Still here!

Sorry for not posting. I was in management class for 3 weeks and there wasn't too much of interest going on. We did have a week where we explored the world of wines complete with wine tastings so that was pretty cool. we also had 2 field trips. The first was to a coffee roasters and the second was to a brewery/restaurant nearby.

The Coffee roasters was pretty cool. they had tons of stuff and being a tea drinker I was much more interested in their teas. They had a special tea set there where the teapot was a small clear glass pot that used special tea leaf bundles that when steeped would bloom like a flower. One of these days i may get around to trying it. Hopefully the taste will be as good as the view.

The Brewery was Rock Bottom Brewery and was quite interesting. While they do have the restaurant they also have the whole brewery on premises and is under the control of the brewmaster allowing him plenty of control to experiment with different brewing techniques. while he did have 2 beers they keep on tap at all times he had about 7 that were all experiments of his and we got to try them all. He even had one that after he had brewed it he aged it in an (if I remember correctly) oak barrel that was used to make bourbon imparting the flavor into the beer. That one had a heck of a kick to it.

The one other item of note during management class is I took the serv safe exam and passed giving me a card showing I have the necessary safety knowledge to run a restaurant. This has the potential of opening up some more positions to me.

After that I started working in Du Jour on the line and things got busy! Its been tough but a lot of fun and Chef Villarico is an awesome teacher. Since we only offer lunch service its quite similar to the pilots saying of "flying its multiple hours of sheer boredom followed by a few minutes of sheer terror" though for us its a few hours of prep work followed by an hour and a half of "GET THAT FOOD OUT!" and that time flies by. Whatever station It kind of seemed like the patrons found a way to target me. I worked the fish/pasta station yesterday and got slammed with orders for both. I think I fed most of our diners that day. Another day I was on Grill station and we had a high school tour come through and they had lunch as well. I think I put out over 20 steaks while there was 2 orders of pasta and 4 of chicken...

Oh well, i'll just keep on truckin as usual. next up will be front of the house. not something you would normally think of doing at a culinary school but they want to make sure we have a full education of what it takes to work at and run a restaurant. So, bring it on!

Advanced baking: Sugar station

Sugar station was a lot of fun as well as being quite a bit painful at times. Most of the sugar has to be handled at uncomfortable heat levels until your skin starts to toughen up a bit. Even then during some parts of making the pulled sugar you have to handle it at burning temperatures with gloves and a thin nonstick mat between you and the burning hot sugar. The layers would protect us from the heat for about 5 seconds and then we would have to put our hands on the cold metal table to bleed the heat off our hands.



This was my first project. Various forms of pulled sugar used to make flowers, ribbons, leaves, and shells. After I had made a bit of each the assignment was to combine them into showpiece.




This was my second practical exam showpiece featuring blown sugar which I used to create the fish and dolphin. The green corral was created by pouring the molten sugar mixture into a pot full of ice. After giving the sugar time to set the whole thing is tipped out and the ice is allowed to melt while draining into a sink.

This is my final practical showpiece. This piece is based around the use of pastillage. Its kind of like clay but quick drying and very fragile when working with. Because of this pieces done in pastillage are usually 2 dimensional but I got and idea and was set on it. Even with the frailty of it I managed to pull it off and think I managed to make it look quite nice! It was required that one pulled sugar style element should be included. I opted for spun sugar because I thought it would work well for the piece and we hadn't had a chance to work with it yet in class and it was the last day. Turns out the reason why we don't work with it as a regular part of the curriculum is because it makes a heck of a mess. The way it works is after you create the sugar mixture you dip a whisk with the curved ends cut off and whip the ends back and forth over a large wooden dowel hanging off the end of a desk. The centrifugal force causes hair thin strands to string off the whisk and cool instantly as it drapes over the dowel. After you do that a few times you gather all the strands up, fold them over a few times without packing them too tightly and use them for your needs.

Ok, thats it for advanced baking! I started management class today. Mostly its bookwork and time in a classroom. There are a few field trips we will be going on and hopefully i will be able to take some pictures. If so, I will make sure to put them up here.

Advanced baking: Cake station

I really enjoyed cake station. We made a lot of really tasty Desserts and I got to work with piping icing using various tips and creating various designs.

