Playing Catch-up

Would you like to know something interesting? I'm more busy during the summer than I am at school. Somehow that seems a little backwards to me. This summer I am working two jobs, one at the fabulous restaurant I interned at as a senior in high school, the other as a nanny, which job I have also had since high school. I work roughly 80 hours a week. As a result of my busy work schedule I have been a blog neglecter. Shame on me, I know. Please allow me to redeem myself.

My Momma's Birthday

This year we decided to go cakeless. I wanted to do something a little more simplistic but equally as fun to make and just as delicious. My mom is a fruit fanatic(seriously, open our fridge. There are usually at least 10 different fruits in there), so I thought it might be fun to make some fruit tartlets...which also gave me an excuse to buy some little tart pans, something I have been dying to buy forever, but never had a reason to.

They turned out nicely, no? These tarts are extra special because guess what? They're dairy free! Usually the pastry cream in the center has whole milk and butter. However, my family does not drink milk. I have a lactose sensitivity and the rest of my family just thinks milk is disgusting...which it totally is. It's not even good for you besides! Everyone thinks that you have to drink milk and have other dairy products to get calcium. Um, so wrong. You're body can't even absorb most of the calcium in milk! So why is it advertised so much that we should drink milk? Because the government subsidizes dairy farms, thus they are better off if we Americans drink more milk. And another thing. Did you know, that we are the only species that drinks milk after infancy? On top of that, we are drinking milkfrom an entirely different species! And you wanna know what that milk is designed to do? Take a baby cow and turn it into a 1500 pound behemoth in a matter of 6 months. Wanna drink milk now? It's just fat and cholesterol people. You get more protein from almond or soy milk. Anyway, I digress. Back to my fruit tarts. They're dairy free. I made them with almond milk and soy butter...and they were freakin delicious!

Father's

Day

I always like to make man food on father's day. Some people may think it's weird that as a future chef of the female persuasion I will differentiate between man food and chick food. But I do. Guys don't generally appreciate the aesthetics of a dish as much as a woman. That doesn't mean I won't make the food look good on a plate. It just means I won't take the time to artfully lay down some sauce or construct a pedestal of rice or potatoes atop which to lay my grilled chicken or something. No. Man food doesn't require as much attention to detail. What it does require is a nice juicy steak. Which of course I had. This was Father's day dinner after all. What would it be without steak? Oh, and I paired it with grilled lobster tail, wilted swiss chard, and rosemary roasted potatoes. A little surf n turf for my dear old dad.

Although I'm not usually one to blab about my kitchen mishaps (I like to pretend I do everything perfectly!), I have to relate to you the excitement surrounding my steaks. I marinated my steaks in thyme oil...mistake. While the flavor was fantastic after pulling the steaks off the grill, I had about five minutes of grill time where I was sure I was going to burst into flames. Because my steaks had so much extra oil on them, the grill flared up...a lot. I literally had 8 inch flames coming off my grill! I was about to panic, sure that my steaks would be completely incinerated. I was pretty ready to throw in the towel on my dinner, storm off and leave everyone hungry. But then an idea struck me. Fire needs oxygen to thrive. So I slammed the lid on my grill and luckily my bonfire burnt out in about a minute, leaving my steaks safe. From this experience I learned to NEVER marinate in oil if you will be grilling. Which when I think about it really should have been something I knew not to do. Anyway.

Amazingly, we managed to have every course be something from off the grill. Our salad was grilled. We even had our dessert grilled! The grilled dessert idea I can't credit to myself, however. When I was working at Vivace the Saturday before Father's Day, I was telling my boss, Joey, about my menu plan for fathers day. Suddenly I realized (out loud), "Crap! I don't have a dessert planned!" Joey looks and me and says, "Well, if you're already firing up the grill, why don't you do dessert on the grill too?" Um, hello! YES! He is such a genius sometimes. I mean, how perfect is it to do each course for a Father's day dinner on the grill? So as per Joey's recommendation I did grilled peaches and plums that I had cut in half and rolled the cut side in cinnamon and sugar.They turned out so beautifully! I served them with a dollop of mascarpone whipped cream and some toasted almonds. This dessert was so perfect for summer and it had everything you could ask for from a dessert. It was sweet but tart, warm from the peaches and plums, cool from the cream, the fruit was soft, the cream was smooth, the almonds were crunchy.....heaven. :)

Last Minute Dinner Plans

Sometime mid June my friend Jake got back from his mission in Chicago. One Monday morning, a few weeks after he came home my mother announces to me, "Hey, I'm inviting Jake over for dinner. So make something special okay?" Um, thanks Mom. I'm glad you gave me so much notice. I was also annoyed because the last time I had interacted with Jake very much at all was during high school...at which point he drove me absolutely crazy. So here I was, 8 hours out from a dinner that was supposed to be wildly impressive, with a guy that I practically couldn't stand, and I had no idea what I was going to do. Luckily I came up with something.

