Thursday, July 28, 2011

Breakfast of Champions

I was originally going to title this post, 'stuff I've eaten for breakfast and you haven't', but that seemed clunky.  

Here's the damning thing about the plated desserts class - at the end of class you have this (allegedly) beautiful creation and you're just supposed to toss it.  It seems like such a waste - and it's breakfast time.  Problem?  I see only viable solutions.

Anyway, here's a photo gallery of stuff I have actually made and eaten for breakfast - recently:


Chocolate mousse and meringue cake wrapped in chocolate


Spiced and baked pineapples with brandy snap and coconut sorbet


Apple tart


Flourless chocolate cake with chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup


Lime-hazelnut meringue with chantilly cream


Poached pear with mascarpone mousse and brandy snap


I didn't eat this:


I just love it.  I think it looks like a goldfish eating someone's brain.  Zombie fish, attack!

Saturday, July 16, 2011

I came for the storm, but I stayed for the sun

Oh, Heathcliff!  Such exquisite torment of love!


(Whoops.  Wrong Heathcliff.  And yet the lyrics are strangely suitable.)

I finished Wuthering Heights in case you couldn't tell.  I have to admit, I fully anticipated hating the book.  In fact, I was inspired to read the book after enduring a three hour Masterpiece Theater adaptation which I so thoroughly despised, I watched to the bitter end, just to see the characters suffer.  So why on earth would I want to read the book after that?  Because I figured that there must be some reason authors I respect (Joyce Carol Oates and Alice Hoffman among them) are so devoted to this book.  And because it's kind of embarrassing that I hadn't read it yet.

So yeah, I don't hate it.  I also don't find Heathcliff to be a swoon-worthy, romantic hero, but I'm not an impressionable twelve year old either.  (Which brings up another interesting point and one of the reasons I love rereading books:  you don't just read a book, you experience what it has to offer you at the stage of life you are in.  So reading Catcher in the Rye as a forlorn and angsty teen is completely different from reading it as a reluctant, tax paying adult.  It's a bit sad to think of what impression it could have made, had I read it younger, how much more I probably would have loved it.  But I digress.)

I didn't realize how funny it would be.  For instance:

And, do you imagine that beautiful young lady, that healthy, hearty girl, 
will tie herself to a perishing little monkey like you?
-Wuthering Heights, Volume II Chapter XIII

Perishing little monkey?  That's going straight to the top of my favorite insults list.  And the word slut is used at least 3 times, probably more (I just didn't bother to keep track), which feels surprisingly modern.  

For all the sturm und drang the book is purported to have (the title has the word wuthering in it, a romantic, stormy word if there ever was one), it ends very light.  The sins of the previous generation are absolved, the future begins fresh with the promise of a kinder, gentler love, and the parties involved walk away from the darkness of the manor and into the carefully manicured lawns of a happier society.  

I have moved on to more consuming works.  Lately, I have wanted to be devoured by a book.  I have such fond memories of  night long vigils spent crouched down next to my childhood nightlight, feverishly reading.  I would usually finish the book right around dawn.  Watching the light come up on the world, I always had the same thought 'Nothing will ever be the same.'

There isn't much I miss from childhood, but that I do.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Plated and Elated

Do you know what I had for breakfast this morning?


Why that would be raspberry mousse with creme anglais, raspberry coulis, and tuile cookies.

It was technically my first plating (and it seemed like such a shame to waste it, so it ended up in my belly).


It's not amazing, but it's not entirely terrible.  And, though I knew it was coming, when faced with the blank plate, I froze.  Completely and totally.  Deer trapped in headlights had nothing on me at that moment.  I'm not even sure what I was going for, because I panicked and tossed it on the plate.  (You should have seen what I scrubbed off.)


I'm sure in a few weeks I will be mortified by this amateur effort.  As for now, I can attest it was delicious.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Once more, with feeling

And we're back to our regularly scheduled program!

Giant Corporate Cooking School: Rotation 4, Day 1

The good news, though I am still in the dreaded room of doom, is the class has been halved and lo and behold we all have elbow room.  Save your breath telling me how tiny professional kitchens are (truth: the larger the kitchen the smaller the area for paying customers so most kitchens are tiny), this is a learning environment people.  I need room to learn.

It was an unusual day.  For one, everyone was exhausted (and possibly hungover) and it was pretty much just straight lecture.  (When we finally did have to whip up some crepe batter for the crepes we're making tomorrow, everyone seemed really confused and unsure of how to proceed, like cattle put into the wrong field.  This is why we shouldn't have a week off.)  This go round is all about advanced pastry techniques, which is far as I can tell means we take everything we've so carefully learned how to do and deconstruct it.  I'm all for destruction.  I mean deconstruction.

I'm excited and intimidated.  The in class Chef demos are now a jumping off point for us rather than something that needs to be faithfully recreated.  While it's nice to have some room for creativity, I'm already being a bit spastic about it (how would a dark chocolate and liver truffle taste?  I think it could work).  How are you supposed to know where the line is, if you don't railroad right over it?

You know what else?  Starting today, the end is closer than the beginning.  This is the halfway point if you include the 6 week externship.  If you don't, then halfway through last rotation was the halfway point.  So I'm that much closer to real life grunt work.  Scary, huh?

Ah, the externship.  Still hanging over my head like the sword of damocles.  But I wouldn't know how to function if there weren't something in life making me uneasy.  (I was even supposed to meet with a career counselor to discuss it today, but, alas, she was ill.  Of course I waited around for two and a half hours and didn't find out till I showed up at her office.  Ahem.)   Still keeping my fingers crossed for something wonderful, but prepping the safety schools so to speak.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Fortunate One

My fortune, according to a cookie (and you know I listen to baked goods):

TURN YOUR THOUGHTS WITHIN - FIND YOURSELF

Yeah, as if I don't spend enough time navel gazing and stuck in my own head.  Stupid cookie.