Week 5!

Sorry for the delay ya'll!!


What  a busy few weeks it has been!!

Week 4's Intro to Bakery and Production classes were pretty standard... in Intro we had a test.. and... i aced it! yup! thank you.. thank you! :)

In Production I was able to be part of making dough for bread and ONCE AGAIN couldn't work that damn baguette machine!!! fuck! i don't care, i love working the dough with my hand and rolling it and shaping it like people did back in the day!! I think we loose originality with machines... yes it makes things go way faster, but I don't know.. the more machines replace humans the less love there is in the final product....

So we hand rolled baguettes.. then another machine we use was broken.. the one that cuts dough into 36 little bits for dinner rolls... so we shaped little rolls and knots (yay! i learned how to make knots!!!!!!)  that was that!!

So!! Week Five!!!

Intro to Cooking Techniques!

EGGGS!!!! MORE EGGS!!!!

This class we learned how to make 3 types of omelets! French, Belgian, and Spanish.


French

So! Here I was thinking French was gonna be the easiest... but in fact it was theeeee hardest to make!

I can't really explain the french omelet... how to make one, but I'll try :)

So, I just watched a video on youtube of Julia Child making a French Omelet, but the way she does it wasn't the way we were taught... it semi is...  here's the video.



So... you see how she shakes the pan? Well, I was taught to shake the pan with one hand and with the other take a fork or a spatula and mix the eggs around in the pan at the same time.. I should try Julia's way and see which is easier. I have a feeling her way might be easier because I messed up my french omelet TWICE!!! I couldn't do it!!! Partially because the pan wasn't a non-stick one so I didn't polish it enough with salt and didn't put enough clarified butter so it stuck for the most part :)  I was also worried about over scrambling the egg by mixing it with the fork... anyways, I'm sure I'll get it one of these days! I should've practiced it more! I only tried it twice and got fed up with it :)




Spanish

Taken from here

Super super easy! Ya'll might know this as the Fritatta... which is actually the Italian name for this omelet... I forget what the actual spanish name was oh! La Tortilla Espanola! So you cook the ingredients you want in this omelet... I cooked some peppers, mushrooms, and onions. Then you beat your eggs... pour it into the heated pan and then pour the fillers in. You let it cook in the pan for maybe half a minute, so the bottom is sorta cooked, then you stick it in the oven for the rest of it to cook. It takes a couple of minutes for the omelet to finish cooking.. maybe like 5-10 min.... depending on the temp you have the oven on.  mm I'm hungry! This one is so super filling!! And soo sooo yummy!!!!! AND!!! Sooooo easy to make too!! There's no way to mess this one up.. unless you put really gross fillings in... or leave it in the over for too long.....


Belgian

Love love love this one!!! It's so light a fluffy and doesn't taste like eggs AT ALL! Seriously! I love it!! We made this omelet with a delicious sweet strawberry filling! We just cut up fresh strawberries and cooked them in sugar a bit of water and a bit o' butta!

Anyways! This omelet is truly amazingly delicious! I never knew it existed! Apparently neither does Google!!! I did a search of Belgian Omelets and Belgian waffles came up!! Anyways! this kinda omelet is seriously to die for!!!

Okay! here's how you make one!

So, you take however many eggs you need.. in this class we made it with 3.. which i think might actually be the perfect amount.... I feel like if you used more it might not cook evenly and nicely all the way.

You take 3 eggs... separate the yolk from the whites.... beat the yolks and beat the whites to a soft peak... nothin' super stiff just a nice soft peak....  then, you add a bit of the white to the yolk and fold it in.. then add the rest and fold all the whites in with the yolk.

Once you have that nice nicely folded together you already see how nice and fluffy the texture of the mixture is, compared to the standard beating of the whole egg for an omelet. You then pour the mixture into the heated pan... let the bottom cook a bit, like you did for the fritata then! You put it in the broiler for like... maybe 15 sec?! if you have the broiler on really hot it cooks super fast! Mine cooked fast and looked ready but when I was eating it, once I got midway it was sorta uncooked.. so maybe it's best to put the broiler on low so it cooks evenly through?

Anyways! you slide that omelet on a plate, then whatever filling/topping you made you put it on half of it and fold the other half over it! Tadaaa! There's your belgian omelet!! So delicious and fluffy and totally not egg tasting! This one dude in my class was saying how his fiance doesn't like eggs but he got her to start liking them by way of the Belgian Omelet! Fancy, eh!!?


Production!!! ahhh!! Production Production Production!

Well!! Since we have 2 weeks off due to the holiday and new years in today's production class we made some bread and then worked on heaving cleaning and good inventory taking!! This was, by the way, the last week for me at the bread station!!! :( sad face!

