.....or is it?
When I got home early from school about 2o minutes ago- I immediately :
-got into my pajamas
-grabbed my dog, laptop & dark chocolate
-got myself into bed
-began this blog post
- and quickly devoured that very large piece of dark chocolate...it never stood a chance.
Heres what happened:
I woke up this morning pumped for my professional cooking class. (This is the very last cooking class I have to take before I can be a chef). Why was i so pumped for class you ask? Because today was desserts! We had an hour and a half to make 4 different plates of 1 dessert. The only guidelines we had to follow was that the dessert had to be a "restaurant quality" dessert - and that it had to have a sauce & a garnish. Easy enough right? Well...
I woke up at 6:45 a.m. - made myself a delicious breakfast consisting of: one piece of toast topped with peanut butter, honey, and banana. A bowl of yogurt with blueberries, banana, and total cereal. And lastly I had a veggie sausage pattie. I ate, got dressed, and was out the door by 7:35. When I got to school at 8 I had 30 minutes to mentally prepare myself for today's class. What dessert was I preparing to make? My irresistible pecan pie.
When I decided last night that I would make this pie for school today -. I completely forgot that after this pie is baked, it must sit for an additional hour so the pie can rest. If the pie doesn't rest properly it will fall apart when it's cut. So I actually needed 2 hours and 15 minutes to do this the way it needed to be done so it could turn out ok - but the students were only alloted 1 1/2 hours....sooooo you can see where my troubles began lol.
My pie came out of the oven at 10:45 and we were all supposed to have our desserts plated and in the dining room for evaluation by 11 a.m. I had only 15 minutes for the pie to rest, to cut the 4 pieces, to plate the pieces, to garnish it, sauce it, and to take it out into the dining room. I was missing out on 45 crucial minutes of resting time....but I did what I could with the time I had.
The pie baked perfectly - but just as I had suspected....it fell apart. UGH I was so angry at myself for thinking I could bake and plate an entire pie in under two hours. Who do I think I am?!?! I'm not capable of a maneuver like that! It was worth a shot though right?
Comments from the chef (Not word for word of course...only bits and pieces of what i remember him saying):
"Portions are way too big"
"It's like a truck stop piece of pie that a 350 lb man would eat"
"Too many pecans"
"Too much caramel sauce"
"The pecans aren't cut up small enough"
"Should've made small individual size portions - like tartlets"
"No one could eat this much dessert after having a 3 course meal prior to"
(I totally forgot to take pictures of my pie...I really wanted to show you guys!)
Sigh - Chef never once said whether or not the dessert actually tasted good - which is what I wanted to know lol. But I'm assuming since he didn't say anything about the flavor - that it was probably pretty good.
Everything he said was right though. The pecans should've been cut a lot smaller, I should've made mini pies, and no one could eat an entire piece of pie after a 3 course meal (although I do disagree about the caramel sauce...there wasn't too much on the plate). I'm glad I was given some constructive criticism today - I needed it.
I suppose I didn't do horrible - some of the other students really liked the flavor of my pie and the way I plated it - it was just too much for one person to eat.
Next week in class (which is the second to last class):
I must take a written exam, and do my knife cuts.
So this week I must buy a very large bag of potatoes so I can practice my cuts - and I must read my book over and over again so I do well on the exam.
Ok...i'm all talked out now. Time for a nap.
Let us begin...
[[Today’s music]]
LYKKE LI – EVERYBODY BUT ME
“don't feel like dancing
no this lights is too bright
don't feel like shining
no this room is too small
I rather stand against the wall
and hope no one sees me”
[[Today’s restaurant]]
HOT SAUCE WILLIAMS – CLEVELAND OHIO
(This being one of those gems)
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[[Today’s news]]
WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE BACON IN THAT MARTINI?
“At restaurants across the country, the dinner menu has been bleeding not so subtly onto the cocktail list. Brown butter rum, chorizo margaritas, foie gras brandy and, of course, bacon.
We wanted to learn more about this trend in mixology, so we headed over to Proof, a restaurant just a few blocks from our studios here in Washington, D.C. There, we met up with bar manager Adam Bernbach, who gave us a little lesson in the art of "fat washing."
"Meat gives a cocktail a certain unique flavor that nothing else can give," he says. For bacon-infused scotch, Bernbach takes the fat strained from cooking bacon — the same fat everybody gets from cooking bacon at home — and pours it into a very peaty scotch. Then he puts it into a freezer for the fat to solidify.
"It will look almost like the crema of an espresso," Bernbach says. Skim that off, and presto: "What you have is the flavor tones of bacon, but none of the oil."
Bernbach says the process can take hours or days, depending on the richness of the fat.”
Want to read more?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128755367
[[Today’s random]]
SWATCH ARTIST PROFILE: IVAN NAVARRO
[[Today’s food clip]]
MAKING STEAK PIZZAIOLA
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Hey Jenna thanks for giving me a spot with the rest of the curly heads... Great post and great blog you have here. Keep up the good work :)
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