Plating? YES PLEASE!

Greetings! 

 Today was a wonderfully fun day! First thing we did this morning was put our ice cream bases in the machine. Chef said "you girls know what you need to do first thing, so go do it." I looked at him. Looked at the machine. Back at him. Back at the machine. I didn't remember how to use it. Oops. Luckily he knew exactly what my shifty eyes meant and showed me again. Not that complicated. 

 First thing we need to do is clean out the funnel at the top of the machine (that's where you pour your base in) and we have to run hot water then cold water through it to rinse it out. When I put the first bucket of water in it started to leak everywhere. Just running out the front of the machine. Great. "Chef!!!! It's leaking! help!" The people who used it last didn't put the rubber seal back on properly. So, always check the seal before starting. Thank goodness it was just water and not the ice cream that was leaking out. 

 Also, did you know that if you don't use the timer thats on the machine it will not start freezing even if you switch the button to freeze? I also learned that today. I used my timer that was attached to my apron, I thought it was a good idea so I could hear the timer when it went off. Chef said "..did you turn on the timer?" "yeah I did *points to timer on belt*" "..well that's great but the machine won't work unless you turn this timer on." "ohhh...well shit." - I won't forget that lesson. 

 The ice cream was sooooooooo good! If I ever get my own ice cream maker we will not be buying ice cream..again...ever. Sorry DQ. The coconut ice cream was so smooth, ugh so good. Chef tasted it and did his little happy dance, always a good sign. We cleaned out the machine and then put in the cream cheese ice cream. Not confidant this would be any good. I LOVED it! Probably more than the coconut, and I love coconut. Chef said that he likes to make a raspberry jelly and fold it in to the cream cheese ice cream when its coming out of the machine..that would be amazing! Like i said, I need my own ice cream maker! Very exciting stuff. 

Coconut ice cream!

 Next we used the Savarin we made yesterday. They are a yeast dough that is very similar to brioche. I tasted them yesterday and really didn't like them. Dry, plain..no good. We transformed them today and they were amazing! 

 We made a simple syrup with lemon zest, we strained it (to get the zest out) added a little rum and then we soaked them in the syrup. They puff right up and are just full of moisture, but they don't fall apart like a normal piece of bread does when it gets wet. 

We let them sit for a few minutes on each side then hold them under until that last bubble goes *bloop*..mmm..moistness. Take them out and set them aside. Chef made us one and he poured more rum over the top of it - at this point I was jumping for joy. RUM! RUM! RUM! So freeking good. We sent a bunch down to the cafeteria (without extra rum) with some cream and strawberries.

Then I cut up a bunch of fruit and added it to a different syrup that we also made yesterday. It looked like sangria! mm booze. April made a chantilly cream, she also made puff pastry triangles. Chef was going to show us how to put a plate together that we would of used for the restaurant. Yay! plating! 

 I told him "See now that I've done some plating I will stop complaining...as much.." :) 

OH!! I almost forgot the most exciting part! (for me anyways) We made angel hair! Caramel that we whip in to the air over a bar and then roll it in to a ball. Throwing sugar around the kitchen is so much fun!! I love doing anything with sugar, but this was just to much excitement. My group was giggling because I was giddy while doing this. 

Making angel hair! 

SO EXCITING! hahaha

angel hair balls

Now I can talk about the plating. Chef showed us how to put a plate together. 

Chefs plate

Then we got to do it! We had so many of these to do we just started handing plates to random people in the hall ways. I gave one to the security guard "would you like some desert?" "...seriously? yeah! totally!" He was so excited :) We gave a lot of them to the cooks, they were pretty happy. They love getting sweets and we love getting actual food. 

 I love putting a plate together. you get to play with it and you get to make it your own. We also got to make some quenelles with the ice cream. The ice cream was quite soft so it was a little bit of a challenge but I also loved doing this too. Spoon over, spoon under, spoon over, spoon under and voila! 

One of my plates!

Do you notice the difference between the angel hair on my plate and the one on chefs plate? See how mine doesn't look as soft and fluffy? That's because the sugar was getting to cold which causes the sugar to become more brittle. I might need to try making them at home! 

 At the beginning of class today Chef was showing us how to use Albumin powder. Sounds fancy, but It's just egg white powder. We are going to be getting in to molecular baking. I've been asking for him to show us how to make fruit caviar. Have you ever been to Cherry Berry? Ever had Bobas? those little fruit balls that explode when you bite them? Those are made with molecular baking. I'm SUPER excited to learn how to make those!! 

