Tartine bread

I am going to be out of commission for another few days (as I have been, regrettably) as I finish up school. I'm scouring for things to keep me going. 

 

This absolutely fit the bill. 

 

Mind blowing.

 

If you have not flipped through the Tartine bread book, I don't know how you get through every day. The photography alone is so romantic. The recipes and methods are nothing short of totally inspiring. Two dudes totally committed to bread. It's a beautiful thing. 

I finish up this week. My practical exam is next Tuesday. I miss it here. I will be so happy to write again and to get back into the narrative of life. Instead of simply pouring myself wine. Not that I'm complaining. First world problems.

I want this to be my life. The community of food. 

 

Watch the movie. Get up and do a dance. Possibly pontificate about how much you love bread. Repeat. 

Hello Stranger.

Hi, my name's Bri. Maybe you've heard of me. I bump around here sometimes. I make promises of dedication that I don't follow through on. Join me on my culinary journey. You will question my sanity and my photography style on a daily basis. That would be if I posted on a daily basis.

I've missed you. But I haven't been able to talk about school. Because it makes me tired. And as the photos that I will share with you today will attest, it has not all been experiences of grandeur.

I like his face. And his BEARD!

I wanted first and foremost to share what the Moozh has been up to. His first fun week was amuse bouche. The amuse bouche is the course before the appetizer. Not all restaurants do it but what it is meant to do is to stimulate your palate and prepare you for the meal to come; 'amuse the mouth', as it were.

Duck Carpaccio (or green pepper) with Cassis pearls

Salt-crust toasted beets and pickled walnuts on Belgian endive with lemongrass creme fraiche
caramelized orange rind and edible flowers. 

Shave smoked scallop and pear, with pomegranate and black garlic on goat's cheese crostini

For his fourth amuse, he did a dashi broth duck breast but he didn't get a picture of that one. Sometimes things just get too crazy and something's got to give. Moozh has such a creative mind though, especially when it comes the pairing of flavours and the melding of textures. I am so blown away. His technical proficiency has totally exploded since he got into advanced. It was good in basic but really being able to apply it in advanced and incorporate it into presentation, he has gotten so much better. And with the duck carpaccio as an example, he is extremely mindful to vegetarians, always having an option available. I am his blessing and his curse.

This week he's on appetizers.

Rainbow Salad

Beef Tartar

Tonight he's doing Pork Belly and I can't wait to see what it looks like. Moozh LOVES pork belly. Like it probably goes, "Jesus, Me, Pork Belly." Sugar puts up some seriously fight for a top spot in the trinity but pork belly does have a lot of uniqueness going for it.

Moozh and I are currently working through the Intermediate WSET Wine course at school. This past weekend, Moozh cooked for the courses on Saturday and he made the most amazing Thai Noodle salad. The salad itself was simple but then the dressing was so amazingly complex. He sweat lemongrass in sesame oil. He added red chiles turmeric, galangal, ginger, garlic. There was mirin, and rice wine vinegar. I said numerous times during the night that I wanted him to make me that salad for the remainder of our marriage. Numerous times.

Our wine class is fantastically fun. The sommelier at the school is such a wealth of knowledge in wine but also extremely accessible in the tasting of wine and the development of palate when it comes to wine. The above picture was from our red flight, including Pinot Noirs, Grenache, Merlot, Cab Sauv, and Shiraz. We also get to taste from the taller wine glasses that you can see behind, which are 'varietal specific' glasses. Each glass, designed by Riedel, presents the wine in the best way on the nose and on the palate. I know it sounds like bullshit, but it works. Works for $45 a stem? If you have the money yes. But you can enjoy wine just as well out of your run-of-the-mill, Ikea stems.

And now for my turn. I really have run the gamut these past weeks. I'm nothing if not versatile.

My first successful macaron, pistachio creme.

This was my dessert today. Lavender Lemon Posset, Chamomile madeleine, and a cherry mint galette.

Posset is the most amazing thing. I answered the question, "What's a posset?" probably a dozen times today and I didn't even have to deal with customers. Posset has only three ingredients. Lemon juice and sugar, which are combined and brought to a boil, and heavy cream, which is also brought to a boil but separately. The liquids are then combined, portioned into their serving containers and chilled. The lemon juice and cream react and 'set' the posset into almost a curd or pudding-like consistency. It is ethereal. Like a lemon curd but oh so creamy. If you are ever short on a dessert and you don't know what to do, make posset. It has to set for a minimum of two hours but it can set overnight for a really creamy texture that is more stable.  It is so simple and fresh and EEEEEASY. But we know how I feel about lemon.

I saved these pictures for last because this day will live in my memory for a long time.

Bad cupcake day.

Now I attend a culinary school that trains in the French style. Let's just say, we don't really 'DO' cupcakes. We make numerous varieties of 'gateaus' which is a layered cake. We make pate a choux (cream puffs, eclairs, etc). We do butter sauces and plate using classic French decor involved lattice work and filigree. Fancy muffins aren't really in the French repertoire.

But cupcakes. Are. Easy. You find a cake batter of which you are fond. You scoop it into muffin tins. You slater it in buttercream. You box it up. It sells. Always. Without fail. Even in Vancouver where cupcake shops are the new Starbucks. They are friggin' everywhere.

So when we got a special order for forty cupcakes, twenty chocolate, twenty vanilla, we were not concerned. I was not concerned. That was my station and I was responsible for making sure that most of it was prepped and ready to go. The request on the order was for 'garden cupcakes' so we were going to decorate them with coloured buttercream in a variety of different flowers. We have girls in our class who have taken cake decorating courses before and some even work at a grocery store in the cake decorating department. They had the decorating part down pat. Now I had to hold up my end. Simple.

Didn't end up being so simple.

Y'all I don't even know how it happened. Danielle in my class, (SHOUT OUT) said they were 'apocalypse cupcakes' and honestly that is the only description that feels appropriate. It looks like mummification. And it was a CIA recipe!! The CIA (Culinary Institute of America) publishes all of their textbooks and recipes. They are extensively tested. They are to be trusted. SUPPOSEDLY. It was a cake recipe and I am racking my brain trying to come up with a solution for why they did what they did. I followed the recipe. I did it twice! The pan turned out like this TWICE.

They souffléd (meaning they puffed up in the oven). They also souffléd ALL OVER everything. But just as a soufflé, when we opened the door to check if they were done, they collapsed….into that. And I ended up with the worst burn of the program that is easily two and a half inches long on my forearm. I'm not bent out of shape about the burn but my conscience as a writer knows that it needs to be included to somehow communicate how bullshit the day was. So bullshit, that's how.

After the second batch, I was NOT doing the recipe again. Not even my respect for and belief in the CIA's recipe practices could make me do it a third time. DEvil's food it was. And they turned pretty good.

You see those leaves? Those were my doing. And the chocolate icing underneath the flowers. But the roses, gardenias, plumeria and daisies had nary a whiff of me near them. How beautiful are those?! The girls did a mega job on them. And we boxed those babies up and sent them away. I don't even care if they lady liked them.

And the moral of this story is not to avoid CIA recipes. Just when you are making their High Ratio Chocolate Cake, have your whits about you.

There is a Food and Wine Writer's conference in the Okanagan in the middle of June that I want to go to so bad. But it ends the same day as my written final. School is a buzz kill once again. But there's also an event at the UBC farm called "The Joy of Eating" or something like that going on pretty soon that I am GOING TO BE AT.  So help me God.
(Please help me.)

Find a recipe you like. Make it. Feel like a boss. Cover it in cream cheese icing but it makes everything better. Repeat.

"Quick! Look like you're having fun."

Oh hello Good Friday. And hello Easter Sunday and Monday. Get the flip off my porch Tuesday.

So fast. It was over so fast. It was Thursday and I was gearing up to sleep in and have my husband all to myself. And then it was Tuesday and I was asking myself what I was doing in my uniform already.