This is a tiramisu item we made for Du Jour. Personally I am not too partial to coffee desserts so its not my favorite but it was a good dish. I quite liked the ladyfingers with a bit of the butter-cream filling on it. Lightly sweet with a bit of flaky crunch.

This item was created after another student asked if we could try making marshmallow. It was a success and afterwards we had a bunch of cubes left over so chef came up with a great idea of a S'more martini. We got to try it chilled and I don't know if it was served in Du Jour that way but I think it lost its flavor. The whole point of a S'more is a hot, molten marshmallow. Without that warmth its more like rocky road than anything else.

Kind of out of order here but this is a pistachio butter-cream cake I made for a practical test. The little fans you see on the top are white chocolate colored with what is known as "chefs rubber" it is used exactly like food coloring but is fat based instead of water based because adding any water to chocolate will cause it to seize up and become unusable.

Another cake we made for Du Jour. This one Raspberry.

Yet another cake for Du jour! This time chef gave us control of the flavor(s) and we chose to go with a cappuccino flavored butter-cream and garnish with crushed butterfinger. The chocolate square garnishes were done by me in chocolate station earlier. its a process of laying down some white chocolate and scraping out curved lines with a comb-like instrument, letting it cool and harden and then layering dark chocolate on top, letting that cool and harden and then attempt to cut it into squares without shattering them in the process. Only about half survived the process.

This was a practice run before our wedding cake practical. This is actually done on some layered particle board to save the cakes for actual desserts or practical tests. Real cake is used on the practical tests so students can take it home and share it with their family. Since I am alone in a small apartment so I opt to trash it. This school already allow me to eat so well I really don't need a giant cake waiting for me at home. The white icing is the cheap type you would find at dept. store bakeries. Easy to work with and cheap but tastes incredibly sugary, you know the stuff. All it is is powdered sugar and shortening. not good stuff. Butter-cream is a much better tasting icing. A lightly sweet, delicate taste with a light texture as well.








My wedding cake! It took some time and effort but it was a lot of fun and I really liked how it turned out. I particularly liked the roses and found I did a decent job on them. I made so many that I used more than usual and still had about 3 left over. The wicker basket design on the side takes a lot of time and but looks great when its finished.



This is my fondant cake! We were given full creative control on this cake and I think I made pretty good use of it! Fondant is pretty interesting to work with. After giving it a taste it reminded me greatly of marshmallow but is rolled out and draped over the cake after a crumb coat is added to give the fondant something to stick to. The kokopelli on top was also made out of fondant that we made earlier in the week so it would get a chance to dry. the base coloring of the fondant was mixed into the fondant and the more vibrant colors were done with an airbrush loaded with food coloring. I am not sure how well it comes through but the theme I was kind of going for was the Montezuma Well cave dwellings, represented by the design on the middle tier, and the kokopelli, which represents fertility, followed by the Verde river on the bottom tier and Green shrubbery representing growth or spring.

It looked great, but after a few moves to various places for photos and to be displayed the kokopelli couldn't handle its own weight. he got shorter, while I tried to fix him I broke a little more off the bottom, he got shorter. I came back the next day with my parents for an open house event and while I was gone... he got shorter. I haven't looked recently but I think at this point he is just shoulders, a head and a flute...

Anyway, that was cake station! I have now also completed sugar station and have a bunch more photos to upload so I should have that posted within a few days.

Advanced baking: chocolate station

I have been having a lot of fun in advanced baking and I might have a bit of a knack for some of the things we have been doing.

First week I worked at chocolate station which was very interesting. We would spend a good part of our day writing with small piping bags of a room temperature mixture of chocolate and cream called ganache.

We would also pipe out "Happy Birthday" along with a border design onto plates for the restaurant in case they found out one of the tables was celebrating a birthday. If they actually made a note of the birthday when the reservation was placed we could get a name and personalize the plate like I did in the second picture.

We also practiced interesting little designs known as arabesques. When making them for actual use we would use tempered chocolate that is firm at room temperature so we can pop them off the parchment paper and use them to top cakes and various other desserts. Because of their fragile nature they would break if I wasn't very careful. Many expletives were used.

