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.

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.