American Regional, New England

This was a very different week in American Regional. Thursday we were preparing to serve 60 people on Friday food from the New England region of America. A local high school was bringing their culinary club/class to the Art Institute to view the school, come to our class and see a demo from Chef, "help" us out a little, and see if any of them were interested in becoming future students at AI. I didn't get very good pictures because everything happened so quickly with the students there and we didn't actually plate anything, as it was all in hotel pans for the buffet.

Usually each group is assigned one "menu" to prepared which includes an appetizer, salad, soup, entree, sides, and dessert, or any combination of these items. This week, however, our groups were assigned a category instead of a menu. My group was assigned the entrees. The entrees this week were New England Boiled Dinner (AKA Corned Beef and Cabbage) and a Turkey Roulade served with a cranberry sauce, a horseradish sauce, and stuffing with gravy.

We had to multiply each recipe by 12 to make enough for everyone, except the turkey roulades. The reason for this was that Chef wanted each group to learn how to debone a turkey and create the roulades. Our job, as the entree group, was to cook off all the finished roulades. We began, after multiplying out the recipes, by creating a time line of what needed to get done Thursday and Friday and what order we needed to do it in. Chef, I believe, tried to split all the "seniors" up among the groups so each group had one member that is further along in their schooling. I completely understand this approach, and don't disagree. We all had our own "burdens to bear" because of this method, though.

My burden was a guy who has extreme sanitation issues on the opposite end of the spectrum from my OCD-ness. All through Thursday, my tablemate and I were trying to nicely remind the third member of all the rules and regulations that he was breaking, and eventually we had to go to Chef to speak with him about the issue. It is completely unsanitary to dip fingers into a dish, lick your fingers and keep cooking, and then stick said fingers BACK into the food that we are about to serve to guests. That's what disposable tasting spoons are for. It is unsanitary to place veggies on a cutting board, whether or not they are still in their bag, that has just had raw turkey on it. It is completely unacceptable to go get towels from the dirty towel bag because you cannot find any clean ones. These are just a few of the issues we were having.

In any case, we were able to make our way through. We prepared both sauces on Thursday since they could be held easily and were to be served cold. We got the corned beef on to simmer for a couple of hours Thursday so we could just finish it off with the veggies on Friday. We prepped all the veggies to be cooked for Friday and labeled them for easy use. We got all the parsley chopped and held for garnish the next day. We prepped everything for the roulade, including the forcemeat to go in the center, so we just needed to assemble, truss, and cook off Friday morning.

Friday we came in and we had done a wonderful job of getting everything done the day before that needed to be done. We put our corned beef back on and brought it to a simmer and added the veggies. Then we pulled the beef only off, and put it in a hotel pan with some juices to slowly finish cooking in the oven to be extremely tender by the time the guests showed up. We finished the roulade and gathered the other groups roulades to cook off. We prepped and made the stuffing and the gravy. We were ready.

The high schoolers showed up and watched the demo from Chef on how to de-bone a turkey, create a farce, and roll up the roulade and truss it.

Then they were split into groups to "help" us finish everything off. Our group helped slice the corned beef and roulades and put them into hotel pans for service on the buffet line.

Finished turkey roulades, waiting to be sliced-


The inside of the turkey roulade-


Corned Beef sprinkled with parsley on top of turnips, potatoes, cabbage, and broth-

Most of them seemed really excited to be there and very willing to jump in and get their hands dirty. It was fun to see their enthusiasm and it was an interesting change of pace "catering" this event.

Mexico- week 2

Let's just start this week out by saying that this is, aside from Pastry and Baking, one of my favorite classes. It's probably tied with Classical at this point on my list of favorite classes. The food is absolutely delicious and it isn't a class in which you have to run around like a chicken with it's head cut off to get everything done. This means, to me, that I have more of an opportunity to really experience the dishes, new ingredients (mostly chiles), and cooking.