Having four days with my husband where we could sleep in, eat a meal together and have conversations that consisted of more than just one of us rolling over saying, 'Bye Babe' or 'Hi Babe' or "You must be tired" was just long enough for me to get really used to it. Tuesday became extremely offensive to my newly acquired sensibilities quite quickly.

The week following was really fun. I was on dessert service again. After my experimental (and non-lucrative) jaunt with the strawberry soup, I figured I would stick to something really reliable. Lent was also newly over. What do most people give up for lent? Booze and dessert. Let's do it up.

So I made a Red Wine Chocolate Cake with a Blackberry Sherry Ice Cream and a Cassis Sabayon. Yep, there was alcohol in all three parts. With the candied hazelnuts from the dessert before. This should have been a hit out of the park but then like ten people came into the restaurant to eat that day. Girl just can't catch a break.

Then I moved on to Bake Shop aka Pate a Choux-land. My Chef wants us to be super confident when it comes to making pate a choux (which is what eclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles, etc are made of) and thus at any spare opportunity she has us making some. It's likely going to be on our final so it's REALLY good practice. Hordes of eclairs, cream puffs, big and small, St. Honore cake bases.

Friday was my first day in the chocolate room and I spent eight hours trying to temper chocolate. I have never had a hard time tempering chocolate but, for some reason, I chose Friday to use up eight hours.

Saturday. Now Saturday was fun. We got to volunteer, through the school, for an event in the city called "Growing Chefs." GRowing Chefs is an organization in Vancouver that looks to educate school age children about food, agriculture and sustainability. They engage kids in farming and cooking exercises, teaching them where their food comes from and how it gets to them. Very cool. On Saturday, Growing Chefs did a fundraising event called "Guess who's coming to Dinner?" Highly recognized chefs from all over the city volunteered their time to cook for a group of people who bought tickets to a dinner. Matt and I got to assisted one of said chefs in preparing one of the dinners around the city. Our chef, Andrea Carlson, has such an amazing ethic about cooking and she was also one of the founding members of Growing Chefs. She has worked at amazing restaurants in her career. What's even better was our menu for the night. The theme was "Wild Botanicals" which was a purely vegetarian meal using unfamiliar and locally grown produce to create the dinner. Basically, I have never been so full in my life. She made a farro risotto (which I could probably eat for the rest of my life) which burdock root and salsify (do YOU know what that is? I didn't.) There was wild sorrel and miner's lettuce that Andrea foraged herself. Green almonds (look them up!), morel cream sauce, black garlic compote. For dessert she made nougat with toasted walnuts and blue cheese and she served it with a walnut port. She even made, as an amuse bouche, a cherry blossom spritzer made from cherry blossoms she picked from the tree in her yard and cured in salt!?!?! Seriously.
I hope to work with Andrea again. At the end of the night, I basically told her that I was at her feet and her service whenever she needed it. Which made me seem crazed or really keen, one of the two.

Monday, I got tempering under my belt and with the necessary reflection, figured out that I make things too hard for myself. So strange. Instead of getting frustrated I made coconut lime white chocolate truffles and ginger pear milk chocolate truffles.

Today. Banquet plating. On Monday we had a party of fifty come in and today we had a party of twenty-five. The timing of banquets is fascinating to me. It's kind of a 'hurry up and wait' kind of situation. But when you have everything you need and you're all working together. It's really cool to see it all come together at the same time and go out seamlessly.

I can't remember if I mentioned it when I was in basic but this cake is called a "Pasuwa". It's a speciality that the school does. They actually invented it. It is chocolate cake on the bottom, a layer of chocolate mousse, chunks of cheesecake and chocolate chips, another layer of chocolate cake, another layer of chocolate mousse and one more layer of cheesecake to top it off, glazed with a chocolate glaze. It's made in both individual sized dome cakes, like above, or in lager 6" and 8" layer cakes. The banquet party ordered Pasuwa as their dessert so then it was just a matter of figuring out how to make it pretty. I got to be lead hand, and come up with the plating, which was pretty fun. I posted a pic of it on Facebook and a friend of mine who's an architecture student posted that it was 'under strain and thus had to be eaten'. I guess I put too much faith in tempered chocolate to hold cookies up. Fulcrum and all that.

Tomorrow is a new day. We got new candy thermometers today and so I brought my old one home so now I have one here as well. I've got my eye on a sponge toffee recipe. Memories of my dad and I trying to make sponge toffee come to my mind. It was always either too hard, more like snap toffee, or too crumbly. If I can master it, I will consider it a top achievement of my pastry education. And then I can brag.

Make a cake. Your choice. Buy a candy bar. Use it as a 'garnish'. That's what we pastry people do. Eat. Feel spiffy. Repeat..

Sistine Chapel with a caramel crust

Methinks I need a proviso.

I don't hate creme brûlée. I don't think any less of people who like creme brûlée. In fact, most of the people I hold intensely dear get creme brûlée every time they are in a restaurant. My Moozh, love of my life and the ministry to my silly walks, ordered creme brûlée just last night. And I DIDN'T EVEN SAY ANYTHING! Creme brûlée is a beautiful combination. There is something mega satisfying about cracking through the sugar crust and finding silky smooth custard, with everything from chocolate to fresh berries to earl grey tea flavouring it up. But let me put it this way: If you were capable of painting the Sistine Chapel but you were all, "Ya know, I think I'm just gonna skip class and tape pictures from magazines onto the front of my binder…" WHAT. There is nothing wrong with taping pictures to your binder. I do it too. But why the flip aren't you painting the Sistine Chapel!? Not that I'm saying that burnt orange ice cream is the Sistine Chapel.

Juuuuuuuust kidding. All this is to say, when you are on a paintball course, you run, you scream, you shoot the crap out of things. Have fun. Go crazy. I will have ample opportunity to make creme brûlée when I get a job out of school. Because EVERY RESTAURANT I've ever been  to has it on their menu.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm on dessert tomorrow and it needs to be chocolate and I'm out of ideas. Or maybe I can only remember putting flipping curry in it. Oy.

Touché, toffee pudding

 I was beaten by a sticky toffee pudding. Powerless against a sticky toffee pudding. 

I feel like I have been on a marathon of dessert service lately. Broken up only by two days of production where I glazed two consecutive cakes that fell apart due to assembly-related errors. I also made some of the most hideous happy birthday signs and one "congratulations on thirty years with Shelfspace Mark." In my opinion, if you have text that you want on a cake, it's like twitter. You have only so much you are allowed to say. 

So then today. I was not totally excited to serve but I was excited to try out something different. To do something fresh and springy, something maybe a bit more palatable than a chocolate are with curry spices. I don't know if I isn't don't have the skill but today was not an exercise in mainstream dessert experimentation. 

 

I stumbled upon (and yet I did so without StumbleUpon) a video on CHOW by Mindy Segal. CHOW does these cool video segments called "Go-To dish". For some people, like Molly Ringwald, it's a roasted chicken recipe that they always use. It could be a cocktail, a soup, bread, anything really. CHOW introduced me to Mindy Segal and I fell in LOVE with her. She's a James Beard nominated chef, which means she's talented 'fer realz', and she owns a restaurant put of Chicago called Hot Chocolate. *Check it. They have marshmallows on their menu*. I am absolutely prepared to monologue  and dictate the entire video but you should just go watch it because it's awesome. But what I found so fascinating in the video was the sense of creativity and potential. Flavors that are exciting. Textures. So she makes a fruit consommé. When I showed Matt the first thing out of his mouth was "that's not a real consommé' and it's not but we pastry chefs...sometimes we just don't understand. We play with concepts and sometimes we play with concepts A LOT. *Notice how I said 'we pastry chefs' as if I am one. Self-talk. Self-talk.* 

 A fruit consommé, or more prosaically, a fruit soup had been on my mind since I saw the video. Every time it has come around to coming up with a dessert, I have thought 'should I do it today'? Every time I have ended up with a 'no' based on the fact that no one would order it. Making a dessert that doesn't sell can be deflating, even if you really like it. But today I bit the bullet and I indulged my soup-lust.

