For many years in my life, I never stopped to smell the roses. Everything was about forward momentum and running with that momentum: full speed ahead, no regrets, little reflection. Over the past couple of years, especially, I've really wanted time to slow down as I know it's speeding up and that's the joke on …
Continue reading Day 101: 19 days left of school and what I’ve learned in a nutshell
Today was our last day of level 5. Since David was gone, I was officially sous chef as well as 1 of 2 on dessert. Thankfully, I had Ian's pork and mushroom ravioli in the fridge from the day before for the "scoobie snack", and all I had to do was make a mushroom broth …
Continue reading Day 100: Last day of Level 5, a new menu tomorrow, and stuffed pork leg for dinner
Tomorrow, I get to play sous chef again and start prepping for a new menu. I'll be glad to get away from the rabbit and osso buco. Tonight, it's another "all in" dinner night, in an attempt to use the last of last week's CSA box: romanesco (the green cauliflower looking thing in the picture …
Continue reading Day 99: Last day on rabbit and osso buco – yeah!
I can't believe there are less than 5 weeks left of school. Yikes! Where did this 6 months go? I knew it would go fast, but please. This flew. I'm not ready to be done. No doubt there's a big bad (good) world of chefs and restaurants I'm looking forward to learning from in 2012, …
Continue reading Days 97 and 98: The end of Level 5 and more good dining out
What a fun tour of Love Apple Farms on Thursday (see http://www.growbetterveggies.com/)! FCI put together a special tour for our class of 9 with the owner of the farm and Chef David Kinch, who is also a dean of FCI. We spent about an hour touring the gardens and picking and eating fresh vegetables. Then, …
Continue reading Days 95 and 96: More dessert and a trip to Love Apple Farms
Aside from almost breaking the $5000 ice cream machine, today was a successful day! I made vanilla ice cream, which was delicious. The secret in the recipe is adding creme fraiche after the custard has cooled and right before you put it in the ice cream machine. It gave it a really nice mouth feel …
It was fun having Chef Peter back in the kitchen and also expediting. He has a ton of stories from his time in restaurant kitchens. Not preachy; just life lessons. I like that way of teaching. Tomorrow I move onto patissier with Tomas - that should be fun. I get to pull some sugar, make …
Last week we moved downstairs to the restaurant kitchen and changed instructors from Chef Tim to Chef Udo. Bobby and I finished on poisonnier (fish station) on Thursday, which was our first day actually serving customers, and then everyone changed stations when Chef Udo came in on Friday. Friday I played sous chef which meant …
Continue reading Days 87-92: Menu Project, The Restaurant: poisonnier to saucier, and Chef Udo
Day 80 was our final day of Level 4 and our second buffet. I loved this buffet! The theme: Spain, with a little Asia and charcuterie thrown in for good measure. I refuse to call it fusion because it wasn't meant to be, but some students really wanted to do Asian, so Chef Ryan was …
Continue reading Days 80-86: The big buffet and Level 5 start
Today's focus was prepping for tomorrow's Spanish-inspired buffet. It's a very ambitious buffet. I'm making 5 dishes solely on my own: Vegetarian Paella, Squash stuffed empanadas with spicy sour cream, roasted wild mushrooms in a shallot-garlic-sherry wine-olive oil reduction, Octopus tiradito (sort of like a ceviche, but the octopus has been "tenderized" in daikon and …
Salty Apron 