the sausage meat, I've been processed in the grinder. My future is so unclear, i am not sure what i want to do once i finish school. I definitely do NOT want to go back to UC Santa Barbara and i never really wanted to do restaurant work. Like most twenty-somethings, i feel like i am heading in direction. Anyhow, class aside because just thinking about school right now makes me uneasy, I've picked up the new Madonna CD, hard candy. I have been a die hard Madonna fan since i was little and obsessing over knowing all the lyrics to "Vogue". I love that Madonna is aging gracefully, but this is not my favorite album of hers. Its very "hip hop" and although i love the "4 minuets" song, the rest of the album is not as work-out worthy. I know she's been into electronic beats and what not since Ray of Light (which is definitely one of my favorite albums of hers), and although the songs from her last album, "confessions of a dance floor" were mediocre, i thought it was a great work-out album. some of the beats to "hard candy" are a little strange to run or bike too and its not a very good "chill" soundtrack like the one from "Juno" was (GREAT soundtrack, by the way, GET IT!!!). Speaking of Juno, did you see the Barbara Walters interview with Ellen Page? she was telling Ellen she doesn't really understand the song and was wondering why anyone would listen to it. whoa, babs, chill, its a cool song and clearly, you need to let some other young journalists take the spotlight every once and a while. I am all for seniors giving up retirement for later, but is this was kind of a sign that maybe its time she gave it a rest?

Cheese Store Field Trip!

2008-04-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

Today we went on a field trip to the Beverly Hills Cheese store. Its about 50 years old and one of the oldest cheese stores in the country actually. Its small but very classy, old registers and meat slicers. Ironically enough, my stomach has a strong aversion to cheese. I never warmed up to like it and when i have had it on rare occasions, i got severe stomach pains. But i understand that as a chef i should be familiar with all food mediums. The guy who gave us the bulk of the tour was so sweet. It was very refreshing to see someone so passionate about cheese! We sampled cheeses (duh) but also some good olive oils, cured meats, salami, mustard, and this fig cake which i couldn't get enough of. they served it with a sheep's milk Gouda, but i brushed off the cheese and ate as much on this fig cake that was left on the sample tray. We still had to show up in "semi" uniform (as in we just needed our jackets and shoes, although i forgot about the shoes and wore my bright pink nikes, very classy, no?). It was funny walking back to my car, someone asked me if i am a chef and i said, "no, this is a costume". I was obviously joking but he believed me for second (hey, its la, you never know...). I can't lie and say i am 100% ok these days. I am actually falling a little a bit into this depressive hole i was in when i started culinary school. this whole website getting exposed thing i think made this negative aura around me and i think the whole class collectively hates me. I hope this won't affect me cooking, but i am just not happy right now, and its seeping to outside the kitchen as well. I already have self esteem issues, and having a bunch of haters doesn't aid that. I feel the relationship between my dad and i is deteriorating as well which is upsetting because i want to make him proud because he's done so much helping me pay for school and all. I need to start seeing a therapist again. I saw therapists since my mom died when i was 13 and stopped when i went to college. Than in college i started seeing one again and when i moved back home to go to culinary school, i sort of stopped therapy period. I am sorry to make this a sad post, i am just really upset lately. don't worry, more upbeat posts to follow.

Retraction

2008-04-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that this blog has been viewed by most of my peers. To those offended by the comments i have made, from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry. Understand that this blog is a diary of sorts and i forget that this is accessible to the whole world and that anyone can view it. Please, understand that my view points are probably made because of my ignorance about certain situations, and i try to be funny and together, it can come up as hurtful. I was about to cancel the whole blog, but i still feel i should document my journey, but from now on I will no longer gossip about ANYONE (even chefs and top chef contestants). To those i have hurt, i respect you to the bone and hope you accept my since apologizes. I meant no harm, everything should be taken with a grain of salt (kosher salt, of course).

"Cooking" Demo

2008-04-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

so i went to the book festival yesterday and Brian Malarkey (from Miami Top Chef season) signed my book and gave me a hug. I saw Padma Lakshami's scheduled cooking demo too. It was rather silly, everything was already made basically and she didn't even assemble anything! she made goat cheese flauntas and after she assembled one, she asked someone from the audience to do the rest and fry them! in the meantime, she did a reading from her book. I think she is gorgeous and not your typical "model/actress" but i don't think she's a chef, and i have a feeling she didn't come up with the recipes in her book all on her own. I love that she proudly displays her scar shamelessly. I have a scar too on my right shoulder, not as noticeable as hers but still, a good conversation starter (although i never wear tank tops). Anyways, here's the picture of Padma "cooking". the line for her to sign was too long and it was 90 degrees outside and i was already beginning to resemble a lobster.

Tea Party!

2008-04-25T22:53:00.000-07:00

Our chef went to New Orleans Thursday and he only comes back on Tuesday. We have a sub who i absolutely love. He's laid back and very chill-axed, no drill sergeant methods of teaching. Not that our subject for yesterday was that hard, tea sandwiches. We had a whole lecture of "tea" and what's served with classic "tea time" and as the British call is "elevenses" (an in between breakfast and lunch snack/tea time, like a daily brunch, if you will). We made some classic, albeit rather boring sandwiches like cucumber, watercress, egg-salad, smoked salmon, curried chicken, and we needed to present two "signature" ones. We were in groups of four and since chola chika excommunicated me from her aura, i was a group of fairly ok people. I am a bit bossy, i admit so we ran with my tea sandwich ideas which turned out really delicious, date and cream cheese filled sandwiches and a peanut, chicken, slices apple open faced sandwich. Tomorrow i go to the Los Angeles Times festival of books to meet some cookbook authors and hopefully get them to sign my book. I wish i could be at the Coachella music festival, but i am a book worm too so i am excited about the book festival (man i am dork). Btw, this is the Reuben from the other day, cholesterol city!

Grilled Veggie Sandwich

2008-04-25T01:32:00.001-07:00

this is the grilled veggie. There's olive capanade in there too and "signature" side was tabouli which he said was too dry (boo!). Sorry the resolution is sorta crappy. Today we did a buffet of tea sandwiches (very english, no?) but i forgot my camera. Whats sad is that we threw most of them away, no one really wanted cucmber and watercress sandwiches.

Sandwiches!

2008-04-23T23:22:00.000-07:00

we needed to bust out 3 snadwiches (reuben, club, and grilled veggie) with a bound salad for each. I just got home so I'll write more about them later, heres the club

what the #%@! ????

2008-04-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

I recently came across an article in the new york times (which i find one of the few very good American newspapers) about chefs and this new cursing phenomenon (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/dining/16profane.html?_r=1&ref=dining&oref=slogin). Gordon Ramsey and Anthony Bourdain, both very successful chefs, have their cussing to thank for much of their recent popularity and fame. In the food industry, or any industry with lots of stress, cussing is bound to burst. Now i am not all innocent and proper, I curse, but only when appropriate. I like to use curse words in their simplest form, without adjoining words. Like lets say i spilled something, i often say, "Shit!". this to me is ok, and spills and burns happen all the time in the kitchen, and in this context, i find it ok to curse. I DON'T find it professional or beneficial when people start to inject curse words into semi-cogent sentences like, "get me that fucking pot into my fucking hands you shithead!". This is just a) a rude, condescending request, b) bad English, period!, and c) a desperate attempt to attract attention or superiority. That said, this Chola Chika bully of mine curse without end, and not in the context of my preference. I am not offended by people cursing, but why do it for the sake of wanting to portray power or attention. Like drinking, cursing is fine in moderation. I learned it from my mother (who without shame cursed infront of me in the car while driving in rush hour traffic). But she never said, "dont curse" and hence, i never felt the need to rebel and curse. I know its not the most polite thing to do, but i admit i do it. Anyhow, what do you think?

Canapes!

2008-04-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

We actually had to produce 15 12 different kinds of canapes (9 with specific recipes, 2 what had to have smoked trout and duck rillet with whatever base or spread/garnish we wanted and 1 signature canape)per group. Our signature one is indeed on this chaud froid platter that i did which looks awful (the platter, not the canape). We used jicama circles as the base, a spicy peanut spread, shrimp, and a piece of coconut for garnish. I originally wanted to do a date jicama canape, but i was out voted by the rest of the group who killed my idea (i eve brought in dates!). I was still satisfied. anyhow, a canape must have 1) a base, 2)a spread, 3) a topping, and 3) a garnish. Now sometimes, like those boats of salmon mousse, the mousse is also the spread, its mainly so the topping will adhere. I cant take credit for making all the canapes you see in the picture because we worked in teams and everyone did a little of something, but i CAN take credit for those prosciutto and melon of shortbread cookies you see. For some reason, no one in my group wanted to do it. Needless to say, they were probably the best tasting.

2008-04-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

About to start class!

2008-04-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

I got here a bit early and i like to sip my oh so healthy diet Dr. Pepper and have a moment of blog zen before i take my quiz today. We had a whole canape spread yesterday (pic will come once i get home). I am writing this from the "wine classroom" that has an available computer (i am in a room full of booze, alone!). My test is on caviar and canapes. We also do a caviar tasting today. I have a feeling its not the expensive stuff but probably still worth it. I just wanted to reach out and write a quick post before i start in a few minutes. That being said i should start to suit up my chef's coat and try to squeeze my unruly hair into my hat. talk to you when i get home!

My culinary anti-heros

2008-04-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

a couple months back i listed some true culinary legends that inspired me to go to culinary school and overall wonderful role models (amoung them, Julia Child, Ruth Riechl). These people had true success in their field, but most importantly, they had true heart. Lately, i've read about a bunch of people that bluntly, piss me off! They have no respect for food, no compassion, and probably were given a plethora of bad meals. heres the list:

Karl Largerlfeld: he recently stated: "I hate the smell of cooking. Some people love it, but I don't care for it. I don't eat sweet things. I don't eat greasy things. And I like fish better than meat. In fact, I hate meat. My doctor calls me to eat meat twice a week, as apparently we are cannibals. There used to be a Nobu here in Paris but it was very bad; it was horrible". Not to mention, he stated in the same article that he hates fat people. I know he must be a very talented fashion designer, but I think he needs to wise up, realize the world doesn't revolve around him and eat trans-fat laden fried twinkie for god's sake!

Robert Irvine: I never liked his show (dinner: impossible) because it was totally staged, aparently so was his resume. he lied about his resume including cooking at the White House, knighthood, a university degree and making Lady Diana's wedding cake. I hate nothing more than people who name names to further their career. He may be nice, but a chef should set a good example (it does mean "cheif" in french).

Natsuko "Gal" Sone : The leading Japanese competitve eater, i give her props because she's unconventional (being a female in a male dominated "sport") but i put her on my list because i think competetive eating degrades the purpose of food. Food is pleasure, nourishment, art, but i dont think you can really get that by shoving X amount of hotdogs, cakes, or wings. this just kind of makes me sick and i want people to taste food, not force it down.

Healthy sushi choices!

2008-04-13T22:20:00.000-07:00

adress the comment from my previous post, i'll give you my little guide to health sushi navigation. First of all, let me just say that every sushi place will vary a little bit so ask when your unsure. Some places sneak in mayo into basic rolls like cucumber and spicy tuna rolls. ask if they do this. Nigiri is ok because there usually is no chance of mayo getting in there. Tuna, Salmon, yellow tail, shrimp, and crab are the good choices for seafood. mackrel is great but fairly high in fat so if your watching that, just be aware. Eel is sometimes fried but some places bake them so agian, ask. sushi rice does actually have sugar in it so don't load up on the rice, unless theres a marathon tomorrow, then by all means carbo load. Miso soup, edemmae and seaweed salads are great starters. Soy sauce has A LOT of sodium so try tamari which is what soy sauce is based out of only it has about 1/3 less salt (and its good if you gluten intolerant, soy sauce has wheat). Wasabi and ginger are also harmless condiments. Tempra anything is battered and fried, its like the KFC of sushi. some crazy specialty sushi's like those "rainbow" or "spider" rolls are usually slathered in may somewhere. go for simple rolls and go easy on the rice. and bring a case of emergency fork if your like me and are a complete chop stick novice! (ps, i didn't make the top roll with the avocado on top, i did the inside out one next to it)

Sushi Buffet!

2008-04-13T15:34:00.000-07:00

This is from friday's sushi buffet. I must say sushi is overrated and over priced. Our chef explained to us it one of the oldest tricks to milk money our of consummers. Many people put huge price tags on sushi when you really only get a little bit of fish or seafood and a lot of veggies or rice. I never loved sushi, i like fish, i am not crazy about rice (i am more of a bread lover when it comes to starches) and i have never left a sushi resturant very full. I usually load up on miso soup, edammae, and maybe tuna and salmon rolls when got to sushi bars. But in general, sushi is not my all time favorite food. I came home with so much sushi that night!

The Asian Appetizer Buffet!

2008-04-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

Here's our cold asian appetizer buffet. I was in the group with all the asian students in the class (ironic?). I am the one staring to the distance and not at the camera on the far left (and obviously, the only one thats not Asian.

Welcome to Garde Manger!

2008-04-12T13:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, so the new term started and boy i am i in for a whirlwind. first of all, my apologize for not posting sooner, this class is major busy! Its actually infamous around the school as being the toughest because A LOT of material is covered in a very short period of time. As i explained in earlier posts, Garde Manger is a lot about cold food and buffets. Presentations are a big chunk of the class as well. On Monday, we had a long lecture about preservation methods like curing and confit. I am sure if you watch top chef (review of this weeks top chef to come soon!), you may have heard that phrase such as "duck confit" or "tuna confit". Well let me tell you, if your watching your weight or fat grams, stay away from anything confit. Confit means preserved and cooked in its own fat. So we made duck condif this week. Duck has a thick skin (which equals fat) and so we rubbed a curing mixture and let it cure in the fridge overnight, rubbed off the mixture the next day to let it form whats called a "pellicle" which happens when you let stuff air dry. Then we cooked it in the rendered duck fat and cooled it in the duck fat. We are going to use the duck probably next week, and guess whats going to keep it nice and fresh until then, yep the fat. We began to make smoked salmon, gravlax, bacon, turkey, corned beef, and sauerkraut. You see, we are doing a whole week of sandwiches week 3 so this stuff needs to cure. It amazing how long it takes to make things like turkey and bacon, I mean its there ready to eat at your local grocery store. So the first few days we worked on stuff for next week and the week after. We did do a few cold appetizers because we had an Asian appetizer buffet (pics to be uploaded soon!). It was actually very delicious we made tea smoked duck (smoking using tea is genius!), fragrant chicken, five spice beef, chui-sui pork (i dont think that means anything, but maybe they though chui sui is some word in Chinese of whatever), spring rolls (very fun to make! a great idea to for a dyi dinner party, its like a step above dyi burritos and tacos, and probably healthier as well!). We also learned how to carve since its all about presentation in this class. So i had bring in 5 radish roses Tuesday for homework and a "kissing swans" melon carvings. I got home tuesday night and began to work on my melons, when i woke up the nest day, my dad's girlfriend's daughter decided to have one of my swans for breakfast! it was so embarrassing to tell the chef, "um, this little brat ate my homework!".

Top Chef Chicago overview!