We also made after dinner chocolates with various fillings we got to experiments with. It was almost like science class as we mixed different liquids into the main mixture to see if we could come up with some tasty results. One mixture I and another student tried was rose water and almond. It tasted good in the bowl but when it was in the chocolate it tasted way too much like a chocolate filled with perfume. I did make another mixture that was just a banana flavored filling but it was a big hit and many were "sampled" by the other students and I. Near the end of the week I decided to experiment a little bit and make more of the banana filling and add crushed butterfinger. They rocked and disappeared quickly. Below is a photo of the filling before I filled it over with more dark chocolate and put it into the reach in refrigerator to set overnight.

Nowadays its all done by machines but its cool to know how to do it myself in case I ever want to make handmade ones to give out for holidays or something.

Besides the production items we also had two projects to work on. First was a chocolate oven that beyond the dimensions of the oven we had full creative control of how the oven looked. Since most ovens made had a stove top I decided to go with a grill top. It meant I had to make a bunch of tiny little black strips. It was tedious but I think it turned out well.

I scored a 49 out of 50 on my oven. I decided not to put anything in the oven because I wanted to concentrate on the scene happening on top which, if you are having trouble making it out, is a big fish being grilled while a cat is keeping a close eye on it from above. The fish, cat, grill, and knobs are made out of modeling chocolate. Its exactly like play-doh and you can modify the color with chefs rubber which is a fat based food coloring as water based food coloring causes the chocolate to seize up. Making the cat was especially difficult because it would absorb the heat from my hands and become too soft to hold the shapes I formed it into so I ended up making the cat in three separate parts and then assembling them on the oven so I could let each piece cool off while I worked with the others. I must have formed the head 5 times but each time I was almost done it got so soft that just holding it made it start to flatten out.

Second was a small amenity showpiece where we had complete creative control as long as it fit on a cardboard base and was able to display a few individual chocolates.

I was actually having some trouble coming up with an idea for this piece. The day when we were supposed to start the project I ended up thinking about my niece Shayla and how she liked cookie monster so after a little discussion with chef Meyer and a little research in the computer lab I had my idea and got to work. After making some blue modeling chocolate it was apparent it would take way too much if i were to craft it out of solid chocolate so I ended up using a Styrofoam cup as the base for the head and two 4oz plastic portion cups for the hands. It worked surprisingly well since in the show his hands are about the size of his head since both his head and hands are occupied by human hands. I was planning to make the five fingers but after working with the modeling chocolate the fingers would have never held up under their own weight so he got mittens instead. I actually managed to finish the piece that day despite being given a day and a half to work on it. As I am usually over critical of myself I wish I had done a little better job in a few spots but Chef Meyer really liked it. He gave me a score of 50 out of 50 points and had me put it on display in the schools front entrance!

Quick post since i can't seem to get a long post worked out.

sorry everyone, things have just been crazy lately and trying to update kept getting pushed back.

Everything is going well. Very fast paced and a lot of work but the saucier kitchen is usually cooler than the bakery so it doesn't seem to sap my energy as much.

My last two weeks in bakery were awesome and I really liked it. the Roll-in station was responsible for laminated dough products like danishes ans croissants and getting them along with some other morning bread out for the morning breaks. After that was the bread station which I enjoyed even more. I was able to learn quite a few bread recipes and techniques. One of the more tasty breads is a cottage cheese dill roll which surprisingly almost everyone likes. Even people the don't like cottage cheese or dill love these rolls. For some reason the Combo works really well. A lot of the breads we made ended up being served in Du Jour and we got compliments on some of the ones we were able to get creative with. Especially a Cheese bread that we ended up rolled out more into a cracker than a bread and I chopped some jalapeños to sprinkle on top. Since the most of the Customers to Du Jour are elderly chef Foote wasn't sure they would go over well but we got back positive feedback.

I finished Bakery with an A so very happy about that.

Saucier has been challenging as well and has kept challenging me for the past 3 weeks now. My last day in saucier is tomorrow. The first station I worked at was Meat fabrication. I got a lot of good information out of it but did find spending most of my day standing at a cutting board a more tedious than I like. Good stuff to know but doing it all day? Bleh. Fortunately, it did get broken up now and then because we also made white chicken stocks, brown veal stocks and fish fumet as well as some Gravad lox (Scandinavian cured salmon) ground meats and sausages.