I started with a strawberry purée, which has such a phenomenal strawberry flavor and then I simmered it with some dried lavender, some sweet ginger (that pink stuff you put on sushi), some black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon. I thinned it out a bit with some water so it didn't taste just like purée. I spent so much time in the culinary dry storage picking out spices for the components of my dish. I felt like Baba Yaga, eye of newt and that kind of stuff. each time I walked past the culinary pastry station where sticky toffee pudding was being prepped. Take my 'Creme brûlée rant' and sub in 'sticky toffee puding' and you've got my inner monologue. "Ooooh sticky toffee pudding. Be still my beating heart." With gusto, of course, 

I was reading through Michel Roux's dessert book the other day and he had a recipe for apple gelees. They were these gorgeous champagne-colored cubes, clear and flawless and he said he often uses them either as a component to his dish or as a garnish. I was going to do an angel food cake, because of its light texture and great crust, but I knew that it was going to get hella soggy in the soup without a bottom. With this in my mind, I grabbed some apple juice and infused it with some fresh tarragon. Tarragon, you say? I have the greatest chef for me. Blessed in basic training and blessed in advanced. My Chef in advanced seems to understand how to motivate me. She also understands my palate and how, therefore, to intrigue me. I love strawberries and balsamic vinegar. It is a slam dunk in my book. Macerate some strawberries in some balsamic vinegar and some sugar over night, you have the best topper for ice cream ever. Ever. Chef suggested the quality of tarragon, being anise-y, citrusy and slightly herbaceous, as another great foil for strawberries. My palate was going crazy today. Total sensory overload but it was wonderful. I even took a core out of the angel food and filled it with some vanilla chantilly cream with sme minced tarragon in it to tie things all together.

So I have all of my components together and for the very first time I have having a very relaxed time of dessert service. I realize, in retrospect, that I COMPLETELY forgot about the customers. I was just having fun playing in the kitchen. Then I had to go get changed into my serving jacket. I come back and I have this moment. No one is going to want this. Everyone in my class was clamorous to try it. The strawberry soup was so fragrant. The angel food had great lift (and consequently a great collapse). The gelee providing one hell of a great snack. I candied some slivered hazelnuts for a bit of crunch on top. It was going to be a thing of beauty.

I sold four. Count 'em. Not a huge hit. The sticky toffee pudding sold out. My pride was wounded, I will admit. Wounded in the best way possible but still a crushing blow to the ego.

After dessert service closed, however, the masses descended and my classmates got their taste. All comments tasted together, gelee, soup and angel food with the chantilly. It was just a mouthful of flavor. So despite my loss in the dessert service race, I still think I made one hell of a dessert, one I would love to make again. My plating was not thought through. The gelee screwed up the soup decor every time. The plate didn't have enough color in my opinion. The cake needed some TLC in the worst way. All good things to think on. 

And it's still better than sticky toffee pudding, I swear to God!

It is Easter. Go find a sunset. Drink some wine, eat some cheese, watch it set. Repeat. Easter Peeps optional. 

"You can't leave the table until you eat that."

 Well y'all. Today was another trip to the dessert service circus. There are those that are made for the showmanship of fine dining. The deadline, the service, plating, customer gratification in real time. And then there are those, and I include myself in this category, that thrive in the equivalent of baking in a closet. With the lights off. Having but a few hours to put something together, balance my expectation, execute and present turns me into Molly Shannon in Superstar. I get weird. And very aggressive. And every time, without fail, I ask myself the question, "Why do I have the make things so hard for me? Why can't I ever choose something easy?" 

My first sewing project was a lined, fitted denim jacket. No boxer shorts for me. I didn't want to buy my wedding dress, I wanted to make it. (plus my engagement was like three seconds long it felt like.) I didn't want to start out doing character sketches or short stories. I wanted to do NOVELS. With a main character that's mute. 

Given this tendency in me, pastry school has been no different. My first dessert service, I did a frozen souffle, which was an exercise in, "What the eff AM I DOING!?" I was covered collar to fingertip in passion fruit souffle. I could smell my caramel sauce caramelizing its way to its death on the stove behind me. And my chocolate cake bloated like a preteen to three times the size I thought it would be. And yet, it was a hit. The diners liked it. I got good feedback from my chef and classmates. And I went home and slept. Satisfaction. 

And so, with that experience behind me, I could have applied some marked sense of wisdom or temperance to my day today. 

But I didn't. 

Behold, "Madras chocolate cake with burnt orange ice cream."

 

Now y'all I have a but of a confession. I have a weird palate. My mouth just wants weird things. A girl in my class wants to do a blue cheese-kimchi croissants. I WANT THAT. I love acid, I love bitter, herbaceous and vegetal. I am still training to be a pastry chef. I'm okay with acknowledging my hubris that but I'm finding that it is alienating me from producing the "hit it out of the park" stuff, if you will. I do have girls in my class who are amazing and honest and know when to reel me in when I need it. "Umm no offense but the general populace would NOT buy that." Good to know. But my Chef has been brilliant in coaching me that it's all how you sell it. 

When you read 'madras' what comes to mind is probably correct. Madras is curry. My chocolate cake had cinnamon, cardamom, ginger; gorgeous chai spices. It also had cumin in it. Which was "subtle...delicious...perfect...I think I crossed the line". The ice cream was so good. It was an orange caramel ice cream and so there absolutely nothing creamsicle about it. It tasted like Grand Marnier. This deep, beautiful, dark orange flavor. The recipe is originally from the Gourmet Cookbook (which is a MASSIVE compendium and well worth the investment if you're looking for a huge book on desserts) but I found the recipe on Lottie + Doof. He had me at 'burnt orange ice cream' but then what truly sold me was when he said ,'this ice cream is not for everyone'. Why I chose to do it for a dessert that kind of has to be for everyone? These are the questions of my life. There is an aspect to fine dining where some people come with an adventurous spirit and foodie culture has absolutely nurtured that demographic. *This is one side to my love-hate relationship with foodies.* But I think the majority of people go to fine dining restaurants because they want prime rib done really well. Do they come prepared for sweetbreads? They come for vanilla creme brûlée. Do they come prepared for curry cake? 

*As an aside, I can't bring myself to make creme brûlée. At school, at me, anywhere foe any reason. To me it is a 'culinary dessert' and that is my snobbery coming through. I know that there is nothing wrong with it. There is a pastry chef based out of Portland, OR named Jeff McCarthy and he summed up my feelings about creme brûlée: "ordering a creme brûlée is like buying a golden retriever. Have some fucking imagination." I feel like such a douchebag, and a hipster which is worse, but that is EXACTLY how I feel. There are MOUNDS of amazing, mind-blowing desserts out there that would create such a memory for your guests and enlist your creativity as a pastry chef and you want to make creme brûlée. It has been DONE. (I also like Jeff McCarthy  because he shares my affection for bread pudding. Which is an equivalent to what I just expressed about creme brûlée for some people. One of the advanced chefs thinks that bread pudding should never be on a menu. I have been put in my place.)

Someone restrain me because I'm on the conveyor belt heading towards molecular gastronomy and I do not have the finesse yet to do anything accessible or palatable with that just yet. I wanna make fruit foam!

This has been 'rant-y' but unfortunately this is one of my outlets for that. I am on dessert service again on Friday and next Monday as well. I will document the carnage which likely me something along the lines of "And then we have a port sabayon on some soggy cardboard. It lends tis really fabulous 'earthy' quality." Sure.

Find some strawberries. Plus sour cream, plus brown sugar. Maybe some balsamic reduction. MAYBE. Thank the gods of simplicity and dairy. Repeat. 

First Meltdown of Advanced: Complete

Note to self: Mondays = Bad Croissant Day.

Some ECards. There's one appropriate for every situation.

