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!

Beet Ravioli

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time! I roasted up some fresh beets, which really is my favourite way to eat beets. I got some nice goat cheese and some creme fraiche and thought it was going to be absolutely amazing. So, I dumped it all into the food processor and whirled it up. Leaving aside the look of it (think horror movie) I was certain it would taste great. Problem one was no texture...problem two is that something about the processing took away any trace of that rich beet flavour that I love so much.
I read that almonds go with beets so I dumped in some ground almonds...this did not help. I should have roasted the almonds at the very least, and I probably should have done a rough chop on some actual almonds instead of using ground ones.
I added some mint leaves, more salt and pepper, and it tasted marginally better, but still not what I was looking for, but I'm not giving up. I am going to try again and leave the food processor out of the equation, and try to find some stronger tasting goat cheese.
Anyway... I rolled out some fresh pasta and made the ravioli...at this point I was rushing so I didn't flour the dough sheets before I used the egg to glue them together so they never really stuck the way they should have, but they held together. They looked nice enough after they cooked!
I juiced and zested an orange and reduced it with some creme fraiche and finished it off with butter. THIS WORKED!
The orange really brought out the beets and the flavour lingered in my mouth afterwards (but like an old friend you want to keep talking to, not like the obnoxious guy at last call in the bar).
I'm going to try again, but take more time to get the flavours where I want them to be. I keep feeling like this will eventually be a good dish.
In the end, I used the rest of the beets and added them to shredded potatoes to make really pretty beet potato pancakes!

It was a beautiful day today and I had a great bike ride! I'm feeling smug about the leftover cannelloni I have in the fridge. Even my failed bechamel sauce (although I truly feel Mario Batalli needs to accept his share of the blame for the saltiness) tastes better after a few days in the fridge with all of the other flavours mingling together. It no longer resembles and tastes like those flour and salt paste maps we used to make in public school!

Fresh pasta

Okay...this wasn't the first time I have made pasta...but this time I thought I would cheat and make the dough in my my mixer and let it do all of the work of kneading. This turned out to be a huge mistake. I measured everything out and tried to 'set it and forget it!' When I went back to have a look it was basically just dry pebbles of dough rolling around in the bowl. I dumped it out and tried to get it to loosen up and hold together, but to no avail. It ended up feeling like cement and I had to dump the whole thing and start again from scratch. There went 6 eggs....I hate wasting food like that.

I think the problem is that when you are mixing it by hand, you just don't incorporate the flour that you don't need and when you do it in the machine you don't get that sense of taste. Pretty sure you could get it to work, but I've decided it isn't worth the effort!! So I started again and rolled out some lasagna sheets and finished up a lasagna that I'm making for a friend. Which seemed like a good idea at the time, but I got pretty experimental and I'm not sure it is going to be any good. I know she will be honest with me, and I hope at the very least it isn't really horrible. I used artichoke hearts and I think I should have diced them up or something. I also tried to used all roasted tomatoes rather than sauce, and I don't think it was necessarily the right choice. In the end I dumped some canned sauce over it just so it wouldn't be too dry. This bothers me somewhat...but we shall see.

Tomorrow I am going to do ravioli with the rest of the dough that I didn't roll out. I have an idea for a roasted beet and goat cheese filling, with some kind of orange creme fraiche sauce.

I will let you know how it turns out.

Osso Bucco

Made my first Osso Bucco tonight. I have to say it was amazing. We were missing some of the ingredients, most notably the celery for the Mirepoix, but it still came out just gorgeous. I scooped out some of the marrow and ate it just after it came out of the oven. No wonder people rave about this dish. I usually like my red meat rare and bloody, but this was worth it the 1 1/2 hours of braising.

We used chicken stock, but when I try this at home I am definitely going for veal or beef stock just to get that nice dark look and flavour to the sauce.

We also didn't try to make the gremolata, but I can see how that hit of lemon zest would really amp up the flavour in this dish.

I am definately making this again!

My first black box competition

I had my first ever black box competition at my cooking class tonight. I love to cook, and I think I'm usually pretty good at it, but this was a very humbling experience.

I seemed to forget some of the basics of cooking...like tasting as you go and adjusting seasonings. I didn't even taste my veg until after judging and it was waaaay undercooked. The taste was good, but what a rookie mistake. I'm still pretty proud of what I put out there...as I was running around trying to put everything together the sweat was pouring down my face and I was almost panicked.

I'm really glad to have had the chance to do this at least once in my life, and I am definately going to try the recipe I came up with again in my own kitchen to see if I can perfect it!!

On days when I hate everyone!!

So today is one of those days when I hate my job and hate everyone! I am trying to work but daydreaming about opening the coolest little bistro so I can hang out with my customers and cook amazing food. If I'm going to work this hard and be this stressed, shouldn't it be at something I love?!

Have to play hockey tonight, otherwise I would be thinking up the most elaborate meal I can dream of so I can blow off some steam in the kitchen.

Now we're cooking with gas!

While I'm sure a food blog is not at all original, given the wildly successful Julie and Julia franchise...nonetheless...food is my passion, so I am going to go ahead and inflict my ability to gush about the divine taste of prosciutto, and field fresh tomatoes on the rest of the world.

For me, nothing takes the sting out of a bad day at work like coming home and slicing, dicing and jullienning whilst sipping a lovely glass Italian red! Actually, who's kidding who...any glass of wine will do!

So, here we go...