So, we made bread and pizza dough. There were only 3 of us at the bread station this week... so... while the other 2 took inventory, I got handed the lovely task of cleaning up the ice that was stuck in the freezer..... man oh man.... so like that freezer generator thing was leaking water, so there was ice stuck down the side and alll on the bottom of the freezer.... so! Chef gave me a torch and I used my bench scrapper and fired and scrapped away!!! It was quite fun!! And!! very fulfilling once I got it all done. I had to crawl into that thing and really get some big chunks of ice out!! I must have gotten at least 12lbs of ice out of that freezer!! insane!!!! and fun!!!! I enjoyed using the torch :)


So! My next 3 weeks in Production class are going to be at the CAKE STATION!!!!! oooOOOooo.... I'm excited! Although, I hear it's not as exciting.... apparently all ya do is make muffins....sigh... we'll see!! Gotta be positive!!!! So far though, I don't think anything will top the bread station... I love it :)

Well!! Until next time!!!

Enjoy your food ya'll!!

<3

Eggcelently Eggstatic!

Week 4!!!!!

Intro to cooking techniques was so much fun tonight!!!

I know I mentioned in a past post how excited I was about learning bread making..... another thing I'm really excited about learning at school is cooking eggs. Doing different things with eggs... learning different ways to cook eggs for breakfast/brunch.... and perfecting the way I cook eggs!

So! Tonight's class was the first of 3 classes on learning different ways to cook eggs!! eeeep! yay!

Tonight we covered simple cooking styles... sunny side up, over easy and...... wait for it... wait for it... POACHED EGGS!! I have always been told how hard it is to make poached eggs, but it was so easy!!! I guess having and instructor show you how to do it the right way really helps!!

So we all know sunny side up... and over easy!

oh but wait!! He also taught us how to properly season an aluminum.. or no.. stainless steel pan! a non-stick pan... for things like this... basically he taught us how to make a natural non-stick surface....what you do is, you take kosher salt... a bunch of kosher salt.. maybe half a tblspn.. if u want you can go for a full tblspn ... either way... you put that on the pan, and with a paper towel just rub it all over... you will see the salt will start to turn grey... I'm not sure if I'm going to be giving the correct info, but something about cleaning up the carbon on the pan and filling up the holes in the pan to sort of create a smooth surface so the liquid of the egg wont get stuck in the ridges?? something like that ... I dunno... it basically just polishes the pan....then you pour some clarified butter on it and you're good to go!!

BACK TO THE EGGS!!!

So, I started off with making sunny side up and over easy eggs.... we have all made them before.. but one thing I liked that I learned tonight was that you know, you put the egg on the pan, but before I used to just let it sit there, but tonight we were told to lightly shake the pan around to get the egg moving and not stick in one spot... it worked out really well for me! My eggs came out looking really good!


I didn't spend too much time making those types of eggs, I think I made 2 sunny side up and 2 over easy.... I quickly moved on to poached eggs!!!! I was so antsy and anxious!!!!!

I grabbed a pot, filled it half way with water and put it over the stove to heat! First thing I learned was to put some vinegar in the water.. it helps the egg coagulate.  So you heat the water... just until it starts to boil and you take it down a bit to a simmer. Then! Stir the water, creating a whirlpool effect. Then plop the egg in (we learned its best to crack the egg in a bowl then pour it in). The whirlpool helps with sorta keeping it all centered. It's really awesome watching the egg whites flow and cook at the same time!! It's like when you see those videos of coral reefs and see the seaweed moving around.. it's so cool!!

So to bring it all together... sorta but not really... we made  Salad Lyonnaise.  We had some salad frisse, a thick slab of bacon!! not those silly thin strips.. we got  3 slabs!!!  We cut off the skin, and cut the bacon into thick rectangles...mmmmm soo yummy!!!  We had our poached eggs and made some croutons and a vinaigrette! It was DELICIOUS!!!!!

Here's the best pic I could find on google image search engine of this salad!!! This salad actually looks perfect! I want to eat it up right now!!

Until next time!

Enjoy your food ya'll!!!!

Week 3!!! Yum!!

Lets see if I can fit all 3 classes in this post!

Intro to Cooking Techniques

This weeks class was focused on Garnishing. I was excited for this class... until only 3 of us showed.. that's half the class... so then I figured that maybe this class wasn't going to be as exciting as I thought it would be ... but I shrugged it off, I was definitely excited to learn how to garnish. So, chef showed us how to make a palm tree out of a carrot, a penguin out of a squash, tulip from radish, crab out of a cucumber and a basket out of a lemon!

