"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..

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. 

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.

Last day at the Italian Spa...

You when (or maybe you don't) you are at the end of a long run; You are tired. You are most likely cranky. You are cursing every car that passes you because they are not offering to drive you home and maybe buy you a Klondike bar on the way. It's all self-talk at that point. If you are me, you are likely emanating steam from the top of your head. You are NOT DONE. And if you sit down and pout because you are tired, people will throw garbage and empty juice boxes at you because you are lame. You have to keep going because you have already run SO FAR. And you are going to be proud of yourself and quite possibly lord over people the fact that you run EVERYDAY and they sit on the couch and watch Jenna Marbles. Which is what you wish you were doing every second that you were running.

This complex (and completely hypothetical, I swear) situation is somewhat akin to what this day felt like, with or without the excessive heat release from the top of my head. The kitchen is very hot. We are cresting a hill, with our Midterm theory and practical tomorrow and Wednesday, respectively. But once we are through that, we are HALFWAY. What we have just learned, there is that and more in Advanced. There is so much on that side for us but there is a crud tonne of hard work too. (*I said 'crud tonne' at school the other day. Everyone was amused by my hillbilly language.)

A lot of running metaphors, hey? Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me something.

The students that are presently in Advanced have been so helpful giving us some healthy feedback as to what to expect and how to enjoy the experience. Last  night, I was awake for quite a while when I should have been asleep dreaming about what advanced would be like.

There is a portion where we serve in the restaurant. We talk to they guests about the dessert, take their orders, take care of them at the end of their meal. I love that crap. Quite reasonably, if someone orders dessert in a restaurant, it has the potential to make or break their dining experience. It can redeem everything that went wrong at any point during the night. But it can also damage an otherwise flawless evening. Talking to people about something that you're passionate about is fun. And not hard. I turn into the 'Phone Voice' version of myself. Do you ever listen to a recording of yourself on someone's answering machine or you hear your voice in a video and you think to yourself, "THAT is what I sound like? Whoa." You have to kind of create a persona that is half your day to day personality so that you are at ease and authentic, but then you also have to create a version of yourself that is endearing and approachable. You don't have to be perfect. People actually like you better if you seem somewhat like them, even in a fine dining experience. We've all had servers that have no sense of humour, who are strangled in this really foreign interaction. If you can converse with someone respectfully, in a way that enhances their dining experience, you are set.

But I was also thinking about dessert. Of course. In Advanced we will do Bread Room and Dessert Service. In Dessert Service, you have the opportunity to play with flavours, textures, temperatures -all the components that go into creating a really memorable dessert.

We did plating today. All of those plates that Moozh has been doing all semester that looked so pretty. I got to do that today. Yesterday we made a Spice Passionfruit Poached Pear and a Panna Cotta. We used those today to practice plating and get a sense of what presentation looks like, especially in a dessert service. Chef gave us feedback as to how to create a plate is not only beautiful but still functional.


This was the Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta that we made. I paired with with some fresh citrus, a raspberry puree and a mango coulis. One of the aspects to a plated dessert is that all of the garnishes should be edible (remember what I said about the mint sprig yesterday? You can still EAT a mint sprig. That option is still on the table.)

This was the Poached Pear, which was amazing. I'm usually not a fan of the texture of cooked pear but this was perfect. It was just fork tender, while still having some bite to it. I halved it because I thought that it would be cute to use the poached pear as a vessel for some fruit and a chocolate cigarette. It sits on a chocolate ganache smear with some chocolate gelato at the end. I went a little heavy on the chocolate ganache. But I did say yesterday that you always want more sauce than they give you on the plate. Oh well. Next time.

These were some of the options that Chef gave us as inspiration. Early this morning before I left for school I was looking for dessert plating inspiration. Maybe these will provide some inspiration for someone doing the same thing.

More Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta:

Poached Pear: 

This was an Espresso Panna Cotta with the Poached Pear on the same plate. 

It all gets real from here on out.

Find some dessert. Even Oreos will do. Put some sweet sauce on a plate. Chocolate sauce will do. Put a mint sprig on top. Enjoy even though haters be hatin'. Repeat.