Being a combination of hungover, delirious on allergy medication and operating on four hours of sleep leaves one with very little personal tools with which to cope with frustration. I took two stints in the walk-in freezer trying to cool down and even then I still resorted to pacing around the school twice, ranting belligerently under my breath. At croissants. Out of three heads of croissant dough (1 head of croissant dough = 20 croissants), I got precisely 20 croissants. That is easy math.

Sinister crab shaped playas.

My problem today was sincerely not the croissants themselves. I have in the past successfully made croissants that had beautiful lamination, puffed up beautifully and were an encouragement to me. My issue was with the sheeter. This marvel of modern technology is what I describe as a "rolling pin machine". Anything you need rolled out thinly, be it croissant dough, pie dough, puff pastry etc, the sheeter can get you where you want to go.

OR CAN IT??!

My encounter with the sheeter, which was the source of my croissant anxiety as soon as I got into advanced, could only be described visually as something like a slip 'n' slide or a mud run. You know, when you put on your ratty summer clothes (or maybe you don't and wish you did) and find a hill and some spring run off and have a messy afternoon. It's all fun and games and you think that you've got a handle on it until you get a tree root to the tailbone or you spin juuuuussst enough to launch you successfully into the brambles or for you to get a mouthful of your own knees. In the sheeter today, I found the tree root to my tailbone. The first dough: I enclosed my butter and then popped it on the sheeter. The sheeter is controlled by a crude button system that leaves you feeling somewhat like you are playing Whack-a-Mole. Or Bop-It. Does anyone over twelve like either of those games? (My apologies if you do. My sincere apologies.) All was going just fine. I had some scaling in my dough, which means that the butter had broken into pieces within the dough instead of being a cohesive piece, but that wasn't the end of the world. Scaling can still be fixed. I'm hummin' to myself, telling myself I worry for nothing -which I do- and THEN the sheeter skipped, which means I was playing with the buttons a little to much and the rollers jumped. This resulted in the sheeter ripping numerous holes in my laminated dough. When you rip a hole in laminated dough, you ruin the layers that produce a flaky croissant. You will likely end up with a lopsided croissant or a croissant that looks like this. (No disrespect.) Anyway, I was disappointed but I knew that the dough could still be used. I had to pop the dough in the freezer to chill it quickly before I could do the next fold. Did that, enclosed my butter in my next piece of dough, and set it up on the sheeter. Back, forth, back, forth. I got scaling again. "Oh crap. Why is this happening? I feel like I made the same mistake I JUST made."

3, 2, 1.

The sheeter -and here is where I am choosing to editorialize and have absolutely no perspective- ripped my laminated dough not only in half but in numerous pieces. At this point I think I look like Yosemite Sam -except instead of a huge cowboy hat I have a tiiiiiiny bakers cap that makes my head look too small for my body. If you picture this, you will have no sympathy for me. It will just be really funny. A baker with shoulders like a linebacker crying over shredded croissant dough. I went and found my Chef who told me to go stand in the freezer. Which helped but didn't really take the edge off. When I came back, Chef rolled my croissant dough for me while I watched. Those croissants turned out just fine.

I'm not bitter AT ALL.

I was on the PMS-side of irrational for the rest of the day. What I got to do with the ripped laminated dough -because it is still useable- was roll it out, cram it full of almond cream, chocolate chips, pistachios and dried cranberries and make sweet spiral rolls. Not a sucky option at all but still not croissants.

The bittersweet piece to this story is that our Chef just started us on a two-day rotation which means I get to do croissants TOMORROW. I have a small prayer bible and a horse tranquilizer in case tomorrow goes the way of today. The benefit of doing it again tomorrow is my mistakes are fresh in my mind. I can go into it tomorrow knowing what I need to do differently. After that, I doubt I'll want to see croissants ever again but I get to do in another twelve rotations!

Fun thing though is tomorrow I'm going on a field trip! A huge panel of well respected Chef's are giving a talk tomorrow. About what, I don't know. But I'm hoping for some inspiration. I'm already a little fatigued with mousse cakes and tarts. We leave school early as well which means I'm not going to be able to waste time and cry in the freezer like I did today. 1230 and my croissants have to be busted beyond all recovery because that's all the time I've got. My attitude will get better, I promise. It's me and chamomile hanging tonight. Valium's coming over later. He can always talk me off a ledge.

It's almost Easter! Go buy some cream eggs. Pipe a rosette of whipped cream on top. Feel fancy. Repeat.

Phew with a side of Booyah

Dessert Service. Bake-off. Bread Room. Never again in my life will my days be so differentiated. This is mah time!

Monday was my first day on Dessert Service. One of the aspects to working in the Advanced Kitchen in the Pastry program is making dessert for the restaurant lunch service. The pastry side is responsible for two out of three desserts while the culinary kitchen makes one. Dessert Service has an aspect that is hella stressful but there is a side that is like going to Playland. You get to do whatever you want. Some people do ol' reliables like New York cheesecake with raspberry coulis or fruit tarts with some ice cream that are always a hit out of the park. People love those desserts because they are homey and they are guaranteed to taste good. Not everybody is as adventurous with their dining choices as they think they will be. But if you are like me, and your palate tends towards the bizarre, you kind of have to reign yourself in and make a decision for the masses.
That reigning-in resulted in my first dessert: Frozen Passionfruit Souffle with a chocolate biscuit and caramel. I think that's as mainstream as I go. The very next day I tried to sell people on chocolate rosemary scones. Not everyone was havin' it.

It was my first time plating my own dessert and having to do it essentially on my own. There was a large portion of the morning when I was preparing my dessert that I didn't think it was going to work. My eggs weren't whipping. My gelatine looked really bizarre. I hadn't even started my caramel and I had only made it once in the past without burning it or making it taste burnt. And then I feel all in a span of about ten minutes, it came together and I felt better. It would absolutely do it differently if I were going to do it again, but for my first try at an idea and for being my first dessert service. I am pleased. People responded well to it. You say 'passionfruit' and people stop listening. They don't even need to know what else is on the plate. They want it. 'Passionfruit mousse with a sardine pate.' "I want it!"

Yesterday I was on Bake-Off which essentially consisted of me making things up as I went along and Chef then coming in and telling me I did it wrong. This is when taking initiative doesn't always benefit. All good. Bake-Off is handling the ovens while all the Bake Shop stuff is in there, like the croissants, muffins, scones, then decorating what needs to be decorated and handing it off. The rest of your day consists of prep for the next day like muffin mix, prepping scones and making sure we have enough for bake off the next day. No probs. Every day in the bread room is an exercise to think through whether you could do it as work. Lifting 10 kg out of a planetary mixer is harder on a small person than you would think. I need one of those weight lifting belts. To be honest, though, everything in Advanced is an exercise in thinking whether you could do it for work. You can spend a full day glazing cakes. That gets boring.

I feel the further I get into the program the further I am from understanding what I want to do when I'm finished. I worked in the bread room Tuesday and Wednesday today and there is something so meditative and beautiful about the bread process. We have been assigned an influential chef in the baking and pastry world in which we have to do a research project and presentation. THis is one of those moments when university doesn't help you. I know I'm going to overwork this. I am going to have sources out of the wah-zoo. MLA citation. What's more, is I was assigned Peter Reinhart who is a bread god in his own right. His books are magical and his pizza crust is the best you will ever have. His passion for pizza alone is contagious. I've been geeking out on his Whole Grain Breads book, where he introduces a new fermentation process called 'delayed fermentation' which allows whole grain and low-gluten breads to be used to make bread that DOESN'T SUCK. If you are gluten intolerant, I am really sorry for you because gluten-free bread is an offence to the mouth. To all the senses, in general. But Peter Reinhart is your saviour. Put a picture of his above your mantle. Leave things for him. Appease him. Maybe he'll give you a sponge cake recipe next and then your life will be COMPLETE. If you want an introduction to Peter Reinhart, listen to his TEDtalk. His piece on bread used as a symbol for life is crazy beautiful. 

Peter Reinhart is working on something he calls "Pizza Quest" where he travels to find the best pizza crust and what makes good pizza crust. The second episode where he talks to two guys who are known in San Francisco as having some of the best pizza. It's a pretty cool video. And the pizza looks amazeballs. 

