Dimensions

Last midterm for now. They warned us it would be about 3 hours, but I was out of there in one hour and feeling restless. It was about 9am, so I trucked off to Chinatown to get some brunch and do some shopping. I wandered around till the hunger pangs set in, then I nipped into Hon's WonTon Noodle house for a steaming bowl of Wonton soup with stewed beef (and a lot of MSG). Now, I react to MSG and I am fully aware of the fact that Hon's wontons contain MSG, but I can't help it -- they are so damn good. Total bill was $5.03. After I left Hon's, I stopped in at Boss bakery (still in chinatown) and picked up a super cheap chinese pastry to munch on as I made my way to T&T Supermarket. I love this store. I spent about an hour strolling the aisles, checking out all the unfamiliar ingredients and selecting a few to take home -- chili garlic sauce, some bizarre coffee thing, MSG-free wontons, noodles and mango gummies.

T&T haul

Egg And Breakfast cookery.

I am going to start by talking about what we learned today. then I will rant. Anyone who doesn't want to stick around for the rant can stop reading after the class notes.
This week was breakfasts. Chef Soren is back, I am so happy to see he him, just so much less of an ego than dear Chef Tim. One of my group members was missing, but we soldiered on ( I'll save the rest for the rant). First half of class was devoted to individual egg cookery projects. We had to do a boiled egg, two poached eggs, an omelet (french style) and scrambled eggs (french style). Now, French style eggs are generally on the soft side, so the scrambled eggs had to be almost snotty (MMMMMM snotty eggs). Mine came out perfect -- I have to brag, because everything else was just ok. The omelet was the hardest part. Had to be folded tightly, almost cigar shaped, and soft inside, no colour on the outside. Mine was good inside, but there was a golden brown hue to the outer layer. All my other eggs came out ok.
Then onto group projects. We had to produce, in our small groups, pancakes, frittata and quiche. I took quiche and let the other guys take the pancakes and frittata. I forgot to take a picture of the quiche, but it looked good. Personally, I found it too cheesey and I had slightly undercooked the crust on the par baking, so the crust was crappy. But it looked good! I didn't take pictures of our other creations as they turned out CRAP! Well, the frittata was ok, just overcooked, but the pancakes.... the boy who created them used salt instead of sugar! I took pictures of some other groups creations (asked permission of course) so here they are....

Pancakes 

frittata 
Got some early tests back. 100% and whatever 26 out of 23 points works out to. (There was a bonus question).
Now, on to the rant....
I am getting so frustrated in school. I just want to work in a group of competent people with a sufficient grasp of the English language so that we can communicate. Once again. My group consisted of me and some people I hope I don't have to work with again. This time, it was to ESL students. And one of them has no real sense for cooking. I felt so stranded. I am sick of being "in charge" of a group, especially when they can't follow instructions. It sounds so petty, but I almost feel like I am learning less because of them. Maybe I am supposed to be learning patience.
Second vent. Once again, I was doing the fricking dishes. I know I could just not do them, but I can't stand to watch them pile up and I know we can't leave until they are done, so I just do them. Is this my kharmic adjustment for always passing the dish duties off to Rob?

Done, done, done

It was the dreaded midterm this morning. Practical AM, Theory PM. I was so terrified, especially of the practical. I know my knife skills aren't anything to write home about at the moment and I was just so scared about everything going wrong. I cut myself, thankfully with a sharp knife, so although it was reasonably deep, it was clean and relatively painless. I calmed down a bit after I cut myself, and things went relatively smooth from there. I suspect I got about 75% on my practical skills. The afternoon was a written theory test which took me half an hour and (this may sound cocky, but its true) I think I scored somewhere between 90 and 100%.

here is the hand...

look, a bandaid!! 

Happy Mother's Day...

I feel a little guilty today. Had a nice long chat with my mom, ended up dumping all my stress on her and then find out that she found me two major books for my school plus my dad is tracking down a whetstone -- And they don't want me to pay for it! Happy Mother's Day indeed. I should be the one doing the purchasing here.

