caviar tasting

We had a caviar tasting on the first day of Intro to Garde Manger after boiling eggs. Supposedly the good stuff there on the right was $120 (for 2 oz). I just don't get it... I guess it's like wine: it's an acquired taste. But even so, that small amount of food for that much money is not worth it to me, no matter how good it tasted.


In case you're wondering though, caviar is good with champagne, vodka, latkes, oysters, lemon wedges, hard-boiled eggs with separated yolks and whites, onions, and creme fraiche or sour cream. It's best served on ice in its original container with the lid nearby. DO NOT serve it with a metal spoon, because they seep metallic taste into the eggs and spoil the flavor. Serve it with spoons made with mother of pearl, bone, glass, good ivory, wood or horn, and porcelain. Or you can serve it on plastic like we did. I know, fancy, right?

journey to the center of the egg

If you've ever walked by our school, you might have seen a few chefs wearing those ridiculously tall hats with vertical lines (or folds) on them. Well traditionally, each of those lines signified how many different ways the chef could cook an egg. When I first heard that, I was like, really? Are there really that many ways? Well, I learned in my Intro to Garde Manger class this week that there are.

1. Soft-boiled 2. Medium-boiled 3. Hard-boiled 4. Sunny Side Up 5. Over Easy 6. Over Medium 7. Over Hard 8. Poached 9. Scrambled 10. Omelet style 11. Baked

And of course there are different styles of omelets and different things you can mix it with to bake... which is what we learned this week. I love eggs and all, but I think we could have dedicated just one day to eggs.

My favorite egg dish this week would probably be the Huevos Rancheros. It's so simple, but I'm hooked! I've always heard about it, but never tried it. I had no idea how delicious it was! It 's mostly because of the enchilada sauce, but I think I just love Mexican food in general.

Huevos Rancheros
2 taco-sized corn tortillas

2 eggs, over medium
1/2 cup of frijoles refritos (refried beans)
1/3 cup of enchilada sauce
1/3 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
2 Tbsp of butter/vegetable oil
Salt & pepper to taste
Chives for garnish

Of course all these inredients can be adjusted to suit your taste and desired portion.

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Then, melt 1 Tbsp of the butter a medium saute pan and heat the tortillas just until slightly brown on both sides. Transfer to a plate and spread a thin layer of refried beans until it covers most of the surface of the tortillas. Set aside.

Using the same pan, add the rest of the butter and either cook the eggs one at a time or together on medium heat until all the white is cooked. Then flip over to finish cooking on the other side for 1 minute, or until yolk is just cooked on the outside. Slide the eggs onto the tortillas and beans. At this point, you can either transfer everything back onto the saute pan, top it off with the sauce and cheese, and pop it into the oven until the cheese is melted, or leave it on the plate and top it off with the sauce and cheese and pop that into the oven. That's what I did in class. I like the look of melted cheese on the plate. This way, the plate is also hot, which is the way they serve it in restaurants.

After the cheese is melted, take it out of the oven, and garnish with some chopped chives and enjoy! The egg yolk should be firm on the outside, but runny in the center.

Mm! As Ingrid Hoffman would say, "Simply delicioso!" Does she still have her own show?

jacob's dairy-free birthday

So I took a break from my double-life this weekend and helped my friend out with his birthday dinner. Just a few cool people, and I hope you were one of them byotch. Those were Mean Girls references in case you were wondering. ::laughs to himself:: Anyway...

I've cooked dinners for people before, and let me tell you, it's not easy! I'm just looking back on my birthday dinner and my friend Ben's birthday dinner and how whelming (not quite OVERwhelming) they were. Making 3-5 intricate courses to feed even a group of 10 is actually harder than making 10 easy appetizers.

So this is what Jacob and I made for the cool kids who came:

• Beer-battered Chicken Tenders (Thanks to Guy for fryin' the chicken)
  
• Beer-battered Fries
• Stuffed Cucumbers
• Pizza Bites
• Pineapple Chicken Kabobs
  
• Roasted Red Bell Pepper Hummus
• Red Onion Bruschetta
  
• Risotto-stuffed Red Bell Peppers
• Baked Tofu and Veggie Chicken Lettuce Wraps
• Pumpkin Pie
• Fried Strawberry-Raspberry Won Tons (thanks to Guy and Patrick for helping)
  
• German Chocolate Cupcakes (made by Guy and Jacob)

So here's the twist: Jacob's a lactophobe! Well maybe not, but he's lactose intolerant. So everything here was DAIRY-FREE! Also, I don't prefer to eat red meat and poultry, and my friend Josie is a vegetarian. Oh, and this is Angie.