Let me tell you a funny story. So this Carrot Palm Tree is really supposed to look like this picture on the right. Well, Chef didn't have green peppers so he made the palm tree out of one carrot... it didn't really look like a palm tree but it passed for one. After the demo, Chef walked out of the room for a second and all 3 of us looked at each other and were like "that carrot!!!! phallic!! ahh!" He walked back in so we resumed to doing our own garnishing..... then! Another Chef next door came in, he's completely opposite of our Chef. So next door chef walks in and looks at the palm tree and asks "Who made this?!?" and our Chef says "I did." Then next-door chef says "Chef, are you aware that it looks like a penis!?!" hahahaha our Chef then says "Chef! Don't put these thoughts in my students head, now you ruined it for them!" All three of us just looked at each other... it was hilarious.

Anyways! I made a lady bug radish, an orange basket, 2 radish tulips, and a Kermit the frog look a like. Oh!! and!! I tried to make a flower out of carrot shaving but I couldn't figure it out, so I made a mat out of thin carrot shavings, and scallions cut lengthwise... oh and I made a little radish rat but I didn't cut ears like the picture up above. So that was that class!

Intro to Baking

This week we learned about different types of flour, about wheat, about gluten. There's the Endosperm, Bran and Germ ...different parts of the wheat... and yeah... gluten is important... we learned about different dough conditioners and what flours are good for gluten-free baking and all sorts of other stuff... stuff that I have to study for my assessment test next week... hopefully I'll have a better understanding of stuff and I'll be able to give you a more clear idea of specific things we learned.

Honestly though, I know this test is gonna be an easy one, Chef practically gave us all the questions and answers and what to study. Something that she keeps on mentioning though, is that for example these flour and gluten chapters we will have better understanding of them when we have our Bread Making class... so I think all this stuff we are going to learn in this class will make better sense when we take the classes and can put 2 and 2 together.


Retail Pastry Production

This week was hard core DANISH week!!!! WAAAHH!! Haha I volunteered to do the inventory side.. so me and my partner took inventory and set up trays. Then when doing inventory there were no more nut danishes or fruit danishes left, so we had to make danishes! We made the Nut filling out of crushed hazelnuts (my fav!!) sugar and old dough. oh and water! Then we grabbed some danish dough and used this huge flattening machine that was kind of hard to figure out... but we got it!

Once it was rolled to the length and thickness we needed, we brought it back to the table.... covered half of it (length wise) with nut filling, spread the top with egg wash, folded top half over the nut half. Took a rolling pin to it just to lightly seal it up. Then we took the pizza cutter roller thing and cut strips 3oz each ... one person cut the other person stretched... once we got that down, we toll twisted it.... then rolled it into a swirl, tucked the end under and BAM hit it with the heel of the palm. By the time we were done with the fruit danishes our hands were covered in delicious nut filling that I just wanted to gobble up... but ya know..... eh.. can't really do that there.
(Ours don't look like this pic... but here's one to make you hungry!!!! yum yum)

Then to end the class we cut pizza dough in 6 oz chunks and rolled them into boules! 12 of which were used to make pizza which I later consumed for lunch!! Yum yum yum yum yum.

I did it! Got all 3 classes in!!!

Until next time! Enjoy food ya'll!!

Week 2: Retail Pastry Production

So!

I'm not going to really write about Intro to Baking... it really is a cool class, like I mentioned in another post, we learn about the scientific side of baking... I'm not sure if you readers would be interested in it... I'll give a quick synopsis of what we learned this week. We went over different types of heating (conduction, convection, radiation etc.), types of metal cookware (copper, aluminum, stainless steal), science of the baking process (mixing, baking and cooling), and different tastes (salty, sweet, sour, bitter, umami) and how the environment and other things effects the outcome of the product (lighting, plating, texture.)

We learned things like a copper pot is ideal for candy making because its the the one that conducts heat the highest the one just below that, I think, was aluminum. A dull aluminum pan would heat faster than a shiny one because the dullness attracts the heat. We learned about olfactory cells (?) and blah blah... haha I don't remember everything right now.



Retail Pastry Production

Woohoo!! Love this class! Yes I have to wake up at 430am on a freakin saturday but FUCK Yes I get to wake up at 430am on a saturday and go and do something I LOVE!!!! :)

Anyways! So, last week I learned the inventory, setting up of pastries and I learned a bit about measuring, and shaping dough. This week I got to make the dough! Let me think... what'd we do? We made.... baguette dough! Out of that dough we cut and shapped like ??... 10? 15? baguettes? half were 10 oz i think and the other were 16? i dont remember...

Then we made sourdough bread. I think it was a rye sourdough bread... threw in some ::vomit:: caraway seeds. So! The cool thing about making the sourdough bread is that I got to meet MOM! MOM is the sourdough starter! She is....I think I was told she's 20 yrs old. Super awesome!! So! We had like 2 buckets of MOM in the walk-through (the fridge) so Chef asked us to stir them down and consolidate the 2. So, we took out what MOM we needed, stirred the buckets up, and tried to consolidate as much we could. (Here's a pic of a sourdough starter, this is probably a good enough size for home, at school we have 2 HUGE tubs of MOM.)