So, what did I do with my days off from school (besides work)? I studied!!
I had a review sheet of possible questions on the theory exam to go over in detail. Y'all want to know anything about vegetables, starches, sauces and stock, I am your girl.
page one of my midterm review 
As well, I plotted my strategy for the practical exam, the top part of which you can see here. As well as my knife skills, I had to prepare Bechamel, mayonaise and consommé

top my practical sheet 

Dimentia

Its Wednesday again... I was so tired this morning and we ran out of coffee, I practically had to crawl to school. Thankfully, Julian lets us have a big pot of coffee from the storeroom and that helped me wake up a bit. Today was one of the first Dimensions classes that I actually enjoyed. Our main focus was menu planning and we started the day off witha mental "black box" aka Iron Chef Dubrulle. We were given a list of ingredients and told we had to use it All to make an appetiser. The ingredients were: eggs, cream, butter, flour, mussels, champagne, tarragon, salt and pepper, caviar.
There were some bizarre ideas developed, but also some that sounded amazing.
After this exercise (No I won't tell you what I did, I want to let you all think about it for a day or two...), we moved onto developing menu for a fine-dining restaurant. We had to develop 7 appetisers and 10 mains, each person taking one. Of course everyone has different culinary styles so some of the entries were hilarious.
Julienne Shiitake mushrooms handpicked in the Bavarian forest and served with a merlot sauce in a hot steamy pan. I kid you not, someone actually presented that idea!
The categories were:
Appetisers
1. Consommé
2. Mushrooms
3. Scallops
4. SHrimp
5. Truffles (yes, the fungal ones)
6. Salad
7. Potato
Mains
1. Beef
2. Lamb
3. Pork
4. Vegetarian
5. Tuna
6. Salmon
7. chicken
8. Rice
9. Pasta
10. Veal

Its a fun exercise, tryt to come up with dishes (money no object). I had to do lamb and ended up with 3 ideas and had to pass it off to my friends in the class for a vote.

After Menu building, we touched briefly on the kitchen brigade system, an overview of our midterm and then, next term's schedule. I was horrified to discover it was 4 days a week instead of 3. I am still paying off my tuition and and I can't afford to drop another day of work -- i won't be able to make my payments. Chef Julian really impressed me, immmediately taking me to the financial advisor and having her rewrite my payment schedule and reduce my monthly payments by more than half and extend them six months past graduation. First time I felt like the school was actually trying to make things work for me. Now I can be excited about the fact that I will have 4 days of cooking starting in July!!

More Starches!

Day two of starches. I came in early in the hopes of catching our group up with the rest of the class. No such luck. The minute Crazy Chef spotted me, I was on a chicken carcass procuring and dividing mission. Cold bloody chicken was the last thing I felt like handling at 7 in the morning, but I felt worse for the other person working with me. She is a vegetarian and just generally squeamish about carcasses. "I can do this" I kept hearing her mutter. Blecch.
By the time we had sorted out everything crazy man wanted us to do, it was well into class time. Luck smiled upon us today, though, because class idiot dropped out. I hope I wasn't the straw that broke his back, but I really don't think he belonged in this class. Everyone is probably thinking that I am a big, mean, judgemental person. But really, this guy was terrible. End result was that our group got combined with another that was down a person and it was so much fun. I was working with someone I have worked with before and someone who's approach to time management and forethought is in line with my own. Just a much more positive atmosphere all around.
Crazy Chef (CC), gave a lengthy lecture on how good his demo recipes were and then we got started.
We had to produce:
Gnocchi
Handmade fettucini
Pasta Carbonara
Rosti
spaetzle
Risotto
Pilaf
Our spaetzle was a very simple recipe, which I executed and finished by tossing the Spaetzle in a fresh herb brown butter and spooning over a bit of our tomato sauce from Monday.

