Aureole

I went to a culinary demo at school with Chef Christopher Lee, executive chef at the new Aureole. You might remember him from Top Chef Masters episode 1. He was pretty cool. His style is American Classic. He puts cool spins on classics. And best of all he has a really awesome pastry chef, Jessica Yee. I have my heart set on interning for her very very soon. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Tuna Tartar on Norri Toast

The Veal Slider

Braise Lamb with Peas and Carrots

Only Semi-Important Announcement

I've added a new link in my side tool bar. Yeah the tools on the right side of my page... scroll down (or up)..... "blogs to eat" yah you found it. ok great.

It's a completely awesome blog http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

I would highly highly recommend opening a bottle of wine, putting on your pj's, curling up in bed with your laptop and actually LOL-ing while you read the blog. I have spent the last two hours on a Saturday night doing just that.

I really hope none of my cakes ever make it on this site, but I make no promises.

July 30th's posting is about Cheesecakes and cheese wedding cakes. Read it immediately pretty pretty please with sugar on top. I find the fact that people are actually making cheese wedding cakes completely ridiculous. It's not a Cheesecake.. .its cheese wheels staked like a cake and decorated with flowers to look like a cake. Why? Who are these people? Where do they live? If you love cheese that much why don't you marry it? Or better yet, marry whomever and put the cheese on a platter on the buffet table next to the wedding cake, the REAL wedding cake.

Crocquembouche

About a week ago I posted a blog about Choux and I wasn't able to get all the pictures up I wanted. So this is a continuation of the post about Choux.

Crocquembouche, pronounced like kroke -em- boosh, is traditionally made for weddings or baptisms.

A crocquembouche is a giant cone made out of profiterols, choux balls filled with pastry creme that are decorated with various toppings.

The one pictured about is Chef Toni's. She used the same choux dough to pipe out "FCI" for the top decoration. The base and stand is constructed out of nougatine (almonds and caramel). So the whole thing is edible... but I wouldn't recommend eating it cause it's nothing but sugar, sugar, sugar and a little bit of dough just to hold all the sugar together.

Each student made their own Croquembouche. It worked out perfectly for me cause I served mine at my wedding reception the following day. Another guy took his to his baptism but most everyone else just threw them in the compost.

Some of them didn't survive the night but most of them looked great!

To create the cone, each individual piece needs to be dipped into hot caramel. The caramel acts as a glue to hold the pieces together, but like any glue it has to dry first. The whole process is quite long and tedious because you have to hurry up and wait for the caramel to cool. It's also difficult to keep the caramel hot for a long period of time and there were several people who burned their fingers while dipping their profiterols in the caramel.

They can be decorated with roasted coconut, pearl sugar, pistachios, chocolate bits, caramel or even caramel swirls.

Learn More Eat More

Today marks two months of being in NYC and 21 days of class at FCI. In theory, according to my syllabus I have learned 46 different recipes. Is that true? Maybe, it sure feels like I've learned a lot. Needless to say, its a lot of work and I'm sweating constantly. I am becoming a regular at the laundry mat, so if you have any extra quarters you could send them my way : )

But despite the work, or maybe because of it I still feel elated at having this opportunity. I'm trying to suck the blood out of every single opportunity I have. The school has so many different visiting guest come for demos, tours and field trips that I learn more and see more here in a week then I would months of being at home.

Most recently I was a student volunteer for Ron Ben Israel (see link). When I was thinking about attending culinary school, Ron Ben Israel actually played a big part in deciding what school I wanted to attend. He is not only a regular at the school but temp teaches a few of the classes during the cake unit. He does cakes for Martha, Bride Magazine and has been on Oprah.

As a student volunteer I was able to meet Chef Ron, visit and tour his studio, meet some of his staff including his current FCI interns and be his assistant while he's doing the demo at the school.
For the demo, Chef Ron made a three tiered s'moore cake which we (that includes me) decorated with gold metals (looks similar to the picture above). To make the edible metals we used real metals that Chef had won at various competitions, made a mold out of a food safe rubber, filled the mold with chocolate fondant, chilled the mold, took the chocolate out of the mold and covered with edible gold powder.The picture is just something i found online but it gives you a pretty good idea of the type of molds i'm talking about.