In fabrication we broke down just about every type of common and popular meat. We Fabricated multiple chickens daily because the whole school burns through them and chicken stock real quickly. We also worked with full pork loins and some beef tenderloins. We Fabricated multiple fish from the major groups; round fish, flat fish and nonbony fish. The nonbony fish was monkfish and that was a very different fish to work with. I am very glad they usually get them head and body removed since the meat is in the tail and they are some UGLY fish. Just working with the tail isn't a very pleasant experience. Though, after all that I did get to taste the final product and it was actually quite tasty.

After that I moved to Family Meal and really enjoyed that even though a lot of times it was more demanding because we had to have various products over to Du Jour each morning before break and then we worked on Feeding the school. I think a lot of the enjoyment came from being back to cooking after working meat fab for a week. Usually it was various soups that we had to make for the restaurant. after that we usually had some type of theme for family meal that we followed and Chef Siam would give us choices occasionally like what type of vegetable platter to put out or how to use a certain vegetable or starch.

Last but not least was the Saucier station this week. Today we had our final tests and cooking practical so no sauces today but still some tomorrow. Saucier is interesting because mostly its working with the mother sauces but there are so many ways to take the mother sauces after that and we made quite a few of them including some not based off of mother sauces. Just yesterday we made a sweet soy sauce recipe that was good and an easy recipe of just combining the ingredients and simmering for 20 to 25 minutes and then adjusting to the right consistency by either adding more liquid to loosen it or adding cornstarch slurry to thicken it. it did end up needing the slurry but the main thing that makes that recipe a pain is that there are around 15 separate ingredients at need to be collected and cut or measured so its all about the prep rather than the procedure on that one.

The market basket test is a day where we have an hour and a half to make an entrée consisting of chicken as the protein with starch and vegetable sides and a sauce but beyond that its up to us. We were allowed to get pretty creative but I chose to keep it simple to get a decent grade. Plenty of time get creative later on. I got a few practice runs in at home and at school but even with that when you are finally in the kitchen with a timer going and trying to work around 4 other people at a cluster of stoves it starts to get hectic. I ended up over reducing my supreme sauce to the point that I almost just had a charred mess in a pot while I tried to get the starch and vegetable ready. I added some more chicken stock and wisked it in but it was pretty much ruined. Maybe if I had more time on the clock i could have fixed it. Oh well.

Altogether I made a pan seared chicken breast with supreme sauce, Sauteed asparagus, and pan fried batonet potatoes with brunoise red and yellow bell pepper and minced garlic. The reason for batonet and bruniose is because we needed to choose two knife cuts off a list of four or five and include them in our entrée somehow.

OK, whew! one more day in Saucier and then I will be moving onto advanced baking.

Whoa! look what i forgot to do for a while!

Sorry about that. I guess Baking had me really involved these past few weeks. Also, working for nearly 8 hours in an incredibly hot and humid kitchen seems to drain my energy severely. From what I have heard the meat-fab kitchen isn't as bad but we shall see. maybe I'll just start getting used to this level of workload. I hope so.

We did a few attempts at watermelon cucumber sorbet and it did turn out alright but usually too sweet when simple syrup was used to balance the Ph. It turns out the Ph level isn't too important. I think its mostly used to make sorbet that will set at about the same time interval as usual for the ice cream machine. If its off it may cause the liquid to take more or less time to set. We never did reach completion of it in class as i moved onto a different station and had plenty of work to do. I will continue to work on it myself, though. Apparently you can pick up a Cuisinart ice cream maker for a fairly decent price. I wont be buying it right away, however, as I have already spent quite a bit of money recently and need to conserve. so, for now it get written down until I can get around to it.

If anyone want to give it a try basically all you need is cucumber and watermelon juice. The part we were last on was figuring out the proper ratio to get the sweetness of the watermelon without overpowering the flavor and freshness of the cucumber. In fact, cucumber juice on its own can be quite nice and might make a refreshing sorbet on its own. OH! I just had a thought... maybe you could just do cucumber sorbet but serve it in a piece of watermelon shaped into a bowl and chilled. If you want some Tang in the sorbet a good dose of lemon juice could do the job. We also made a small batch with a bit of lemon juice and a dash of ascorbic acid to give it a good kick. I haven't tried it yet but I had a thought that crushed lemon flavored hard candy sprinkled over a serving might have a good taste and give a bit more color for the eyes. Also, we did try a version with salt since some people do like salt on their watermelon but we used too much and decided to shelve that version for the time being.

