sugar britches

one day in international, i made curried shrimp. it was delicious and there is not photographic evidence of it.  there was, however, evidence all over my pants. I managed to get curry powder….everywhere. Including my hind quarters, and it wasn’t long before the nickname Curry A$$ was born.

after advanced dining room, we went to advanced patisserie (because i’m soooo advanced now), where on day 1 we made all kinds of fruit coulis. I made a delightful cherry coulis. and got it on my pants. enter Coulis A$$.  not nearly as catchy.  BUT i actually have pictures of what my hard work and soiled britches produced (props to our chef who required pictures of every plate in our final project).

our chef was awesome. cool, calm, and collected (as most pastry chefs are) and not afraid to beat into the teenagers’ heads the importance of taking care of your body in this industry–with both food and exercise.  only healthy snacks were allowed during lecture (i’m continually shocked by the amount of soda, cookies, and fast food consumed for breakfast here) and we all had to tell her what we do to keep ourselves fit.  Ironic in a lab full of cream, butter, and sugar, but that made it all the more necessary.

So–the treats! We worked in groups the first few days, with one person directing the plate design, then the last days we worked together for production, but plated our own desserts.  All these (well, the decent looking ones) went to the Advanced Dining Room for lunch service.

chocolate mousse with a tuile cookie, chocolate piping, and assorted fruit coulis

almond financier with red-wine poached pineapple, chocolate straw, lace spiral, and piping/sauces. (my plate design–chef said best of the day!)

lemon basil bavarian cream on a phyllo nest

fresh fruit tart with coconut cream

pear tatin with lace cookie (that awkward open space on the right side of the cookie is for ice cream). first dessert plated totally on my own!

lemon-scented cheesecake on a chocolate cookie with fresh raspberries and a sugar spire (sugar work is now my sworn enemy).

hand-pulled apple strudel with a cookie cup for ice cream and demerits for the fresh fruit because it didn’t go with the fall flavors of the strudel. whoops!

and my final! chocolate lava cake with (now tremendously melted) raspberry swirl ice cream. also imagine a beautiful piece of chocolate placed right through those delicately cut holes in the lace cookie. rough day, but i still made an A!

 

you’re international, so international

After a quick little jaunt over to Asheville to visit my cuzzzzins and reunite with Mad Dog, I came back and BAM! I was a sophomore [for normal students they do 2 terms of labs and 1 term of academics their first year, then 1 set of labs and 2 academics their second year. cuz i can already read and write rull good, they don't make me take no real classes or nothin'].

So! Being a sophomore means you get new uniforms which is AMAZING because you no longer have to do laundry halfway through the week and you rock the light blue collar on your coat which allows you to look at the little freshman with nothing but the utmost distain. But it also means they force me to take another pair of the most god awful work shoes ever. Those bad boys are going right to goodwill. danskos4life.

First class: International Cuisine

This was a huge change of pace right off the bat–it’s a service-centered class, which means we produce the food for the freshman dining room (remember when I was graded on opening a bottle of wine? that class). We got our first taste of dealing with ticket times, working a line, plating, all that good stuff. It wasn’t 100% authentic–the food was all prepared in advance, kept hot in a steam table, then just plated to order. But it was the perfect way to ease into things.

Each day of class we were “in” a different region of the world: Japan, Thailand, Spain, Greece and Turkey, Americas, Africa. We started off with lecture, covering a loooong list of terms and discussing the culinary history of the region and how imperialism, wars, and other major world events impacted the food people ate around the world (hint: spain made their mark allllll over the place).

The food was great–and diverse for sure. A new term means new classmates, so there were a few hiccups along the way (the paella–my love!–was a disaster) but by and large everything was tasty.

japan: miso soup (duh)

phillipines: lumpia and mandu (think wontons and spring rolls)

phillipines again: pansit (stir-fried noodles with shrimp and sausage)

in filipino culture, noodles are usually served on birthdays to symbolize long life. therefore, it’s super extra bad luck to cut or in any way shorten the noodles. that’s news you can use.