I grilled chicken, sliced it and laid supremes of fresh orange and grapefruit between the slices, served it with rice and a salad of mixed greens and a spring onion flower wrapped in a cucumber slice so it would stand and topped it off with a citrus Dijon dressing. How's that for 8 hours notice? Boo-yah! Oh, and the dinner went great by the way. Jake is now one of my best friends. Funny how that works out. I always say, food brings people together!

Mmmm. BACON! And Cheesecake too!

Is there anything better in the world than bacon? Well, yes there probably is. However, bacon is something pretty tasty. :) I've recently been into wrapping things in bacon. This is the most recent dish I've done:

Bacon wrapped chicken drumsticks with sweet and spicy pineapple dipping sauce. DE-lish!

Also, I recently revamped a cheesecake recipe that I rather love. My baking and pastry textbook from earlier this semester has the most incredible cheesecake recipe in it. I was thinking the other day about some substition suggestions I had seen for desserts to make them less bad for you. I read somewhere that if you substitue ricotta cheese for half the amount of cream cheese in cheesecake, it cuts the calories in half. Sounds pretty great to me! So I tried it.

I just love my adorable mini springform pans! They make the perfect portion size. One quarter of a cheesecake is just enough that your sweet tooth is satisfied, but you don't overindulge. Anyway, with my cheesecakes oven ready I started to guess at what the finished product would be. I was a little worried that the cheesecake wouldn't be quite as smooth due to the ricotta substitution. Also, I used half and half in my recipe instead of cream, so my batter was a little more runny than usual. After coming out of the oven, I let my cheesecakes cool for 2 hours before topping them with a blackberry/blueberry coulis. Then I let them chill overnight and Voila!

I am glad to say these turned out just as smooth and creamy as any cheesecake I have ever had. Plus they have half the calories. Which, as my adorable roommate stipulated means we can eat twice as much! Everyone wins. :)

New Orleans Night!

Food and Disney: two of my great loves in life.

I decided my roommates and I needed some much deserved bonding as well as some time to just relax. After all, the life of a college student is stressful. So I decided we should start having dinner and movie nights with a cultural theme. Our first one? New Orleans! Our dinner? Louisiana Red Beans and Rice with cornbread. Our movie? The Princess and the Frog.

The red beans and rice were absolutely delicious. Perfectly spicy. Maybe a little too spicy for my Utahan roommates, but hey! Our cornbread was moist and sweet (I'll admit I cheated. This is about the only time I will resort to using a box is for cornbread. But only if it's Trader Joe's cornbread mix. It's so delicious and it's perfect every time!)

Cute Chantel's fiancee came down from Salt Lake to go to a lecture we were required to attend for Honors and he stayed for dinner and part of the movie. Aren't they cute?

And the rest of us:

I just have to say, I completely adore "The Princess and the Frog". I think it is probably one of my favorite movies. I feel like I can relate to Tiana so much. All she wants to do is live her dream of finally owning her own restaurant, and she will do anything to get it. That is totally where I am right now. I am going to culinary classes 30 hours a week and busting my butt to become the best chef I can. It's all I've ever wanted! And I'm almost there! :)

Time Crunch

Hallelujah! I'm finally getting around to writing about my Baking and Pastry final....it was only, what, a whole month ago?

Four hours. I was given four hours to make two dozen soft rolls in two shapes, 16 pate a choux in two shapes (I chose cream puffs and eclairs), 2 cups of creme Anglaise, a pie (chocolate cream), a dozen cookies, and a dozen muffins.

It was nerve racking to say the least. Chef Al was walking around, asking all of the students what they were doing, watching over our shoulders. He was watching me while I was piping the whipped cream on top of my pie and my hands started shaking. I imagine that must be what it feels like to compete.

Anyway, all of my stuff turned out well. My rolls were perfect, as was the creme Anglaise! The muffins were a little bit too salty....wooops. The pate a choux was done really well. My cookies were good, but they didn't turn out how I wanted them to. I wanted them to be soft and chewy, but I left them in the oven for a minute too long and they ended up crisp and sandy. So delicious, but not what I was going for. Bummer.

So here's my spread:

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!