Being a volunteer for the Chef was pretty cool, especially because I got to paint the metals with GOLD! I'm gonna get some pictures from the actual demo up really soon. So look out for that.

LOOOOK OUTTT
Here are those REAL pictures I promised.

Master Chef Jacques Torres

Yesterday I attended the demo of Master Chef Jacques Torres, The FCI's Dean of Pastry and Owner of Jacques Torres Chocolate in NYC (see link). Chef Jacques is by far one of my favorite people I've met in a long time and I completely admire him. He's a very accomplished business man, engineer, chef and teacher. He's cooked for a lot of famous people, worked at Le Cirque (see link) and now owns a chocolate shop. He has a great sense of humor and is very playful in his work.

He told us about the time he cooked for the Pope and while the Pope was away, and no one was looking he sat in the Pope thrown.

How cool is that!

Have you seen what the Pope's thrown looks like?

No.

OK. Here's a picture. ------------------------------>

Seriously.

See what I mean. That's pretty cool.

Anyway, so at the demo, Chef Jacques initially explained some principles of how to be a successful restaurant pastry chef. " When you make a new dessert menu, make it the best one you ever wrote. The last menu you wrote must always be the one you ever wrote. " He said that every menu needs to have contrasting temperatures, textures, flavors and weight. Creamy, crunchy, hot, cold, light and fruity, heavy and deep.

For me, his ideas on creating dessert menus was especially interesting because I'm thinking that's what I want to do first when I'm out of school. There are a lot of different job opportunities for a pastry student and many of my fellow piers want to work in bakeries, cake shops, at catering companies or open their own shop. Initially I thought I would be interested in cakes. However, after finally having the opportunity to work in a restaurant I think, at least while I'm young and have the energy, the restaurant life will suit me well.

At the Demo, Chef made a birds nest out of slivers of filo dough, resting on a creme brulee, topped with powder sugar covered egg almond slices. It was very cute and playful.

This was just my tasting portion but you could add multiple layer of filo which could sandwich chocolate or bananas or chocolate and bananas. Yum! The cool thing is, I know how to make every component of this recipe so I could make it at home.

But just in case you wanted something a little easier... here is a video from Chef Jacques which I think most everyone could handle.






How to make chocolate covered corn flakes


I'd love to know if anyone does indeed try to make the chocolate corn flakes how it goes. (Honey I'm expecting you to try this, if you haven't already)

Choux makes me sad

I'm feeling very lazy today so instead of explaining about what I've I'm been doing, I'm gonna keep the typing to the minimum and hope the pictures explain enough.

We made Eclairs a couple days ago and I will have to make them tomorrow for my test. I feel...

Yah my Eclair were under baked meaning they fell flat (literally) and will never resided in some one's stomach. Instead they made it into the garbage. The ones picture below clearly aren't mine.

They come in 3 flavors, chocolate, vanilla and coffee... horrah or something.

....
The French love their bike races. This is a pastry that's suppose to look like a tire wheel and is called a Paris-Brest. I know bear with me here. It's a stretch.

OMG shoes...

Questions?
Comments?
You know the box to put those in.

Sparlum

On a completely unrelated note, I just wanted to share a few random pictures of my apartment and neighborhood. So friends and family can have a better idea of exactly where it is I'm living.

This is my street, 117th, in East Harlem aka Sparlem.
The neighborhood is mostly 3 and 4 story apartment buildings. On every corner there is a bodega. The McDonald's by my house has a walk-up window instead of a drive through, and there are tons of street cart food vendors.

When I first moved in I spent a lot of time decorating. We don't have a lot of money or nice things so I've had to do the best I can. This is the east wall of our giant living room.

The north area of our living room, that's my new couch!


My tomato plant is HUGE! Its started climbing the cable lines. In a few months I'm gonna be eating yummy tomatoes.

This is our porch, it's pretty big. I spend most of my nights in that big red chair relaxing or talking on the phone. When the sky is clear I can see the big dipper. It's pretty awesome.

Kiss Me

We've started our new unit which concentrates on Pate' a Choux, also called Choux for short. It sound really exotic but if you've ever had an eclair than you've had choux. It's the chewy crunchy, brown dough that's hollow on the inside.

