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!