"You f***ed your macronage…good hustle though."

Where is my thicker skin?? Four weeks should have done it. Can't you buy those somewhere. I swear to God I saw them at Adrenaline one time. But then Tyson McAdoo made more stuff and they can't the thick skin. I need a lotion or a potion or something that prevents me from standing amidst the chaos, doing breathing exercises on a Friday afternoon.

Oh life in a kitchen. Pastry is calm. I have SEEN it with my own eyes. But days like today….and yesterday…and Wednesday...were not calm. No. I blame it on my inability to work effectively with others. I could probably blame my mom for it in some way. I should go to therapy. But she made me sign something in elementary school promising I wouldn't.

Yesterday, I came home, looked at my cookies. And then I went to Chinatown. There was a feeling of escape in it. I was nearly braindead and thus I just wanted to go somewhere that when I wasn't understood I could blame it on something else. And buying stuff with Hello Kitty or a ceramic owl making the 'peace sign' just makes one feel better.

Yesterday, like I mentioned, was meringues and macarons. You know how i promised that my macarons wouldn't look like the picture.

I didn't lie. 

They don't' look awful. They look kind of odd and cute in their own way.

The almonds weren't ground nearly fine enough so the 'shells' are quite bumpy. There is a narrow rim around the bottom of a macaroon called the 'feet' that is a desirable characteristic. Ours have ok feet. But the bumpy shells are simply so distracting you almost don't notice. The macronage is the stage where you incorporate the ground almond/flour mixture in to the Italian meringue. You need the Italian meringue to be light enough and whipped but you don't want it to be to dry because that means the eggs have been pushed too far and they are very unstable. You'll probably come out with bizarre looking macarons if you pushed them that far. I think the key thing with ours was the ground almonds. They had a nice shell. It was just too bumpy. Hmmmm.
For our vanilla macaroons we had pistachio, chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry Italian buttercream filling. Italian just tastes like butter, with sugar. It's majestic. But just sampling it from the mixing bowl, it feels like you're just eating butter. So weird.

We also made meringues, which always look good and taste awful. To me, they have the texture of packing peanuts. I find, with Classic French meringue, you don't get that spongy, chewy, almost marshmallowy texture. We made a rustic cocoa meringue (that is undocumented because none of them made it home) that were like and so very tasty. It is the brittleness of meringues that I don't like. And whenever I make pavlova or other egg white desserts, I undercook (within the parameters of food safety) as much as I can get away with.

There are macaroons as well, which I think we did in the same class because the names are similar. Other than the name, they are NOTHING alike. Meringues and macarons are 'stress-required' cookies. There are steps. With macarons, there is PLENTY that can go wrong (as illustrated above) that will leave you with less than the product you desired. Coconut macaroons, you dump all the ingredients in a bowl, kind of warm it up a bit to melt the butter, scoop it with an ice cream scoop to make it nice and round and the forget about it. I mean, you bake it, and then you forget about it. So little effort. Even glazing or dipping them is marginal. So they provided a necessary if brief reprieve from the intensity of yesterday.

And then TODAY…..hoo boy. For one, we had a different chef than we've ever worked with before, learning an entirely new concept, a concept with gives many a person pause. Let me preface this by saying that I have NEVER made a pie crust from scratch that was any good. I have made pie crust with my grandmother many times and with my mother-in-law at least once. I dedicate these pies to them. Really, the times that I made with them was one of those instances when you are 'making it together' and they do everything. And then when it comes out of the oven looking majestic, they are gracious enough to let you puff up your chest and tell everyone you made it when you're really going to huddle in bed and feel ashamed that you took credit for someone else's work. Pie crust is one of those things for me.

And then you learn that there are two different kinds of pie dough and that's just for pies. Then you have pate brisee, pate a foncer, pate sucree, and other such French froofy pastry crusts that are used for other things for which pie dough is not appropriate. Oh sweet Lord, I knew it was going to be a day.

Four pies in an eight hour day, chantilly cream, Italian meringue, and so many freakin' ovens on! I texted Moozh and asked him if before he went into class if he would stop by my kitchen and give me a hug. Because I may have needed to cry uncontrollably -I mean, talk out my feelings. Today wasn't really that bad but given my previous major, I can't let the truth get in the way of a good story.

We made two baked pies and two blind-baked pies with cream fillings. First, chocolate cream and lemon meringue were the blind baked. I totally pilfered the gorgeous piping technique from a fellow classmate. I probs would have just done the slather technique and then burn the shit out of it with the blow torch. Thinking back on my grandmother's lemon meringue, it always had the singed meringue on top. Did she have a blow torch. Or did she just use her oven? I'm going to assume she had a blow torch, because that's totally bad ass. And farm wives have a bad-assness that is beyond your expectations. This is flexible family history, my own mythology if you will.

We made a pecan pie, which of course accompanied an argument not only as to the factors that make up a legitimate pecan pie but also as to the proper pronunciation of 'pecan'. Everything from 'puh-cahn' to 'pee-can' to 'pee-cahn' to 'p'cohn'. We have a lot of Southerners in our class with rather inflated and ingrained opinions when it comes to pecan pie. My dad's favourite pie is Chocolate Pecan Pie, which is exponentially better (and with a fuller expectation of calories) than ol' rag'lur pecan pie. The chef we worked with today told us about running the kitchen at one of Vancouver's largest hotels and that every Father's Day, they would produce thousands of pies. Something about pies that dudes just love. Not that any man I've ever met would discriminate against cake or ice cream or chocolate (even though Moozh would go to inordinate lengths for ice cream and ice cream alone), but pie does seem to hold a peculiar and permanent place in their hearts.

You will notice the unsightly 'slosh' mark. That is when I was sloshing and rushing to be a part of the pecan party in one of the ovens. We make a fool of ourselves on the altar of being included don't we? But even despite the slosh mark, there is enough butter and sugar (and protein!) in that pie to make anyone happy. Grab a cup of coffee, grab a couch and chillllllllll out. That's how we do it.

Lastly, which was the pie that came first and was an exercise in crust inflation.

We scored in and it was just never the same after that. Not even coarse sugar and egg wash could fix it. The apple filling was SUPER GOOD. It had enough sugar to provide that dessert sweetness but not to much that it lost the great Granny Smith puckery tartness. Although it did have raisins in it. Raisins? I'm not a connoisseur but I've never had an apple pie with raisins in it. The seam between the lower crust and the top crust was a little shoddy (my bad) and our pie leaked. All in all a bad execution on my part for a fruit pie. So it looks like melted cheese but it tastes great!

And now it is the weekend. Here's aiming for some wine, some sitting, some quality husband time. And very little conversation about food. Monday will come soon enough. Chef Maurizio is back on Monday from his gelato competition. It's back to Top 40 hits with an Italian accent and Lawrence of Arabia tea towel parades.