This week we were still in Mexico. I made Pico de Gallo to go with the Yucatan style steamed turkey, Churros, and Mexican Hot Chocolate. One thing that happened this week was that the turkeys all too a little longer to cook than planned so everyone else had everything ready and then it had to sit for over half and hour while waiting on the turkeys. This definitely affected the consistency of some items.

I've made Pico before at home, so this wasn't too much of a challenge. I did need a little more lime juice and salt, though, in my final seasonings. The Yucatan style turkey was amazing. We ate it in fresh corn tortillas with Mexican white rice, a delectable salsa one of the table mates made out of his own repertoire, pico, and grated gruyere cheese. Some people also ate pickled onions with theirs, and we also had a cactus topping that was available but I didn't really enjoy the flavors of that dish.

The churros were a little bit of a challenge. I've made churros before with no problems. This recipe seemed to produce "stickier" churros. The outside fried up nicely, but the inside never fully dried out as much as it was supposed to. I made the dough and piped lines onto a sheet pan and popped them in the freezer to set up enough to cut into smaller lengths to drop into the fryer. I set the fryer on 350 degrees and gave it ample time to heat up (2 hours!). I tested a tiny length of the first churro and the oil didn't seem hot enough. Chef turned it up all the way to 400 and we gave it a little longer to heat up again. My second churro began bubbling immediately, but was still extremely tacky in the middle when it was golden on the outside. Another table was having the same problems, so we decided to try and fry them twice. This seemed to help and my last batch finally seemed to cook enough that the inside was just SLIGHTLY tacky, and by placing them in a 200 degree oven to hold, managed to get them dried out enough to be delicious, although not quite as crispy as we would have liked due to the holding.

To go with the churros, I made a Mexican chocolate dipping sauce. I've never eaten Mexican chocolate before, and I was missing out!!!! I love the spicy cinnamon flavor, and I even like the grainier texture. I could have just sat there and eaten a whole bar of the chocolate. I made a basic ganache by melting the chocolate in a double boiler with a little butter and heavy cream. The texture of the Mexican chocolate made a stickier ganache instead of a smooth and creamy ganache than "normal" chocolate does. I then whipped some heavy cream and folded a little of the chocolate mixture into it to make a topping for the dipping and hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was simply milk, vanilla beans, and Mexican chocolate all melted together. It was thick and delightfully rich, and I stirred a little into my coffee to make an amazing late morning pick me up. The whipped cream melted almost as soon as it hit both items I piped it onto, so the presentation pictures are a little...rustic...but that's the food's style anyways.



I was able to take leftovers home to Marc and he thoroughly enjoyed it, as well. I am finding that as I eat more and more spicy foods in my classes that my palette is slowly becoming more accustomed to higher heat. I am able to tolerate spicier foods without having to guzzle huge amounts to cool my mouth off. I didn't think that would ever happen!

Next week is our last week in Mexico. I am anticipating more delightful foods, especially since we will be making GUACAMOLE, which is one of my favorites!

American Regional, week 1

American Regional is a two day class in which we explore the, fairly obviously, different regions of American Cuisine. American Cuisine is completely unoriginal, as it has been molded from the various settlers that originally inhabited this country. That being said, unoriginal does not, in any sense, mean that the food isn’t absolutely delicious. I enjoy the fact that our country’s cuisine is as much a melting pot as our inhabitants.

This week we were focusing on the Mid-Atlantic region. This region includes Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Virginia, New York, and West Virginia. Since yesterday was the first class and we had less time to cook because of going over the syllabus, we specifically focused on the usage of crab. We prepared Crab Soup with Crab Puffs, Maryland Crab Cakes, Sauteed Soft Shell Crab with Fennel Salad, potato croquettes and roasted spaghetti squash.

I, specifically, made the crab puffs and prepped the soup, as well as adding the final seasonings to the soup. The Crab Puffs were basically a pate a choux with crab and cheese mixed in. They turned out well and puffed up nicely. The only thing that I can say negative about them was that since we used canned crab, we had to pick through it and get all the bits of shell out. Someone else at the table performed this task for the group, and I should have gone through the quantity I was using myself to double check. There were definitely a few bits of shell left in the crab and I bit down pretty hard on a piece with a tooth that has already been bothering me and it hurt. Badly. Other than that, the crab puffs were a delightful experience.