2008-04-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

I remember when the first season of top chef ran back in 05 when i was living in the college dorms. I thought it was ok, but I really fell in love with the show during the second season (and totally had a crush on the winner, Ilan). Now i am addicted. the Miami season wrapped just when i was beginning culinary school and now that the Chicago one premiered, i haven't realized how i view the show in a completely different light now. Before, i did have an interest in their food, but more into the drama (which i am sure is semi-staged, as with all reality shows). So i thought each week, I'd give a quick overview and my thoughts of the weeks episode. I dont know if any of my readers care or even watch the show, but maybe if you just listen to my ramblings about it, you won't even need to watch. Now i know i am sort of jumping into this kind of late in the game since its already had three episodes for the new Chicago season but I'll briefly fill you in. Right now, theres a lesbian couple who new each other from before the show (Jennifer and Zoi), a quirky new Zealand (Marc), a kinda cute wise crack (I have a crush on on of the chefs in EVERY season, last season it was CJ, this time its Spike, the token Latina (Antonia), the other cute but kinda dumb guy (Ryan), a know it all gastronomy whiz (Richard), the token Asian (cause every top chef season needs one or they would be prejudice, Dale), the quiet ladies (Valerie, who was voted off, Lisa and Stephanie), the token black girl (they always need someone black, in this case it was nimma, voted off the first episode), the scary tattoo dawning guy (Erik, voted off last week for soggy corn dogs), the pretty girl with little culinary knowledge (they always need some really pretty girl, usually shes just eye candy for producers, she wont win, but will be around for beauty's sake, its sad but its a pattern I've noticed, anyway, this season its Nikki), the comic relief (Andrew), and the quiet guy (Manuel, who was voted off this past episode). I think they cast strategically, as with all reality shows, but i love the show for the fun culinary creations and challenges, not for the "diverse" cast. I like that Ted Allen is one of the judges this season, joining Padma Lakshmi (Salman Rushdie's ex wife) and Tom Collichio (a very good chef i might ad, just opened Craft in LA and it got three stars in the times which is very rare). I wont go over the first two episodes because that could take a while, but I just loved this past one. They had to do a dish with a partner based or inspired by a movie with film critic, Richard Roeper, and kick-ass actress, Aisha Tyler, as guest judges. One team did Vietnamese Spring rolls for the film, "Good Morning Vietnam" and Padma commented that she though they chose the film because they want to make Vietnamese food, when it should have been the other way around. I agreed with her, and if it were me I might make something like twist on chili and corn bread (a la one of my favorite films, "Blazing Saddles")or some southern inspired dish (a la "Gone with the Wind", don't make fun, i still cry when i watch it!). What would your film/dish be? imagine if someone chose Silence of the Lambs! what would they serve, their partner's kidneys or liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti!?

2008-04-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

How-to's for those "duh" items!

2008-04-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

Its funny, i remember when i first started in my intro I class, I was rather agravated at what were learning. At first, LOTS of time spent in class just cutting up carrots and potatoes! NOT for consumption, but to hone our knife cuts. And lets not forget that week where all we made was stuff like rice pilaf, blanched broccoli, hard boiled eggs, chicken stock.. i mean i wanted to do what they were doing on "top chef", i wanted to play up with new flavors and ingredients. Now that I am almost nearing the end of my formal cooking classes (because after Garde Manger, I go to international, and then its "restaurant rotation" where i work for a few weeks at the school's bistro), I realize just how those intro I classes were. I mean they are basic things, and surprisingly, most people (culinary students aside although many forget these basics as well and are guilty of this too) do these "duh" items incorrectly. so i thought I'd go back to my Intro I lessons and review with you some items you should know how to do properly. mind you, many people do things differently and if it works your way, great, but its good to know these "core" techniques.

HOW TO:

-Boil Rice: Its different but each kind of rice has a standard. Long grain white rice is 1/2 cup rice to 1 cup water. Ive read some packages that say to boil the water first, but don't do this, i dont know why but my rice never turns out nice this way. I usually "pearlize" the rice with a bit of olive oil on low heat and then add my water. Bring to a boil and once boil cover and put in a bay leaf and seasoning and pop a lid on it and put it in a 350 degree oven for 8-10 min. Once you get it out of the oven, fight the temptation to open the lid, let it rest off the heat for 10 min. The you can fluff with fork and i promise, perfect rice! Jasmine rice works a bit differently (but I LOVE jasmine rice so to me, this is important) there is no exact ration, but you simply cover the rice in the pot by 3/4 of an inch and bring to a boil uncovered. then pop on a lid and on a very low heat, let it simmer for about 20. Take off the heat (again, no peaking!) and let it rest for 10. Like with meats and even cookies and cakes, rice needs its rest after its been in the heat.

-Hard Boil an Egg: i love hard boiled eggs and i make it a lot in batched so i always have a few ready on hand. There are loads of ways I've seen people do it but here the way we were taught (i find it the most effective for not overcooking the yolk so it turns green). simply place egg in water unboiled water and let it come to a boil and boil for 8 min and done!

-Poach an Egg: this bit me in the ass when i took my Baking I class because we had a "pop quiz" where we all had to make two poached eggs with hollandaise. like hard-boiled eggs, people over the years came up with little tricks and what not for the the perfect shape, there are even cute egg poachers in nifty stores like bed and bath. But here's the old school way: add regular distilled vinegar to your water or poaching liquid (it helps keep it together) and bring to an almost boil (you don't want a full on boil because it'll break up the structure of the egg). It sounds theoretically appealing that if you stir the water rapidly to create a vortex in the middle of the pot, and you crack an egg into that vortex, it will magically wrap the whites around the yolk. It rarely works this way, though.Once the egg is in the pot, you can shape it a bit using a spoon or spatula. This definitely helps to rein in the loose bits. It's not going to transform a totally incoherent egg into a beautifully contained one, but it can make some difference.
fish out with a slotted spoon and i like to let it rest over some paper towels because it'll still have a fair amount of water on it thus making your English muffin or plate watery.

-Blanch veggies: Many SO many people screw this up. in boiling water dump your veggies. if its leafy like greens, almost immediately fish out and shock in an ice bath (i cant stress this shocking step enough! it will over cook if you leave it). broccoli, green beans, and cauliflower take about min and then shock, carrots can be left for about 2 min. it might seem like little time but i get over steamed veggies in restaurants and people's house all the time. I dont like it raw (unless intentional, of course) but you do want so snap. Unless its meant to be pureed or for baby food, it should not be uber soft it practically melts in your mouth.

-Sear meat: even if your baking meat in the oven, it often wise to sear because it adds color (for appearance) and seals in juices. You do need so sort of fat (you can go healthy like me and use canola, olive or sesame oil, or go French and use butter, or go american and use crisco, or if your really gutsy, go with lard). You dont need a lot of fat but a little. heat the fat FIRST and do the sizzle test (drop or water in the fat pool, if it reacts immediately, its ready for the meat). sear all side evenly, dont walk away and change the TV channel or answer the phone, it easy to over cook meat which if you ask me is more serious of a crime than overcooked veggies.

there you have it, some simple "duh" moves you may have been doing differently, but try the old school approach.

Possible Business Venture???

2008-04-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

So a couple weeks ago when i went to get my hair done for my UCLA audition, i brought a tin of the cookies i made in class (hoping to get a slight discount...). Well i did get a discount (i doubt the cookies had anything to do with it, i just my dad is family friends with my hairdresser) but the owner of the salon asked me if i ever thought about selling the cookies. When i cam back a week ago just for a blowout, she said she gave them to a few customers and they loved it and wondered if they could buy some. She suggested i give her my card (which the closest thing i have to a business card is my head shot i give when i go on auditions)so people could contact me and buy my cookies. Well this got me thinking...maybe i could make a healthier assortment of cookies and sell them. I called my nutritionist and she said she'd gladly help me figure out the correct nutritional info for labeling. I am thinking of selling all sorts of low sugar biscotti. what do you think? could i possibly sell them online? maybe through nutritious junk? would people actually buy them? Tell me what you think?

How to be a Faker Baker!

2008-03-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

Now that i have completed 12 weeks of baking, I've come up with a few tips and tricks for all you baking novice's and even experienced cooks. The thing is, most chefs don't like baking. Its hard, chefs (and most home cooks too) generally treat baking like some people treat math. Many people are love writing, reading, and English people like me, for example) and hate subject like math and science and vise versa (some loath language arts and thrive off numbers and theories). Chefs may be excellent chefs, but when it comes to pastries, they begin to loose their cool. Pastry chefs are a lot rarer than savory chefs, and not surprisingly, get paid sometimes double the salary. Rachel Ray (as annoyingly "cute" as she is) always says, "I don't bake!" and some chefs of "top chef" were booted for their pathetic attempt at dessert concoctions. I am probably not going to be a pastry chef, but I do think my skills have improved tremendously in the past 12 weeks and i completely understand why they included baking in the culinary arts program (because the Le Cordon Bleu also has a separate Baking and Patisserie program). So here they are, a few tips you should know when you do venture into baking to ensure better products and self-proclaim yourself as a baker (even if you fake it!).

-BOX MIXES: yes, my baking teacher did consider these box mixes and canned frosting (or what she referred to as the f-word)taboo but lets be honest, the average home cook does not have loads of different flours, extracts, and baking powders necessary to make cakes or cookies for those once in a blue moon events (with the exception of those that DO bake often and DO happen to have these item on hand). Its simply easier and cheaper for these occasions to resort to the mixes. so if you do choose the mix, to ensure a more "professional" or "home-made" touch, remember to sift your dry ingredients ALWAYS. Nothing pisses me off more than biting into a brownine with a dry lump of powdered cocoa. Sifting ensures a smooth lump-less batter. Often your asked to add eggs and oil to these mixes so make sure you do use your amounts correctly. If you think skipping the oil or only using egg white will yield a healthier product, you may be right, but if substitution is your thing, so it when you make the whole thing from scratch. These mixes already have some oils and other sorts of chemicals in them that can make it taste off when you substitute your own products. If healthier baking is your goal, just don't go with mixes.

-PAM: or otherwise known as cooking spray to prevent your desserts and breads from sticking. Its used in most pastry kitchens, but my chef told us that she personally tries to avoid them whenever she can, opting to use a non-stick silicone "silpat" baking sheet or lining pans with non-stick parchment. why? because besides oil, these sprays have a fair amount of alcohol in them that can produce this waxy film on your product. I've tried it and its totally true. silpats are a little pricey but definitely a great investment and they last forever.

- FRUIT: are you stumped as to what dessert to make? start with nature's sweetness. Think of a seasonal fruit and try to build your dessert around that. this was a good exercise in our "mystery box" exams. Say you want to use cherries, you can flambe them with rum for a "cherries jubilee", incorporate them into cake like a cherry clafoutti, or if you can, maybe even a cherry sorbet. Just like savory menus can often be built off protein, dessert menus can be built off fruits.

-SCALES: by all means throw away the bathroom scale (clothes are a much better way to measure whether your leaning out or expanding), but instead trade it in for a kitchen scale. I think chefs don't like baking because to bake correctly, measurements must be precise to a T, unlike cooking which is more "dash" there, "hand full" there, "eye ball" etc. And cups and tablespoons are actually not very accurate. weight is the best way to measure so invest in a small kitchen scale (i got a digital one for like 14 bucks at costco) and you're baking good will probably always turn out perfect.

-VANILLA BEANS: again a pricey ingredient that goes a long way. extracts are OK, but the vanilla bean itself will really pack a great flavor to ANYTHING. Ice cream bases, pie, cookies, custards, cake, pudding, even savory dishes get a great enhancement with some scraped fresh vanilla beans. You can buy a single bean in most markets (for about 4 bucks per pod) but i think the best deal is a wholesale pack which has about 100 pods and costs about 50 bucks. Its a lot of vanilla beans, but you'll probably never need vanilla beans again and they don't go bad (so maybe you can pass them on to your grandchildren if you don't use them all).

See, you can make decent, gourmet desserts without being a pastry chef! and if all else fails, i am sure there's a lovely local bakery where you can get a cake and put it in you cake pan and call it your own. Don't worry, these cakes are generally not copyrighted.

See ya Baking II!

2008-03-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

So baking II ended this Friday. For those wondering if Iam alive, i assure you i am, but just barely, hence my infrequent posts. A LOT went on since i wrote last, finals week, and i wish i could be more articulate to describe it, sucked! lets begin with my little mystery box fiasco. I did LOADS of research, i went to three bookstores to look for this particular fine dining dessert cookbook for ideas, I browsed online for ideas and plating designs. I had a concept, i wanted to have a chocolate devils food cake tart with a chocolate tart shell filled with thyme infused pastry cream with caramelized orange segments on top with a orange thyme creme anglise and orange apple cider gastrique (we needed two sauces). But everything that i tried to execute just didn't go! the ONE thing that went smoothly was the bake on my cake, but when i made the chocolate tart shells, they stuck to the molds and wouldn't come loose! so i covered the molds with plastic wrap, hoping i could just remove the plastic to help them move off. but it just broke off the set up, chocolate! At this point i had about ten minuets to plate up, clean, and fill in my mystery box form (explaining all the components of the dish and listing ingredients). my orange segment which i cooked with flambeed triple sec completely fell apart and didn't hold their crescent shape I'd hoped they would, they just looked like orange mush. It was awful, i didn't know what to do, so i just piled everything on the plate. I know I had to kill it with my final products that were to be due on Thursday. So Tuesday, from 6:00-9:30 we need to do what we could for Thursday where, as i mentioned previously, I needed to turn it a dobos torte, 12 tempered chocolate truffles, 12 petite fours, 12 biscotti cookies, creme brulee, and caramel sauce. We had Wednesday too, but the catch was, that we needed to turn in a hot souffle at a specific time on Wednesday. you see souffles need to be served "a minute", french for "at the moment" otherwise they deflate and i guess are no longer considered a souffle. So everyone really needed to time it perfectly, get them in the oven with enough time to rise and bring them with their given time. I was three minutes late, but at my time they really weren't puffed up enough and she mentioned that she'd prefer a late, puffed souffle as opposed to a flat ramekin on time. It wasn't even that puffed up, but i didn't was to be TOO late. SO i was super stressed for time, everything was made hastily and without careful attention, and hence done, and again excuse my in-articulate use of words, half-assed. Fat blooms (or streaking) surrounded my truffles, my petite four were not uniform and not all completely glazed, my biscotti was way too big (i forgot to half the recipe), and my sponge layers for my dobos torte were not "spongy" and hence super dry and hard. The one thing i think i nailed was the creme brulee. I say "think" because when i received my final grades, yesterday, i was so embarrassed from my performance during finals that i folded it over without looking and its in that same position in my car as we speak. a terrible habit of mine where i do into denial mode until i get in a better mood and then face it. Maybe I'll look at it next week, in the meantime i just need to focus forward, on whats next. Well actually we have a week break (thank the lord)and then i start a class called Garde Manger, french for "keeper of the food". Its basically all about preparing and presenting cold foods like canapes, cold cuts, terrines, sushi, sandwiches, salads, and stuff like that. Its also about making decorative centerpieces from ice sculptures to decorative cuts of fruits. The class works a bit differently from the others, you work in groups and you do a whole buffet spread each week. The final is a whole buffet spread you prepare by yourself, without your "group". I am nervous, i hated when we had to work in groups for our fried chicken day in my Intro II. Not to get snotty, but i really think some people are difficult to work with and um...i don't know i kinda am a bit of a control freak, i like doing things my way. I guess that makes me bossy, but i always avoid fights by not staying out of drama. anyhow, I have week to recharge. I'll be posting some recipes and other articles here throughout the week so check often, I'll try to get them in daily, thanks for the support guys!