The dough is cooked 3 times, twice on a stove top and then finally in an oven. When in the oven, water inside the dough becomes steam, causing the dough to rise. The long gluten chains cause the dough to hold a shape and create a hollow middle.

The items we've been making in this unit are much more playful and involve more plating,but more on those dishes later. For now I just wanted to show you my swans.


Two swans, kissing, in a pool of chocolate.

This is the most romantic dessert possible!!!

Slight Sake Intoxication.

There's something to be said for a school that serves its students alcohol. Most universities are "dry campuses" or have an alcohol policy (however strictly enforced) but clearly drinking during class is never permitted. However, culinary schools don't follow these same EtOH guidelines. Obviously alcohol education is a really big component of a good culinary education, but I'm not sure getting buzzed off sake at 4 pm is part of the normal curriculum. haha

So here's what happened. I went to a chef demo on Sake food pairings. It's a common misconception that Sake is only appropriate with sushi, but that's completely wrong. In fact, Sake isn't the best thing to eat with sushi. Rather Sake can be paired with more 'traditional' foods.

I love sake and this demo only made me appreciate it more. The brewing process is really unique because rice lacks natural sugars unlike wine grapes do, so a mold, Koji-kin, is used to convert starch into sugar. That sugar can then be turned into alcohol. The type of rice and type of mold are what traditionally control the various flavors of sake.


We tasted 5 different types of sake with a mini meal; raw tuna tar tar, raw oysters on the half shell, green beans and chocolate curry cake with creme chantilly. My favorite sake that we tried was a sweeter, more coconut flavored sake called Nigori Genshu. It was a hazy white color because it has small partials of the rice still in it. I tasted some premium sake including Daiginjo (pictured right).

The sake was from one of the only American Brewers, Sake One in Oregon. They make an organic sake, which I also tasted. Pretty good stuff.

The process of brewing sake is rooted deeply in tradition, the basic premise is that the best sake in the world is that which taste like water. Personally I'd never drop a ton of cash on a bottle of sake that has no flavor! But that's how it's been done for hundreds of years in Japan.

I don't wanna bore you with more details, but I will say everyone needs to go home and make this summer drink:

White Saki Sangria

Ingredients

- Honey Dew Melon (1/2" cubed)

- Strawberries (sliced)

- Blue Berries (whole)

- Raspberries (whole)

- Fresh Pinnacle ( 1" wedges)

- Kiwi Wedges

- 1 part white rum

- 3 parts sake

Mix fruit and rum in a jar. Cover. Let sit for 1-3 hours in a fridge so fruit can absorb the rum flavor. Add sake, LOTS of ice and maybe a mint to garnish. ENJOY!

Test of Tarts

Yesterday I had my first culinary test. It was everything tests in college were not... fun, exciting, scary, crazy and rewarding. The tests are divided into two sections: written and practical.

The written part is about 40 minutes and goes by way, way, way to fast. I had studied, knew all the material and still almost ran out of time. I was scribbling like a mad person up to the last second. There was multiple choice, matching, T/F, conversion problems and essay questions. I know for sure I got one conversion wrong because I didn't know how many fluid oz. are in a cup, and I got another question wrong- wasn't sure what creme patisserie mixed with creme Chantilly makes. But aside from those two I feel I got everything right.

The practical is two and half hours, but it feel like it's 30 minutes long! It's open book, open note. Ever receipt is fair game and you draw out of a mixing bowl to see you're doing. Every student must present Chef with one large 8" tart, 2 tartlettes and 5 cookies. However if you're smart and fast, it's better to make extra and then only present Chef with the best.

The first and most important thing is to have well organized station initially. This is my drawer full of tools. I have a TON of tools (and these aren't even all of them). I totally love my tools. I think during robotics I was told "With the right tool you can do anything" and that's exactly how I feel about my tools. They each have a very specific use and I'm trying to keep very good care of them. In case you're wondering, the purple and silver tape on all my tools is an identifying mark in case they get mixed up with someone else's tools.

Anyway back to the test. I was really happy with the 3 items I choose;

• 8" Tarte aux Pommes (traditional apple tart). It was the first thing recipe made in class.

• 2 Clafouti tartlettes. (a baked custard tart) Usually made with cherries but any berry can be substituted.