The crab soup was alright. I liked the flavor of the broth in the final soup, but I really didn’t enjoy the texture of the crab in the soup. Again, we used canned crab and it was just kind of stringy and weird. I wouldn’t have minded a bowl of the broth with the crab puffs floating in it, perhaps, but the overall soup wasn’t something I would create at home.

Maryland Crab Cakes are a little larger, are pan seared (NOT fried), and have almost no breading. The Southern version, however, has an extremely high ratio of breading and is usually fried. Everyone in class used too much breading, apparently. Either way, the crab cakes that our group made were absolutely divine. Especially with the sour cream tartar sauce that was prepared to go with it.

Today, Friday, we prepared a large quantity of items. Half the class prepared one menu while the other half prepared a second menu. My team, specifically, prepared braised short ribs, chicken and dumplings, sautéed shaker style turkey cutlets, vichyssoise, cucumber and tomato salad, red swiss chard and spinach sauté, spoon bread, and ginger cake.

I made the turkey cutlets, spoon bread, and ginger cake. I started off by getting the ginger cake in the oven since it needed to bake almost 2 hours. After that I got the spoon bread prepared and let it sit so it would come out of the oven almost exactly at service time. I gave myself and extra 15 minutes bake time so if it was taking a little longer (as tends to happen sometimes with people always opening and closing the oven), I wouldn’t be screwed. The spoon bread was actually a very loose, cornbread based soufflé. It is still very moist, almost wet, when it comes out of the oven and it is actually spooned onto the plate and eaten with a spoon. Hence, SPOON bread. Once the cornmeal is mixed with simmering half and half and has cooled slightly, you beat in egg yolks and then fold in whipped egg whites. I served this underneath the turkey cutlets which only needed about 15 minutes actual cook time.

The turkey cutlets tasted fantastic with the sauce and spoon bread, but were not prepared completely correctly. While I was getting the spoon bread ready, a teammate was at a holding point in their work. They asked if they could help, and I said that they could prep the turkey items if they wanted to. I have decided that from now on, I just always need to do my own work completely. I’ve been trying to work as a team in the way of helping prep other dishes and allowing other to help me, but I am not satisfied with the results. The turkey was not pounded out thin enough and therefore the dish wasn’t exactly correct. I ended up having to braise the cutlets after sautéing them because they were too thick. Again, it still tasted amazing, but it was not as the recipe specified.


At one point I had a little extra time, so I decided to do what I do. In addition to the warm cranberries that were supposed to be served with the ginger cake, I made a delightful lemon sauce and also a cinnamon and ginger flavored whipped cream to go with it. I strained the cranberries through a chinois to make a sauce, and used the actual berry mush underneath the cake. The plating could use a little tweaking, but the flavors were delectable.


One of the things I am enjoying so far in this class is that, since the majority of the class are “newbies” right out of Skills, I can really see how far I have come since I was in that position. I can feel that I have grown in both my palette, knowledge, skills, and plating techniques.

New Quarter

Well, today began my 6th quarter here at AI Jax. I am scheduled for Latin, Food and Beverage Operations, and American Regional this quarter. I already have all my Mexico recipe cards typed and my first week of American Regional, as well. I couldn't help it. I like to get ahead on things to make it less stressful later.

I got all my stuff ready last night. I got my toolbox reorganized, packed up all my books, notecards, etc, and laid out my clothes. I got up and had my coffee and left with plenty of time. I get to school thinking, "Awesome! I'm 10 minutes early. I can grab a great table and get set up..." and then I walk into the lab and think, "Crap." The schedule said 6:30AM but labs never ACTUALLY start at 6:30! They always, ALWAYS have started at 7! So, half hour late, new teacher, augh!!!

The class gets underway and it's a very small (only 10 people!), very quiet, very calm class. I love it. Chef Heidi is OCD about being clean and organized. I love it! It's not so crazy that you can't experience the ingredients. I LOVE IT! We even finished cleaning at 10:45 and got to leave! I had to stick around for my next class, but hey! I get to do my blog now! Did I mention I love it?