Yet another cry for help!

2008-03-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

Man what a week! finals are on monday and work a little differently for this class. Monday is our written exam and right after is our "mystery box" practical. this isn't a mystery box like before this time its way more difficult, and thus the plea for help. this time i need to make a plated dessert using devil's food cake (the cake needs to be part of the dessert, the dessert itself cnt just be a slice of devil's food cake), pastry cream, orange, and thyme! God i hate this!!! everyone got a weird spice. i dont know why they did that because we never learned how to use savory herbs in desserts. I have a feeling my dish will taste pretty awful. Then on tuesday and wednsday we have all class to prep for thursday when I have to turn in: 12 round dark chocolate truffles, 12 petit four cakes, 12 orange anise flavored biscotti, and a whole dobos torte (remember the pic i took of mine a little while back?). I actually have to turn in a hot chocolate souffle on wednsday at 8:10 pm EXACTLY becasue those need to be served right away otherwise they'll deflate. i need to time it perfectly, i loose points if it early or late! Anyhow, i stumped about this mystery box, the only think i can think of is baking the cake on sheet pan (so its thin and flat) and rolling it with the orange/thyme pastry cream. But i dont really thing this cake will roll nicly because its so moist and not very sponge-y. anyhow ideas would be much appreciated :)

Advice? Anyone?

2008-03-15T12:44:00.000-07:00

Hey, i just got back from my 8am saturday math class and feel like i am going to melt into my bed/sofa/or any surface. we finished our fondant celebration cakes (i will post the pic in the next post) but most importantly, we have a mystery box plated dessert quiz on monday and we each got to pick out of a hat three flavors and make a fine dining, balanced dessert using the ingredients. Mine are apple, cinnamon, and walnut. honestly, i was a bit disappointed because this pairing is very cliche. but i need to get creative so if you have ANY ideas, throw em at me! there are rules though: i cant do frozen desserts (no ice cream, sorbet, etc), no flambeed desserts, no custards like flan, creme brulee, etc, and no souffles. sure i could do a cobbler-esque type thing, but again, thats pretty cliche so if theres anything you guys can think of, let me know! i'll post the final end result on monday!

Mystery Box!

2008-03-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

I appologize again for not posting daily this week. I've been so burnt out! Gah! but I have loads to dish about! First, lets go over what i did this week:

Tuesday: We made the base for ice cream and sorbet last week and we needed to present them on tuesday. We were given free reign over the flavors. So i made a hazlenut chocolate ice cream swirled in with almond butter. For the sorbet, i made an orange/pomogrante with some balsamic vinegar! We had to bake the approptiate "vessels" for each. For the ice cream we made a tuile cookie in any shape we wanted to contain our single scoop of ice cream. We also had to present two sauces so i made an almond creme anglaise and an almond gastrique (a reduction of sugar and vinegar, its kind of like syrup, its used in sweet and savory dishes). As far as presentation, we could have done whatever we wanted. I admit, my plate looked so so, but when the chef tastes my ice cream, she flipped. She was like, "Wow, this is so good, bring this to chef so and so next door, i want him to taste this!". I was so happy!!! Most of the class did fruit based ice creams, the know-it-all who works next to my station made a wasabi and seaweed one with soy sauce. It pissed me off because it smalled like a sushi resturant alley annd he was doing it for the sake of being "unconventional". Trust me, he's that type of guy.

Wednsday: pretty boring day, we made crepe batter and flourless chocolate cake for friday

Thurday: this was the Mystery Box plated dessert practical quiz. We could make ANY well blananced plated dessert that had ti have a financier cake (a basic french almond cake) somewhere in the main item and a seasonal fruit which since its winter, was either a pear or apple. Its actually not much of a mystery but there will be more of these types of quizes next week where it really WILL be a mystery fruit. It was so exciting but my creative mind was running a mile a minute and i had so many ideas and concepts that i kinda went a little haywire and couldn't decide on what to actually do. I ended up making a small cranberry ginger financier round with a ginger lemon poached pear (visit nutritious junk for the recipe. I had an almond sabayon and cranberry cooked fruit sauce as my two sauces (also a requirement), and i made some brittle which i added crystalized ginger and dried cranberries in for my "crunch" component. I got a great score for flavor, but it was overbaked so i got an 88. o well, now i am doing resereach to get inspired for new ideas to cook fruit desserts until next monday (btw, feel free to give me ideas!)

Friday: we had a super busy day, we made crepe suzzet, baked alaskas (yay for the blowtorch!), and 2 10 in sponge cakes which I hate to make beacause they state like scoth brite and involve separating 16 eggs!

anyhow this week we do chocolate truffles and sugar pulling. at the end of the week we are doing a themed fondant cake. my sister is having a baby show next week so i'll make it baby shower themed!

Creme Brulee!

2008-03-05T00:14:00.001-08:00

i'll write more about this tomorrow morning, i just wanted to show you my brulees. One is covered in sugar in the raw and the other is regular granulated. can you tell which ones which? anyhow, my chef really liked it, and it was so much fun to crack it! just like Amelie's favorite past time (does anybody remember that from the movie?)

The Charlotte Royal, and is culinary school right for you?

2008-03-02T20:40:00.000-08:00

Here's the Charlotte royal i made monday. When we present a cake, we need to slice it, put it on a platter, and pipe our names and the dish name in choclate around the rim (so long to my annonyminty, now you know my name!). To be honest, i didn't like it, not just the fact that a messed up the sponge but i just didn't like the taste. Its filled with Bavarian cream, and i am not big on creams. I dont know, this isn't exactly my kind of dessert, I like chocolate and nutty-ness to my desserts, this was kinda lacking although pistachios did encrust the bottom as you can see.
Anyhow, when i read over some of the responses to my interview over at workout mommy's blog,many people said how much they've always wanted to go to some sort of culinary school or program. I hear this a lot, i went to the grocery store a few times in my uniform (which i dont this i will do again because i get stopped all the time and people ask me "which is the best dressing?" or "can you choose my fish?". It was fun at first, kind of like being a celebrity, but like celebs, it gets annoying) and many clerks told me, "wow, your in culinary school?! You know I ;ve always wanted to go". Sure they want to go, but its a bit like working out, they seem to find some excuse from actually doing it and they dream about it, thinking its a far fetched idea and too drastic of a decision to actually put into action. So i thought I'd give a quick rundown about whether or not its a good decision for you. every one's different, of course, but this is simply how i come to see it since starting:

-You dont really want to be a chef. Well, neither do i, but its cool to know i could. Anyhow, i dont think culinary school is all about making young aspiring chefs. the knowledge you gain is invaluable in MANY fields and believe it or not, it is impressive even on a resume for a law firm. Why? well for one, i dont think theres a better way to really learn about team work, multi-tasking (especially when you only have an hour to make 7 cookie batters like i did on Tuesday!), leadership, and communication. Its more hands on than anything you'll get in a college or university. and there's loads of directions you can take the culinary educations that does not involve being a chef. you can be food writer, food critic, recipe developer, caterer, restaurateur, food stylist, personal chef, etc. Many people in my school are also older people that left their dead end jobs because they were so unhappy and just want to enhance their beloved hobby.

-You can't afford it. Most culinary school cost as much as a year in an ivy league college, but there are LOADS of scholarship opportunities and grants you can qualify for (like if you keep up good grades). Not to mention most school will offer financial aid. this didn't actually help my situation because my dad thankfully is paying for it and we're middle class, so he makes too much to get a substantial financial aid grant. Also, once you enroll many special event promoters (like for swanky parties and premieres) love to recruit culinary studeent for their events and they pay nicely (from 10-20$ an hour). you basically will never have to settle for minimum wage again, believe me, a culinary education will hellp you get better jobs in any food extablishment

-Its too drastic. well is it? many people think its crazy to do something they love so much, like WE SHOULD dread going to work/school. most culinary programs are about 1 year to 2 years so its not a lifelong commitment, and you can always drop out (and it not beauty school with matching "grease" remind you of it). Yes it will be a change, but if cooking is something you love you'll enjoy the drastic change.

Look, I was sitting in a 300 person lecture hall learning about the Yanomamo tribe in Bali when I THOUGHT i would be learning about acting and drama which was my major in college. I was unhappy, and just trying to get throught each day, hoping it would be over soon. I felt so unproductive, like i was running on a tredmill (and a bad, squeaky one at that, you know the kind that make all the noise and people stare at you funny in the gym because of it becuase its distracting). I still love acting, but i love cooking too and I love learning about something i care about. I look forward to the next day! I love that I get to make creme brulee on monday (puts manic monday to shame!). I think we too often supress our aspirations because we think its bad to do something you love SOOOOO much. But i have yet to meet someone that went to culinary school and regreted it. again, its like working out, you never workout and say "hmm, i really am sorry i did that".

Plated Dessert!

2008-03-01T14:28:00.000-08:00

this was my first plated dessert i did on Monday. Its a banded chocolate mousse cake i was talking about. Its made out of the layered cut out devils food cake with chocolate mousse, I froze it and then made a band of chocolate (with, as you can see, very girly designs). We had to present it with two sauces a creme angalise (which is the white one, made with milk, cream, vanilla sugar, and egg yolks) and a cooked fruit sauce of our choice. I like that theres not real recipe for the other sauce because it really gave me creative control. I could have gone a little nuts and made like a ginger orange or infused it with cinnamon. but it was my first plated dessert and our chef said less is more. plus i wanted a nice, not too overpowering flavor to go with the chocolate cake, which is really rhe focal point of the dish, not the sauce. The creme anglaise it sweet and vanilla-y, so i went with a raspberry cooked fruit sauce with a little lemon as my acid. I have a quiz on Monday on the components of a fine dining plated desserts and as you may be able to tell from this plate what they are:

1)Main item (the mousse cake)
2) chocolate (pretty obvious)
3)cream (the creme anglaise)
4) Crunch (the banded chocolate and the chocolate garnish)
5) sauce (the creme anglaise and the raspberry)

for a well BALANCED dessert, i need to know these 5 components:
1) flavor (sweet, tart, nutty, etc you want them to complement, sweet on sweet is a bit of an over kill)
2) texture (like the creaminess of the sauces, the airiness of the mousse, the crunch of the chocolate, etc)
3) color (i wanted the band color to match my sauce, i could have used an orange decoration with a orange type sauce)
4) design (you want to design your plate nicely, make portions small because our chef said "this isn't sizzler or claim jumper" and you don't want people to share because it means everyone can order their own which = more $, also you want to create a height and a real "wow" factor. Haven't you ever been to a restaurant and a server walks by with someones tray and your like "WOW! I WANT THAT!", that what your going for, but you also want to keep it simple. Luckily, she told me mine was good in that it was still dramatic but not too busy, simplicity is always good).
5) temp (like the hot souffle I made last night which is served hot from the oven immediately or it will deflate, but its served with a cute small pitch of the creme anglaise which is cold, you poke a hole in the middle of the souffle and the coolness of the cream and the hot chocolate souffle make a great balance!)

so there you have it, a semi-brief 101 on fine dining desserts. I really suggest you indulge in them every once in a while. Don't spend a fortune at at the four seasons for a fillet minion (although if you have the spare $, by all means). go to a really nice fine dining establishment and just order one other their desserts. Yes its not super healthy, but potions are sensible, prices are not crazy because its not like lamb or caviar, and you'll get a really fabulous taste adventure, you'll look at oreos and think, "hmm....thats kinda pathetic...".

Cookie Explosion!

2008-02-26T23:01:00.000-08:00

We did our charlotte Royal yesterday along with our first plated dessert of banded chocolate mousse cake (i took pics they'll be up soon..). I'll explain them once i get the pics up.
Today we made 6 different types of cookies! like biscotti, sable (french cookies that look like checkerboards), earthquake cookie, and some others that just slipped my mind ( i just got home, bare with me i feel like collapsing). I promise to get the pics up soon and talk about the plated desserts!

From Chef, to Actor!

2008-02-23T16:40:00.000-08:00

Well friday we put together a charlotte russe (aka a "jelly roll"" which is supposed to be this sponge cake with rasberry jelly rolled in it, sliced, and then lined on a bottom of a bowl and then filled with bavarian cream and then frozen. Since i promised you i am not a baker, of course my sponge cake was overdone so it didnt roll nicely so my charlotte (hee hee, charlotte, if your reading this, know i thought about you when our instructor told us, "ok, so today were are going work on your charlotte!") is a bit deformed. Then we took that left over devils food cake and cut out litte circles to make a "band of chocolate" which is a peice of the devils food layered with chocolate mousse three times. we froze those too because on monday, we'll learn how to creat a chocolate "band" to wrap them. They are a small dessert or what we call in culinary school "plated dessert". This upcoming week will be all about plated dessert. A plated dessert is like a dish, it need to have five components (texture, cruch, flavor, creaminess, and chocolate) and be well balanced. Its neat because this is part of the class that does not involve a recipe, we make the sauces ourselves. Most start the same, some boil fruit with a little simple syrup, blended in a blend with an added acid like citrus of vinegar. Some chefs are ballsy and add salt, but our chef instructor told us you should be VERY experienced if you want to add salt because if you add to much, theres no taking back and you have to make a whole new batch. After the sauce is blended, you strain (cause the "crunch" factor should come from raspberry seeds), and then heat or cool it until it thickens up to a nice consistency. I am so excited because i cant wait to finally use my creativity and really wow someones taste buds. I am think maybe doing a ginger organe sauce of maybe fig and honey? Usually there are 2 sauces on a plate that should balance each other (like sweet and tart). See the difference between this baking class and the other one. Anyhow, besides that, sunday morning is my UCLA theater audition and I am nervous as hell. I've been so focused on cooking that i am afraif i am out of shape for my other passion for the stage. they are very cut throught there, not a lot of spots. I am doing a contemporary monologue and a classical one. I like the contemporary one, its from the vagina monologues, lots of cussing, totally me. the other i am nervous about, its chekov and i never liked russian theater all that much when i studied it in college. Anyhow, i got a haircut today (so i look at least a little like my head shot) so hopefully my confidence will be up and i'll be able to put my apron down and be an actor, well at least for tomorrow...

Dobos Torte!

2008-02-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

So this is my pathetic eight layered Dobos Torte. Itsa hungarian dessert with eight sponge layers, choclate butter cream with brandy simple syrup washed on it and carmel encased sponge waffers on top. I am sorry for the slice missing but the chef needs a piece to try in this class when we present them. I will go over more in detail about the disaster that happended from the Balck Forest Cake later today...but for now heres the latest pic.

Welcome to Baking II!

2008-02-19T23:02:00.000-08:00

so baking II began and heres a first, our instructor is....a girl! She seems nice, looks a lot like aa younger verision of Oprah. She seems super serious though, i tried to crack a few jokes here and there, i am usually good at getting even the most serious of people to loosen up and crack a smile, but she just barely did. O well, my baking I chef (who's actually teaching next door!) told me she's sweet. We made Devils food cake and a dobo eleven layer cake. We didn't assemble them because we'll make a black forrest cake tomorrow with the devils food and this hungarian eleven layer cake with a carmel wafer on thursday. So i will take pics of my cake tomorrow for all of you to marvel at my baking inempt-ness. This class is ALL desserts, we'll be doing cookies, hot souffles, truffles, petit fours, sorbets, and all these of intricate sugar pieces. Defiently no waitning around waiting for breads to proof and bake like in baking I. Azelma, dont be so jealous, but you know theres tha same class i take that here at school that goes from 6-11 am! good lord i'd have to get up at four am! i could never do that schedule, me and the morning dont mix!