Americas: Bass with Mole Pepin (pumpkin seed mole)

awwww yea the crowning glory: ethiopian sample platter

you got your beef tibs, chicken doro wat, greens and veggies…heaven. we made our own injera (that brown spongey pancake thing on the bottom) and ohhh man it was awesome.  injera is usually made with teff flour (a grain, and gluten free!) and is fermented like sourdough, but we took a wee shortcut and used club soda and lemon juice to mimic the flavor and texture. i’m an injera fanatic and i thought this stuff was down right tasty.

pretty sweet jams, huh?

from here, we went to Advanced Dining Room [cue law and order DUN DUN]. It was all fancy-like, with french brigade style service. I won’t bore you with the details because it was absolutely terrible (and I already had experience with this style of service). It did make me infinitely more appreciative of just how fantastic all my instructors had been…this far. I’m a 27-year-old woman with a college degree and nearly 10 years of restaurant experience and I was treated like a 4 year old.  And she LIKED me. The hardest part was watching other students get berated for things there was no way in heaven they would ever know the answer to.  In a strange twist of fate, this brought out my compassionate side for these struggling individuals and it became a greater learning opportunity for me to quietly teach them things hiding in the dish room that our professor would rather screech and insult them over.

[end rant]

and then we walked through the seven levels of the candy cane forest, through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and landed in advanced patisserie!

girls just wanna have fun

i go to school–a lot.

i work–a lot.

that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of trouble to get into. i thought y’all might enjoy a little break in our regularly scheduled programming to see what i do when i get a hot second to myself

the good, the bad, and the ugly

The last lab of my “freshman” year (my spring term is what regular students do in their second year) was Fundamentals of Food Service Production (FFP for short). I didn’t know very much about the class going in…other than I had some not-so-great french toast from there way back in September.

FFP focuses on the mastery of three skills:  savory baking, shallow fry, and saute.  We made SO. MUCH. FOOD. and had SO. MUCH. FUN. Our chef was an ex-military who had spent considerable time in D.C. and loved to swap stories and encouraged us to take these skills and punch it up a bit.

exhibit a: savory baking (good!)

breakfast burritos. with scratch-made enchilada sauce simmered until it was extra delicious.

the most amazingly delicious breakfast burritos i've ever tasted. ever. ever ever ever.

exhibit b:  shallow fry (good!)

risotto cakes. have you ever seen someone so happy to be standing over hot, popping fat?

look at that mug!

exhibit c: saute

oh wait i have no pictures of this because I was too busy scorching off my eyebrows.  (bad)

BUT–after cooking off 3 flats of eggs (flat=50 eggs) and working 3 or more flaming pans at the same time, I walked out of this class really feeling like I could COOK.

roasted tomatoes stuffed with mushroom duxelles, topped with mornay (cheese) sauce

 

note the lone, sad green vegetable in the corner.

 

oh! we also made sauces. lots of sauces.

 

baby quiche! smuggled a couple of these bad boys out and sold them on the black market (or fed them to manfriend)

 

slidersssssssssssssss

chef: "do something with these potatoes!" me: "you got it."

 

next time he said that to me…

i stuffed them with cheddar, bacon, and scallions and topped them with fried onions. oops!

 

and then one day,

a pastry class brought us baked alaska made with candied bacon ice cream.

“So you must eat really well, huh” is something I hear often.  Not to blow off all the glitter and magic, but this is what “eating well” looks like in culinary school:

nom nom....or something.

it’s all really tasty, but it sure ain’t glamorous.  (uglyyyy)

All right!  Now I’m only 3 classes behind. I  contracted a lively strain of the bubonic plague this week, so I’ll try and get us up to real time while i’m on the mend. over and out.

 

boop boop

Alright lets get to the good stuff. [cute old school tivo "boop boop" fast forward noise].

Christmas was delightful. Saw the g-parents, they’re looking spritely as always.  Skype’d Auntie K and Unkie J and the pups. Also spritely all around. Got into trouble with the sista in chi-town. Jet-setted back to the east coast to ring in 2012 with Manfriend and had a fantastic little jaunt in the city of Brotherly Love with the Inventor of the Flameless Candle and his blushing new bride.

