viennoiserie!

Happy Day!

 Did you notice that my 'Happy' was not in sarcastic quotes today? It was a much better day today then it was yesterday. It was our first day in viennoiserie. We make a whole mixture of amazing little goodies. I'm loving it. We made a bunch of things to be baked tomorrow, so unfortunately I didn't get anything to snack on today..well thats not entirely true. I'll explain more later.

 My group was talking about coffee first thing this morning. I am not a coffee drinker, never have been..probably never will be. BUT I love the smell. Three out of the five of us don't like coffee. I was talking to the girl that had a coffee in her hand and I said "..yeah well thats because of your Cathleen addiction..I mean caffeine addiction!" haha and she replied "yeah, I miss her.." hahahaha - If that doesn't seem funny I'm sorry. But in the moment it was. Then we started chatting about food and got on the topic of sweetbreads. Now, some people know what this is, for those of you who do not - It's not bread. It the thiamus gland of an animal. The thought of this is absolutely disgusting! Chef came over at this part of our conversation and proceeded to insult us because we don't share his love for this food. lol "ah, you young people, you don't know anything." He told us that himself and his siblings use to fight over the organs of the rabbit they were going to have for dinner. Liver, heart, kidneys..nasty! Maybe that's why he's so tall?

 The first thing we made today was quick puff pastry. This is a laminated dough with lots of butter. We didn't do it the traditional way, which is a layer of pastry then a layer of butter then another layer of pastry then single fold, double fold etc. We put our butter chunks right in the dough then did folding. He attempted to teach us the math behind folding this dough - its complicated. especially for a math dummy like myself. But its something like, if you double fold a traditional dough 6 or 7 times you end up with over 1,000 layers of pastry and butter. Amazing.
 So we made the dough and had to put it in the fridge to let the butter get cold again so we could roll it out. Then we moved on to making "Pure Beurre" translation? PURE BUTTER. Now we are talking..
This is a french shortbread. My friend bought me one of these cookies last week from the cafeteria. So good. Again we made the dough and it went in to the fridge for tomorrow. Then we went back to our puff pastry. We got it out and rolled it in to a long rectangle and did a single fold, then we rolled it out again and did a double fold. Then it goes back in the fridge. You can't do all your folds with this dough right away because it will become to tough. It needs time to rest. Very time consuming.
 Next, Oat cakes. *drool* . I ate some of this dough (it had no raw eggs in it. I won't eat batter with raw eggs..ick.) It was so good. I need to sneak a few of these out of the kitchen when we make them. Shh, don't tell on me. ;) . AGAIN this one was balled, wrapped and put in the fridge.
 The last thing we made today was chocolate chip cookies. Pretty simple stuff. Unfortunately we ran out of chocolate chunks. Chef said we could use the fancy chocolate wafers and just break them up. This turned in to a "one for the bowl...one for Ashley. yum. One for the bowl..one for Ashley." Expensive chocolate tastes amazing, go figure. So those got scooped on to baking trays and (can you guess what i'm going to say next?) It went in the fridge! So we didn't actually bake anything today. Just prepped a lot of stuff.

 Today we got a little treat. We got a free meal in the restaurant! Chef told us last week that wednesday would be our day. So we asked him again around 10:30 and he said "no, you guys are tomorrow.." and I yelled "WHAT!? damn it! I didn't bring my lunch today." - So he let us go. muahaha!

 Now the cooks are still learning, just like us. Some of the food was good..some was okay. First we had the options of a seafood chowder or a Pho soup. I got the Pho. It had an egg on it, so I threw that in Sara's bowl. I don't like eggs. It had great flavour but I found it really spicy. I'm a little of a wimp when it comes to spice. But it was good.
 Next we had the choice of calamari or vegetable spring rolls. I got spring rolls as I hate seafood (can you see why I chose to work with sweets instead of food? I'm a little picky.) It was served with this weird pork that was steamed in a banana leaf. Interesting. I didn't really eat it.
 Then we had the options of Pork loin, Chicken or cod (I think..It was fish). I got the pork, Leona got the chicken and sara got the fish. They request that we don't order the same thing because they want the kitchen to get use to making different dishes for the same table. It all about practice. This again was okay. My pork was very fatty for my liking. I like very lean meat. My rice was crunchy but my veggies were very tasty. Then we got dessert. Best part of the meal! I ate everything on my plate. Couldn't insult my fellow classmates :) It was a lot of fun to get to sit for more then 20 minutes and chat with my friends. Lots of laughs.

 Oh! we asked the tourism student (who was serving us) if booze was included in our meal, we could have it if we paid for it. Um no. But she said we could have any of their drinks as a virgin for free. SCORE! The funniest part was when Leona ordered a screwdriver without vodka. haha. Now the only things that are in a screwdriver are orange juice and vodka. So the waitress came back and said "um, we just realized that a virgin screwdriver is just orange juice.." buahahaha! oh god. I'm so going to a restaurant and asking my waiter "Can I please have a screwdriver, hold the vodka" and see if they can figure out that one out. Hilarious.

 We got back to the kitchen and it was time to clean up and go home. I grabbed some marzipan to bring home to practice. For those of us who want to do the skills competition we need to make Chef two 60g marzipan figurines by the end of october and he will pick which five are the best and thus chose who he is taking to skills. I've never worked with marzipan before, I need some practice. I have a few pictures of my attempts. It's a good thing I have a month to practice.

 What a great day! See you all tomorrow!

My soup. See all the red hotness in there?

Calamari ..

spring rolls with the weird pork..

Enjoying my virgin pink lady drink

My pork with a force field

Sara's fish dish

Me and my buddies! 

Pear tart with Raspberry sorbet

Before she fell over. She has lop sided boobs

The back. 

My first attempt at a frog. Davin informed me that the back legs should be bigger then the front. ..re do! 

Starting to lean..

She's a tad top heavy....