"We wanted a place where people felt taken care of." That's what I want too. That's what this whole food thing is supposed to be about. I could proselytize about the correlation between making food for people and the Eucharist. It's getting close to Easter so I'm getting weepy. But I'm not going to. That's for the other blog. 

I found this Swedish Patisserie called Holy Sweet -this link should take you to the translated page- and they encapsulate so much of what I want to do. They cater small gatherings and weddings and they do an entire range of cakes, cookies, confections and do it with such an intoxicating aesthetic. I originally found them when I found a cake of theirs that had these gorgeous pearls on it. So simple and elegant while being unique. 

O Holy Sweet at Flickr

I made some Irish Soda Bread over the weekend to celebrate St. Patty's. I'll post some pictures because it came out so nice and tall. The last time I made Irish Soda Bread was right around this time last year when I discovered that our oven was broken. Well…not broken. Overachieving. And by overachieving I mean it was 600 degrees at all times. YOu can't use your oven as a proofer in those instances. I was decidedly proud when the bread didn't come out scorched to crap this time. 

Eat a pizza. Talk loudly and obnoxiously about how good it is. Mention Peter Reinhart. Feel like a genius. Repeat. 

Bam

Day one in big kid baking: success.

Bake Shop Set Up was my KINGDOM today. It involved cutting up cakes, putting them on doilies maybe with a little fruit on them, and giving them to the Bake Shop. And may I say that it was the perfect task for me on my first day of Advanced when I was DAZED and CONFUSED. As our first day in Basic, the amount of time I spent today trying to figure out where anything was severely outweighed any intentionally productive work. But that Bake Shop sure looked pretty. Tomorrow, friends, is another day.

My midterm yesterday, in no uncertain terms, was deflating. I came home and barely took my coat off before I collapsed into bed and didn't wake up until my phone rang late in the evening. So much pent up emotion was put into a process that at the end all that was going through my head was, "I don't even care about those crap eclairs." And then the very next day, without any gatekeeping, I just waltzed into Advanced like yesterday had never happened. Even after today, it feels slightly time-warpish.

The next three months is going to be a steep learning curve, like 'pop-a-wheelie' steep.

But I feel like…..

It's totally do-able.

Set a timer. Spoon ice cream into a bowl AS FAST AS YOU CAN, because you are a speed demon. Do not eat as fast as you can. That never ends well. Savor. Repeat.

Can't I just put butter on it? Butter makes everything better.

 Not gonna lie, I'm kind of tired of being in the kitchen. Thank God it's not the 50's. 

It's been a full day dry run of my midterm today. I know that it doesn't sound like a very successful dry run. 'Bri', you say, 'don't you only have four hours for your midterm? And today took you ten?' 

*In my head you sound like a Precious Moment when you talk.

But yes you would be absolutely right. I only have four hours to do everything that I took all day to do today. And there are even things that I will have to do on Wednesday that I didn't even DO today. Self-sabotage? Perhaps. My life resembled a bit of a science experiment today. I had my projections of what my midterm should look like, my HYPOTHESIS if you will -(guaranteed I just lost a couple of readers)- and compared it to what I felt I was capable of against what I was able to actually pull off. 

To my surprise -probably an hour added up throughout the day was made up of me congratulating myself on being realistic about my abilities and that I was 'going to be just fine at the midterm'- everything went fairly smoothly.  

Now being in pastry school has been an exercise in managed expectations. Anything you do at school -ANYTHING- that you choose to try and replicate at home, you will likely be disappointed. Professional kitchens are laid out with a certain modicum of premeditation. Ergonomics. "Flow". And you have a $1000 knife kit at your disposal. Your tuition has paid to enable anything you could want to put your hand to to be at your fingertips. Your apartment kitchen was made with the premeditation of "We were just going to put in a hot plate and a plug-in for a microwave but the building next door just put in new faucets and privacy film on the bathroom windows. So we have to at least make room for a full-size refrigerator." So any moments of Sound of Music-style spinning that was possible at school is only possible OUTSIDE your apartment. I don't remember my kitchen being inadequate before I went to pastry school. This is why you don't sleep around with other kitchens. Hindsight and all that.

So you get home. And you realize that you have a cloth piping bag that smells like morning breath (It DOESN'T dry well OKAY!?), you have a dough scraper that was obviously designed by someone who had never made bread before and purchased by someone (me) who hadn't a clue either, and your spatula has chunks missing along the side due to it being left on hot surfaces unattended. And then you feel sad. 

But then. You look back at your recipe. You remember the glory of school days recently passed. You conjure up your best show stopping dish. Commence dancing and inspired chanting at the glory of your semolina bread and how it's going to bring all the boys to the yard. 

Fast forward fifteen minutes: "Bah! This thing doesn't work AT ALL!"

Inspired chanting is replaced by swearing under one's breath. You make concessions for your recipe not shaping up like you had hoped. You pass the buck to the (now) broken spatula. You say that "It's just not for the home baker". And then you feel ashamed because you promised yourself that you would be better than that. Whatever you were making comes to a relative state of completion and you eat it with your eyes closed trying to resuscitate the previous beacon of talent and unchallenged winning. 

I have done this before if you couldn't tell. 

But today went well. I tried my best to preempt any tool-related shortages and use what I had at my disposal for it's intended purpose. I know you say, "Just take your knife kit home." But I would probably just say -and probably not very nicely- that it is simply not that simple. I don't know if you have ever been in the charge of a toddler or related small human before but there is this inevitable moment where you realized that they blew a shoe, or their pacifier or their blanket at all Hell breaks loose when they are without it. You search and retrace your steps. "You just had it. I don't understand." This life is my life. Everything I have is on an idiot -ahem, tether- when we go to the airport.  So two days before my midterm I am not going to lose my shoe THANK YOU VERY MUCH. 

I documented my truffle making process today because... I am a product of my generation and I have this insatiable desire to take pictures of my life on my phone using unnecessary photo sharing apps. Mae culpa, mea culpa. I worked with milk chocolate today whereas I've only worked with dark chocolate before. This made for a learning experience I probably could have saved for AFTER my midterm. Because dark chocolate has more cocoa solids in it, its sets up faster and requires less work to create the proper crystallization. The milk chocolate ganache is quite soft but it has bourbon in it so it can't be THAT bad right?

Including the Saran wrap and Archimedes the napkin holder seemed necessary. Or I just didn't realize I hadn't moved them until after. Our glass table isn't a marble and therefore will never be as great as marble but it definitely served its purpose well today. 

I also practiced my pate a choux paste today. I made eclairs, with drive me crazy but are on my exam, and then some profiteroles, which are much easier to work with and therefore more gratifying. I practiced some lemon curd today as well so instead of pastry cream I crammed the profiteroles full of lemon curd and left the finicky eclairs without any filling. That'll teach them right? Lie to me. 

 Tomorrow I have time to further finesse my agenda because I am the queen of over planning. A third of my class has already done their midterm. I want to ask them, ya know, pick their brain and TOTALLY obsess. But I know it is a short distance for me right now to go from there to rocking back and forth whispering, "I'll never teeeeeell." Best if I just keep to myself until Wednesday morning. 

Moozh did his this morning. The culinary students weren't told ahead of time what would be on their exam so Moozh went in blind. His chef told him that all of his stuff was cooked perfectly and that he did very well. And after six years of education and a master's program, Moozh still considered this midterm the most stressful exam he's ever written. I concur. Already. 

One more day to overprepare. 

Find a cookie. No, two. Find some ice cream. Make a sandwich. CUZ WHO DOESN'T LIKE AN ICE CREAM SANDWICH? Repeat. 

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Beta 5

The Oven Wall went on a field trip! And by field trip I mean, I got cabin fever and decided in the Vancouver drizzle to venture out of Yogapant-land (aka Kitsilano) and out into the land of some of the best coffee you will EVER HAVE, the art of finding beauty in concrete and a chocolate shop holy grail (aka EastVan). Next time I'll bring a good camera. 

