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..

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.