I made a Chicken, Corn, and Lime Soup today, as well as corn tortillas. The soup was fairly easy to prepare. I was a little hesitant about how spicy it would be since it had two jalepenos in it, but it didn't have the seeds so I figured it wouldn't be too bad. It was actually very delicious, not too spicy, and a very flavorful soup! It literally took less than 20 minutes cook time. I really enjoyed the sour notes from the limes and the sweet from the corn, plus the little punch at the end of the jalepeno. I cut one of the tortillas I had made into strips and fried them up to garnish the soup with.


The tortillas I had a little more trouble with. I must have mismeasured something, probably the water, because when I mixed the masa harina (basically fine cornmeal) with the salted water, it was still a loose, not quite batterlike consistency. I incorporated more masa into the mixture until it was more dry and able to be formed into balls. Then I rolled the balls in more masa and pressed them between deli paper in the tortilla press. This enabled me to flip them directly from the paper into the skillet and then gently peel the paper back so they didn't fall apart like they would have if I tried to pick them up individually with my hands/spatula. Once they cooked, they were a good texture. I experimented with brushing them with a little oil before cooking, too, and I actually liked how that turned out better. It made them a little softer, and since I was topping them with Mole and Rice, I liked being able to roll it up like a soft taco.


The Mole was delicious. I didn't prepare it, and I had never had it before, but it was really good! I, surprisingly, wouldn't have minded a smidge more of a kick, but other than that, the meat was tender and the flavors melded really well. So far, Mexican cuisine has been healthy! I am definitely enjoying that aspect already.

The only really unhealthy thing on the menu was Flan. This Flan was odd. It called for ground almonds which gave it a very odd texture. We discovered that all the almonds sank to the bottom, though, and just ate the top part which was delicious.

Overall, I think it will be a great class and I am excited to learn more and cook more Latin food at home.

Gothic Wedding Cake

Our final for Advanced Pastry was a three or four tier wedding cake. The first week we worked on learning to make flowers for the cake. Then we had one more week of prep and this week was the week to put it all together. I, of course, didn't want to do the same thing everyone else was doing. I just always want to be different. I don't like "competing" by definition. I don't want to be "better" than anyone else, I just want to be different. It's funny. As children and teenagers, the worst thing in the world is to be different. As adults, at least in my case, I have learned to embrace uniqueness. It's what sets me apart. It is what makes people go, "Wow!" I like doing things people don't expect. I like thinking "outside of the box."

With that in mind, I didn't want to do a classic white wedding cake. I had seen a photo of a gothic cake that was my base inspiration. Of course, mine ended up not being very similar at all as it evolved, but this cake was the one that I looked at originally and got the wheels turning.



When I was at work at Doing Dishes Pottery Studio, a photo cube caught my eye.

People paint the cube, then we glue the metal photo holder into the top once it is fired. My brain started churning. "What if I just used the metal part as the cake topper." I began to sketch a plan for my cake. This was the original sketch.



I went on to think as I got more and more into it, "What if I mold something around the topper to look like a tree??" The cake continued to evolve. I love how this happens. My mind just churns and churns and eventually something wonderful comes out of it. I make lists upon lists. I edit, cross out, and crumple up sketches and notes. I plan like crazy. It usually works and this was no exception.

Thomas Hill from Marion Crane and Digital Kill Productions, and incidentally my husband's best friend, came through for us and willingly went with us to take our photos in a Gothic Wedding Photo Shoot for the photos on the top of the cake. Jaime Yeoman also helped out with the makeup and the actual shoot and the cake wouldn't have been the same without them!!!

Wednesday I put the whole cake together. First I put the cake topper on the cake and added the "roots" of the tree. To make the topper I used a mixture of modeling paste and modeling chocolate kneaded together with black food coloring powder. It took several tries to come up with the right ratio, but once I did, I was able to keep making small amounts as I needed it to make the flowers, leaves, and trees. Then I piped the wrought iron fence on the bottom tier with black royal icing and the web on the top tier, and piped a simple border on all tiers. I added the second tree and the leaves, spiders, and flowers. I finished up adding accents of luster dust here and there, and finally added the photos to the tree.