When we were learning about chocolate in Foundations, Chef mentioned a chocolate shop that had started up in Vancouver by a buddy of his. Then he mentioned that they had a tobacco-flavored truffle. I think at that moment my brain kind of shorted out. Definitely didn't hear anything he said after that. I don't think he realized how dangerous it was to throw out such a mind blowing concept in such an off-handed way. The whole idea -nay- the INTENTION of combining those two glorious things into a TRUFFLE?! Mind blown. I knew that I had to have one. And I had to buy AT LEAST one for my scotch-lovin', Johnny Cash-quotin', corn cob pipe smokin' man aka The Moozh.

The moral of this story, preemptively of course because no one ever likes to wait for the moral, is when you feel these compulsions, act on them. Tobacco being the flavor of the month, and me having discovered it's existence on the 28th of February -even with a leap year on my side- I missed the February flavors.

The shop is called Beta 5. The name is very clever because the stablest formation of crystals in chocolate making and tempering is called Form V or Beta 5. That is the crystallization that is responsible for shiny chocolate, chocolate that isn't grainy and a bar of chocolate that has that great 'snap' when you break it. Nestled just off of Main St on Industrial Ave in a building a color somewhere between Pepto Bismol and flesh tone, Beta 5 Chocolates specializes in chocolate, marmalade, and other confections like caramels and marshmallows. 

*Why I felt compelled to take pictures with the awful camera on my phone, I don't know. It was all I had. Apologies. 

Despite having only the window on their door to work with, the shop has an open, brightness to it. The decor is industrial in a very cool way with exposed lightbulbs, metal shelving, wooden boards and cool cardboard packaging. 

 

 The people there are freaking awesome, even though all Vit D deprivation considered, we should all be feral and snarling at each other.

Beta 5's Chocolate Union is the version of chocolate of the month if Jesus had come up with it. Utter perfection. (Or Christopher Nolan. That guy's got a great track record.) It will redeem any negative connotations you have with the word 'union'. You can purchase a three-, six- or twelve-month membership. On the first Saturday of every month, you pick up your union package. Inside you will find an assortment of treats associated with a monthly theme. March's theme, because they're awesome and they GET IT, is Legends, Leprechauns and Libations. Within this theme you will find treats like Guinness truffles, green apple shamrock fruit jellies, chocolate covered potato chips among other things. *They have a 'crunch' category every month. Can't wait. 

Understandably this month's memberships are all old out.

 I picked up a six-piece Monthly chocolate, even though I was POSITIVE it wouldn't live up to the mythical tobacco truffles that I had hoped for. Wrong again. Sometimes our instincts, when clouded by our emotions, just aren't that reliable. The monthly flavors this month were Spanish olive oil, lime, pistachio, wasabi and genmai cha. The olive oil chocolate was smoooooooth.  Like Marvin Gaye smooth. The wasabi was good if not as pungent as I was expecting. I need to try another one in order to feel truly informed. You know, in order to give constructive feedback. My favorite out of the six, by far, was the lime. All of a sudden I felt like Mexico was in my mouth. (In the good way not in the hep-B, bad beef kind of way.) I associate Mexican cooking with that really intense, clear lime flavor. This truffle had that. I didn't share that one. My wifely dedication only extends so far. Mea culpa, Mea culpa.

I also went intending to buy a jar of their Bergamot Orange marmalade. *I feel marmalade is misunderstood and I appreciate that Beta 5 is working at a kind of renaissance. Beta 5 placed Second and third at the World Marmalde Awards (because there IS such a thing) for their Seville Orange marmalade and their Rangpur Lime marmalade respectively. They were out of the Bergamot orange (I'm seeing a pattern here) so I came home with the Blood Orange marmalade instead. The Blood Orange isn't as tangy as I assume the Seville Orange would be but its got this subtle deep pink to it. So preee-tay. I'll be hassling them until they get some more Bergamot in but I will also take what I can get in the meantime. By any account, their tactics to get me to come back are totally working. 

 So the moral of this story, yes there are two, is that if you are ever in Vancouver, you must make a stop at Beta 5. Tell 'em Chef sent you. You might get a deal. Don't tell them I sent you. They be like 'huh?'

Eat chocolate. Be happy. Repeat. 

Friday, March 9, 2012

SWISS MERINGUE!!?? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

It's 10 am. Guess where I am? IN MY PYJAMAS!

No I didn't get kicked out of school. I kicked school out of the…park.
I think I got my metaphors confused.
But anyway. My midterm is done and gone with a 97% scribbled in nearly legible writing! Boo-friggin-yah man! Going into my exam this morning, I was coaching myself, "It's not about the grade. The grade you get doesn't matter. Trust your abilities." And then I found out my mark. Suddenly, it IS about the mark.

And of course, it being the Pacific Northwest, I walked to school in the rain, wrote my test so fast that my clothes were still wet when I walked home in them. But suddenly you are in your pyjamas, drinking the first cup of coffee you've had all week, sitting down in a comfy chair and catching up on blogs as if this is your life.

All kidding aside, my practical is on Wednesday and that's the one that really counts. When I was in school for writing, it was all conceptual knowledge. In the 'real world' as a writer, you would sit in your pyjamas in a public place and look like you were doing nothing so book knowledge did matter. As a baker or pastry chef, you will NEVER be sitting as a part of your job. Being able to hustle, do rosettes double time, whisk-whisk-whisk are all the pieces that make the man. (Isn't that a reference to a suit? Metaphors. Not my thing today. My writer-self is ashamed of my baking-self right now.)

And academia is a totally different world. You take your exam in a gym or a huge lecture hall with three hundred other people. The teacher sits at the front and plays Angry Birds or talks to some brown-noser TA. In pastry, there is absolutely nothing standardized about it. The Chef looms and looks over your shoulder to tell you that the answer you just wrote is wrong.

Moozh walks into his exam in a couple hours. He'll kill it too. He has so much discipline when it comes to studying. I'll have all of my books spread out around me and yet still be on my computer looking at Pinterest. He's constantly writing, printing off worksheets and diagrams. He always draws sunglasses on the diagrams of the animals on his butchery worksheets.

Yesterday he made Foie Gras, which is a fatted duck liver,

And Braised short ribs to finish off his journey in Foundations. He won't be eating a three course meal at 730 at night anymore once he gets in Advanced. Which I think he'll be just fine with.

Five days until my Practical. Having another go at eclairs and truffles on the weekend. I'm gonna SLEEP IN. I may or may not make myself a Rocky montage. And then Wednesday comes. And I RUN.

Find yourself a crossword. (Or a sudoku, word search, or a word scramble.) Whether you finish or not, reward yourself. (Hot chocolate, wine and/or cake acceptable.) Repeat.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

"What do you want me to do? Dress in drag and do the hula?"

If I were a racer, and providing I could any longer see my toes, I would be stretching right now. I would be decked out in something unflattering, that wicks away sweat and pinches at your armpits (and your groin). I would likely be sizing up my competition, praying my shoelaces hold, and injecting myself with some kind of steroids (secretly). But I'm not a runner. I'm a baker. I still wear unflattering clothes. I still sweat a lot. Nothing pinches because everything is too big. (Which is a good sign.) I'm not sizing up my competition, I'm clinging to them for emotional support. I'm not on steroids but when you eat nougat for breakfast, you might as well be.

I ROYALLY messed up my marshmallows. I had coffee extract all ready for it. Coffee marshmallows + HoCho* = what you want your life to be all about. Or a mocha. This is a "both/and" kind of situation.
Anyways, I then realized we had a scaling situation on our hands as we were pouring the BOILING SUGAR SYRUP into our egg whites. Hot sloshy mess = not what marshmallows look like. And then I nearly poured that mess down the drain which would have resulted in, what we call in the culinary world, 'call the plumber cuz shit just went down'….and it's not moving. I guess. (This is stream of consciousness blogging.) But I've picked up some gelatine so I'm going to give it a try this weekend on my own when I should be studying for my midterm.

