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

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???

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!

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!

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!

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?

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!

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!