That was exciting! I have yet to learn how to feed mom... something I'm super looking forward too! I'd like to have a sourdough starter at home! So, this class will teach me how to take care of MOM!

I feel like we did some other stuff too. hmm.... can't remember anything.....my mind is so warped from waking up early for production today (I'm running a little behind with this blog.. I just finished up week 3)  and not sleeping enough last night and having too long of a nap this afternoon.

Oh! Focaccia!! We made Focaccia dough with roasted garlic!! DELISH-ISH-ISH! So, we made the dough, we let it proof.. for I don't remember how long but it had to rise to be pretty big... then we oiled pans and spread out the dough in each pan, but the dough retracts, so we push it out at least 1/2 the pan let it sit for 15 min and press out, sit, press out, sit until you have the pan filled out. Brush the Focaccia with oil and you're good to go!!

So!! Until next time!! Enjoy your food ya'll!!

Week 2: Intro to Cooking Techniques

So!! This was my second class in this course and on my drive in I told myself, "you know what you gotta do, you gotta be vocal when you need help, don't feel insecure, learn as you go and fuckin' rock it!" I now knew how things went at this school, you get thrown in and you roll with it! If mistakes come your way you pick up, learn from them, and move on. It's kinda like life actually...

This weeks class I also learned how awesome, forgiving, and patient my fellow co-students are! :)

So! What was on the menu for tonight? DELICIOUSNESS!!!! haha

So, like I said in my last post, there are 6 of us in this class, so tonight's class we were split into 2 groups of 3 :) we had hmmm 4 courses to prepare:

Pork Ragout with Tomatoes and Rice
Braised Chicken Legs with Tart Green Apples
Mussels Steamed in Beer 
Poached Pears with Brandied Chocolate Sauce 

So, my team, we made the Pork Ragout with Tomatoes and Rice and Mussels Steamed in Beer. First what we did was cut everything up that we needed for each recipe. We did two Mussel recipes! One with Beer sauce and the other with Wine sauce! We had a shit ton of Mussels so we thought we might as well double it up!!!

Pork

(Since I can't take pics during class because we cook and eat and cook and eat I'm doing google searches for things that look similar to what we made in class...this pic has prunes but you get the hearty feel of it yeah?!! mmmm!)

For the pork we cut the pork in 1in cubes, diced up some bacon, minced some garlic, onion and jalepeno, cut up some green olives and added basil bay leaf rice parsley, tomato puree, balsamic vinegar and chicken stock.
- we first cooked the diced bacon on the pan....
- then we cooked the pork cubes, in batches, in the bacon fat... put the pork and bacon in a pot
- then if needed we added some more oil in the pan and sauteed the garlic, onion and pepper
-In the pot combine all the ingredients except the rice... let is boil then reduce to simmer and cook for 20 min
- add the rice and simmer for another 20 min

DELICIOUS!!!! It seriously was!!!! It was a delicious hearty stew, perfect for this fall/winter season!!


Mussels!


mmm mmm mmm!!!

So, I missed the cleaning part of the mussels because I was working on the pork... I wish I hadn't missed this step! Anyways, you clean them.. but they came pretty much cleaned already but I think my partner like ran them under water and I think disposed of the open ones.

Alright, this recipe calls for diced bacon, minced garlic, leeks, jalapeno pepper, beer, crushed tomatoes, fresh thyme, bay leaf, and butter.
- in a large pan cook the bacon over medium head until golden brown.
- add the garlic and sautee for 30 secs
- increase the heat and add the leeks and jalepenos and sautee for about a minute
- add the beer (or wine), crushed tomatoes, sprigs of thyme, bay leaf, and mussels.
- bring to simmer and cover for 4-5 min or until mussels open
- remove mussels and continue to cook/smmer the liquid until its reduced by half
- add butter and seasons to taste and pour that sucker over the mussels and BAM! delicious!

So, like I said above, we made 2 batches, one with beer and one with wine. We all liked the wine you could actually taste it, it had more of a kick... a sweet kick at that. Couldn't really taste the beer in that batch so it was good but no extra kick to it.

The other dishes were delish!! The chicken was AMAZING!! I wish I made it because the sauce was to die for!! It seriously just slid soo smoothly down my throat and tasted soooo good! It was seriously amazing!

The poached pears were good... I love desserts, hence the Pastry Arts focus, but I'm not a big fruit dessert person... the pear was poached, there was some glaze on it and some chocolate sauce, but I felt it needed more umph...it was good none-the-less

but that chicken!!! seriously can't get over it!! hahaha!

okay! I'm hungry!

Time to cook something up for dinner!

Enjoy your food ya'll!!!