Been a While

WOW..It is has been a long time since I posted. Chef school has been a complete whirlwind so far. I am already halfway done and I can't believe it how quickly it all went by.

I have learned a lot since school started, but I feel like I still have a ton more to learn before I am even close to being a decent cook. I am happy at how quickly I can now crank out fresh pasta, it no longer feels like an all day event!
Finally figured out how to create Orange Cream Cheese Mousse. The technique we were taught in class didn't work at all, neither in class or here at the house, but I have finally figured it out..the trick is to heat the cream cheese over a bain marie and whip it with the orange concentrate before folding in the Italian Merangue...NO LUMPS.

Today I tried to perfect a technique for the jelly sponge. Every time I try to do it, the sponge cracks when I roll it up. Tastes delicious, but doesn't visually look great. I googled it and think I will try again next weekend. I did try do a chocolate Jelly Sponge today, and it did work out okay. I think next time I will use less of the cocoa in the mix...it was almost too chocolately...did you think such a thing was even possible? It cracked even worse than the regular sponge, so maybe a higher flour to cocoa ratio will work better...although the darkness of the cocoa sponge looks amazing.

Tonight I made a Shitaake soup using the beef stock I made last weekend. It tasted really great...I added some little pork meat balls from the homemade sausage we made in class on Thursday. 100% of this soup was made by my own little hands...so it tasted even better I guess.

Sausage making in class was very interesting. I have already bought the meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachment for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer, so I plan on starting to make my own sausages pretty quickly. I just need to find out where I can buy the casings.

Thanks for listening...I promise to write again soon.

Chef School has finally started!!

It seems like the summer lasted forever, and although it was fun I was totally anxious to begin Chef School. Finally at the end of September it started. The first 5 weeks are all theory and exams. Including math...yuck! I hadn't cooked all summer, and now with 5 weeks in the class I am worried that I won't remember how to use a knife once we get into the kitchen. So, today I made two batches of soup. The weather has turned cold so it is the perfect time for soup making. Bread making to follow soon!!!

I made a sweet potato, red lentil soup, which turned out okay, although a little lumpy. My immersion blender is dying a slow death so it is time for a new, more powerful tool. It has a pretty good taste and pretty low in calories as well which is a bonus. I floated a little bit of chili oil on the top of the plate which really jazzed it up, and cleared out my sinuses. Hopefully this will help fight off the cold that I feel coming on.

The second soup is oxtail, and it is a two day affair to make it up. It was a lot of fun, and it has a very rich flavour!! I have only tried a few spoonfuls as I am full of the Sweet Potato Red Lentil soup and so I didn't do up the Mustard/Madeira cream sauce that you float on the soup when you serve it. I think the bite of the mustard and sour cream that are incorporated into this topping will cut the meaty flavour that dominates the soup quite nicely. I am looking forward to trying it later for dinner.

Sigh...two more weeks until the kitchen!

Last class at Boot Camp

Heavy sigh tonight as I finish up my 13 week boot camp at the local culinary school. It has been an amazing ride in oh so many ways. In fact, it completely changed my life.

I will be handing in my resignation at work and be unemployed as of the end of June. In September I will begin my formal chef's training!! I can't wait to begin...in the meanwhile I am going to attempt to start up a catering company with the time I will have free once I'm done with my computer gig!

We got to flambe tonight which was totally fun, and nobody got burned, the school is still standing...and desert was delicious. We did bananas, plantains, mangoes in a butter honey sauce and flamed it with orange brandy...delicious. We learned how to make crepes...not for the faint of heart. It is much harder than I thought it would be and I have to say my crepes did not turn out as I hoped they would. This is something I will have to practise at home. We practised flipping them with our fingers...HOT. We also had to grill pineapple. I didn't think I liked pineapple, but turns out fresh pineapple is wonderful. Grilling is the way to go.

We then had to plate the food in a professional manner. I tried really hard, but the chef didn't like that I did a chiffonade on my mint rather than using the whole leaf. I really think this is an area in which I need a lot of work. I'm not a particularly visual person. I can tell when I find something beautiful, but to create it out of my head it very difficult. Eh, in the end I ate my mistakes and they tasted pretty good!!!