To make the cucumber and watermelon juice isn't too difficult. First, you want to wash before you cut the cucumber and watermelon just to prevent any materials or chemicals from getting passed into the flesh when you cut it up. Skin (a peeler works well) as many cucumbers as you want and rough chop them. you can leave the seed in because you are going to puree it in a blender and strain it either with a fine mesh strainer or if you don't have one of those a large coffee filter. Possibly many coffee filters depending on how much juice you have decided to make. To strain it place the puree in your strainer and push it against the sides. If some of the solid pass through you can always strain again with a coffee filter. If you start with the coffee filter put in only enough that you can wrap the filter closed and squeeze the juice from it. depending on the durability of the filter you may need to be gentle or it will tear. Not the end of the world, though. Unless it was your last filter and the store is closed for holiday.

You should probably start with about a quarter of a watermelon as you will get a ton of juice just from that quarter. Remove the watermelon flesh from the rind just as you did with the cucumber and rough chop it small enough to fit into a blender as well or use a method that works for larger pieces. Ripe watermelon is so soft just about any technique will work for juicing. Heck, yelling at it would probably juice it as well but I imagine you can find a speedier method.

Oh! I just remembered a tip for picking out the best fruits from my instructors. Use your usual methods to weed out the unripe and damaged and when you are down to a few to choose from if they are about the same size its best to weigh them as the riper the the fruit the more water it is carrying and it will be the heavier of the bunch.

Anyway, once you have your juice all you have to do is pick a ratio of watermelon to cucumber and give it a go. As I recall we mostly tried a 1:1 ratio and it usually resulted in the watermelon overpowering the cucumber. While not bad we wanted to balance the flavors more. So, you may want to try a ratio of 1:1.5 or 1:2 and see how it comes out.

Now, I will be talking about how baking went soon but I feel a need to do something else for a bit and didn't think this all did any good sitting as a saved draft until I get back to it.

Tuesday & Wednesday

The Creme Brulee turned out great and we learned two techniques for making the brulee part of the creme brulee. Other than that we worked on various pie crusts and pie fillings, choc. chip cookies, butter tea cookies, cakes for the advanced baking class and made an attempt at angel food cake. Angel food cake is incredibly picky and is easy to ruin. It turned out that were were a little bit premature on removing them from the oven and they fall apart so we couldn't use them. They were still pretty dang tasty but damaged so they were unable to be used. We also made some orange and apple juice sorbet which was really good and surprisingly easy to make.

Today we made more pies. I made and rolled the pie crusts which is pretty dang time consuming but worth it for awesome crusts. We made apple, strawberry rhubarb, and coconut cream pies. More cakes, cookies, brownies, cupcakes, etc. Its all starting to blur together but I am learning more and more everyday while we make really tasty stuff. I think I have cracked close to 100 eggs over the past 3 days. I am very good at it now. The last time I had to Separate 24 yolks for one recipe and I managed to not break any of the yolks.

As we were making sorbet I learned that It requires a PH balance. Usually done by an acidic main ingredient and balanced with simple sugar. The neat trick for finding the right balance is to take an egg, wash and sanitize the outside then place it in the acidic liquid, add the simple sugar until the egg floats with a portion of the egg (about the size of a quarter) breaking the surface like an iceberg. Thanks to an awesome Culinary grade ice cream machine we had sorbet in a little over 7 minutes which was very nice to have in a very hot and humid kitchen.

After all this I got to thinking about what you could put in a sorbet with it still turning out right. I asked chef Foote if a watermelon, cucumber sorbet is possible. His response? "Lets find out!"

Tomorrow should be interesting.

Basics passed!

I have made it through basics and started my first day of Baking. Practicals week went alright but i did have some issues with my tests. I passed but I could have done better. I haven't gotten my grades yet, though. I guess I will just have to keep on practicing my skills!

