Sitrep 2

Life UPDATE!

Those pastry students are awesome!!! This is a great cake!!! I can hear that intro music...

So I'm almost back together again. I am making a few changes to how all of this gets done, I haven't found the right recipe yet but I'm working on it. What I'm going to do is get you all caught up on the last few weeks in a few posts that are full of some juicy info. I think the best way to get the blog back up and running but also give me enough time to do everything else will be to write a few here and there during the week and then have one larger post that sums up that week.

This will keep you up to date with all of the awesome stuff, and keep me sane!

Also on a side note. My side project is gaining real momentum and soon shall be unveiled to you! I have high hopes for it yes, but I think we can really change things with it!!!!!

Kitchen Day 28

Biscuits, Dough, Pastry and...?

My phone decided this was super important... At least it's clean!

I am slowly catching up..

Biscuits:

Easily one of my top favorite breakfast munchies! I LOVE biscuits and gravy. It is hard pressed for me to order anything else when I do get to go out for it. There's just something fantastic about a nice buttery, flaky biscuit smothered in gravy. Don't you dare say that isn't good!

 This is my first attempt at making them. We will see how it goes...

Keenan (pictured) Bubba and Megan (both hidden behind Keenan) prepare their biscuit dough

Danish (the pastry duh :P)

This pasty has always been a misnomer to me. If you don't remember, my grandmother actually IS Danish. A long time ago we were able to visit our motherland, go to Copenhagen, and taste REAL Danish pastry. So here we are, making it in class, eh. It still isn't the same. They should call it Danishish instead of Danishes. Unless I ever go back "home" and learn how to make it really, you can count me out of making this in my career. It was fun though, :)

Danish pastry is a laminated dough. That means that we have to give it layers of fat (really butter should be the only thin used, the Danes really do love it, I can personally attest!), in between the dough. Chef Suzanne demos the proper way to do this.

 Even though it takes me out, I really like taking these photos. It's cool to see the whole class interested in the same thing. Reminds me of why we are here, Us.

 Look at all that BUTTER!!! True to the namesake.

Once you get the butter in there, you have to begin the folding of the dough the "lamination". We only folded it once today, you want to make sure the dough is firm and cold to do it; warm butter melts and then gets absorbed into the flour, reducing it's flaky power.

The real purpose here is to get layers, for the pastries as they are enjoyed. It's the same with the French croissant, you get that flaky goodness from laying the dough with the butter. We just made the first layer today so it can cool and make more layers the next two days.

Cindy made these beautiful strawberry roses. Way cool!!!

Krista makes some vegan blueberry muffins. They were good!

Some granola. I didn't make any, I made a ton as a kid...

Megan makes her Danish dough...

Make an Ikea Bookshelf with it!

 Lots of biscuits and muffins!!!!

 Keenan and Jakob prepare for the feast!

 Chef Mark has taught us to use a garnish that is also in the dish. This way we can show what it contains if someone has an allergy. It also looks super pretty!

The Path

It's time to get back on track...
I lost my way... :(

I let myself get trapped in nonsense, much like Sampson did here... :P

I'm back. It's been a long time. I for sure lost myself and let life push me down.

For that though, I have learned some great things and have lots of advice for anyone who would love to join me on this path.


Planning

I'm not sure if I have said this already, but this journey was life changing. Exactly the last minute decision. So with that I didn't set myself up for the most success, and I have been playing catch up ever since.

As you saw here, some parts unfortunately were left behind. My writing, really was the biggest side project that took the hit. I miss it. So here I am! I have worked my way back and I will do my best to ensure this is at the top of my list. Eventually, down the road this might be a HUGE asset to me and I don't want to stop it because of my ignorance.

My best advice is to plan. If you decide as well to completely change your life as I did, make a plan for it. Even if it is a short notice plan, do something. Right now my biggest challenge is my drive. I don't live in Boulder (where both school and my job is), I live up near Fort Collins. It's an hour drive, not terrible, but it adds up. If I could have moved closer I would have, it's 2 hours a day that I lose (it really gets taken out of sleep).

Financial plan. This is my killer. I've been all over the past few years on jobs with very different pay rates. My financial foundation does not exist and it is beyond difficult to make it work. Make some kind of plan for it. Rent, food, school payments... I definitely recommend student loans if you need them (someday as an Executive Chef I can pay them back!), and really work with them on it. Understand that it will be hard, there aren't enough hours to work a full time job and go to school and I don't recommend it simply because I can't do it.


