October 23, 2011

Mayonasie and Power Outages

Hi.

I have  a lot of talking to do.

First off, I occurred to me the other day (because I was getting emails from people asking me) that you would all like to know what the heck goes on in school for me.

Is it really like those scenes in Sabrina where they all line up and show off their soufflé? Do you get yelled at? Why are you cutting carrots? I thought you knew that?

Here we go. I'm in my second quarter right now, and my first "Lab", which is what they call the classes that I have in the kitchen. The lab I'm in right now is the beginners class. Everyone has to take this, no matter what their major(Culinary, Hospitality, Pastry).

It goes through the basics and proper industry techniques of, well,  quite a lot. So far we have done stocks, knife cuts, soups, mother sauces and small sauces.

Here are some pictures of the last few weeks:

Chef demoing how to truss a chicken.

The handiest thing you'll ever have. I give you the . . .monkey bowl. Yes, that is really what they call them.

Ginormous pot used for making stocks. And a shot of my glamorus footwear.

Prep for soup. By the looks of it this is for split pea.

The other more "normal" sized stock pots.
 So thats a peek at the last few weeks. I'll try and keep you all updated.

Also. Last week had some crazy weather going on. Wind gusts over 60 mph+40ish degrees =


It usually looks like this:

I got back from class on the day of this storm to discover that half my block was out of power. That was around 4pm. We didn't get it back until around 2am. I'm hoping that this isn't going to be a theme for this winter.


Thank goodness I had a bunch of candles. I made a quick trip to the grocery store for super and then watched The Kings Speech. Wow. Amazing movie.

I haven't had much time for cooking/baking lately. But I did manage to squeeze in a little baking a week or so ago. I made the previously mentioned Chocolate Biscotti.

I used Smitten Kitchen's recipe, which you can find here. Then only change I really made was switching out hazel nuts for almonds.
Oh, and if you really want to make it the way I did you will do the following:

❖ Decide to make half a recipe, because there is no way you are going to eat that all yourself.
❖ Mentally cut the recipe in half instead of writing it out like you should (can we say lazy?)
❖ Once you have added everything and are at the mixing stage, find yourself thinking"I know she said that this dough would be sticky but this is ridiculous.."
❖ Realize that you forgot to half (halve?) the eggs.
❖ Quickly dump another half of the other ingredients and hope that it doesn't get too crazy in the oven.
❖ Shape the dough, bake, cut, bake.
❖ Eat, eat, eat.
❖ Give away some because there is no way you are finishing that.
❖ Refuse to share with geese.


The End.

4 comments:

  1. "Ahhhh...Biscotti do die for!" according to a 9-year old brother who really misses you! Now he is asking me to make brownie pie! Sheesh...

    Loved the part about forgetting to halve the amount of eggs. Shows that you do have my DNA after all!!

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  2. I have some new recipes up my sleeve for when I come back for Thanksgiving :)

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  3. Yum! You have to explain, whats with the mayonaise? I don't think you mention it once in your post, and I'm very confused! Don't you just love stormes though. I wish I could have been there to enjoy your power outage with you... :)

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  4. Yeah, sorry I have to stop titling my posts before I write them. I made a LOT of mayo in class that week.

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