She's vegan. So it was important for us to create a menu that had something that everyone could eat.

Which brings us to the stuffed cucumbers she's holding. She probably looks so happy because it's completely vegan. It's stuffed with veggie ham salad made with deli-style veggie ham, onions, mustard, and honey. They were so simple, yet so refreshing! They're perfect bite-size appetizers.

I got this idea along with a few others from a Summer (I know it's not Summer anymore, but this is southern California afterall) appetizer book from Pillsbury. It's a handy little book.

These are the pizza bites before going into the oven. I would have taken a picture afterward, but they were such a hit they were in our stomachs before my camera could even lay a flash on them. The dough is made with Pillsbury Crescent Recipe Creations. The cheese is tofu-cheese. You really can't tell the difference once you bake it with everything.

So here's the birthday boy himself, holding the risotto-stuffed red bell peppers. Instead of chicken stock/broth, I used vegetable broth. It definitely isn't as good with that substitution, but wasn't bad.


This next dish was probably one of my favorites. These lettuce wraps are so tasty and easy to make.

-Baked Tofu
-Veggie Chicken
-Salted Cashews
-Hoisin sauce
-A head of lettuce

I suggest getting all this at a Chinese market. That's the only place I can ever find plain baked tofu and my favorite veggie chicken (made with bean curd). And while you're there, you can pick up the hoisin sauce, salted cashews and lettuce for cheap. Just chop the tofu and veggie chicken into little cubes, chop or crush the cashews, throw it all in a pan and saute on medium heat with oil (and garlic and onion if you'd like) for 2-3 minutes. Then add about a tablespoon of the hoisin sauce and heat until it's incorporated. Spread some hoisin sauce on a leaf of lettuce, throw the tofu mixture in, and you have yourself a party.

And of course, we can't forget dessert! These fruit-filled won tons get me so excited! I just have to find a better way to make them. I think I will use bigger won ton wraps next time so I can put more fruit in them. Basically, you dice up whatever fruits you would like. In the past, I've put a combination of strawberries, banana, and kiwi inside the won ton. This time we used just diced strawberries, a raspberry, and some pastry cream inside. I wasn't sure how the pastry cream would hold up in there since we deep fry them, but it was actually pretty good! We topped it off here with some non-dairy whipped cream, and a raspberry-blackberry sauce. Just blend a little box of blackberries with a handful of raspberries with sugar and honey and strain out the seeds. If you're like me, it'll be something you'll want to make over and over again.

That's about it for food pictures, so you'll have to trust me when I say mostly everything looked good. This post would be way too long if I showed you everything anyway! But I will leave you with this...


I will try to have Jacob write up an entry on here to tell us about his dairy-free pumpkin pie, just in time for Thanksgiving!

test day

Today was the last day of production for our Baking 110 class, which means TEST DAY! We drew pieces of paper from a bowl last night and I drew Menu #5: Eclairs, Raspberry Ganache Tartlettes, and Hazelnut Meringue Drops with Coffee Buttercream. That's a total of 6 recipes to execute plus assembly! 1. Creme Patesserie (pastry cream) 2. Pate a Choux ("cabbage paste") 3. Ganache 4. Pate Sucree (sugar dough) 5. Japonaise/Meringue Noisette (hazelnut) 6. Coffee buttercream. Four hours seemed like plenty of time, buuuuuuut it wasn't.

Piping the pastry cream into the eclairs were frustrating enough the other day, but the oven I put my pate a choux in was accidentally turned off while baking. So my eclairs collapsed a little bit and took longer to bake. The reason it's so frustrating, is because we had to use parchment paper to make a little piping bag to squeeze into little holes on the bottom of the eclairs. The tip of the bag gets soft after a few squeezes so it's hard to stick into another hole. I'm sure in the real world, they have better tools for doing that. So I presented only 4 eclairs instead of 6.

My 2 tartlettes came out really nice. They're the same ones from my previous post. My meringue drops turned out good, but I couldn't get the buttercream to set. I was in such a time crunch at the end I had a hard time fixing it. Oh well... it's the experience, not the grades that matter to me in culinary school.

Next week we start our Garde Manger class, in which we're making cold dishes. Yum! Bring on the pasta salads and sushi!

So long to baking lab... at least until Advanced Baking.