 Today he used the Albumin powder to make marshmallows. Passion Fruit Marshmallows. Holy amazing! Using this powder with fruit puree helps to keep things more stable and they are less likely to separate than if you used real egg whites. 

Did you know that way back when Marshmallows were used for medicinal purposes? They use to contain marshmallow root which helped combat many illnesses. Today we don't use the root and they are just a sweet treat. Neat eh? 

 I really like the idea of using puree to add flavour instead of using an artificial flavouring, taste much better.  I have a few in my bag to taste with Davin tonight. 

 We also made vanilla panna cotta. Not sure how I will feel about them. I've never tried a panna cotta before but If they end up having the texture that I think they will I see a gag fest coming my way. I'll let you know how those turn out tomorrow. 

 We also picked our groups for the decadence event coming up. Chocolate and wine! I'm excited to see which wine I am assigned and to do some "homework". How can eating chocolate and trying to pair it with wine be homework. seriously? Bring it on! 

 So many exciting things! 

See you all tomorrow! :) 

 

Ice cream..mmmm

Happy Tuesday,

 It's absolutely freezing here, which is making me very cranky. -22 and very windy makes me wish for summer.

 This morning it was pouring, and on our way over to school we got stuck on the mackay bridge. I have no problem crossing a bridge thats suspended over water, I'm also not afraid of heights...but when I'm stopped in the middle of the bridge with high winds and rain and I can feel the bridge moving - well lets just say I panicked. A little screaming and little jumping around in my seat and constantly saying "omg go..go...go...move!!" It's very unnerving. Luckily I survived this ordeal and made it to school.

 Today our new group started in Restaurant. I got mad because the dining room is closed for the week, so once again I will not get the opportunity to do any plating. Very disappointing. I complained to Chef and he said "yeah, sucks to be you." Then he laughed at me. And I said "No, it sucks to be YOU because now you have to listen to me complain for the week." haha.  He laughed again and said "you put things on a plate and I yell at you that you are doing it wrong and doing it too slowly, Do you want that?" "YES! yes I want that. It would complete my life." - He rolled his eyes at me. LOL!
 I might get out of pastry school without getting a chance to do a dinner service - not a happy camper.

 We did lots of prep today, sauces, bases etc. We made coconut ice cream (I'm very excited for this!) and we also made cream cheese ice cream (....meh..) So those will go in to the ice cream machines tomorrow. Can't wait! We made syrups that will go with a dessert that has fruit and chantilly cream. I made a blueberry compote. We made poached pears. We made this weird stuff called....called...Okay I don't remember what it's called. We boiled glucose and fondant (not the stuff you cover a cake in) and then when it got to 150 degrees we added white chocolate, stirred it until it all melted together then spread it out on a tray. So its like candied chocolate..but not really. I'm not sure how I feel about it or what we are using it for. It's interesting. We made ginger bread and we made a base for french toast. We will be combining those and making gingerbread french toast!

 Myself and one of my group members were at the stove cooking and chatting and Chef came up beside me and just started talking and scared the shit out of me! I screamed, which scared Des which scared Chef who yelled "JESUS CHRIST ASHLEY!" buahaha! "well don't sneak up behind me!! You scared the crap out of me!"  - When I looked behind me the whole class was quiet and was looking at me. Lesson..Don't walk up behind me. lol

 It was a great first day with my new group. I'm really looking forward to all the fun things we will do this semester.

 Sara and I went to the gym after school. I'm sorry to people who love the gym, but my god I find it so boring. I need to jump from machine to machine to keep my attention. I need this snow to melt so I can get back outside. I guess its a good alternative to not getting any exercise at all. I'll deal with it..for now..I guess.

 Well keep warm you beautiful people!
Hopefully I will have some pictures to show you tomorrow!

and Christmas break is over...

HELLO PEOPLE!! - See my excitement to be writing to you again!?

 I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas break! We did. It was a very busy time with visiting family, but it was lovely. I had a whopping three weeks off - I'm very spoiled I know. My first few days of break you could find me in my jammies, on the couch with movies and my iPad. It was glorious! Then I got bored and made cookies! 

 They were fun to sit down and pipe and try to get the creative juices flowing. Some turned out better than others, but an ugly cookie still tastes yummy! 