Baking II !

2008-02-19T16:15:00.000-08:00

I start baking II today. I hope i will have time to write about it after class but that is if i get out early (because its supposed to end, as always, at 11 pm and i am usually dead if they make us stay till then). I just want to say a big ass thank you to everyone who's been reading and commenting. I really appreciate it! I wonder how big my class will be this term. last term it was only 16 (down from about 23 in my Intro II class, and i remember when i first began, it was about 30!). As you can see its intensive. people drop out because its very time consuming, costs A LOT (like a year at harvard without a scholorship), and lets face it, its boot camp for culinary students. Although not to say that you cant handel these things, if you reall want to be there, that is. There are lots of loan and financial aid options and plenty of grants and scholorship, its just extra work but it can save you a lot of money. In a sense its good the class is small but i must say i still feel a bit of a social outcast. Its weird i also seem to be the most knowledgable about food we haven't learned yet because i've been interested in cooking all my life and julia child's books were staple in my home. Like for example, about two people raised their hands when the chef asked if they new what carpaccio was. not to sound like a snob, but i expect them to know that. anyhow, i will try to write about tonight. wish me luck!

The "Final" showdown!

2008-02-17T21:43:00.000-08:00

Before i begin my Baking I final lowdown, i must apologize for not posting as frequently as i would have wanted recently. This past few weeks have not only been tough at school, but I've had so many personal issues to deal with. But i am back, i do hope people still read this, please someone, comment just to let me know i am not blabbering about culinary escapades to a monitor. Anyhow, so my finals went horribly! gah lets begin with this past monday, we had to take the written test (that actaully was a bit easy), and do an egg/holladnaise practical test. We were given four eggs to produce two poached eggs and holldanise on top. So that gives you an extra egg incase you mess up. I mess up, but i still needed more eggs! I started making the holladiase when i noticed it was not comming together, than i realized my butter wasn't clarified enough. so i simply put it back on the burner and cranked up the heat, hoping this would speed up the process because i only had a bout ten min left! Silly me of course took the screaming hot butter and into my egg yolk to start my hollandaise when it hit me, "the butter must be below 110 degrees!". So incase you haven't guessed already, this turned my yolk into scrambled eggs. So theres two yolks gone. and i still needed to produce two poaches eggs. so i handed in two eggs, no sauce. I felt pathetic. Then lets proceed to the rest of the week. Tuesday we were allowed to prep whatever we wanted for the rest of the week. On wensday we needed to turn in two items (everyone had a different item). Mine were fairly simple, 6 eclaires and a 24 oz sourdough. I thought i could for sure nail this, but even here i messed up. First of all, our recipe given to us when the class first began a few weeks ago was for a 1 lb loaf so i thought, "hmm all just had half to make 24oz". Then when i baked it, although i must say beautiful as it was, it was huge! and he weighed all the breads! i forgot to weight it BEFORE baking, and it turned out to weigh a whopping 34 oz! And the eclaires? beautiful, really perfect, but the filling! i didn't read my menu carefully enough because i realized i had to fill them with pastry cream NOT whipped cream (they are very different, pastry cream is yellow). Thursday i had to turn in a cheescake and 6 bearclaw danishes. thank god those turned out good, but i topped the cheesecake with cherrys and he said he want it plain. O well, i still got an A in the class because i do my homework and do fairly well on quizes. So tuedsday i start baking II! its way more intricate and i hear we have a mystery box for the final where we must make a dessert out of the ingredients inside. sounds neat, please check frequently, i promise to post!

Pate a choux: the unhealthier cabbage!

2008-01-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

This week was a lot about Pate a Choux, the basic dough for pastries like eclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles, and a french cake you may be familar with which is basically lots of profiteroles stacked like a christmas tree with spun sugar around it. In french it means "head of cabbage" because it does kinda resemble it once its baked. Anyhow, we only had to make cream puffs, eclairs, and "swans" which were literally this pastry dough filled with chocolate, whipped cream, strawberries, and little heads and wings! they were percious. Again, i apologize for forgetting to bring my camera, its just that its VERY easy to get it damaged (a lot of flour and sugar flying around in the kitchen) in the baking labs. Anyhow the Pate a choux consits of lots of butter and eggs. Although you might think its super rich, its actually quite airy, hence its popular to fill it. We made a plethora of pastry creams as well this week. We made a great one for out napolians on monday which consisted of milk, eggs, gelatin, cornstarch, and the best part, pure vanilla beans. I dont get to use fresh vanilla beans very often (they are super pricy, often sold like safron with only one or two pods). There was a a case chock-full of these dried vanilla beans and I was so tempted to steal some! but i am not that kelpto, so i restrained myself. I think the chef is good, like i said, a hard ass miltary drill sergeant type but he teaches effectivly. plus, i think he noticed my extra efforts because he told me he appriecated me cleaning his demo-table every night (i do this because no one else does and the sooner we clean up, the sooner we get to go home!) and said he added extra points to my grade. Speaking of grades, its midterm now, so we got our midterm grades. I have an "A" although i admit, i am not that proud of it. I do well on quizes and homework, but to be honest, i think the products i make aren't great. I dont have a passion for baking, and i a think my mediocre results in my products show it. but its very hard for most of the class actually to get things to turn out perfect. But i am a perfectionist, so naturally this irritates me. The cool thing is that I've been making all these pastries that frankly, i dont eat very much of (i DO taste everything, but I have theory that i dont have rich desserets unless i am absolutly craving it) and neither do the people living with me, so i've been giving them to people i buy from as i mentioned in my last post. Its cool, i scored free sushi last week! I really hope to be able to make desserts using less sugar and saturated fat by the end of this course. Infact, i have a little idea: please send in a "sinful" dessert that you'd like to get "lightend" up. I'll try a bunch of different substitutions i think will work and hopefully will come up with something nice. I'll post it here with pictures too. Lets send some desserts to rehab!

Its like Shrek, lots and lots of layers!

2008-01-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

did you get that. In the first Shrek (cause i couldn't stand the second and thought the third was a joke so i never even saw it), shrek tells donkey about how ogres are like onions, maily because they have "layers". I guess Shrek must be like coissants and danished as well because as i learned this week, the flaky layers require much elbow grease and time. It makes me look at those ones you roll out of the tube in a completely different way. I sorta wanted to cheat and go out and buy a dough-boy tube and present it. anyhow, first we had to make whats called a beurrage or "butter block" which is basically whipped butter with a little bit of flour and lemon juice. Its formed into a "block" and chilled. Then you make a wet dough which might look like any old dough. You fold in the butter block with the wet dough, pound it, flatten it, and chill it for at least 30 min. then you take out the dough, fold it like a letter (3 time) and again pound and flatten and agian, chill for at least 30 min. You do this 3 times (not including the intial fold). wait, thats not all. We made danishes which was a bit fun because we got to cut them into all those cool shapes (and we get tested on them) like pinwheels, turnovers, "windows" (i cant explain how it looks but its pretty neat, pockets, bearclaws, spirals, etc. we were able to fill them with whatever we wanted which was nice (gave me some room for a creativity outlet). then once shaped, they needed to proof which took about another 30 min, then filled, baked, and then they were brushed with an apricot glaze and drizzled with white icing (its like a double sugar infused garnish, healthy aint it?). I was actaully very proud of mine, most turned decent. Other people i saw complete burned them, I never thought of this but burned danishes are very sad looking. On Friday we made croissants and pain au chocolat which is just as time consuming and labor intensive. They turned out fine, but again, i snicker every time i pass buy the tubes in the market. I've been speaking with some of the other students and most generally really like this baking course. I on the other hand miss those days of simply cooking. Sure, its fun to brag and say you actually made your own loaf of bread (but its old buy now, I could seriously operate a litte bakery from my house i've got so much baked goods). I also made some nice friends passing them out. I give them to the people at the fro yo shop to get a discount on healthier desserts, i even gave them to my mail man. hey, its good to be on good terms with people who serve you and what better way than with freshly baked danishes!

Overrated Food/Nutrition Trends!

2008-01-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

I recently flipped through this magazine I'd never heard of called "Radar". This was actaully an old issue (my therapist needs to seriously update her magazine selection, where i spotted this odd-ball of a mag). They were giving 2007's overrated trend awards and i must say, i totally agreed with most of them (some i totally DIDNT and hope it got on the list as a joke). Celeb chef and potty mouth Anthony Bourdain gave a menu of dishes he thought were overrated (again, i agreed with most, stuff like "Be sure to sample our selection of flavored salts, and please await the water sommelier (Bourdain said) A chef who offers anything other than sea salt probably refers to himself in the third person. When the water sommelier comes over, I reach for my gun." SO heres my list of totally overrated food and nutrition fads of the year:

Pinkberry: I love fro yo as much as the average health nut, but serisouly, shelling out six bucks for plain tart yogurt with some berries on top and waiting half an hour for the employees to do this is nothing short of overrated. I am thrilled healthier snacks are becoming trendy, better this that the krispy kreme boom, but this overpriced, over hyped yogurt is nothing special.

Shaved Truffles: Anthony mentioned this but i have to second it. Most of the time, when i see "shaved" or "accented" with truffles on a menu, i just see it as an easy way to over-charge without people thinking twice about it. Also, it tells me the dish underneath is probably mediocre that the truffles need to compensate. Indeed its a lazy chef's way to enhance the price of his menu without really streching his culinary imagination.

Whole Foods: Sorry, and i know i frequent there but some people treat it like its a health food mecca. the reality, the quality is not THAT impressive, not EVERYTHING is organic, its not saving the planet from global warming (i know they try though, but they still carry many goods imported from far off places like New Zealand so they shouldn't go off bragging that they aren't leaving a carbon footprint). Also, its kinda like mall and many people just go to "window shop" and leave without really buying anything. Propbably because although the food looks entcing, its much cheaper elsewhere. I see celebs there, its like a label, some people buy at whole foods to say, "i got this from whole foods".

Vitamins: This made radar's list and i totally agree. Some people will spend hundreds of dollars a month on vitamin supplements alone. And get this, most, if they eat more than top ramen and coke, will not need all that supplementation. Infact, they could OD on it. My dad got kidney stones because of too much vitamin C in his system (a combo of popping supplements, drinking OJ daily, and eating plenty of fruits and veggies). A simple multi might be ok for most people and maybe even none if you eat REALLY healthy. the one thing maybe to consider is a calcium supplement for women, but thats not a vitamin. and quit it with those vitamin infused waters will ya? they taste like, well water, and cost twice as much and een have added sugar.

any others you can think of?

I am Baked, and Fried for that matter!

2008-01-16T13:20:00.000-08:00

So sorry for not posting everyday, i do hope people still read. Anyhow, i missed a day so i had to make like four different breads on monday! Pita, foccacia, cinnamon buns, and rye. I actaully never loved cinnamon buns although i love the smell of cinnabon at the mall. The funny thing is that the chef couldn't fdtress enough how there was "nothing healthy about these buns" and that "they might as well give you a heart attack". cause they were basted, rolled, and encased with butter and sugar i guess. Any how, if the buns didn't get you your devilish side, yesterday we got fry0happy and made doughnuts and beignets (i think thats how you spell them??). That took orever because we had only two fry stations. Mine were gorgeous and i had a beignet with some powdered sugar because the doughtnuts were huge and frankly i really was not craving them all that much. I wanted t get out of class early so i can go to the frozen yogurt shop and maybe trade them for chocolate frozen yogurt (ahh the health nut in me kicks in!) but we stayed until about 11:15 pm, so everything was closed. Today i have an egg quiz, basically i need to make two poached eggs and hollandaise, yuck! good think he makes us throw it out right after he grades them incase we "slide it over" to "cheat" and give it to someone else in the class. I must say, i miss my usual cooking classes, baking is kinda boring, a lot of measuring, a lot of waiting for things to proof, bake, set, cool...I have ADD when it comes to the kitchen, and i hate just kinda floating around waiting for my sourdough to rise (by the way i made two loaves yesterday that were PERFECT!). Anyhow, i cant find my camera so these are NOT my doughnuts, but hopefully they got your mouth watering...

From NJ: Fiber One Caramel Delight!

2008-01-13T22:06:00.000-08:00

Sorry my pics are not working over a NJ so again iam posting a recent review

Again you may visit http://thiswaifcooks.blogspot.com/ for a picture of this. Well I am so excited that cereal companies a coming out with new cereals, as it appears, daily. I love cereal, not sure if its a vice or not because it can be healthy but its like my comfort food. I didn't grow up eating mac n'cheese (with a Beligan dad and Israeli mom, standard american classics weren't often in our kitchen) so cereal really is what comforts me. Plus its great for a meal or snack, its portable, etc.. so i am happy i get to try all these new cereals! anyhow, my second favorite to all bran is usually fiber one. I like their normal cereal and their honey clusters are pretty nice too, so i was having high hopes for their new caramel delight. A cup has 180 calories, 3g fat , 41g carbs, 9g fiber, 3g protein, and 10g sugars. a sweeter high fiber cereal all in all and actually fairly close nutritonally to the newly reviewed all-bran strawberry medley. They come in squares similar to cinnamon toast crunch but they are much "airy-er" and crisper as oppsed to really crunchy and hard. No grittyness you might get from other high fiber cereals and it wasn't too sweet. infact, it wasn't sweet at all. It was not bad, but i dont see the "caramel" to this delight. It was delightful, but i think the caramel claim is a bit far-fetched. This would be good if your trying to get kids to eat a high fiber cereal that doesen't look "healthy" becuase its brown, but other than that its a bit on the bland side. i know the original fiber one has no sugar, so why does it seem that its actually sweeter than this version? who knows. but i like all cereal, money on this was not wasted :)

NJ Review: All-Bran Strawberry Medley

2008-01-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

i wanted nj fans to see a pic of my cereal review, so pardon the interuption....
I am a big All-Bran fan, I actaully have about a cup daily mixed with some yogurt and fruit. Very fiberific and delicious indeed. So when i saw this new Strawberry medly box, i jumped for joy! the cereal has crunchy bran flakes and squares with granola clusters and real strawberries (albeit, dehydrated). Each 1 cup sering is 170 calories, 1.5 g fat, 44 g carbs, 10 g fiber, 5 g protien, and 10 g sugar. To be honest, i was a little disappointed with the nutritional info. sure its got a nice amount of fiber, but there is a lot of sugar for "healthy" cereal and the third ingredient is sugar! ok, but i'll cut them some slack, its still fiberific and there are way higher amounts of sugar in cereals these days. I LOVE the flakes! crunchy and not gritty by any means a lovely hint of strawberry sweetness! and i am obsessed with these little checker/chex looking squares! its like if life cereal decided to make a strawberry verison! Great tasting, a little lacking the the nutrition dept, but still worth a try!

This Waif Can Cook, But Can She Bake?

2008-01-09T12:45:00.000-08:00

ahh so i started baking Monday. Man SO different from my previous cooking classes. First of all, its on an entirely different campus! It only holds baking and pastry classes. We have gotten smaller in class size so we only have on instructor. He's a hard ass, military type man, so let call him Chef Sargent. I think he might be a good instructor though. anyhow, we started by making dough for baguettes and "epi" (which looks like a wheat sheaf but its just a baguette cut with easy to tear off pieces). Mine actually turned out pretty ok, despite my horibile scoring! Yesterday we made whole wheat dinner rolls which i am sorry to day i totally burned! how embarassing! they weren't burnt to a crisp, they were still very much edible, but a litte on the dark side. I must say, i havent been in baking very long, but i can tell you already, i prefer cooking. its very slow, we have to wait for it to proof, rise, bake, i get impatient and i dont even have ADD. anyhow, i also have math classes at 8am til 2pm every saturday now! I hate math and i know its impotant, but i really dont want to be baker. Today i do challah and brioche, that should be fun, i love challah and itll be like an homage to my Jewishness!

