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.