I was also set with the challenge of making a tourtiere (a meat pie, usually make with ground beef and pork). I didn't even know what it was. Turns out its actually a Canadian tradition..oops. Makes me feel like a bad Canadian! haha. I talked to Chef and he said they make it every christmas eve so he gave me his recipe for it. I was crapping myself I was so nervous. 

 

Let me explain why I was so nervous. If you knew my history with pies you would fully understand. I once made a pecan pie that I literally had to saw through. You couldn't cut it. I used a serrated knife and sawed through it. When you tried to break a piece off with your fork the piece usually left your plate at 100 miles in hour and could take out someones eye during its flight path. bad. 

 Then a friend of mine came over and showed me how to make one and with her help we made an apple pie that was quite yummy! success! 

 Now that I'm in school we are not allowed to use crisco shortening - only butter...no "cheating" and believe it or not we haven't made actual pie crust - only sweet dough for our pies. So when I had to push out a pie dough for this tourtiere I was convinced it was going to be a disaster. 

 I made individual turnovers and you know what? THEY WERE FREEKIN DELICIOUS! The crust was so light and flakey and buttery and the meat was so good. Pat on the back for Chef Ashley! The curse of the pie dough might be over! muahahaha! 

Turnovers ready for the oven

Ready to be eaten! mmm

So that's christmas in a very small nut shell. 

Now today was the first day back! exciting and nervous. New courses, new groups, new expectations.

 Now I must say that after sleeping in for 3 weeks and napping when ever I wanted and staying up late was wonderful. When my alarm went off at 530 this morning I...well I had no thoughts because it was 530am! That was a painful experience. I had to blink one eye at a time to make sure I stayed awake until after my shower. After my shower I was good..  

 I also packed all my stuff I needed to take in to school the night before..Lots.of.stuff. So walking to the car I had two backpacks (one for my classroom books and one with all my kitchen tools) A big huge bag of clean whites, another shoulder bag with my two 3" blinders of recipes, my lunch bag and my travel mug of tea. "DAVIN!! COME OPEN THE DOOR FOR ME! I CAN'T MOVE MY ARMS!" haha. Two trips is for suckers. But I made it! success! without spilling my tea, double success! 

 As I'm walking down the hall towards the classroom Chef jumps out and starts doing a jig and is dancing around and waving, hilarious. Just what you need on a monday morning at 7am. :) 

 Our first class this morning was with Chef. I guess its a theory class but instead of learning more about ingredients we are going to focus on the methods and getting those down pat. Luckily he took it easy on us and we watched a movie. The movie was really interesting. It was about the MOF, its essentially a competition to become the best in pastry chef in france. When you do become an MOF you get a coloured collar on your chef whites. Very very high honour. The stress these men went through was amazing. They train for years for this and you always have a judge watching over you, checking your garbage, checking your ingredients. I don't know if I could handle the stress. The sugar pieces they made were absolutely unbelievable. Part of the competition involves moving their piece to the right spot and this one guys piece just collapsed and smashed. The gasps and yelling that came from my classmates was hilarious! "*gasp!* NOOOO!!" "OH MY GOD!!" and a "OH SHIT!" from me. haha. This grown man, just burst out crying, even the judges had tears in their eyes for him. I couldn't imagine! I would be a huge mess. All that work, all those hours..gone. It was a great film. 

 Next we had our first class in human relations. I'm going to like this class. I have covered quite a bit of the material in college round one. Thank you Early Childhood! We talked about Maslows hierarchy of needs and learning styles. I like the teacher as well. Its going to be fun. 

 Then we had two long hours to wait until our computer class. Spread sheets and stuff. I haven't worked on excel in years so I knew this was going to be a challenge. We had the opportunity to challenge out of the course by taking an exam. Everyone wanted to try the exam. I got it, read the paper, opened excel, looked around the room, looked at my paper again..Yeah this isn't going to happen. lol. 

 Just the math and the formulas you had to figure out were over my head. I figured out how to open up a pie chart and put my name on my paper haha. A few people had already gotten up and left (which meant you were taking the course) and i would be following them. I got up and went over to the teacher and said "yeah, I'll go buy the book and see you next Monday, this isn't happening." In the end I believe there were two people out of all of us who stayed to try the exam. Even the teacher said it is very hard, so don't feel bad. It's not a bad course to have to take, learning this stuff can only help me in the long run. 

 Then I came home and had a nap. Every Monday I get headaches. I can only handle so much talking before I get over whelmed and tired. Back to the kitchen tomorrow, thank goodness. 

 I'm going to go get organized for tomorrow. 

Have a wonderful evening!