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
Okay, so we didn't drink this champagne at school. It was at the start of our Wednesday night celebration. If you can find this champagne, I highly recommend buying it. In a world where champagne has become so commercialized and additive'd, thanks in great part to the U.S. palette and the CA sparkling wine producers, …
Thanks for the guest post on Sunday, Carnet! We are both so busy I didn't even get a real flavor of what it was like in Bangalore until I read the post. I am now craving Indian food. But, not enough to pass up Bar Bambino this evening for a celebratory dinner with Brian and …
Up until this point, I haven't had much time for reflection on 7 weeks of culinary school, so I thought I'd take a moment - more for me, than anyone else - to put down some thoughts while I'm enjoying a quick salmon lunch I made for myself (pictured, above). My life seems to be …
Continue reading Saturday, August 20 – Thoughts on my life and cooking
The grapefruit, fennel, artichoke, watercress and walnut salad was delicious. The grapefruit vinaigrette was so nice and light, especially due to the sweetness of the fresh grapefruits we worked with today. Here's the recipe (it's really simple): 1-2 Tablespoons walnut oil, 2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons fresh grapefruit juice you reserved after …
Today was the first of two days on nutrition. Really, nutritious French food? I guess it depends on your definition of nutritious. The recipe we made today indeed had no butter in it, but it had huge bacon lardons in it (as seen in the picture above), and the bacon was cooked in with the …
Oh Mark, for all of our whining that we are no good at pastries, I think our tarts turned out well. The apple tart was incredible-tasting (thanks, Ian, for the calvados addition!), even if our apple slicing and design skills leave much to be desired. I know, I know, we did screw up our puff …
Continue reading Day 30 – Tarts and a quiche! Another fantastic fat day.
Yesterday we worked on ice creams, sorbets, granites and sherbets. Yummmmm. Anne and I had the best sorbet, we're convinced. We didn't have an exact recipe, as there wasn't enough fresh grapefruit juice, so we had to use a raspberry puree and adjust the sugar and the acid content. It worked out splendidly. We also …
Continue reading Days 28 and 29 – Ice Cream and Profiteroles – yeah, sweets!
Day 25 - After a day of offal, some math was a welcome change. We spent a large part of Day 25 talking about the calculations used to figure out edible portion costs and the "Q" factor that one must include when doing accurate food costing. Although some of our eyes were glazing over after …
I think I was so disgusted I forgot to take any pictures of our finished dishes today. So, above is the only picture I have: Chef Peter and Heather are taking the outside connective tissue off a calf's liver. We started off by cleaning kidneys and lamb tongue. The kidneys had a bit of a …
Salty Apron 