Cousins, Cooking, and Craziness!

Last weekend I had the wonderful privelege of meeting up with my faulous cousin Kelly. I was really excited by this prospect because I have not seen Kelly since I was 14. Yeah, long time. And now we live less than 10 minutes away from each other! Glorious, I know. Kelly is loads of fun. This is her, by the way:

Anyway. After much catching up and many giggles as well as fits of snorting laughter, we jumped into Kelly's car and off to Sunflower Market we went to get some supplies to make dinner. Yummy!

Our menu? Well, whilst giving darling Kelly the tour of my room, she noticed my cookbooks and we started looking at them for inspiration. One cookbook I have is from Princess Cruise Lines. Kelly went on a Princess cruise a little while ago and proceeded to find the recipe for a delicious chilled strawberry soup that she had fallen in love with on her cruising adventure. So strawberries and cream were on our list. The recipe for the strawberry cream soup calls for Frangelico, a hazelnut flavored liquor that really brings out the flavor of berries. But alas, as I am 18 and Kells is just a few months shy of the magical age of 21, we would have to make do with hazlenut extract. Do they make such a thing? Apparently yes. We even found an organic brand.

Groceries in hand, we make our way back to my apartment and bust out some delicious chilled soup. Which took about 7 minutes to make since there is no cooking involved. Just pureeing. Thank goodness for miniature food processors (thank you Mommy!).

So, my strawberry soup as pictured above. In the book they had this really cool strawberry flower that stood vertically in the middle of the soup with really beautiful thin strawberry petals. And then they filled the center with cream. So basically it was gorgeous. But I wasn't sure how to make that, so we ended up with a strawberry fan, some spatterings of cream and a few red peppercorns. Needless to say, the soup was delish!

We had some salmon too, with black bean, corn and mango salsa...also yummy, but I didn't take a picture, so I won't bother going into details about it.

After some tasty food and chatting, we rounded off our evening in the best way imaginable: drooling over Ewan McGregor's lovely feautres and gorgeous voice in Moulin Rouge. Ahhhh. Love that movie. I always feel inclined to stop it before Satine dies so it ends happily. But alas, I never do, so I always see her die and watch poor Ewan cry. Which makes me cry. Oh well! Just a movie.

Early Morning

For the past 7 weeks I have been getting up at 4:45 am Monday-Friday. Why? To go to Bakeshop of course! From 6-11:30 am every day I have been learning the basic skills of baking and pastry. At the beginning of this class, I was totally freaked out. But now I am producing things like this:

Pear bordeloue and brioche with cream cheese filling and berries

And this:

Creme Brulee

There are a lot more exciting things that I have made recently. More to come as I get the photos uploaded!

Future Restauranteurs

A couple weeks ago, I had the privelege of going back home to fabulous ABQ over a five day weekend incurred by the event of an ACF culinary competion. So my culinary classes were cancelled for 3 days. Whilst at home, I had the opportunity to finally do some cooking with my friend Zach! We've cooked together before and made a splendid 7 (I think it was seven) course dinner for our families.

Zach is totally fun. He shares the same passion and obsession for food that I have. My mom always laughs at us when we are together because we will literally spend ours just discussing food and bouncing ideas for new techniques and flavors off each other. Needless to say, this is somebody I would love to do business with in the future. Future restaurant partners, I say!

Anyway, while we were preparing our meal for my parents this time around, we shaped the beginnings of what may end up as an appetizer on our future menu. Voila! Bacon wrapped asparagus with a delicious (but secret combination - sorry!) sauce. :) My parents completely flipped over the sauce. My mom spooned more sauce on her plate after eating the asparagus and simply licked it off! If that doesn't tell you how good it is, I don't know what will.

There are still a few kinks to work out, but I think we have something here!

Zach, embracing his Asianness with a stereotypical pose...Haha, love this kid!