Happy Things!!!

This might be the most important. Find something that makes you happy!!! This is a crazy insane life. I have interviewed multiple Chefs now and all of them, ALL of them have said this is a crazy way to live. Long hours, stressful hours, all kinds of things going on that need to be done. It's CRAZY!!!

But they all love it! No one would do this if they don't love it. I'm still here because I love this. I love the work. I love the food. I even do love the crazy hours. I just forgot to do happy things outside of it all to keep me going. The weekend I stopped writing was my first day off in weeks, I didn't really do anything. That was a huge mistake. I should have made a day of fun to get me fired up! Next weekend...

I am going to make my best effort to be here, to be engaged. It does make me happy, it's the time sitting around at home that ruins it. I've located my weakness and I'm going to work with it. As far as getting back on here and getting caught up, right now in class we are working on creating a restaurant so we won't be cooking. I will be back on point by the end of this block!!!!!

Chef Mark Kalix

I will be interviewing Chef Mark soon, I really have enjoyed working with him!

Kitchen Day 27

Custards, sweet and savory:

Okay, so we didn't make this... But it's beautiful! This is a S'more, deconstructed and reimagined for fine dining. From the wonderful class in K1, they are two blocks ahead of us, can't wait!!!

Back to us... lame... :-P

Quiche and Fritatta

Custard. What do you imagine when you hear that word? I always leaned towards the sweet side, actual custard, creme brûlée, flan. But that leaves out a whole world of custards, quiches, fritattas and more.

Custards are both simpler and more complex than that. Essentially all a custard is, defined by the French of course, is eggs and dairy at a ratio of 3:1. Now what you put in the custard is what defines it to how we see them. Meats and vegetables, maybe some cheeses, make savory custards for quiches and fritattas (fritatta is basically a shell-less quiche).

Pate Brisee

Chef Suzanne demos how to make a pate brisee dough. This dough can be used to make both sweet and savory pies.

Flaking the butter into the dough (three photos above) is literally called the "biscuit dough method", it is important to keep the pieces of butter fairly intact. When you bake it, they impart steam into it, making it flaky.

Chef Suzanne frassages the dough, you have to make sure you don't over knead the dough, the last thing a biscuit needs is long gluten strands making it tough. Remember, light and flaky...

 Chef portions out the dough for the quiches

And now we can store it until we knead it! Haha! Pun! (Don't actually knead it again, you will ruin it!)

Fruit Carving

Chef Mark Kalix has some very good knife skills. The way he can carve up a fruit in literally seconds is awesome! I didn't know the tricks of the trade as far as peeling a melon! Now I do :D...

Make sure you WASH your melons!!!!!

This was cool, he like fell down the curve of the melon with his blade. It looks funny, but that really is the best way to do it! It ensures that the blade follows the curve of the melon, reducing food waste and saving $$$$$

 A skinless melon! It looks funny!!!

At this point Chef Mark had cut enough cantaloupe to plate. Unfortunately that was the only type of melon we had for the day. He had us imagine there were other colors in his demo. It's really important to give a fruit plate color and shape to capture the eyes of guests. (Just wait until our buffet for the week, it was amazing!)

It looks good! We did get an apple and an orange so imagine that the melon is a few kinds and colors. :P

I think I took more photos today than I do on multiple other days combined! It was a fairly straightforward day for production, nothing too complicated, so we had a few demos. I really want to get more of the skills and personality of the Chefs. There are a few days that I forget to take photos and get engrossed in creation, so take these for now!!!

Chef Suzanne shows us how to make the pie crusts for the quiches. (Above and below)

  Bubba (left) and Dylan (right) prepare fillings for the quiches and the frittatas.

Although it got mixed up, I made a fantastic filing for the quiche. Some tomatoes, onions, banana peppers, mushrooms. I added in some spinach after this photo, you don't want to overcook greens!!!

Tasty!

 Mahsa makes a fruit plate. I really wish we had different colors. It was super tasty though!

FEAST!

It's a bird, it's a plane;

It's actually an apple! Nice plating Megan!!!

Braxton made some really nice potatoes, and there is our frittata. You can see the spinach in there right?!? The filling got switched around between that and our quiche. It was still really tasty, but it wasn't what I had originally planned unfortunately :'(

Chefs Suzanne (left) and Mark (right) go over our dishes with us. It's really nice to get feedback at the end of the day as to how we did. I could cook you up some really tasty things, but unless you know how it is supposed to be and what I did I will never get better!