Q and A: Leslie Goldman

2008-01-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

since NJ is having techinacal difficulties, i am posting this here as well. Leslie is a health writer and author of ne of my favorite books "The Locker Room Diaries". She has done so much for women's self confidence and I am thrilled she agreed to this interview. Also, check out her ivillage blog, the Weighting Game.

1)I loved the locker room diaries, but can you tell me
a little bit about the purpose of starting "the
weighting game" blog?

A: First, thanks for loving my book! Is that why we're conducting this interview at your local YMCA in the buff? Kidding. But really, it was such an adventure to write Locker Room Diaries and has opened many doors, including speaking at colleges, awesome magazine writing opportunities and, of course, The Weighting Game! I took over the blog from another body image writer about 10 months ago
(February is our one-year anniversary...I'm registering at Lucy Yoga Wear, Victoria's Secret and Z Gallerie). When I started, I'd never even blogged before - I've always been a bit hesitant to jump on major tech trends, which explains why I'm still jamming to my Debbie Gibson cassette tapes instead of CDs and absolutely cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to TiVo. But I found that, with the Weighting Game forum, I was able to express my voice and connect with awesome women from around the country - the globe, even. If something happens in my everyday life or I hear about something body image- or weight-related in the news, my first thought is always "Oh, I've GOT to wrote about that on iVillage!" It's comforting to read others' responses and realize, "Hey, I'm not alone in this crazy, image-obsessed world." Plus, I've met quite a few fantastic women who have become my friends, not just readers.

2)How would you describe your eating style,
vegetarian, vegan, mostly low fat, indulgent,or are
you up for anything?

A: I'm boring in that I tend to have the same thing for breakfast pretty much every day (two packets of oatmeal with brown sugar and cranberries, fruit, egg whites if I've cooked 'em that week and an Americano). Dinner is usually salad with lots of veggies and some kind of meat, like salmon or chicken, plus whatever I can scarf off my husband's plate. But I LOVE this stuff - I truly do crave oatmeal when I've`ben away on vaycay for a week. How weird is that? I should`be the Quaker Girl! I don't do strictly "low-fat" or "low-cal" and I've never considered going low-carb (see #6). But I do pay attention to what I put in my mouth and tend to choose lots of fruits and vegetables, skim milk, kefir, lean meat and an ample amount of candy and dessert to balance it all out. Let's put it this way: I'll gladly splash balsamic vinegar on my salad if it means I get to order something called a "Chocolate Lavaflow Cakegasm" for dessert.

3)What's your gym/workout routine like?

A: About five days a week I'm at the gym. If you read my blog, you know I have recently become obsessed with working out in the morning, early - like, 6am. I do about 30-40 minutes of cardio 4 times a week, a power yoga class on Sundays and lift weights a couple times a week. I'm all about my guns - love my biceps. Now, they can't actually DO much - opening a jar of pickles can be difficult for me. But I CAN bang out 12 full-out push-ups and if you ask my to flex, I will do so, anywhere, anytime, be it at the mall, at a wedding, in McDonalds or in a house of worship (I understand these places may all be one-and-the-same).

In the summer, I really love running outside for about 30 minutes. If a sassy lil running skirt is involved, so much the better. And if Maneater by Nelly Furtado comes on my iPod, watch out! That song makes me fly.

4)What's the most suprising thing you've learned about
women's relationship with food when researching your
book?

I found it really interesting to interview women in their 60s and 70s and discover that so many of them struggled with their body image and with food from a very early age - it's just that, in the 1940s and 50s, "anorexia" or "BDD" weren't really discussed. It was all sort of swept under the carpet.

The boobs chapter was my favorite to write because (a) I am obsessed with my own and will talk about them at any juncture and (b) it surprised me just how unhappy so many women are with their breasts. They're too big, too small, too hard to work out with, too saggy, need to be implanted, etc. It bums me out just writing about it right now. But women also totally opened up to me about their breasts - they had so much to get off their chests (heh heh. Heh.) Together we dug deeper and explored the underlying issues surroung boobs, like sexuality, power, becoming an adult, motherhood, the whole shebang.

5) do you have a favorite food product (for example
not "eggs" but rather "kashi go lean" or "garden
burgers")?

A: Are you asking me which items I'd like to be a corporate sponsor for? I have no shame, so here are a handful of namebrand items I eat almost everyday:

Honey Bunches of Oats Cereal
Progresso Lentil Soup
Luna Bars (lemon zest) and Kashi GoLean bars (chocolate pretzel)
Lifeway Low-fat Pomegranate Kefir
McDonalds Fruit and Yogurt Parfaits
Fake crab (brand unknown)
Diet A&W Root Beer; Sierra Mist Free
Cool Whip Lite
Cadbury Creme Eggs (once a year!)
Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa
Sour Patch Kids, Raisinettes

6) whats your food vice?
Candy, chocolate, sugarsugarsugar. I am obsessed. It actually reached a point where, when working in an office environment a couple years ago, I would top off my healthy, oh-so-virtuous oatmeal and fruit breakfast with a handful of mini-Snickers and mini-1000Grand bars. Just because they were there! My dentist has actually asked me to stop eating so much candy, which I kind of don't understand because doesn't that mean less work/money for him? Hmm...quandry.

7) Ok, and as with all reviews, i need a random one
for kicks, which three celebs would you invite (if you
could) to a dinner party (alive please)?

I will not allow anyone to make me feel ashamed by my first answer: Britney Spears. I loved her from the moment she danced across my screen and have long wanted to BE here, shaking my booty at the MTV VMA awards and singing in front of milions of people. I know she's down-and-out lately, but I just couldn't pass that shiz up.

Madonna would be up there - I am just so in awe of her career.

The third? Oy, yoy, yoy. Deepak Choprah or Andrew Weil?

PS Can Brad Pitt, circa Fight Club, serve us our dinner? In boxer-briefs? Puh-leeeeze?

My final grade and some other things on my mind....

2007-12-22T19:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, so now that Intro II is officially over and i am finally on break, i'll have some time to catch up with what's been brewing in the kitchen at school thus far. Well I did ok on my written portion of the exam, in which we were provided a scantron similar to the exams in college classes. I scorred 89% on it, not bad. then there was the "notebook". I dont know if i mentioned the notebook before but its basically ALL the recipes, notes, handouts, and additional readings we collect for the class. It needs to be SUPER organized, all homeworks and notes MUST be types, there needs to be a table of conetents as well as a sectional table of contents (therefore it needs appropriate dividers), o yes, and every paper must be in a plastic sheet protector. Dude i swear, its like evidence of an OCD patient. O yes, and did i forget to mention the most time-consuming part of all this, every page must be numbered. and since i cant write on the plastic covers, i stick numbered labeles on each and every page, front to back. right well, anyhow apparently i am not OCD enough cause i got a 71 (out of 100) points for that. On my chicken trussing (you know, when you tie the chicken legs together with butcher twine) and fabrication, i got 100 and suprisingly on my fish fabrication, i got 100 as well. I was a bit shocken because i had to fillet a flat fish, a sole, and those are tricky. Have any of you actuall seen a whole sole? they look like tile fish, they swim sorta up and down, as opposed to round fish like salmon or sea bass that swim side to side and resemble goldfish crackers in shape. On my actual cooking, i was pretty pleased with my grade. Not a single dish scored below 90 and the only harsh comments were that my mahi mahi appetizer was slightly undercooked and that my cubes of carrots in my consomme were not perfectly uniform. Minor things really, so in the end, i got a 94 in the class leaving me with an A. Yay! i was extra happy especially after seeing that a lot of my peers got C's and D's. Only a select few got A's and thankfully, they were those that i truly see as potentially successful chefs in the making. So now i go from being super busy to, um, less so. I might have a few catering gigs for the holidays which will be nice cause i could certainly use the extra cash. but other than that, i'll be home alone since my dad will be in Israel. I was offered to go as its been a tradition to visit my mom (who's buried there) since she died Dec 28 in 2000. but I've been to Israel numerous times, i dont have many breaks from school, and i am already rather burned out and dont know if i can handle the VERY long distance trip. Anyhow, i am hoping to also catch up on nutritious junk and there's a chance me and tanya from iateapie will be doing a podcast about healthy meal ideas. To the right is the shrimp gumbo i made last week, btw. For the few readers that i visit this site, thank you, and i promise more stimulating posts to come!

finals, day 1!

2007-12-19T22:45:00.000-08:00

Gah i am pissed! first of all, i wrote up this long post detailing how my first day of cooking finals went and like the dork i am, hit backspace and poof! i jeeze i just got back from class and and i am too tired to gab all about it after JUST writing about it, so i'll fill you in about it tomorrow, for now heres the shrimp gumbo i made on laste thursday (do you people still want recipes???)

Stuffed leg!

2007-12-15T22:37:00.000-08:00

One of our chefs didnt make it on tuesday so the sub demo-ed this dish which is rather tricky because you have to debone the leg and thigh, stuff it, with dried apricots, and roll it up and pray it wont break apart. Mine wouldn't get done too! its easy to undercook it and everyone knows raw chicken is no good. alas, it was alright in the end.

Review week

2007-12-09T22:21:00.000-08:00

I apologize for not updating recently. Ive been very busy aside from school as I am currently finishing up my UCLA application. I plan to go to to their acting program after I am done at the Le Cordon Bleu so i need to get my application in by friday. I am very nervous, i got rejected the first time (before i attended U.C. Santa Barbara) so i am crossing my fingers they'll let me in.
Anyhow, friday was "Fried Chicken Friday". Our class made a fried chicken dinner served family style with the classic biscuits, gravy, greens, and black eyes peas to accompany the fried chicken. I thought it would be fun but to be honest, i realize how much i like cooking by myself. Not to say that i dont work well with people, in fact i love working and cooking with people. but a lot of times i find myself wanting more control over situations and its hard when other team member disregard your suggestions and you end up with a less than perfect product. anyhow, i cant say i really like southern style food all that much, but i did get to sample some food from the hawaiian buffet the student from the international cooking class were having. Next week is the last week before finals, so we will be doing a mixture of dishes that will encompass all the meats we've learned about. I think i truly have new respect/love for pork now. its lean, tasty, and suprsingly, fairly cheap compared to other meats I like. I am also really liking the Chefs this term. I miss chef woodstock and i visit him often and bring him food i've made sometime, but these new chefs are closer to my age so i feel a bit more relaxed with them (as opposed to chef woodstock who was about my fathers age).
The class is a lot smaller than what it was when we first started, many switch to a different class and some dropped. I was hoping to have more close knit friends, but i can say that I am that close to anybody in the class simply because they are very different from me. O well, i love the friends I have outside of school who are great and always ready and willing to try ANYTHING i make.

veal scaloppini!

2007-12-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

I was supposed to beat mine down a lot finer (i thought it was TOO thin, but i guess not thin enough). I was a bit embarrassed with this actually. My risotto was overcooked (and if you remember when i first learned how to make risotto i nailed it everytime). My sauce was excellent though...

Veal meatballs!

2007-12-06T16:17:00.001-08:00

I dont eat veal because i;ve heard about how they slaughter it (or rather how its kept BEFORE slaughter) but i tried the artichokes in this and they were very good. I would defiently make these at home with some other type of lean meat

Lamb chops!

2007-12-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

here's the pictures of the lamb chops i promised. they turned out great! i love mustard and a coated it with plenty of dijon!

Veal, Lamb, and Pork, O My!

2007-12-04T23:12:00.001-08:00

Yep, this week its all about the three "other" meats. On monday we had a written quiz on seafood and fish, then a practical where we simply needed to fabricate a chicken and cook off on of the breasts however we liked it. THEN, and this is where i got kinda sick, Chef Kahuna fabricated a WHOLE lamb carcas! Its huge! and it looked so much like a live lamb (minus skin and head of course) that i really lost all taste for lamb. I am not a vegetarian or one of those peta activsits but i cant say i dont feel for the animal. Most of the guys in the class were in awe of this giant lamb. Anyhow, today we cooked it. We made lamb chops (I'll load those pictures up tomorrow)and lamb kabobs. My Chef said i did a good job on both which is great, but i couldn't eat it. So i went into the baking II class next door and traded my chops for chocolate truffles! I cant wait till baking II (next term will be baking I, then baking II). tomorrow is veal meatballs, and dont think i'll eat veal either, i just dont think its that good and i do have a problem with it being a baby cow. anyhow, i am exhausted as i just got back home from class but i will load those pictures (and would u like the recipe for the lamb as well?)

This weeks recipes!

2007-12-02T22:11:00.000-08:00

I know, people are itching for the fabulous recipes of the food i made this week. So here are a few. Mind you, i figured most of you are somewhat health concious so i took the liberty of sub-ing some of my own ingredients for the massive amounts of butter that these recipes call for. but if you have no problem with butter, you may simply use it (i put my suggestions next to the "butter" on the ingredient list)

Poached Salmon in Court Bouillon (pictured)
(serves 1)
4 cups water
3 tbs white wine vinegar
1ea onion, sliced
1/2ea carrot, peeled and sliced
1/2 ea celery rib
1/4 tsp crushed peppercorns
1 thyme sprig
1 parsley sprig
1 bay leaf
5-6oz fillet of salmon
2 tbs salt

Bring all of the ingredients (expcept the salmon) to a simmer in a pot. Once simmered simply add the salmon and allow it to poach for about 15 min or until flesh is firm. (in the picture, it has hollandaise draped over it. i personally dont like hollandaise but if you do, its nothing but clarified butter, a little water, lemon juice, egg yolk and cayenne pepper mixed VERY rapidly over a simmering pot of water. A lot of elbow grease for a sauce that i think tastes like spicy rubber).

BlCKENED fISH
1 salmon fillet (cleaned and skinned)
1/2 t vegtable oil (i prefer oliver oil)
Blackening Seasoning
1 tsp each of Ancho chili powder, paprika, ground oregano, ground thyme
1/2tsp ea of onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne, black pepper, white pepper, and salt

Coat the fish with the seasoning and on a VERY HOT pan (coated with the oil) "blacken" the fish on both side for about 4 min per side and finish off in the oven for about 5 min. Its important you place the fish on a VERY hot pan when you fist put it in otherwise it WILL stick. This rule actually applies so all protein, even eggs.

Roasted Poblano Chili Sauce
2 Poblano chilis, raosted, peeled and seeded, the purreed
2 oz onion, lightly carmelized (we carmelized them in butter, i would us olive oil if making this at home)
a litte "touch of cream" (you dont NEED this, i prefer it without but its part of the standard recipe)
salt and pepper to taste

carmelize onions in oil, and purred pepper and strain. transfer strained liquid to another small sautee pan (ad cream here if you wish) and let it reduce a little. season accordingly.

Fish week wraps up, and check out the seabass!