I will really miss going to class on Wednesdays, and in particular I will miss all of the great people that I met and cooked with over the last 13 weeks. Wonderful people, not a dud in the bunch. I kind of hope that I will see them again in some context...hopefully having dinner in my restaurant.

So, now I will have to practise practise practise until Chef school begins in September.

Gourmet Class Fish!

Ahhhh, another great class tonight. No matter how bad work gets, I can always be sure to relax and unwind at cooking class.

We did fish tonight, which included scaling, gutting and filleting a whole fish! My Da would be so happy to see that I cleaned a fish, although he wouldn't have approved of all of the 'fancy' cooking and spicing that I did to it afterwards. He just likes his fish to be fish, no salt, no pepper, just fried fish. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

I actually kind of enjoyed cleaning the fish, although scaling it was a major production...scales were flying everywhere in the classroom...kinda looked like a blizzard! My filets turned out okay...at least I didn't think it looked like an animal chewed them off the bone or anything.

We cooked them 'en papilotte' which is a fancy way of saying wrapped in paper! Throw in some vegetables and seasonings and put in the oven and in a very short period of time you have a verry tender delicious piece of fish...a meal in a bag.

I only did one filet that way, the other one I pan fried on the stove just like we do up at the cottage. I gotta say it tasted pretty good. I think I would definately cook fish again here at home.

I was covered in scales and pretty much smelled like a fish...I saw the old stray tom cat that lives in my alley eyeing me pretty hard when I got out of the car. I hustled into the house as quick as I could! My own cats were less interested than I though they would be...they get more excited about 'hockey hands' than they did about fish hands...go figure.

Only one more class *sigh* I am really going to miss the camaradarie and fun of Gourmet Boot Camp.

MS Society of Canada

MS Society of Canada

Please help me raise $1000.00 in the fight against this crippling disease.

I live with this disease every day and there are some pretty exciting new developments that are just being studied now. My friends and I will ride from London to Grand Bend and back with hundreds of other people. My personal goal is to raise 1000 dollars and this year we really hope that the ride will top out over a million dollars!

Thanks for reading.

Mussels and Oysters

Another great night in the kitchen! I am very much going to miss these classes when gourmet boot camp comes to an end in two weeks...

We baked bread, which was pretty lackluster in my humble opinion...I don't think they added pastry flour this time, which was a step up, but I don't think they added salt...really tasteless...but good for dipping into the sauces we made for the mussels and oysters.

I did a curry sauce for my mussels, some garlic, butter, white wine, cream and curry. It looked like I was eating mussels on the sun. I had everybody try them and the consensus was that the curry was a good idea. I really think that could be a great dish down the road...I didn't have time to really let the sauce thicken...but it was soooo pretty.

I did a cream and goat cheese sauce and then baked the oyster in the oven and topped it with a tomato dice that I sauteed quickly. YUM...

I am really going to miss the people in the class as well. It has been really fun to meet new people, especially ones as food obsessed as I tend to be...I'm thinking of trying to institute some kind of supper club where we would all get together to cook every once in a while.

What a great day today was. I took my shiny new bike for a ride, it was beautiful and sunny, and when we got to the top of the escarpment we saw and heard the peregrine falcons hunting over the red hill valley. We even saw their nest...what an incredible sight to see the falcon spread it wings and soar out over the trees. Their call is just haunting. Finish that off with cooking and eating and NO dishes to do....that is what I call a good day!

Hamilton Food and Wine Expo

SIGH...Just got home from the local Food and Wine Expo and can still taste the lingering flavours of wonderful food.

It really was a great night. The place was absolutely jam packed with people. From the second you walked in you could just smell everything that was waiting to be tasted and sampled.

The pulled beef was incredible, it was so tender and the edges were crispy and carmelized...yummm!

My only disappointment was that I used my last sample ticket before I found out that there were duck confit sliders at one of the booths.

I saw the chef and some of the helpers from the school at the college booth, and ran into another one of the students, which was nice. Good to have someone to rave about food with on a night like this.

Also exciting was running into Mrs 'Mr Vinegar'. I have finally found somewhere to get some mother of vinegar so that I can start making my own blends. This is exciting to me...the possiblities are endless.

Think I'll pour a glass of Fuzion and try to find the Cheese Lovers Facebook page!