Spaetzle 
The Gnocchi was a delicious potato and herb gnocchi--of which I am still eating leftovers--also served with the tomato sauce.
Risotto and pilaf I had nothing to do with, but I am having left over pilaf tonight! And I used the handcrank pasta machine to produce the fettucine for our group which was used to make Pasta Carbonara

Carbonara 
I am in severe carb overload at the moment!
We wrapped up the day in the dishpit {chef Julian thinks we shouldn't call it that, but I am sorry, it is a pit}. Five of us stayed behind and scrubbed non-stop for twenty minutes. Yuck. First in Last out and I am SO exhausted.

Monday morning Again

We moved onto starches this week and were given a monumental amount of recipes to complete. I was in a group with Helen -- the english girl and a boy named Chris. Chris is the class dunce. It was mind-blowingly difficult to deal with him. The boy managed to screw up the rice!!!
We had to produce:
Steamed Rice
Roasted Potatoes
Duchesse Potatoes
Large Tourné Potatoes
Small Tourné Potatoes
Tomato sauce
Baguette Dough
Pasta Dough
Cook potatoes for Gnocchi and Rosti
Prep for Rice Pilaf and Risotto
Potato Croquettes

croquettes 
It was HOT, sweaty, frusterating, exhausting yet exhilarating day. today was one of the first days that I actually felt like we were being prepared for the real world. Of course, class ran and hour and a half late and we all felt like we had been put through the wringer, but it was awesome.
To top the day off, I came home, made dinner and then finished canning a batch of jam from Mes Confitures!

jam 

Kicking back on a Friday Morning

I had to work today, but not till 11:30, so I klatched and played in the garden.


Azaleas in my garden 
Thursday, I actually got a day off work!!! I spent the day traipsing around town trying to track down a Larousse Gastronomie, Martha Stewart Hors D'ouevres (sorry, can't speel) and an Oxford Companion to Food --- used. No luck, I am afraid, although I did find an adorable pair of baby blue mary janes for a mere five dollars!!
I won't be putting out an edition of Putting It All Together this week. Check back next week when I hope to explore the wonderful world of starches.

Dimensions

I think I am going to rename this class Dementia. I really, really don't like it. This week we did food costing, recipe conversion, learnt about what we can write off on our taxes if we own our own hospitality industry business, and went to the library. That's right, we had a library field trip -- how to use the library. It smacked of grade school and irritated me no end that we were wasting a beautiful, hot, sunny day doing this. I was happy to do all the academic, classroom stuff though. I am sure it will all come in useful in the end.
I still haven't gotten my first essay back. GRRRRRR.

Blecch

First of all, my apologies for not updating sooner. I have been feeling a little stressed from both school AND work, so I have been spending my free time drinking and watching brain rotting TV. Back to the grind... I am just going to date these posts for the days they apply to. So even though I am typing this in May, it is for April 26th or something like that.

We still have Crazy Chef. And its hot AND we were frying today. I forgot to take pictures again -- I blame it on heat exhaustion, so I will share the view from my classroom with you instead.

view from my class.. 
Sometimes its hard to concentrate on lectures when I have that to look at.
Anyway, back to class. My group is assigned Celeriac Fritters and Fried Eggplant with Tomato Sauce. Still have two fairly apathetic guys in my group, so I wasn't too surprised when they elected me boss or "chef". :rolleyes: The recipes themselves were fun to execute, although the heat in the kitchen started to get almost overpowering, especially once the deep-frying started. One of the boys in my group was responsible for heating our HUGE pot of oil, and he got it WAY too hot. We were sharing it with another group, and one of them tried to put a slice of eggplant in the pot. We were supposed to be SHALLOW frying the eggplant. I stopped him, so he grabbed a spoon out of a pot of water they had on the stove and plunged it into the boiling oil. Anyone who knows anything about boiling oil will know what happened next. The oil just exploded everywhere. Fortunately, we all jumped back in the nick of time, but that was very nearly a hideous kitchen accident.
The eggplant was SO good. And this from someone who hates eggplant. Buutery, creamy interior, crispy exterior, fresh tasting tomato sauce that cut through any residual oiliness... I am so glad I am learning how to cook!
The Celeriac fritters were also nice, but I couldn't bring myself to eat more than one, after standing over the oil for so long.