(A basic quiche I made yesterday)

baking

So, I'm currently in the last few days of my Baking 110: Intro to Baking and Pastry class. I wish I had started this blog from the very beginning, but better late than never.

In this class, we've learned how to make all kinds of things from baguettes to cheesecake. I've really enjoyed this class. There's something therapeutic about kneading a blob of sticky gooeyness into a ball with the spring-back quality of 10 Tempur-Pedic pillows.

Today, we made eclairs (which mean lightning bolt in French), but they weren't that exciting to look at, so I didn't take any pictures. Instead, let's talk tarts. Last week, we made a classic fruit tart with pastry cream filling. As it came time to assemble and arrange our vibrantly-colored assortment of fruits, I got a little intimidated, I'm not gonna lie! Especially after the chef came over to me after putting down the center fruit and said "That's a great idea, but you want everything on the tart to be edible." I had left the leaves of the strawberry attached. D'oh! I should have learned from my Intro to Culinary Arts class. Garnishes need to be edible! So anyway... this is what I came up with:

Not bad huh? I was making it up as I went, but everyone seemed to think it was beautiful. Aww, ::blushes::.

The secret to the shine is a nappage - 70% apricot coating, 30% water. Just incorporate those two on a stove top until you can brush it over the fruit after assembly. It also acts as a preservative.

For a good pastry cream:

16 fluid oz of whole milk
1/4 of a vanilla bean, cut and seeds scraped out
3 1/2 oz granulated sugar
5 egg yolks
1 oz cornstarch
1 tblsp. butter

By the way, unless it says fluid (fl) oz, we usually weigh all our measurements on a kitchen scale. I got one for my birthday from IKEA. It's come in handy these past couple of weeks of class. You should get one!

Here's a little kitchen conversion for you: 16 fluid oz equals 2 cups. I've also tried this recipe at home already using soy milk, and it worked out pretty well, so I'm sure any type of milk would suffice. It's the cornstarch and egg that really thicken this puppy up. With this recipe, you don't really need to weigh things. Add about 1/3 of a cup of sugar. This is what goes through my head every day in class: "You can never have too much sugar." Well that's not really true. What I really mean is that a little more sugar than the recipe calls for is okay by me! 1 oz of cornstarch is about 2 full tablespoons. If you don't have the vanilla beans, add some good quality vanilla extract to it. Not too much though, or else the pastry cream will turn a bit brown.

First, you combine the milk, vanilla, and half the sugar in a medium sauce pot. Bring it to a scald (below a simmer) until bubbles just start to form on the sides. While you're doing this, whisk the egg yolks together with the other half of the sugar, and the cornstarch. Whisk it like you're making whipped cream! This will make for a lighter pastry cream. Once the milk is up to a scald, remove it from the heat and temper it into the egg mixture by adding a little at a time and whisking frequently as to not cook the egg. Once all of it is together, pour it back into the pot on medium heat. Using a heat-proof spatula or wooden spoon, stir occasionally until it starts to thicken. Then stir constantly until all the mixture has thickened into a smooth creamy texture. Then pour it into a shallow container or bowl with the butter. The butter gives a nice shine to it. Stir the mixture until the butter has melted and is fully incorporated. Put some plastic wrap directly onto the cream so it doesn't form a film and pop it in the fridge until it's set. Voila! You have delicious pastry cream. Spread it into your tartshell about 3/4 to the top and go crazy with your fruits. There are many tartshell recipes on the web, so take your pick. We used a sugar cookie-type dough for our shell.

Oo and we made this a couple days ago:



It has a layer of raspberry jam on the bottom. Sooo good!

Okay it's way past my bedtime. Let me know if you guys try the fruit tart at home!

this is my passion

Since I've started Culinary School at Le Cordon Bleu, Hollywood (formerly known as Kitchen Academy) and working full time so that I can actually afford it, I haven't had much time for social interaction. This blog is a way for me to let you guys in on my experiences at the school, as well as my new path to becoming a chef.

I've never been good about taking pictures. I don't know if it's because my camera is really slow, or if I'm really slow. Maybe both... but I'm going to try my best to keep things "spicy" by including lots of photos. Hopefully this blog will last for a very long time, all the way up until I have my own cafe/bakery!

You know, I've had dreams about being an astronomer, a Broadway performer, and (don't laugh) a professional bowler, but this... I feel like this is something that I can actually see myself doing for the rest of my life. I love food. It's my passion.