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!

Customer of the day and other adventures

I am Sunflower Market's customer of the day. Why? Because I'm awesome.

While I was at Sunflower today to pick up some things to make lasagna (which will be discussed later), the produce guy (who will from here on be mentioned as "Justin", as was signified on his nametag) jokingly said to me "How would you like to sample one of our fine peppers today?" as he motioned toward the serranos, jalepenos, and habaneros. Thinking he was serious, I said "Sure, why not?" He looked at me for a moment and said, "I was just kidding. How about a kiwi instead? That's probably more appetizing. Besides, these are probably too hot for you." WRONG words to say to me, the queen of the overly competetive. Feeling the desire to show this ignorant Utah boy just how much heat an Albuquerque girl can take, I said, "Actually, I think I might go for the pepper."
He stared at me, quite taken aback. "Are you serious?" he asked me. Hah!
He proceeded to hand me a serrano, which I took no hesitation in biting into. "Is it hot?" he asked timidly. "Not at all," I said. And truthfully, it wasn't. "Okay, how about a habanero?" He held it out to me. I took it and bit in. Not too hot. Then he said, "Did you get any seeds in there?" I hadn't. So I took another bite, making sure to get some seeds. At which point, my mouth turned into a raging inferno. I didn't mind though. It was a welcome change after all of the sissy food these Utahns call "spicy". My eyes teared a little bit, but that's to be expected. After all, this was a habanero!

Justin the produce guy was quite impressed. "What is your name, crazy pepper lady?" he asked. So I told him. Later, when I was at the register, he went up to the cashier and made sure she knew I was the customer of the day. Go me!

Switching gears. As a chef-in-the-making, I have the frequent experience of spending hours on a masterpiece that is demolished in about 30 seconds. Yesterday, I made a beautiful, perfectly round, mouthwateringly tender loaf of sourdough bread topped with deliciously sweet diced onions. It was not a small loaf of bread. It was about a foot in diameter. It was 3/4 of the way gone within 15 minutes. It took me four hours to make. Granted, a lot of that was "waiting for the dough to rise" time, but still! At least I know my hard work was thouroughly enjoyed.

Lasanga. An Italian classic, and a tired American standby. I am deeply saddened by the number of people who equate the concept of lasagna with Stouffer's. Why on Earth would anyone eat that? It's not the way lasagna was intended to be I tell you! Anyway, I digress. I wanted to make lasagna. But not the tire, bolognese and cheese lasagna. This was to be a special dish that would use simple, clean flavors and be ultimately much lighter than it's meat and cheese laden counterpart. My lasagna features layers of sun-dried tomato pesto, ricotta cheese, pancetta, tender pieces of asparagus, all topped off with a healthy layer of shredded whole milk mozerella. Molto bene!