*HoCho is the gangst terminology for Hot Chocolate for those of you unaware. Now you know. And you sound cooler or as Moozh likes to call it, "Trying to be black, you white girl". You're welcome.

So marshmallows were not to be for us but we did make nougat. Did you know that nougat (and marshmallows and hard candies, I kid you not) started out as medicine? They were a way for pharmacists and apothecaries to cover up the gnarly taste of their medicine.
I was telling my friend Zoe that marshmallows used to be made from the mallow plant, that grew in marshes. And then I told her that they also used to be medicine. She will henceforth never believe anything credible I have to say. Certifiably.

But look at our nougat. Yum city, right?

Candied orange, toasted almonds and pistachio nougat. I don't know about you but I was NOT excited for nougat. Whenever I think nougat, I think of that irritating crud that gets stuck in your teeth when you eat a Toblerone. So I also associate nougat with Swiss Chalet. Not a good association. But this nougat is NOTHING like that crud. Like anything made by hand. My mind was completely changed about marshmallows, marzipan, and fondant for this same reason. When it's not churned out in a factory where the air smells like Frito Lay chips, it actually turns out pretty good. This nougat is chewy in the best way while still being pillowy. And it's not the 'clingy-chewy', where you think you're gonna rip out your fillings if you eat another piece. I have totally made things like that. Good nougat.

We also made Pate de Fruit (Pat-due-Free) yesterday and it is the candy equivalent of bacon. You will eat EXCESSIVE amounts of it and it 'cures' underneath a centimetre of granulated sugar for at least a day. K, maybe it's not JUST like bacon but it is so good. Again, it's the artisan equivalent of a fuzzy peach (or whatever fruit puree you choose to make it out of). I'm sure if Epic Meal Time found out about Pate de Fruit there would be a shirt that read "Pate de Fruit Pate de Fruit Pate de Fruit Pate de Fruit".

This week has been more of midterm prep.
We made more chocolate truffles:

More buns (accompanied by Chef's continuous jokes about 'handling our buns'. Hardy har. My sense of humour is the first to go under stress.)

We may take another stab at eclairs tomorrow but that is somewhat unlikely I think. We are learning plating tomorrow. Pretty desserts. I am forbidden to put a mint sprig on ANYTHING. EVER. Chef ranted about that for probably five straight minutes today. Which I get. Mint is boring. And unless you have halitosis, I would wager, no one eats the mint sprig. You either leave it on the side of your plate or flick it at your eating partner. (Moozh and I never go for dinner anymore. So strange.)
We made sauces today: caramel, chocolate, anglaise, fruit coulis, gelee, to use to plate things tomorrow. Eight hours will be spent on learning the art of the 'smear'. You know the one I'm talking about. The sauce that you always wish there was more of.

My practical is a week from today. Week. From. Today. What is scarier to me is that a week from tomorrow, I will BE in advanced, preparing food for the general public! But what if…what if something totally irrational and unlikely happens! What will I do?! How will I recover from the embarrassment?! Like what if I stab someone (by accident, for real)? What if I give someone food poisoning?! What if my mousse doesn't set?
(I'm trying to poke fun at myself now. I will laugh later. WHEN IT HAPPENS.)

P.S ~ Three points for me: I used the "Hula Dance" from The Lion King in conversation at school the other day. Someone mentioned something about doing the hula (Because this is what you talk about in your down time at pastry school) and of all the songs and quips that could have come to mind, I managed to pull this out, complete with dance moves, I can guarantee you. It's stuck there, in my head. That is core space I am never going to get back, never be able to use for any other useful purpose.

Find some Toblerone. DON'T EAT THE NOUGAT CRAP. Sing a Disney song. Repeat.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Moozh doesn't get a lot of air time here. He's the talker in the relationship. I'm the typer.

I ate (and/or gave away -I swear) all of my creme brûlée and thus have no documentation. We made a million and the ramekins we needed for our creme caramel. So we shared them with the rest of the school for the staff meal. I had to run to advanced pastry to grab something and on my way back I heard one of the advanced pastry kids bitching, "Just throw them out. They're not even done properly." So. Maybe not as successful an outing as I convinced myself it was.

 We made chocolate pots du creme which is akin to a custardy hot chocolate. Aka holy delicious.

We finished with creme caramel. My most dominant memory of this dessert is how hard it was to clean the caramel that didn't form a sauce from the bottom of the ramekin.

There was a rather rapid 'turning out' of the creme caramel. They were set and cooled but creme caramel (an really anything baked in a ramekin) is not really transportation friendly. We had to scoop them out into a container to take home. So it looks like salad dressing. Custardy, vanilla salad dressing.

But Moozh has done fun stuff! He did butchery all last week and then aced his butchery exam this week. Mucho proud wifey.

Moozh beat me to both creme caramel AND soufflé. I thought that pastry would have the market on that but turns out I have competition from someone who can hack through a pig carcass and balance our check book all in one day. I need more skills. We do soufflé on Monday, I remind myself.

Moozh told me an interesting story about sablefish (below). Turns out that the sablefish you are dying to try on the menu is the same Black Cod that you could have taken or left. It's a beautiful example of the role marketing plays in food culture. When the fish was under the name Black Cod, it couldn't compete with Atlantic Cod, Halibut and a lot of the other more familiar fish that are used for Fish and Chips, seafood chowders and other classic fish dishes. So someone decided to instead call them 'sablefish'. This bumped them up to an entirely different category because we all know that sable is so much better than black. More exotic. And quality obviously.

Yesterday they made scallops. My favourite part of getting pictures from Moozh is the plating. Plating is one thing that pastry only learns late in the program. You have to know it before you get into Advanced but it simply does not factor into any of your learning for the first month and a half.
Look at those scallops!

And notice the tourneed vegetables. Even though I bet learning that was really frustrating, it's good to know because after the first week, it's in EVERYTHING.

Each day, the foundation culinary students make a three piece meal for themselves.
An appetizer:

And entree:

Flank steak and grilled zucchini.
And a dessert:

I don't know what this is. I should because it's a dessert. But it does not look like anything I have seen before. I will reread this passage with egg all over my face one day when I say "Oh THAT'S what that was. Ooooh……."
Moozh has come home with an angry stomach everyday this week. It's a wonder French people are so chill and skinny. Because their contribution to the culinary world has been bereft of anything easy to digest.

So tomorrow is Savoury Day for us Pastry folk. We're making spanikopita (or Spank-i-topia, as Lex calls it), tortiere, which is a ground beef pie with chunks of potatoes and yummy spices. There's sausage rolls, empanadas, samosas, an onion tart, and a tomato-ricotta tart. We  also get out knife skills tomorrow. *Saying it like that makes it sound like they come in a box or something.* No, we have our knife skills class tomorrow. The first day of the pastry class having to use their knives, two of us cut our fingers in a major way (I wasn't one of them -go figure!). So some of us got indignant (that may or may not have been me) and demanded that our ineptitude be rectified by a knife skills class. So one of the VERY FRENCH teachers is coming in tomorrow to help us work out way around the sharpest knives I have ever been around. On the day where we will be slicing more onions than most of us have probably ever seen. (C'mon, it's Greek food. Super smelly but smelly in the best way.)I feel like I have a leg up because Moozh sat me down and showed me all of the slicing methods he was learning the first week. I sliced an onion in class today and I didn't even cry. These are the big things of life, let's be honest.

Next week we start cakes, which basically means we enter one of the seven circles of hell. Chef has straight up told us that if we were deluding ourselves that anything up to this point was hard, we may as well just sign our careers away because cakes take it all (just about said, 'takes the cake' but I restrained myself…kind of). But of course, Chef says that about everything. That is the Italian Pep Talk.

Find some veggies. Slice 'em fancy. (Strips are fancy) Put some parsley on top. Top it with a steak. Feel like a genius. Repeat.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Cute

So my whole rationale about the 'cute' thing. Not totally wrong. But kind of wrong. 