Peas, Squash and Crazy Chefs!

This week we cover vegetable cookery. My group, comprising of me and two reasonably culinarily talented guys, was given a Snow Pea Stir-fry and an unnamed spaghetti squash dish that the chef made up on the spot. Before I talk about the food, I want to talk about the chef. Chef Soren has taken two weeks off to spend with his elderly parents who are visiting from Denmark. We got stuck with a substitute --. He was, well, cheffish. Borderline chauvinist with a wicked temper. Yay!! Anyway.
Snow Pea Stir-Fry became Snap Pea Stir-fry... It was simple -- too simple, and delicious.

Snow Pea Stir-fry
We also were asked to throw together a dish that this guy (sorry, chef) created out of his vast head -- Spaghetti Squash with a tomato concassé and (yes) pancake syrup. (The storeroom was out of honey and maple syrup).

Spaghetti Squash
Once our dishes were finished, we got to have an All-Vegetarian Buffet (well, except for the Brussels Sprouts with bacon)and all those veggies were so good,. I get hungry again just thinking about it. Time to go make dinner (Pork kebabs with berbéré sauce, couscous and tomato and cucumber salad. With an organic mango and cashew fruit salad with lime dressing for dessert.)

Putting it all together...

This weeks installment of putting it all together features Hollandaise!. Hollandaise was the sauce my group made the worst and the one I didn't get to participate in. So I decided to have Eggs Benedict for breakfast this morning - mmm eggs on eggs....
Started off with two egg yolks:

In the beginning was the egg... 
Then I added water and lemon juice and whisked like mad. Transferred the bowl to a double boiler and continued to whisk like a maniac. After the eggs started to thicken, I pulled them off the double boiler and had Rob drizzle clarified butter in as I whisked. Thinned it a bit and seasoned with salt and pepper:

Beaten to submission 
Rob kindly poached some eggs, I toasted the English muffins, we topped them off with some ham, the eggs and the hollandaise:

the final result 
Very good, very rich. I declare this episode of Putting It Together a success!

First Mark of A Chef

My first blister! 
I was so proud to discover my first knife blister! It has since gone down and is working its self up to callous status.

Dimensions

Okay, I may have gotten a little carried away today. But I was SO pissed off. I turn purple just thinking about it. It was ridiculous Dimensions of Culinary Education Class again today. I was feeling a little rough due to some Arts Club Hijinks on Tuesday night, but I was there bright and early. We waited in the hall, Chef Julian doesn't show. So someone from the office lets us into our classroom. We wait. 8:20, someone tries to get a hold of him. he isn't at home, his cell-phone is off, there is no message. I don't know about anyone else, but I was little concerned. We decided to continue to wait. People worked on vocabulary from the other class, chatted quietly etc. He showed up at 8:40, ushered us into a different classroom and then went around the class asking what we had done for the last 40 minutes. Then gave everyone shit for not getting started on their group projects. "If this was a work situation, would you have just hung around done nothing for 40 minutes?" I was SOOOOOOOO mad. But I kept my mouth shut. No point in causing an in-class scene. At the break, I went up to him and told him how I felt. Conversation went something like this:
"Sorry to be obnoxious, but I just wanted to share my take on what happened this morning with you. Is that okay?"
"Sure, go ahead."
" Well, I understand the lesson you were trying to teach, but I have a problem with your methods."
"What?" (he starts to turn red at this point)
" I have been working full time and hard for a long time now. If something like this happened at work, I would do my job no matter what because that is what I am payed to do. However, I am at school. I am not being payed. in fact, I am paying a lot of money to be here."
"Ahh, but you could have been Self-Educating during that time."
" I certainly could have been. But the point is that I am not paying good money to Self-educate. I am paying YOU to educate ME and I would expect that you would be here on time to do that."
"Okay, fair point."
"Sorry to be so argumentative, but I just needed to tell you that.
"No worries, its a fair point"

And that is where it ended. The rest of the class was resume building.
Now I am wondering if I said to much. I am not used to being back in school and being treated like a child. I need to stop writing about this, I am just getting pissed off again.