2007-11-30T23:08:00.000-08:00

This is my first whole fish dish. Its probably the best tasting to be honest. I had to fabricate the whole fish. Yep, meaning taking out all the guts, heart, liver and all the gooey insides AND scaling it. Note that scaling it does not mean removeing the skin. The scales are clear, so its actaully hard to tell it they are all off. You need to run you finger down the fish and make sure its smooth. this seabass was very easy to prepare and one of the few dishes we've made thats not doused with butter (giving health junkies like a me a break finally!). You simply saute some cremini mushrooms and shallots with a little olive oil, add some wine and reduce a bit. then you take your whole fish and stuff it with parsley, basily, lemon, and thyme. You then score its skin about three times (to prevent the skin from drying our and curling the fish. Then you add a little water or chicken stock to that pan, add the stuffed fish, and bake it at 350 for 30-45 min. When its done, remove the fish and with the remaning sauce, you add some chopped tomatoes, and chopped herbs (probably the ones you used to stuff the fish). cook a little and then simply pour it over the fish when it's ready to serve. today i forgot my camera, but we made fish n'chips (super healthy!) and salmon baking in parchment with gnocchi! I've never made gnocchi before! it was so fun and delicious, and chef Kahuna said mine were perfect. My fish on the other hand was under done :(. Do you guys want some of these recipes? anyhow, lots more to write about but i just got back from class and am exhausted, but i'll upload some more photos and write more tomorrow!

Grilled Salmon with Poblano Chili Sauce!

2007-11-28T23:11:00.000-08:00

I made this tonight, its was PERFECT except that i forgot to season my rice. this actually is healthier than my previous salmon since we only used olive oil.

Poached Salmon!

2007-11-28T23:09:00.001-08:00

I also made this tuesday. Its looks healthy, poached salmon with steamed veggies BUT its doused with hollandaise (which is made with a lot of clarified butter) and those potato gauffretts were indeeed deep fried. Honestly, kind of a boring dish but it was my first attempt at salmon.

Mussels!

2007-11-28T23:06:00.000-08:00

I made these tuesday, it was pretty good, i overcooked my pasta slightly (i tend to do that when its freshly made. Can you believe this is an appetizer!) it was delicious though!

My pics are coming, and a great mussels recipe!

2007-11-28T14:35:00.000-08:00

I know i promised pictures, but i got home later than expected last night and i am tech inept so i need to wait for my dad to get home and help me upload them. anyhow we made poached salmon with potato gauffrets (little waffle-shaped fried potatos) and mussels with pasta. I love mussels! so i thought i'd share the recipe (you may add pasta with the mussels, but this is often an appetizer and frnekly, i think pasta is a bit too filling for an appetizer).
40 mussels (20 per person)
4 oz. dry white wine
2 tsp. onions, spring or scallions (includes tops and bulb)
1 tsp. garlic
1 tsp. butter, with salt
1/4-tsp. bay leaf
1 tsp. parsley
1 tsp. fresh thyme
1 tsp. fresh rosemary
1 tsp. freeze-dried chives
salt and pepper

Directions:

Scrub and debeard the mussels, discarding any that remain open.

Combine the wine, onions, bay leaf, thyme, rosemary and garlic and bring to a simmer.

Add mussels, cover the pot and steam until the shells open.

Remove the mussels and keep them warm while finishing the sauce.

Strain the steaming liquid, add parsley, chives, and mint and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve the sauce ladled over the mussels.
(if you interested in the nutition info its roughly per serving: calories, 150 calories and serves two)

Hey there Skinny Chef!

2007-11-25T21:01:00.000-08:00

I know i have not posted a lot recently, mainly because i haven't had class since before thanksgiving. Monday night i have my Beef Quiz and then we have a fish and shellfish lecture as we beging fish/shellfish week. I promise i'll start taking pictures of my dishes each night becuase they truly are goregeous this quarter (as opposed to last term where it was simple stuff like rice and hollandaise). We also do a whole salmon fabication after our lecture, this could be fun, and fishy i guess. I am sorta glad to be doing fish because i love almost all seafood. Plus its super healthy, a good source of protein and omega 3's. Shrimp and oysters are also good sources of iron (oysters even have calcium, i prefer oysters to a glass of milk anyday!). Speaking of health, i feel a bit "different" when it comes to nutrition and health as opposed to the rest of the class. what i mean by "different" is that i seem to be the only person who cares maybe, or maybe iam the only person educated on it. The rest of the class will need to take a nutrtion academics class i believe in a few terms (i got out of it cause i studied it in college). I am not a crazy calorie counter but since i know a lot about nutrtion, i am mindful of the food's nutrtional value. For example, i am probably the only person in the class that thinks "why are we using clarified butter (buter with all the milk and water evaporated, basically fattier butter) when we can just as easily use canola oil?". I realize its not about nutrition, its about taste, but sometimes i just think about some dishes we make and think, "ok, this can still be delcious and be healthier". Maybe thats what I'll do with my career, open a GOOD tasting healthy resturant or write a healthier GOOD gourmet tasting cookbook. I dont remember who it was but someone once told me, you should never trust a skinny chef. I disagree. Although my chef instructors this term are a bit on the chubby side, Chef French and Woodstock were very slender and fit. People naturally come in all shapes and sizes, and their food shouldn't be judged on their pudgy-ness (or lack thereof). skinny chefs also doesn't mean they dont taste their food. Thats hogwash! all good chefs taste their food. I HATE cheese, i am even a little lactose intolerant, but i taste my dishes, even if they have cheese in them. Mind you TASTE is rather different than having it as a meal. One is meant to tickle your palatte, the other is meant to keep you full. Some the best chefs around are slender, Julia Child, my hero was fairly slender, Nigella Lawson could model, Martin Yan was pretty trim, and Gordon Ramsey is farily skinny. Dont judge a chef, or anyone for that matter, on their body. the one exception I'd be wary of is that creepy purple grimace icon from McDonalds. dude, a purple blob selling my quarter pounders? yea, ok, I'll pass on that one.

Turkey Coma

2007-11-22T22:29:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone, not sure how many americans read this blog (not sure how many read this period but since nutritious junk for some reason gets a lot of canadian and british readers, maybe they found there way here), Happy Thanksgiving! Honestly, i dont care much for this holiday, and part of it is that stupid shopping day the day after. Black friday, as its known. I cant believe a discount on a semi-pointless item is motivation enough for some people to wake up at 3:30 am (or do they even go to bed? because i've totally stayed up until 4 before) to get to the stores at 4 and make their way through an stampede of other people just as crazy as you (or more, because they must have gotten there BEFORE you). Good lord, i enjoy shopping but not like this! Wel its done and over with. My turkey was OK, people told me it was good, i thought they were just being nice, or maybe so used to dry turkey that this was excellent according to their previous experiences. My dad forgot the stuffing and green beans in fridge back at our house, and my roulade was a teeny underdone. Ehh, whatevs. At least i dont get graded on this. I did make a fantastic roasted garlic mashed cauliflower (or "faux-tatoes" as i like to call them). I put in four cloves which was A LOT but i loved it! I didn't get to workout today which sorta pissed me off because on stressful days like this, i sorta rely on it to take my edge off. Thats ok though, since i am avoiding all malls tomorrow, i'll have plenty of time to blow off steam and maybe do some homework (believe it or not we get so many written assingments). What sorta bothers me about thanksgiving is that its like a little red carpet for all those relatives that havent seen you in a while. meaning...its like a little judgment session. What are you doing, how are you looking, what are you studying, where are you working, on and on...Its rather annoying filling people in and responding to less than nice comments. for instance, i just loved it how my dad introduces me to new people.
"this is my daughter, she took a year off school to go to Le Cordon Bleu"
First of all, this isn't a vacation, i am not taking anything off, i am more busy than i ever was in college. People can sleep their way through college and still get degrees. You defiently cannot just sleep through this! you need to be so passionate and have the energy to keep up with the rigorous demands. I dont think its for everyone. Now that I've gotten to know my classmates better, i am noticing some real chefs in rough, and some people that i really feel sorry for. Its like trying to be funny. You cant exactly fake it, and you cant fake passion, and i do think some people in the class really lack that. Its funny too because i know so many people NOT in culinary school that completely belong there, mostly their scared to take the plunge, but little do they know its a blessing for them if they just attended. I think i ll write up a post later on whether or not culinary school might be a place where you belong. hope everyone is recovering from their national day of eating and shopping.

Beef, its whats for dinner, but not tomorrow!

2007-11-21T15:54:00.000-08:00

ahh, so last week was poultry, this week is all about beef! since most of you know from nutiritious junk, i am not big on beef. I like filet mignon and a good burger from time to time, but i dont tend to crave it like i do with shrimp and lobster. We saw a video all about the extensive parts of the cow and cuts that are servable from it. seeing that carcas hung up gave me the willies, i am not vegetarian now, but i do feel a bit guitly for the poor old cow. Cow are kinda cute, especially the one with earings on the babybell cheeses. anyhow, so i made hungarian goulash with chuck yesterday and the class as a whole roasted a huge rib eye. I admit, it was bloody but yes, delcious. i think today its just sauteed steak but beef week is cut short because of the turkey day weekend. I'll be in charge this year of the meal (its about time, i havent cooked for others since starting culinary school!) and i'll post some pictures from my spread. I am going to be a little untradtional, since my family, is indeed a little untradtional. I actually wont be spending it with most of my family, the only member will be my dad since my sister is having it a her husband's grandmothers house, and most of my family lives in Israel/Australia/Beligum and anywhere besides the US. anywho, ill post some stories of thanksgiving past tomorrow in between my basting the turkey. Stay tuned!

Wrap up of poulty week and thanksgiving!

2007-11-18T13:22:00.000-08:00

So on friday we said our goodbuys to poultry as we begn beef on monday. I mad a delicious Coq au Vin that with chicken pieces that marinated overnight in burgundy wine! ah they were so beautifully purple! then we seared them off in a deep pan and flambeed them with some brandy! They were nice and mighty drunk but so delicious, the meat litterally fell off the bone! We also learned how to make Chicken roulade and i was so nervous mine would fall apart on me but it turned out great and Chef Kahuna loved it. It was served with a port wine sauce which nearly broke down on my when i served it. Its strnage, my meats have all been fantastic, but my sauces always break down on me. grrrr.... very frustrating, but i hear that pan sauces are indeed the most difficult thing to master (its very much a chemistry understanding of heat, and thickening, other stuff on that chem nature which i never warmed up to at school).
Anyhow, on nutritious junk i posted so thanksgiving recipes and thought i'd continue posting them here, so enjoy them!

Healthier cornbread stuffing

1 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onions
2 Tbsp. snipped fresh parsley (2 tsp. dried)
1 tsp. ground sage
1 1/2 tsp. poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp. cracked black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
2 packages (12 oz. each) unseasoned cornbread stuffing cubes
3 cups chicken stock (fat-free/low salt)
1/2 cup egg substitute (or 4 egg whites)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly spray a medium nonstick skillet with cooking spray. Add the celery and onions. Cook over medium heat until tender. Stir in herbs, seasoning and spices. Lightly spray a large casserole dish with cooking spray. Place the cornbread cubes in casserole. Add onion and celery mixture, 2 cups of broth and egg substitute. Gently toss. Drizzle with remaining broth to moisten bread thoroughly; gently toss again to mix well. Bake uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes or until heated through.
nutritional analysis per serving: 135 calories, 1 gram fat

Cranberry Chutney
Ever notice how cranberry sauce is like a sugar mine? this one is low in sugar and big on flavor! But it is a rather tart chutney, so if its sweet your after, you can add more splenda or honey.
1 cup raw cranberries
1 cup water
2 tablespoons Splenda®
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ cup finely chopped onion
¼ cup finely chopped celery
1 medium apple, peeled and chopped
Directions:

Simmer all ingredients except apple in saucepan for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add chopped apple and cook for an additional 5 to 10 minutes.
Cool. Serve as an accompaniment to turkey, fish, or pork.

per 1/4 cup serving: 30 calories, no fat, 2.5 g fiber

the Bird!
Orange-Sage Roasted Turkey

1 (15-lb.) fresh or frozen turkey, thawed
Cooking spray
1/2 cup chopped fresh sage
2 Tbsp. grated orange rind
1 1/8 tsp. salt, divided
1 1/4 cups fresh orange juice (about 3 oranges), divided
2 Tbsp. honey, divided
1 orange, quartered
1 Tbsp. cornstarch

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Remove and discard giblets and neck from turkey. Rinse turkey with cold water; pat dry. Trim excess fat. Starting at neck cavity, loosen skin from breast and drumsticks by inserting fingers, gently pushing between skin and meat. Lift wing tips up and over back; tuck under turkey (kinda like doing a full nelson on a turkey ;).

3. Place turkey on the rack of a broiler pan or roasting pan coated with cooking spray. Combine the sage, rind and 1 teaspoon salt. Rub sage mixture under skin and inside the cavity. Combine 1/4 cup juice and 1 tablespoon honey; pour over turkey. Place orange quarters inside body cavity.

4. Insert meat thermometer into meaty part of thigh, making sure not to touch bone. Bake at 325 degrees for three hours or until meat thermometer registers 180 degrees. Cover turkey loosely with foil, and let stand for 10 minutes. This is very important, if you dont let it stand the juices will escape and you'll end up with a very dry bird. throw away the skin and orange wedges. Remove turkey from pan, reserving pan drippings for sauce put the turkey on a platter; keep warm.

5. To make the sauce, pour reserved pan drippings into a zip-top plastic bag. Seal bag; snip off one corner of bag. Drain drippings into a medium saucepan, stopping before the fat layer reaches the opening; discard fat. (You should have about 2/3 cup drippings; add enough water or fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth to make up the difference, if necessary).

6. Add 1/8 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup juice, and 1 tablespoon honey to drippings in pan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer one minute. Combine 1/2 cup juice and cornstarch in a small bowl; add to drippings mixture. Bring to a boil, and cook for one minute, stirring constantly. Serve sauce with turkey.

Makes 16 servings (serving size: 5 ounces turkey and 2 tablespoons sauce). Nutritional values per serving: 261 calories 7g fat 41g protein

Stewed Cinnamon Apples!
nice as a side dish to turkey or as dessert with son whipped cream or nonfat frozen yogurt!
6 cups chopped peeled Granny Smith apples (about 2 lbs.)
1/4 cup splenda (about 7 packets if your cheap like me and steal them from starbucks)
1/4 cup apple juice
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp. salt
Directions
1. Combine all ingredients in a large, heavy saucepan. Cover and cook over medium-low heat 45 minutes or until apple is tender, stirring occasionally. Let stand five minutes.

Makes eight servings (serving size: 1/4 cup). Nutritional values per serving: 90 calories, 0g fat

Apricot glazed brussle sprouts!
I adapted this from the "A Veggie Venture" website. she used apricot perserves, i just substituted the sugar free smuckers version
Salted water to cover
1 1/2 pounds fresh Brussels sprouts, trimmed and X'd

GLAZE:
1/2 cup fruit preserves, apricot or peach (you may use the real thing, i used the smuckers sugar free and it works just fine)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
8 ounces canned sliced water chestnuts, drained and sliced into matchsticks

TOPPING:
1 tablespoon toasted nuts (almonds or pecans would be nice)

Bring the water to a boil in a large saucepan. Add sprouts, cover and adjust heat to maintain a slow simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes or until Brussels sprouts are fully cooked but still bright green. Drain and return to the hot saucepan.

Meanwhile, bring the glaze ingredients to a boil in a small saucepan. Pour over hot, cooked sprouts and stir to coat well. [You could pause for a few minutes here but cover to keep the sprouts hot.] Transfer to a serving dish. Top with toasted nuts.