Last Friday our tests were finally over and all we had left was cooking breakfast for the entire school. It was quite a bit of fun. I ended up getting assigned to making sautéed potatoes with onions and bell peppers. I had a little bit of trouble with my first batch as my flame was too high so my onions started to char before the potatoes cooked fully. it was a little darker than the rest of the batch but it was all being mixed together so it was salvageable. After that I had it locked and the rest turned out perfectly. Many people ended up complimenting our potatoes so I was happy about that.

After that our class formed a plating line while the other basics class started making French omelets filled with sautéed onions, bell peppers, mushrooms and grated cheese. the plating line basically just put all of the ingredients we had made ahead of time and added it to the plate as a successful omelet was made. we added salsa, fruit cups, sausage, bacon and the potatoes. cleaned the dish of smudges or fingerprints with a clean rag dipped in a bit of warm water and distilled white vinegar and gave it to the Du Jour class wait staff to serve throughout the school.

Eventually we switched places and our class started to make omelets but the other basics class did an amazing job and got out most of the orders. In the end I made one omelet I browned a little too much so it couldn't be served. The next one i made was perfect but soon after putting it on the plate I was informed all orders were filled so I should keep it for my own meal, which I did. It and everything else plated with it was very tasty. After that all that was left of the day was breaking down and cleaning the kitchen, a written test and a quick introduction to our baking instructor and the course.

Monday Started off with more lecture getting to know our new kitchen and our instructor. We did get some cooking in later in the day but most of it was mise en place for the following day. i was assigned to the dessert station so we broke up the jobs between us. Together we made apple pie filling, chocolate chip cookie dough ready to go in the oven tomorrow, a few doughs for pie crusts, and creme brulee filling. I made the creme brulee filling and Chef Foote decided to go ahead and bake them today so I decided to stay a bit after to see how they turned out. they really wont be completely done until they have cooled overnight. Chef Foote said they looked a little too soft but they were starting to brown on top so we had to take them out. We wont know if they were solid enough until tomorrow. Once I see the final product I will try to remember to get a photo of it to show off here. I have a Feeling I am really going to like the Bakery, just as I thought I would.

Now that classes will be a bit calmer I will try to post more often but until then thats it for now!

update

Sorry for the lack of news. Things have been real busy lately and will continue to be for the next week as it is the final week of basics!

Lets see, I left off mentioning shellfish. That was a pretty interesting day. We made Oysters rockefeller, oysters on the half shell, clams casino, fried shrimp, and a dish of sauteed and steamed mussels whose name I can't recall. All the dishes turned out pretty well and I manged to get a sample of them all. The oysters rockefeller, clams casino, and mussels were good. The fried shrimp was great and disappeared shortly after being served at the family meal! I also tried the oysters on the half shell, I probably wont be eating those again anytime soon.

The next week started with chicken! It was set up so we would take a day trussing and then fabricating the chicken and the next day would be spent cooking with what we fabricated. So, Tuesday we made Chicken Picatta, Chicken cordon bleu, and one other dish that I can't recall right now.

After that we moved onto red meats where we each fabricate a rack of lamb and chef Sayre demoed some other meat fabrication. The next day we cooked the lamb rack with a persillade crust, a grilled fillet in bearnaise sauce, roast beef, and an Austrian schnitzel. The roast beef was done with partners and ours turned out perfectly cooked. I did have a little trouble when it came to slicing it thin. the blade I was using wasn't sharp enough and it lead to some off angle cuts. Beyond that it was all pretty dang tasty!

Today we made steak au poivre, lamb nevarin, and beef rouladen. All went pretty well without any major issues. Nobody set themselves on fire when the brandy was added into their hot pans for the steak au poivre. I almost burnt myself when I didn't open the oven fully and the spring started pulling the insanely hot door back into my forearm. Fortunately, I was able to react fast enough and got my arm out of the way. One of the other students wasn't so quick to react and got a good sized red mark on her arm.

It has been a crazy 5 weeks and i am pretty sure I have forgotten more than I have retained but thats where practice comes in and my training is far from over!

Next week will be the end of basics which means it also the most demanding. I will be spending this weekend practicing for the final practical exams taking place Monday to Thursday as well as putting together a 5 page report on Russian cuisine so I will be pretty dang busy! Oh, and on Friday we cook Breakfast for the whole school. Sausage, bacon, eggs, stuffed omelets, and pancakes for 90 or so people. Chances are I will get around to posting again once it is all over and done with. wish me luck!

i need to update!