Back in the Queen City, we rounded out our Beverage lab with individual presentations on various spirits. I drew, in a fantastic twist of service industry fate, Grand Marnier.  I opened my presentation with this (it really hits its stride around 0:40).

Next up: Skills of Meat Cutting. Where you actually spend 5 hours in a meat locker. A 40-degree meat locker. The only class where people are dyyyying to do the dishes (hot water). This was definitely the hardest class I’ve had. For some reason, I just couldn’t grasp all the different cuts of meat and how they related to the anatomy. We had to know poultry, beef, pork, veal, and game. The actual skill of deboning a cut of meat I mastered no problem. But this?

name every muscle and bone. ready, GO.

This was HARD. Luckily, the chef was awesome.  We’re two peas in a pod when it comes to food philosophy–he has “eat” and “local” tattooed on his wrists, and ended every lecture with 10-15 minutes of yoga-inspired stretching before we headed into the arctic. He expected a lot, and gave a lot. And by gave, I mean gave us chicken cracklin’s and pork ribs rubbed with the most amazing dry rub ever.

In the middle of this, Liscious, Sparkles, and sista Leenie came to visit! We drank WAY too much wine, had WAY too much fun, and I impressed/horrified them with my fantastic butchering skills while prepping the Sunday night chickie.

After Meat Cutting, we went to Purchasing and Product Identification, known among the collegians as “Store Room.” You learn to identify product by filling every single purchase order for every single lab in the massive store room in the basement. Well, my group filled the req’s (short for requisition) while the 18-year-olds lounged around and thought about picking up a carrot.

This chef was a great cook–but also a math mind.  We learned how to cost out individual recipes and also how to analyze a menu and pick out which items are making you good money, and which ones need to be fixed.  There was a 10-minute lecture that involved words like “dog” “star” and “plow” that was hands-down one of the most educational experiences I’ve had in a LONG time.    He also had no patience for idiots or sloths, so we got along quite well.

Ahh so many words! so few pictures! what shall we do??

BOOM. carnitas from scratch. actually prepared in my very own kitchen. with quick-pickled red onions, radishes, and jalapeno.

Hop and jiggle

These truths I hold to be self evident:

1. Birthdays always need sprinkles
2. Birthdays on holidays call for a special level of celebratory creativity
3. The final term of any degree necessitates jello shots
4. old college traditions and new culinary educations can lead to wonderful things

I present: birthday cake and Bellini jello shots, presented in (food safe!) Easter eggs. Happy birthday Katie, and happy Easter everyone! Hope everyone celebrates in a way that makes you smile.

a christmas story (6 weeks late)

Smack-dab in the middle of our Beverage class was winter break.  Great timing, huh? Our 9-day class took the better part of 4 weeks to complete. Everything ended nicely at thanksgiving, and this term wraps up cleanly in 2 weeks (ack!) just in time for spring break, so I guess it can’t all work perfectly.

The last day of class before break was a university-wide deep clean, so we all spent a few hours scrubbing coolers, wiping down coffee machines, and organizing bottles and were sent on our way. A couple mimosas at a friend’s house and I was off to the great land of MILWAUKEE.

I have the fantastic ability to fall asleep absolutely anywhere, so as soon as my butt hit that seat I was out cold.  I wake up, expecting the beverage trolley to be rolling down the aisle, and wait. that’s concrete outside the window. We haven’t left yet. It’s been an hour. I have a connection in 60 minutes. In Atlanta–that’s 90 minutes from here. We finally take off, the pilot mumbles something about rain. We touch down in ATL as my connection is leaving. Cue mental rolodex: do i know anyone in a-town? Negative. Crap.