Serves about 10 Per Serving: 80 Cal 3 g Protein; 1 g Tot Fat 4 g Fiber

Grilling and the social scene!

2007-11-15T16:26:00.000-08:00

So we did our gilled chicken yesterday, learning how to do it properly (cause most people completely mess it up) and making the perfect grill marks. It was served on a bed of rice pilaf with a red pepper coulis (a roasted red pepper sauce). My sauce broke down on me and was too thin, but Chef Kahuna said my chicken was emitting juices (a GOOD SIGN, its the opposite of a dry chicken which can taste like chalk). Today we do duck which is a darker meat than chicken and has a LOT of skin, so much so we took piece off to render it down into huge pots full of pure cholestorol! Wonder why ducks float? yep its that thick layer of fat that surronds their skin. Tomorrow i need to make Coq Au Vin and write an essay on its origin (would you like me to post that as well, do any of you even care?).
I realized i havent talked much about the social scene in class. Well, i notice now its really not that much different from the people that were in my dorms in college. Sure they take night classes, but a lot of them are younger than me (like 18 or 19) and still after two things, booze and drugs. this makes me sad, i thought I might find people with different interests than the college crowd i was used to. and incase you didnt notice, those two things are not really my scene. dont get me wrong. i've smoked a doobie here and there (although NEVER ciggaretes, sorry, its just that I saw my mom die in the respitory intensive care unit and the hospital and that just did it for me), and its not like i dont enjoy alcohol. I do, but i dont like getting drunk or sick. I went to the biggest party school in west coast so i had to take care of a lot of drunk people and i never want to go through the embarassment of someone doing that for me. I think good food and exercise is my drug. Believe nothing gets me off like a good block of rich chocolate and nice run. so i am noticing that i am gravitating towards the older people and even the chefs which this term are very young (under 30!). anyway, my carpool is honking and i need to sharpen my knives. hopefully i'll have time to write if i get let out early! thanks guys for reading!

Intro to Culinary Arts II !

2007-11-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

so yesterday was the first day of Intoduction to Culinary Arts II. The biggest difference between this class and my last on is that we will be learning to work with protiens like poultry, fish, beef, lamb, etc. Plus, we serve complete dishes (each must have a protein, starch, and vegetable) and in between a certain time window (to mimic what its like to turn out plates on time for when you work at a resturant). My new chef is kinda laid back, hes huge, like the green giant, but soft spoken so a friendly giant. He graduated from the same culinary school but 7 years ago. The first day we had a little lecture about poultry (next week is beef, than fish...) and we had to "fabricate" two chickens and truss them. Fabrication is merely butchering off the breasts, wings, thighs, drunsticks, etc. Trussing is putting it under arrest, or just tying it's legs together and then binding it at its neck so its all compacted together. Today we only need to produce one dish: herb roasted chicken, with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, pan gravy, and zuchinni and squash tournes. My potatos were out of this world, but it seemed like forever until mychicken would get done. You have to test it's temperature and it needs to be at least 165 degrees. Mine kept reading 140 or 150. But my time limit was nearing so i just busted it out of the oven, carved it nicely, and served it. My new chef, lets call him Chef Kahuna (cause he looks kinda hawaiian), said my gravy was not emulsified enough, but that my chicken was perfect, juicy, moist, and flavorful. woo hoo. He also busted my for chewing gum during class, o well., i am not perfect, but i need to get the garlicy taste out of my mouth from my mashed potato tasting! well tomorrow's menu is grilled chicken with rice pilaf, red bell pepper couli, green beans, and tortilla soup. Going with a south of the border theme i see....

"Deep Cleaning" and my final grade!

2007-11-09T21:55:00.000-08:00

So today we basically chillaxed (its chill and relax, incase you thought it was some sort of typo which i am infamous of doing) and cleaned the labs (the kitchens, we call them labs i guess to make it seem more scientific) and had a one on one with our instructor. I was so happy! Chef Woodstock said, "I think you doing pretty darn well, i did think you conomme was very salty but overall you did just fine. On cooking i got a 91, an 88 on the "notebook", 97 on performance, and overall all i got a solid "A" for the term as i averaged out a 93.3. I was happy, some people did slightly better, most got away with a b, and i did over hear some C's, but honestly its from students who i think really alck the heart for this. its the kids that miss class, smoke and drink a lot, and fairly young. Ehh, i dont want to be one to judge, i got loads of C's in college and a select few in high school algebra. But i am very happy that i am content with my grade. i think i tried, i think i deserved it, no more (i am devoted, but this isn't the only thing in my life), no less. Perfetly seasoned! anyhow, monday is intro II !! Eeek! new instructors and meats! I cant only hope I'll do just as well. Sit tight readers (if there are any, i really am begining to doubt people read this), we've only just begun!

ALL DONE!

2007-11-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

Woo hoo! today was my last day of finals! tomorrow we get our "exit interviews" where the chefs tell us our grade while the rest of the class cleans the bottoms of the pots and pans (exciting, no?). Anyhow, I am fairly pleased with my cooking. Yesterday was the most difficult day but i finished with an hour to spare! in fact, the chef came by as i was cleaning up and told me to go take a break or get some coffee because i worked so hard. I could barely believe it! was he that impressed at how i managed to finished everything so quickly or was he seeing through my aching body as i was dying to crawl into bed and catch up on much deprived sleep? anyhow, took it as a complement. Today was short but tricky, I had to make Pommes Lyonaise (1/2 in sliced potatos that are fried and served with fried onions), a fine herb omlette, sauteed spinach, and Girodoine (Hollandaise mixed with dijon mustard). The catch, this all needed to be presented at once. its tricky cause the omlette will begin to cook itself if it lays around for too long and the spinach will wilt if it does too. Also, you need 100% attenetion when you work on a hollandaise (not good for multitasking). I worked on my onions for the Lyonaise first, concetrating on browning them and NOT burning them (the biggest mistake people tend to make on this dish). Then i fried the potato medalions and set those aside with a bowl on top to lock in the heat. I next worked my wisk at the hollandaise (although thanks god i caught up with a further along in the program student yesterday that told me the key is to move the wisk side to side, not around). The sauteed spinach was what i did next (it took litterally 30 seconds becuase longer can make it change color, and then devoted another 30 seconds to my omlette. TADA! fini! and i believe i was the second dish turned in of the night. I am a natural multitasker, in fact, its rare i find myself doing only one thing at a time. Even when i eat, i need to be reading or even watching tv, or talking on the phone, or something! Perhaps the one exception is driving, but i am prone to do my friend check ups while in bumper to bumper traffic. Well tomorrow i get me grade and on monday, sadly, no more Chef French and Chef Woodstock. I'll really miss them and i am a little nervous about getting new chefs. SO Intro I (the name of the class i just took) is done and monday i begin Intro 2 which is more focused on meats and fish and other interesting things (becuase this class was uber basic). Yay! i cant wait to eat those dishes cause i am sick and tired of rice pilaf and potatos!

Day three of finals!

2007-11-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

so i did day two last night. as you saw in my preveious post, a lot of dishes bu simple one, today is the tricky one. Well yesterday was ok, i think. its very strange in the kitchen as we are not allowed to talk. I first got my potatos boiling for the pommes duchess, and then got my white roux working for my bechemel. the bechemel just needs 10-15 min to simmer so during that time i got my carrots cooking for the glazed carrots. i turned in my bechemel first, and by that time my carrots were ready so i turned them in next. so i got to work on my blanched broccoli. i think i may have left them in for too long, but i tried a few and they were ok, but maybe to mushy for the chefs standards. I then proceeded to braising endives because that can take 30 min. in that time i got the food mill going for the duchess. it was tough because i assembled the food mill wrong! any how i got it to work and piped my little roses of potato on the sheet pan. So while that was in the oven i got the pilaf going. I pulled it off with time to spare, but i am not sure i did fantastic, ok, but not perfect. anyhow, after we finished, we had 40 min of prep for today's menu which is super complicated. Iam nervous about the carbonara, the eggs always curdle on me! and the french onion soup my turn out a bust, it has before. anyhow, i'll let you know how it goes, hopefully we'll get out early...

Finals Day two!

2007-11-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

So after completing the written portion of the final and our knife cuts, we were given the weeks menu and time for prep for today. tonight i have to make the following
-Blanched broccoli
-Braised Endives
-Glazed carrots (oblique cut)
- Bechemel sauce
- rice pilaf
-Pommes Duchess (basically mashed potatoes piped into little roses and baked, gorgeous but honestly taste kinda strange)

fairly simple and easy, but then again,i have no clue how much time they will give us to present all these. tomorrow is really tough, i have the following:
-pasta carbonara (i need to make the pasta too)
-cream of tomato soup
-French Onion soup
-Chicken Consomme
-Rissoto Quatre Fromagio (three cheese risotto)

those all take a lot of time and can be messed up if neglected. we'll see, i am so nervous....

Some Recipes I need to memorize!

2007-11-04T22:28:00.000-08:00

again, i apologize if you guys are bored with this, but i need to memorize these as we aren't allowed to have our recipe cards during the exam. anyhow, here is the recipe for Pasta Bolognese:
1/2 tbl butter (of course to be healthy, i'd only use olive oil if i were making this at home for myslef)
1/2 tbl olive oil
1 oz ham
2oz each of onion, celery, and carrot (aka, mirepoix)
2 oz mushrooms
2 oz each of ground beef, pork, and veal (once again, i'd just use lean ground beef, tofu, chicken or turkey)
1 garlic glove
1/4 cup red wine
1/2 cup stock
2 cups tomato sauce
1 bouquet garni (celery, leek leaf, bay leaf, and parsley wraped in a string)
salt/pepper

Heat butter/olive oil in a sauce pan, add ham and mirepoix and sweat unitl carmelized. set aside
Brown the mushrooms in the remaining fat and set aside
Add the ground meats and saute until brown, add the garlic and saute unitl aromatic
Deglaze the wine and reduce until almost dry (aka, au sec)
Add the stock, tomato sauce, bouquet garni, and ham/mirepoix/mushrooms that were set aside earlier.
Cover and simmer for 45 min and season.

you may use any noodle you'd like, it works weel with shiritaki noodles as well!

just spitting out some info!

2007-11-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

One of the first things we learned at culinary school was how to make stock. Its very simple, but actually has a detailed prep and a good stock can make other good things, but a bad stock can equal a bad soup, bad rice, bad sauce, bad risotto, etc. You get the picture and how there are 7 key pricples to makeing stock and imust know them backwards and forwards. so here is is!
1) Start with COLD WATER: it allows the protiens to coagulate and evenly rise to the surface
2) Simmer NEVER BOIL: Once the impurites rise to the top, a boiling stock will emulsify it and we dont want that to happen
3) SKIM FREQUENTLY: This is to remove the impurites and excess fat that can cloud the stock (if you want to actually attempt to make stock, use a good strainer or even a coffee filter will to the trick)
4) Strain carefully: Its important this is done CAREFULLY because to quickly will emulsify the fat and allos them to actully go through the strainer.
5)Cool Quickly-its also vital a stock be cool quickly because it has a large amount of protien and this can spoil
6) Store Properly: its crucial to store stock in plastic containers (but this is more of a school policy because part of this step according to my notes is to label it so another class doesn't use it)
7) Degrease: There might me a fat cap floating at the top but leave it because it helps the preservation of the stocck but remove it before use. Reomove the fat BEFORE reheating the stock because it will be much harder to remove when warm.

So thats it, the seven principles. and if you want to take a stab at making your own just know the very simple ratio to stock makeing: 100% water, 50% bones (if chicken stock, use chicken bones, if fish stock use fish bones...etc), and 10% mirepoix (which has its own ratio of 50% onion, 25% celery, and 25% carrot). You also need to add a "sache" which is a bayleaf, parsley sprig, thyme, peppercorns, one clove, and sometimes, garlic, wrapped in a cheese cloth into a little sack. Just dont forget to take it out one your done (a kid in my class forgot to take it out in one of his soups and he put it in the blender! ekk!).
I know its so much easier to go buy a box or can of stock, but beleive me the flavor will be very different and make everthing that will derive fromt eh stock taste spectacular!

Finals!!!!!

2007-11-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

so resturant day went, ok. no i'll admit it, it was a bit sucky. I enjoyed being fed by another group, but my team must have been a collection of the slowest learners in class. I was also the only girl, so they were really "rough" on our food (as in when i suggested we pipe the whipped cream on the mousse, they basically plopped it on, forgetting that mousse is very delicate!). They also were not being very helpful, a lot of standing around when i was like..."well do somthing! clean dishes at least so we have some space to work!". Anyhow, we however got another teams food and i am glad we did (cause the guys on my team completely overdid the steaks!). It was a mexican themed resturant with shrimp ceviche with tortilla chips and spicey beef empanadas as an appetizer, some sort of stuffed chicked (i am sure if your Mexican you might know the exact name, forgive me), and flan for dessert. I was stuffed, and i dont care much for flan, so i has some of the dessert my carpool's team made which was a plaintain egg roll with caramel syrup!
Anyhow, final begin monday and basically the first day is a the written test and kinife cuts where we need to produce the precise cuts they ask of us. I am most worried about this because its very hard to get thme uniform and i am pretty sure they'll ask us to work with carrots which are a lot hard to cut than potatos.
Tues-thurs is the cooking tests, which i am less nervous about.
anyhow, i was udying earlier todya when i realized that re-typing some of the info will help me retain it, and i think some of you might really find this info useful and interesting. so i'll post some recipes and info i need to memorize in hopes you guys will be somewhat interested....

Resturant Day and Finals Week!

2007-11-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

We've mostly been doing review dishes for the final. It lasts a week! the first day is mostly written work (what i am most worried about cause its math conversions and ratios) and knife cuts. Tuesday-thursday is cooking. We get the menus each of us needs to make on each day. Everyone cooks somehting different on a different day so we cant "cheat" (reminds me of the exams they gave in college, you know the A, B, C etc). Friday we get our scores and we "deep clean" which is the cleaning of all the bottoms of the pans and pots, burners, ovens etc. this can get messy. Anyhow, tomorrow is the resturant day. we decided to name our restaurant "Basta" which means "enough" in Italian. I came up with it cause i remember when i went to Italy with a friend of mine, her father told me if there is any italian i must know going in, its "basta" because people will keep on piling food on your plate even after your stuffed. Chef Woodstock was actually out sick monday and tuesday. Its werid but i missed him a little and my dishes were definetly not great those days. Plus, i hated the sub who completely massacred my confidence by saying nothing positive about any of my dishes. But he was back yesterday and i nailed my review of ratatouille and i made hollandiase which is probably the most difficult thing to do with a little help. Anyhow, i am currently waiting for my carpool and i think i hear the honk, so i'll catch you up later!

Pros and Cons of a Culinary Student!

2007-10-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

I thought this up while in traffic on the way to class. Dont take this too seriously, its meant to be funny and silly and iam obviously exagerating it. I honestly love being a culinary student although it is grueling on the mind and body, but its like a good workout, it kinda hurts but you get a high off it and never really regret doing it. So once again these are true to an extent but are exagerated and meant to be goofy.