Sorry about that! Things definitely did not slow down at school the past week and a half and I kept forgetting to update.

Week 3 was pretty fun but kind of a blur when I look back on it. It all is. Week 3 consisted of making both a veal and a white chicken stock and then using them throughout the week to make various mother sauces, sauces (some made from mother sauces, some not) and soups. This continued into week 4 till Tuesday.

The list, in case you're interested:

Espagnole

Demi-glace

Bechamel sauce

Mornay

Soubise

Veloute

Supreme sauce

Allemande sauce

Hollandaise sauce

Beurre Blanc

Bell Pepper Coulis (very tasty!)

Robert sauce

Chasseur (hunter's) sauce

Port and dried-cherry Demi sauce

French Onion soup

Cream of Mushroom

Egg-Drop soup

Veal Consomme (pretty interesting to make)

Vegetable soup

Puree of Black Bean soup

During all this I also had a practical on Friday of week 3 where I had to make mayonnaise and Veloute sauce marking the end of basics 1. My mayo got a perfect score as I got a bit of practice in at home but not so much on the Veloute. Overall I still had a pretty decent score.

Wednesday of week 4 we started getting into animals and their fabrication, starting with fish. Chef Sayre Demonstrated fabrication of some Salmon, Redfish, and Yellowtail Sole. Each of us ended up fabricating a Redfish and Sole and stored them for cooking on Thursday. Thursday was fun but seemed hectic going in because we were preparing 8 portions in total 6 different ways! We grilled, poached, baked, fried and sauteed filets breaded, unbreaded as well as skin-on and skin-off.

oh! I got my grades for basics 1.

I got 90%! Doing good but room to improve!

Tomorrow we work with shellfish!

Week two continued

Sorry for taking so long. School has been keeping me pretty dang busy and when i am home i am either practicing my knife skills, attempting some recipes, or just plain tired.

Tuesday we Made Mayonnaise which was used to make some american potato salad and chicken salad. We also made some German potato salad that was quite tasty.

Wednesday we continued with potatoes and made Potatoes Dauphinnoise, Duchesse Potatoes, and Potatoes Anna. The Duchesse Potatoes require the use of a Icing bag to pipe the mash onto a baking sheet and baking in the oven, definitely need some more practice there. The other two dishes were made of thin sliced potato that i had trouble getting thin enough so my seasoning wasn't too bad but it wasn't able to cook right.

Thursday we worked with rices. I made some rice pilaf, Risotto, and soft polenta. All of it went pretty well. Compared to the other days it was kind of easy considering there wasn't much prep or chopping required. We also made some Pasta dough in preparation for Friday.

Friday we made some baked penne in a classic tomato sauce, spaghetti tossed in a pesto sauce, and some fresh pasta in an alfredo sauce. Chef Sayre Congratulated me on making some really good pesto sauce! He even said I managed to season mine a little better than his!

Saturday I went in for some special practice towards a state competition for culinary students in late October, early March. Right now I have no idea how far I will get as the team will only consist of and it is some hard training but I am going to keep at it as long as I can. Oh, I managed to slice my thumb open about halfway through the day but bandaged it can kept going so I got my first little taste of the more painful side of cooking.

Week two, day one

Salads went well. We made basic vinaigrette dressing, Caesar salad with Caesar dressing, and a Spinach salad with warm bacon dressing. My Mise en place came together pretty well though I did miss a few things. Still, I managed to finish on time and did a decent job of each. my personal favorite had to be the Caesar salad since I got to learn how to make fresh fried croutons. very tasty!

During the classroom portion of my day we took a test on our first week of training. Thanks to some review the night before I managed to pull of a 92 out of 100 questions correct!

I forgot to mention the family meals in my last post. In short, they rock! everyone gets together sampling the dishes multiple classes have made and even our class has been able to supply some vegetable dishes already! Everything is served cafeteria style but it is still exceptional. tons of morning pastries, fish, chicken, pasta, soups, pizzas, cakes, creme brulee, and what i think was some type of bread pudding and its only been 5 day!

ok, I'm off to do some prep for tomorrow.