Plating Red Pepper and Spinach Coulis 
Those were two of the sauces we made today. The other was Sauce Bordelaise, without the marrow. Thankfully, it was a big improvement on Monday's catastrophe. We also had a knife skills test. I get 7.5/10 for my fine julienne (it was 2mm instead of 1.5mm) and and 8.5/10 for my tourne - that was the shocker. I hate tourne and I really expected to fail that one... Next week, we start on vegetables. I think we will be eating well on Monday. My recipes include Green Beans Amandine, Brussels sprouts with Bacon and Snow Pea Stir-fry.

Bloody Sauces...

Well, not literally bloody. Today we had to make mayonnaise, hollandaise, beurre blanc and bechamel. Honestly, the only one that worked out for me was mayonnaise. And I "forgot" to take pictures today, so no exciting photos...
Chef Soren showed up this morning, hobbling in pain and just stuck a round long enough to let us know that Chef Julian would be taking over the class.. Chef Julian is ok, but he has a tendency to skim and not hit the details and talking points the same way as Soren. Anyway, we got our tests back from last week - two A's !! I got 100% on one and 99% on the second. And here I was thinking I totally f-ed it up. It all went downhill from there. Our beurre blanc split, our hollandaise split ( I didn't make the hollandaise, so I won't take responsibility for it...) and our bechamel tasted odd. It was the best looking, but something in the ingredients went wrong. It had a faintly acidic flavour which no one could identify or pin down a possible cause for. Very frustrating day all round. On the plus side, we got out of class early, I blasted through my homework and I am going to treat myself to a Corona on the patio in the sun.

Putting it All Together -- Part Two

Last night, I made up my chicken noodle soup. I diced carrots, celery and leeks and minced some garlic. I sweated those down, stirred in my mushrooms, then added the consommé from Thursday night. Then cooked chicken and cooked fusilli.
chicken noodle soup
I tasted it for seasoning and almost swooned - it was SO good, probably the best chicken soup I have ever made. I am a little jealous of Rob getting to have it for lunch today!
After soup making, we watched two episodes of The Sopranos and then I sat up till past midnight doing homework.

Putting it all together Part 1

I know I mentioned last week that I am going to try to incorporate what I learn at school into a home project. This week's project will be a two parter. I started by making consommé, which I will hopefully get around to posting directions for on a new site that I set up just for recipes. The consommé starts off looking pretty ugly, a mixture of egg whites, ground chicken, and mirepoix with a half burnt onion throw in for colour. Oh, and the stock, of course.

in the beginning
Then, bring it up to a simmer, stirring frequently. Once it hits the simmer, stop stirring. Let it simmer gently, undisturbed, for an hour.

At the end..
At this point, I cut a hole in the "raft" and gently ladled out the clear broth, running it through a cheesecloth lined sieve. Et Voila!

beautiful clear consommé
Part 2 will be turning it into chicken soup.

Food Safe/Worksafe

Well, you will all be happy to know that I passed my FoodSafe -- without it, I would not be able to continue at the school. Of course, anyone who doesn't pass it, has problems. It is based almost entirely on common sense, mixed with a touch of paranoia. I can tell you I will never look at food the same -- we learnt just how disgusting and dirty food really is!
Now my love is sick -- picked up what I had last week -- so I will be making a chicken consommé at home tonight and a chicken noodle soup tomorrow. I'll try to squeeze these in after work as I am working the rest of the week.