We get off the plane and I frantically ask the gate agent, “Did the milwaukee flight leave already?” (its now 20 minutes past scheduled departure) He points down the terminal and says one word: “GO!” I get (sprint) 3 gate down and I see another agent jumping up and down yelling “MILWAUKEE” and giving me the air-traffic-control TURN RIGHT arms. There are now 2 or 3 other women who also came sprinting into the gate and we breathlessly board the plane.  My seatmate says “Charlotte?” “Yep.” [flatly] “They held the plane for you guys.” [glare] Merry christmas to you too, wench.

I notice a guy in army fatigues from my first flight board right behind us (not the slightest bit out of breath) and the pilot comes on the intercom “We are pleased to welcome Private-Captain-So-and-So aboard, he is returning home to Wisconsin after his 1st tour in Iraq.” So THAT is why they held the plane. God bless the armed services. Seatmate X is now applauding so hard her whole body is vibrating. Wench.

This flight goes swimmingly (I’m asleep for most of it), and 24 hours later all is forgotten in favor of champagne and ornaments

t’was a lovely holiday, indeed.

tuesday quickie

Quick trip…quick post.

After such a great thanksgiving break, it was extra hard to dive back deep down below the mason-dixon. I was missing my city and my people baaaaaaaad. Manfriend came to the rescue and whisked me back up to dc in mid-december. We hit Fruit Bad on H Street, a place I’ve been dying to try forever. And was it ever worth the wait. Enter: the pig latin.

oh yes. i’m still talking about it not the next day–but the next month.

saturday morning brought a reunion with a favorite pasttime: brunch with liscious! ted’s bulletin for eggs, bacon, bubbles, and house-made maple bacon poptarts.

A happy coincidence with this visit was it coincided with Slow Motion’s no-way-i’m-3-years-from-30 birthday celebration! She can sniff our a surprise from 5 miles away, so this was a covert operation and I declare it a success she only had half an inkling something was up.

surprise!”]

[cue creepy jazz hands

An absolutely amazing night of good bbq, great friends, and awesome live music was the perfect way to end the weekend.

it’s 5′o clock…always.

After Nutrition class, something I’m really interested in and passionate about came Principles of Beverage Service, something I….know very well.

We spent two weeks learning how to carefully pour, mix, and serve cocktails. We spent many hours practicing pouring shots, mixed drinks, and martinis. Our practical required us to choose 8 drinks out of a hat and prepare them in a mere 20 minutes.

I should note this class began less than 1 week after the last Panthers home game, where I prepared roughly 8-10 drinks for rabid football fans between the times of  12:00pm and 12:01pm.

Aside from the mixology portion (where I should note, I got a 99. One point off for filling a martini too full. Seriously? Any real customer would give me extra credit for that.), we learned tons about how practically every spirit is made and consumed.

Our professor was fantastic–super passionate about not only the material, but about making it fun to learn.  I was constantly surprised at the different activities and games she came up with to help us understand the material. We created our own wineries, did quick fire-style cocktail challenges, and created dramatic presentations on different categories of drinks.

polynesian presentation: you put the lime in the coconut.

 

So all of those delicious cocktails at the top weren’t actually potable. Think just for a second about precisely how much liability would be involved in turning 20 or more 18-year-old college freshman loose in a completely stocked bar. Right. So we used water and food coloring. The juices were real though, so if kids wanted to get all hopped up on cranberry juice and sour mix, no problem.

That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of opportunities to taste–we used sip sticks to taste every liquor we talked about, did a beer tasting, and the infamous 8am wine tasting:

Most of the students had already done this activity in Dining Room, so this time we were given a plate full of food items like mint leaves, siracha, potato chips, lemon, goat cheese, and grapes to play with layering flavors and pairing them with the wines. It was a really interesting exercise, and almost more interesting was hearing the different things people liked that I never could have dreamed of wanting to eat (honey and milk chocolate with riesling? someone get the EMTs on call for when we all go into diabetic shock).

One of the questions I get most frequently is, “what do you do with ALL that food?” I think I’ve mentioned before that much of it does get eaten by students. And what can get donated, does. But there is a lot of pushing unwanted food on other students. Every classroom gets at least 1 tray of cookies or cake every day. Sometimes we just can’t eat it.  Sometimes, there is a better use.

happy 19th birthday!