Week one

The first Day (Tuesday because of the holiday) was mostly getting to know our instructor, Chef Sayre, and what lies ahead of us. He went into detail about the coming weeks and what we would do the following day as well as what would be expected of us. It was a bit intimidating but i was pumped!

The second day was a big eye opener as to just how frantic it can be in a kitchen and all were were doing was learning knife skills by chopping different vegetables! Mainly what was causing the panic was us not knowing our way around the kitchen yet along with a shaky grasp of proper preparation before starting. The French phrase "mise en place", meaning "putting in place" is used to label proper preparation of both the ingredients and the chef that will be using the ingredients. If our mise en place isn't done correctly before we start things can go awry very quickly. Things did eventually get done but things were spilled, food was wasted, and I learned this wasn't going to be easy at all.

The third day we finally got to cook! In fact, we got to cook 3 different vegetable dishes at the same time! I was still struggling with my mise en place as all of the students scrambled to get ingredients and do initial preparation of the vegetables. We had prepared some minced garlic and shallots the day before but when i got around to collecting what i needed the containers were empty which meant i had to go get some more and prepare them as well. This lead to me running over my alloted preparation time so I had to prioritize some vegetables that needed to start cooking and finish the rest while they cooked. Because of this i couldn't concentrate on the vegetables cooking and came very close to burning a few things and did burn my cabbage but not so badly it couldn't be salvaged. Despite the challenges dishes did turn out edible but not perfect. the cabbage had the right taste but my knife skills were off and some of the cabbage was too thick too cook enough and didn't produce the right texture. Some other mistakes include forgetting to season one dish with pepper and salt and adding the finishing fresh herbs (finely chopped parsley) to the wrong dish! Fortunately, I didn't get discouraged as i knew that if i wasn't making mistakes i wasn't learning.

On day four my Mise en place came together a little better. the Fact that the recipes were simpler helped quite a bit too. We prepared some vegetables for roasting and others for grilling. For the roasted vegetables we were told to pair up. My partner and I misunderstood the direction to pick a fresh herb to season our vegetables with so we ended up with two herbs, rosemary and chives. As Chef Sayre performed the demo we realized our mistake and asked him how we should handle it. He said to come to an agreement between the two of us. so, after a smell test of the two herbs together, we decided to try both and just halve the amount of herbs we used. The Vegetables to be roasted were rolled in a bowl of extra virgin olive oil and our herbs and put into the oven. While the roasted for 30 minutes in the oven we had to go grill the rest of the vegetables. We only had one grill in the kitchen so there was quite a line. So, my partner got in line while i went back to our station to do a little clean up, begin preparation for blanching some broccoli and tried to keep tabs on the time. After 15 minutes my partner had managed to get his veggies on the grill and came back long enough for us to mix the roast vegetables a bit and add some salt & pepper which we forgot earlier. Back in the oven they went and back to work we went. I managed to take into account the time we had taken the roast vegetables out of the oven into the time needed and after a quick check decided they were done. I presented them to Chef Sayre and found I had cooked them quite well but Ii hadn't seasoned them enough with S&P so the heat and texture was right and the taste was there but it didn't have the pop of flavor that his demo vegetables did. After all this and a bit more waiting i was able to get my turn at the grill. I did well on my sliced vegetables and my bell pepper but failed on my green onion as i had them laying across a hot spot at their thinnest point and let them burn while I payed attention to the demo of the Blanching and shocking of broccoli. I let my grilled red bell pepper cool while i prepared for the blanching. once it was ready i put on some glove and began to peel the charred skin off the pepper. I was so amazed at the aroma. I never knew it could smell so good! After that I set to work on turning the broccoli into spears (removing leaves and odd edges to make it more visually pleasing) but I had a problem. I had put too much water in my pot and it was taking way too long to boil! After removing some of the water it still didn't seem to want to boil and i was running out of time so i put it in and hoed for the best. It turned out under cooked as i thought it would but i learned a valuable lesson from it. don't use more water than you need to submerge the vegetable! oh, and i forgot to season with S&P again...

That's it for now. Next week starts off with some salads and a written test.

First post!

Hi guys,

For those that don't know, I am creating this blog so friends and family that are interested in my journey through Arizona Culinary Institute can keep tabs on me at their leisure.