• 5 Spritzkakor (spritz cookies) A piped cookie with a chocolate, jam or nut topping.

Ready for Chef's examination and tasting.

To do well on the practical test you must have good planning and timing skills. Tasks need to be completed in the correct manner, at the correct time and in the correct sequence. You need to have good knife and tool skills. Cleanliness and organization are critical. You must follow the directions perfectly and the final product must be pretty, appetizing and of course taste GREAT.

Here's how I did:

Spritz cookies (pictured left)- almost perfectly. The one mistake I made was in the piping of the cookies. I didn't tuck the end of the piping tail into the center of the cookie, I tucked it toward the bottom. Not a big mistake but one I will never make again. I only lost a point for that mistake : )

Apple Tart (picture above)- my weakest product. I made several mistakes, they are kinda technical so I'm just gonna briefly describe them. First I sliced my apples and didn't keep the apple as a unit. I allowed the apple pieces to fall apart. This mistake did not affect my final product but just made it hard and slower to assemble.

The second mistake I made was I forgot to file down my tart crust, silly me. I remember when I did my tartlettes but forgot for my apple tart. Oh well... mistakes were made.

The largest mistake I made was I forgot to glaze the apples with butter and dust with sugar BEFORE baking. This causes the apples to burn, and get a more grainy texture : ( Not a single person baked this tart remembered to do this though. We all forgot and scrambled to get a glaze on the apples after they were half baked.

Raspberry Clafouti (pictured left)- Awesome. Basically kick ass. Chef could only think of one suggestion, make the sides of the crust slightly thinner. But she said "the custard is perfect". I was sooooo happy!


I have another test in ten days so I should probs go study : ) yah right.

Sharon's Tour

So my friend Sharon was in NYC with her family and spent 24 hours with me. She was at my mercy and I forced her to go all over NYC with me.

We went to Time Square
(which is the hardest spot to get to in Manhattan from my house)

Drank some beer at a bar in Korean Town, made friends with the bar tender. Sharon proved to me once and for all that she really does know how to speak Korean : )

We rode the subway (A LOT).



Walked around Central Park. There is a wonderful garden on the north east corner of the park, right by my house. Had a nice little picnic there.

Almost got in trouble.... a couple times.

She got to see my school and the wall of fame.

Her hands are as big as Jacque Pepin!

I walked the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time and saw the city.

We ate my favorite soft serve ice cream... tasty delight and hung out at Union Square.

Totally the highlight of my week!

The End Of Tarts

Today was the last day on our tart unit. I'm having my first exam in two days and I'm crazy nervous, but in a good way. The kinda nervous that forces me to study my butt off and get super organized. So right after I'm done with this blog I'm gonna go organize a bagillion flash cards... a typical fun filled Saturday night for me : )

So here are a few more things I've done in class since my last posting.

My Tarte Bavaroise au Chocolat.

The decoration is a cre'me chantilly which is piped on using a conique- a cone you make out of folded parchment paper. using a conique is about a billion times harder then a traditional piping bag and my 'thumbs up' is covering a monstrous decorative disaster in the middle : )

Look how lovely Chef Toni's Tartelettes looked.

I've also made a yummy Quiche Loraine with real bacon, not something that came out of a package, but honest to goodness smoked bacon that came in huge strips as big as your forearm!

We made Tartelettes Tatin Facon Rapide, aka apple tartlettes with carmel turned upside down. It is assembled with carmel on the bottom layer, then raw apples slices and pastry dough on top, bake it and when it comes out of the oven, while it's still hot, flip the little bugger upside down to plate it. Sound good right? Carmels and apples you're thinking... yummy. Chef was excited for this, she described it as a simple but classic dish. But I was completely unimpressed. It's the first tart we've done where I've been disappointed. The taste was just blah and it looked like a hot little mess. It's cool in theory, the flipping of a carmel tart, instead of applying a carmel glaze, but it needs some work.

And Finally for the big finish... my Linzer Torte. A wonderful raspberry compote tarte. The raspberry compote is very labor intensive and the lattice needs to be treated with tender love and care. It's the perfect raspberry tart in my opinion.
I was so completely looking to taking this home and getting a slice. To bad the side walk ate it first.

Before

After