Pros
-the most obvious, the food, gourmet food is constantly made and ready to be eaten and you try dishes and foods thats out of this world and so exotic that most people are never lucky enough to get the oppertunity to try.
-since your introduced to all this wonderful food, your uniform is very forgiving. You could be pregnant and probably no one would notice since the pants are baggier that the one that were popular in the late 90's and the chef jacket buttoned on the front makes even a waif like me look big.
-Its easy to get roomates, just list in your ad "gourmet chef looking for a hungry roomate to feed...."
-Servers and waiters are at your mercy, its like a resturant higharchy and your groomed to be at the top.
-Your not boring, seriously and not to be rude to anybody out there who is (a lot of my friends are) but like everyone i know is like a phychology/bio/english major and when someone asks you all of a sudden what you study and you say, "me, o i go to culinary school" it sorta stands out.

Cons
-although food is good, doesn't mean it always is, remeber your in culinary SCHOOL, as in learning as in you may get yourself sick
-Although the outfits are forgiving for those extra pounds you may put in, it kinda sucks because i think my biceps have shaped up from all that whisking, kneading, etc. and for anybody who has a body to show off, you dont really get a chance to flaunt it. Even your hair is covered so there goes my 50$ blowout!
-You get ugly, you cant wear makeup, jewlery, nail polish, and that stupid hat covers your head so you look bald.
-you become ashamed of your hands, they are cut, burned, bruised, unpolished, unpampered, just plain old beaten up, alas, they are your most important tool.
-This correlates the the room-mate thing, u might feel kinda used, and on that note, the pressure is on to make spectacular food, otherwise, people think your a joke.
-People dont get why your stressed, but believe me, making hollandaise just right CAN be stressful.
-Seeing food network begins to irritate you since about 90% of the cooks have no culinary background, and you begin to notice it....

ok i could add more but thats all i can think of right now, but again take it with a grian of salt cause i honestly do love it.

Burning from the inside out and finals approaching....

2007-10-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

I know i haven't posted in a bit, but its mainly because i have class on saturday mornings at 8 am (meaning i need to leave the house at 7:15) and i only get back from class the night before around midnight. Hence i never feel like writing much once i get home those nights. Anyhow, lets review my last few days this week. Its good i have carpool now so i am not driving exhausted all the time. But i still had a very tiring day yesterday, i nearly fell asleeo during the demo of latkes! (luckily, being the only jew in the class i didn't really need a demo as i have made and tasted ALL sorts of latkes). I perked up once we started cooking, but lectures and stuff that keep me inactive can induce sleep on me. As we were prepping for the latkes, i was explain to the people at my table (or around my station, so to speak) that these are usually eaten at Hanukah and that its a little early to be making these(to be pc, i shold be spelling "Chanukah" but people mispronounce that one even worse so i spare the sore throat). So the girl the works beside me, I'll call her Jessica (because her real name is one of a pop star without any recent hits, like Jessica Simpson) asked me, "So, does that make you Jewish?" I've gotten a bit used to this, so i tried i replied, "yes, why, is that a bad thing??"
"o no no..." she replied obviously worried she ofended me. But it seems i am indeed the only jew in the class and most of the people in the class were clueless about judaism. Not that mind, i was kinda the opposite because i went to a private jewish (but NOT religious AT ALL) high school and i never had real non-jewish friends until college. I tried to do what all good jews do, poke fun at my jewish-ness by saying, "I know, its hard to tell sometimes i am a jew because my nose hasn't developed enough yet". But after thinking about it, i am sad i said that because iam afraid i sparked or refueled the sterotype. And i usually get mad at my jewish friends that say they have a jewish nose.
Anyhow, my latkes were ok, but i made like seven (i only needed to present three) cause i kept messing them up. I had an off day yesterday, i also burnt my onions for my risotto milanaise. O but we had to make a DELICOUS gazpacho soup thursday! (recipe will be posted at nutritious junk). It was a bit weird cause most of the time we spent on it was make the garnishes! i never had gazpacho with so much garnish. We had chopped tomatoes, red bell peppers, green peppers, cucumbers, smashed egg whites, smashed egg yolks (hard boiled, of course), and little cubes of pullman bread that we made into cute little croutons. It was so yummy and i am guessing very good for you. Probably the healthiest thing we've made thus far (besides roasted and balnched veggies). a good break from all the unhealthy clarified butter we've been cooking everything in. So by friday i was so burned out and it doesn't help i need to go to my sanitation class with that smart ass instructor (she hated me today for bringing my laptop! sorry, my handwriting is illegible). And finals are the week after this coming one so i am really headed to a burn out. o yea, and i burned my finger tip trying to grab a hot plate. I hate complaining and i am not really, i am just exhausted but in a good way i guess. At least i am leaving class feeling productive and i do enjoy it when i cook well and everything is orderly. anyhow, i'll post more fun posts about things i learned this week soon, hopefully that will be more stimulating to you lovely readers.

New Carpool and i double as an acting coach!

2007-10-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

So this guy that works next to me at our "station" lives in Santa monica so my house is on the way and hence a good carpool opptunity. I could certainly use the extra gas money. he's cool, he saved my carbonara the other night and lets me borrow tools and stuff when i dont have one on hand. Dont think this is a romantic gettup, its not, hes really not my type, but seems like a cool pal. Anyhow its also nice to have some company on the way to school which can take up to two hours if traffic is really bad.
My other chef, chef French, can into class, and asked if he could talk to me outside. You can imagine my nerves. I was like,"o shit, did he find out i wasnt wearing my neckercheif!?" but no, his agency (cause hes about to release a cookbook) gave him a script for a mustard commericial and he knew i was into acting and wanted me to look over it with him and help him out. Phew! ok something i can handle! he has a thick accent as is, so i am pretty sure he nailed out, i hope he did, and i hope he shares the money with me! (unlikely, but who knows?). I made a lot of baked dishes yesterday, roasted chayote (i never had it before but its really good!), roaseted tomates, pommes duchess (which are like little piped mushed potatos that are baked and beautiful, but honestly are kinda off tasting), scalloped potatos, rice pilaf, and risotto with three cheese. I loath cheese not just the taste, but the smell makes me gag too. I felt like passing out as my pot reeked of my three chesse blend. I finished early but this means we'll have A LOT to do today. I also cut myself while packing up my knives so i hope i wont be too handicapped. Ugh..i also need to finish up my sanitation report on lysteriosis...fun times.

Resturant day!

2007-10-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

The last class before finals is "resturant day" where our class is divided into five groups of five and we all cook a three course meal for another group. We were randomly assigned groups and i ended up i a group full of guys with on of the guys i probably get most irritated from in the entire class. What should i call him???hmmm....his name (first and last) is SO common so I'll just call him by another common name, george. George is those nerds that aren't cool. i love nerds, at least i usually grow to love them, but no, George is an uncool nerd, making you feel stupid by always inserting his "words if wisdom" when sometimes he's completely wrong. He's annoyingly always prepared for class with all the latest high tech gadgets. He also wanted to be the dictator of the group by deciding on what the menu should be, but actually, I was elected to be "manager" by another member so i guess its my ultimate decision making. I dont know why he elected me, maybe cause i was the only girl. Anyhow, i need some ideas for this meal. I thought for an appetizer we'd make thin crusted gourmet pizza with sage or rosemary or figs and goat cheese or something fancy shamncy like that. The boys (or should i say, George) wanted this roulade of beef. i'll give them that, but i would have prefered something with seafood like Paella. anyhow i am stumped on dessert. we need to make it in two hours so nothing like cheesecake or tiramisu that needs at least a day of chilling. Also, we need to make everything so stuff like ice cream and canned whiped cream is out. I was thinking chocolate mousse but word of mouth is that everyone else is doing that. so any ideas????

Sanitation and my midterm!

2007-10-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

so a couple of things went down recently. I had my first "real" santiation class (because i missed the first week, and last week the teacher was sick and the sub ditched!). It sucks to go to school on a saturday at 8 am! thanks god my teacher is a little crazy in that half the class she let us go to the other labs (which in culinary school is where most of the hands on cooking classes take place but are basically large commericial kitchens to the normal people looking in)where they set up an omlette bar. she freaks me out a bit, shes blantly mean but she tries to be funny about it so shes a bit confusing. she talks super fast too. Well its only once a week and its over in three weeks so i should manage. I got my midterm grade. Chef Woodstock (who i know i said has a stick up his ass but i am begining to appreciate it because he genuinely makes me want to improve)said i have a 91 in the class but that i could probably improve and get a solid A which would only require me getting a 93 or higher. It depends a lot on the final which i think is nov 9th so i'll just have to study real hard. I am beginning to get a little more friendly with my class mates. those that work near my station already have a few jokes with me and we share all our secrets when we nail a dish. Anyhow, i do hope people are reading this, i know this has not displayed as much color and fun as nutrious junk, but i hope people are still reading this. I'll write more tomorrow because its my only day off the whole week!

Mmmm and eggs over easy are really hard!

2007-10-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

Mmmmm for that lovely dinner we had at our school bistro! it was wonderful! It was merely a tasting menu but it was bursting with flavor. First course was mussels and clams steamed in a white wine reduction with saffron foam. Main course was a filet minon with a mushroom demi-glace with arugula and risotto cocquet (which is bascially a little ball of risotto. The dessert was where i was a little unhappy about, combining two things i dont like very much, it was pumpkin cheesecake. A beautiful presentation, but ehh, still pumpkin cheesecake.
Today though i had to make a few soups like clam chowder and consumme (both i got A's on!) but i also had to make eggs over easy. I must have gone through seven eggs! i still dont think i have it down. it was so freaky trying to flip the pan. Everytime, i asked Wanda (yes as i mentioned earlier, not her real name but reminds me of Wanda Sykes) to hold my hand. It was like jumping into a pool cause the flipping is so fast. anyhow, it'll be on my final so i really need to pratice!

Manic Mondays!

2007-10-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

yea, although i haven't really loathed mondays since high school, i really dont like them now. Basically every monday, and last night, we just have a looooong lecture and demos for most of the dishes we'll be preparing this week. So we had a demo for espagnole sauce, clam chowder, cream of tomato soup, roseti potatoes (yes, thats not a typo, its a swiss dish aparently, pommes anna, and some egg dishes. Yes we had a long lecture about eggs. I now know what the different egg grades mean and the different components of the egg (yes, it more than the mere yolk and white). What was sort of funny was that we got a list of egg sizes and it included: jumbo, extra large, large, medium, small, and get this, pee wee! yes mini eggs are apparently called pee wees! any how, yesterday was basically all talk so we weren't actually cooking. today should be better, i'll be making all the dishes we saw in demo and before our whole class actually gets to go the school "bistro" where the almost graduates serve the public but one day a quarter each class gets to eat there so the chefs at the resturant handel a simulated "high volume" situation. I'll tell you all about it, it should be yummy!

Tricks of the Trade!

2007-10-14T15:59:00.001-07:00

This week I learned about all these little cooking, presentation, and preparation methods high end resturants use and thought I'd share a few of them. some a are not suprising, others a little disturbing...

-Notice how the more high end the resturant, the smaller you dish is, regardless if its an appetizer, entree, dessert, whatever. Of course big chains give you those massive more bang for your buck portions, but the high end ones give you fairly small portions not because they use better ingredients and thus costing more (that couls be, but thats not why), its because they dont want you to be full to quickly, they want you to stay there and order more and stay longer and longer. Our chef was demonstrating a soup and pour a single ladel into a big soup bowl and said to us not to fill above the rim. He explained that you want to keep your customers as long as possible cause that way, they'll keep ordering more things.

-That sauce, yea, its basically butter, flour , and somesort of seasoning agent, so if your watching you figure or cholestorol, be aware. Most sauces are based on a roux which is equal parts butter and flour. other sauces may be even more unhealthy and contain clarified butter which is 95% butterfat with the milk solids and water evaporatied out of it. You dish shouldn't need that much sauce anyhow because it may overpower.

- If you dont like something, say your allergic. Our chefs told us that they take allergies in resturants VERY seriously cause they could get sued. and sometimes, the inflated egos of big time chefs dont want to alter their dishes simply because someone doesn't like parsely or whatever you dislike. but allergies are a differnt story and they're not going to demand a medical record so just mention this when you order.

- If your vegetarian, ask if your soup is make contians chicken stock. Many resturants have healthy, veggie soups, but they may be made with chicken stock so just ask.

-If your vegan, ask if the pasta is made with egg yolks. i made pasta every day last week and they all had egg yolks.

-be wary that before serving soups, chefs like to up the butter ante in a process called "Monte au beurre" which translates to "mounting the butter". What they do it add soft, room temperature butter right before service. a sneaky way so make it creamier.

this week's wrap up: soups, sauces, and pasta!

2007-10-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

I once agian appologize for not updating this week. Anyhows, i thought i'd give you an update of this whole week, cause boy did A LOT happen! Lets start with the chef instuctors. Chef Woodstock still has a stick up is...ahem....but i am kind of appreciating it now. He's hard on me, but it makes me want to do better, to outsmart him and to be honest, i think he likes me because i talk to him during break about stuff that he does in his life(always get to know your teachers on a more personal, one on one level. college taught me that at least!) like this buddhist retreat he did where he only ate vegan food at this remote place in Carmel for a month. He's also given me a good credit on most of my dishes. Which brings me to the dishes....monday is usually a lecture/demo day so no actual cooking. We learned about soups and sauces this week and man, i had no idea they can be that complex! With that, we had to make a number of soups this week like potato parmentier (the french name for potato leek soup), carrot ginger puree soup, spicy black bean, and vichysoisse (which is nothing more than potato leek soup chilled!). I usually am in love with potato leek, but i actually preferred my spicy black bean! It had only like four ingredients and it was SO simple to make, i am suprised i never thought of it before! sauces were a bit strange. we did the classics like roux (butter/flour mixtures) based sauces like bechemel, veloute (basically like gravy), and hollandaise (yuck!) as well as carbonara pasta and prima vera. We made out own pastas which sounds cool but i hated it, he had these terrible pasta crankers that were falling apart on us so it took me forever. All i wanted to do was get a box of barilla and be done with it! Can i just say that i HATE holladaise! the taste, and even more the process! first of all it's concentrated cholestorol with egg yolks, a bit of water and lemon juice, and most importantly clarified butter. for those who dont know, clarified butter is butter heated just enough that most of the water evaporates, it like fattier butter. We made batches of the clarified butter the day before and combined it into this huge plastic tub. I sat next to sit, inhaled the fattiness, and thought, "By god, this is like an atkins dream and susan powder nightmare!". Anyhow, back to the holladnaise, you need to wisk the clarified butter into the egg yold mixture gradually over a towel with heated steam water in a pot underneath. But you have to wisk FAST or else the butter wont combine. Its about 8 min of constant wisking. yes, my arm is sore. Not to mention, i think it tastes awful.
As far as the other students, i am slowly getting a better feel of who they are. some are very naive and litterally just fresh out of high school. and then theres those who blow me a away like this girl, i'll call wanda (cause she reminds me of wanda sykes) who has a full time job, a two year old, AND does this culinary school. There are a few people who keep very quiet and i try to exchange a word or two from time to time to spark converstation, but i think they mostly want me to leave them alone. Its sorta funny because some aspects of the social scene are very high school. there are those few that actually do the reading, you know, the types that get 100 on all the quizes and make you feel a little lazy. there are the social butterflies that cant keep their mouth shut and need to talk about something or someone all the time. the nerds who interject to say what they want to correct you when you were really doing it right all the time (its just this one guy in particular). I was never in any "group" in high school, so i am not sure where i fall here, but i am doing alright i guess. anyhows, more culinary school gossip to come...