First text I get from Moozh tonight: "Look at the cute little pear guy I made." 

Totally cute pear guy. With a leaf carved right into the skin.

Then there was a fruit salad for the appie. Oranges, melon, tomatoes, and cucumber with zest. Good palate cleanser/amuse-bouche.

Apparently a raspberry vinaigrette was part of the theme for today.

So the veal was served with a raspberry vinaigrette reduction and later the dessert was poached in the same raspberry vinaigrette.

I'm so impressed by the plating that Moozh is learning. I know that we will likely learn plating once we get to advanced but I kind of wish we were focussing on presentation more now. In pastry we learn a lot of the technical stuff so maybe that's why we're not learning presentation yet. Figure it out first, THEN you can make it look pretty. 

Really though, my most stressful day is simply an exercise for someone in culinary. We will be the enigmatic pastry person huddled in a cranny in some restaurant somewhere fixing a tart tatin or something custom for dessert while everyone else in the kitchen scurries like mad people. They are preparing us for our future dynamic. 

Make something pretty and purely ornamental to go on your plate. It will make you feel like a chef. 

I need a drink

We were all sayin' it at the end of class today. Today. Was. Stress. Full. Stencil cookies: totally gorgeous, in the end somewhat worth it. HOWEVER, stencil cookies + 12 PEOPLE = chaos. I swore at full volume numerous times. I body checked poor Karin at least once. I kissed my fingertips goodbye early in the day. And then I came home and had a drink. We're cool. (I know it's a coping mechanism okay?!)

For those of you who don't know what stencil cookies are, they fall in the category of "cookies made primarily to be a component of, or garnish for, a plated desserts." Meaning they are a sidekick. They are secondary. Robin to the Batman ice cream. Bullwinkle to the Rocky mousse cake. They are spread free form on a pan and then formed once they come out of the oven. In our theory lesson this morning, my chest was already getting tight. Stressful cookies. Oxymoron. Nope.
Timing is a big component of stencil cookies. As you know, timing = not my gifting. Movie references, butchered accents and even voices = totally my gift. I can make quotes from Aladdin or Princess Bride work for ANYTHING*. Can I remember that I have high fat cookies that are slowly smouldering to their death in the oven? Apparently not.

One helpful development today is that we utilized the three extra conventional ovens in our kitchen today. ("He CAN be taught! *See?)
Of the teams of six, four were designated a conventional oven each and then the remaining two teams were designated one of the two convection ovens each. We were a convection team. This helped me with my oven skills more than you can imagine. Our almond tuile still came out a little…bronzed on the edges. But after that we really stepped up and the rest of our stuff came out with a really beautiful colour. Our cigarettes (cookies, I swear) came out a little under baked but it was a good exercise to determine how cigarette batter was supposed to look, post-bake.

One of the (numerous) aspects of stencil cookies that makes it stressful is the shaping. Stencil cookies are baked flat and then shaped directly after they emerge from the oven. And when I say 'directly' I mean, when they are still hissing. Again, timing. So we set up a little "Shape Station aka Jane Fonda" on a rolling trolley next to our oven with wooden dowels and other shaping devices so that we could do our shaping in a warm environment instead of running our trays from the oven to our chilly work station by the floor to ceiling windows while they whine and become frigid in the travel time. Numerous time I would pull our tuiles from the oven and put them on the trolley only to shriek, "Shit, I forgot my effing offset spatula!" Step one would be to body check someone. Second would be to call my offset spatula, which had done nothing to deserve it other than remain where I put it, a nasty epithet. Step three would be to try and form my cooled tuile into something akin to a cylinder and watch it snap under the pressure. Step four: swear, under my breath this time, stuff some of the cookie carnage into my mouth and portion out a new tray. Yeah, they cool THAT fast. Talk about killing the mood.

Given their high butter content, tuiles bake very fast. About 5-7 minutes, I found for mine. But because of their high fat content, along with the high sugar content, when they emerge from the oven they are very flexible. You can drape them, crush them, fold them, crease them. If you do it in time, there is almost no limit to what you can do to the shape.

The texture, which is a brisk 'snap', and the toasty sugar flavour of the cookie is totally worth the work but only if you want to make quite a few. Tuile keep well when stored in an airtight container. You can bang off a huge amount of the cookies or you can make the dough/batter and keep it in the fridge until you want to make more. These would be great around Christmas and New Years when desserts abound and sometimes you figure you've got a dress on so why doesn't your ice cream. You think that right?

Florentines are a bit different. They are technically a 'biscuit' or a 'cookie' but ours, being a tad under baked, came out more like a caramel square. Which is an awesome mistake to make. Florentines, in their addition to a dessert plate or as a garnish are usually finished with a cream or chocolate on them. They have a really warm nuttiness to them. This recipe had candied orange peel, which normally I would never question but this time it only contributed a bitterness. Weird.

We also made shortbread, which were really good. And a necessary reprieve from the chaos. Although the recipe called for a hard-boiled egg yolk instead of a standard raw egg yolk which was strange. The PM chef said it was 'very southern'. And I trust southerners with anything associated with cornmeal, pickles, sauce and chicken really. To be honest, I don't really question southerners when it comes to food. This is blind trust. But then you add hard boiled egg to cookie dough. And my cookie dough smells like a sulphur leak. But then -BUT THEN -the cookies become the most tender shortbread sammies I've ever had and I revert to my former wisdom. Southerners. God's gift to food. (Hush puppies? Am I right?) During the decoration phase, numerous people made a comment regarding my love of jam. Maybe it's excessive. I definitely love jam more than cookies. Twisted? Probably. But these cookies are a good mediator. Cookies: 1 point.

These are the gingerbread that I promised. The decoration segment of the class time became stranded in an icing session bordering on the grotesque. There was a lot of neon icing going on. A couple decapitated John Does. And a lot of lederhosen going on. I managed to salvage a couple of undressed ones, naked if you will. They look like they're wearing choir robes which is fun. Ginger dames.

Tomorrow we do macarons. Parisian macarons. I know I'm going to be excited because I love macarons. They are elegant. And colourful. And playful. And French. And then I will likely become stressed in class and leave saying gin's not gonna cut it and I'm going to snort coke or something. But right now, macarons are a giddy thing.

Mine will not look like this. But I'm curious to see how they will turn out. I want to make crazy flavoured ones like strawberry and basil or coconut and lime. Lemon and chocolate. Endless possibilities. Tomorrow we also do meringues and macaroons, which are not to be confused with macarons.

Macaroon:

via The Shoebox Kitchen

Macaron:

Via Project Foodie

Meringue:

via A Taste of Koko

So much whipping. Which I am straight up not doing by hand. It's probably possible. My grandmother probably did it for her lemon meringue long before KitchenAid came in pistachio. But I'm Gen Y. And that's why people hate us. I console my laziness by telling myself that no one in the industry would tolerate me if I pranced in saying I wanted to do it the 'old fashioned way'. And post-apocalyptic, I foresee meringue falling to the wayside. That's a luxury you just can't include when you are trying to make a fire like a boy scout.

Pies come on Friday. I will be bringing home at least one FULL SIZE  PIE every day. This is nothing like loaves of bread. This is ferocious.
Anyone want a pie?

Find a cookie you love. Find comfy pajama pants. Eat. Enjoy. Repeat.

About Me

Name: Bri

This is where I (Bri -writer and pastry novice) and my husband (Moozh -theologian and culinarian) document our journey through academia into the culinary world and back again.

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Previous Posts

• Song for Rome Pt 1
• The Pizza Quest and Gelateria del Teatro
• Song for Venice
• Da Vinci, Shylock and a 24 hr pizza chain
• Song for Prague
• Alfons Mucha, The Green Fairy, and Fried Cheese Sa...
• Song for Berlin
• Gorky, Stalin and Hitler. Are there sausages?
• Song for Provence - Minor Swing from Chocolat
• Cezanne, Sextius and Calisson d'Aix

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