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.