I was so extremely happy with how the cake turned out that I was thrilled when I learned that one of the guys from the photography department at the Art Institute volunteered to take professional photos of all the cakes.

*If you click on the photos, they will come up larger so you can see more detail.






These are the other photos that were on the top of the cake. Some of them were edited to be black and white with only the purple remaining.




I love that these say Husband and Wife:



And just for fun, here are additional photos from the shoot that didn't make it onto the cake.







Here is Marc rear naked choking one of the headstones. He's in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Classical- Week 9

This week in Classical, I made Blini's. You may recall that I made these in Garde Manger last quarter. Two of my photos from that class were chosen to be displayed this whole quarter downstairs at the school in the main display case. I actually really enjoy the Classic Caviar presentation because Chef Thompson had told us that it is supposed to be intricate. This time I really paid attention to knife cuts. I wanted to make a whole new presentation and not do the same thing I did the last time. I LOVE how it came out.





Next week we are doing quite a few pastry items, which I am very excited about! Can't wait to make some scones, but the Apple Charlotte with custard sauce sounds divine!

Asian- Week 9

We had a ton of recipes to cook this week, but I ended up having a ton of fun. I really enjoyed the exercise of creating our own “fusion” dishes. I made Twigum Mandu into meatballs and served them with the Mung Bean Noodles and Crispy Seaweed. I thought the meatballs came out with a delicious flavor! I would POSSIBLY add a little more rice or some breadcrumbs as an additional binder because they were hard to keep together in the pan when I was sautéing them, but I’m not sure, because I liked the lightness that they had. I would have to try it and see which way I liked better.



I liked the flavor and texture of the Mung Bean Noodle dish, too. I thought it was a little sweet, but that seemed to be the trend in much of the Korean dishes. I hadn’t had the Mung Bean Noodles before, and I enjoyed the slight texture difference from regular noodles. I would add more veggies if I was making this at home, but other than that, I was happy with it!

The Crispy Seaweed, however, was a different story. It never toasted up enough, which is probably because of my lackadaisical application of the sesame oil…and my fear of the fire. I just hate getting near fire. I just do!!! I don’t know what to do about it, and I think I’ve come a long way, but I’m just not fully over it yet. I think I COULD like this if it was done right, but I obviously am not the person to do it right. Yet.

I liked the way I plated all my items together and I think the flavors complimented each other nicely. The actual cooking was interesting because of all the blanching and steaming that went on. I tried to compile a list of what I needed to do in my dishes so I could get all the blanching done in one swoop and save some time. There just was such a huge rush over to the stoves at one point that there wasn’t really enough room for everyone and all their pots and dishes. It was extremely frustrating.

I also made the Yak Sik and shaped it into balls to plate. The flavor was ok with this, but the texture wasn’t very appealing to me. The glutinous rice was just kind of gummy. It was ok when it was first done but as it cooled, it kind of gelled up a little and I didn’t find that appealing. I also didn’t care much for the dates. I think it was the date flavor that was throwing me off. Maybe it was the seasonings that were folded in. Either way, this was not a winning dish, in my opinion.


Overall, I really liked Korea! I enjoyed learning more about the people and the country during class from someone who had actually lived there for awhile. Once all these classes are over, I would like to leisurely study some of these cultures again.

Classical- week 8

I’m usually not a procrastinator. This week, though, I have been putting off writing this entry for as long as possible. I am not proud of the food I put up last week, so I haven’t been wanting to share it or write about it. I had an incredibly off week last week. I think it was due to me being stressed about the pastillage piece I was going to be putting together in the class after Classical.

I know it isn’t anyone else’s problem, but I have huge anxiety issues that tend to manifest themselves in other areas that are not directly related to what I am actually having anxiety about. I woke up feeling extremely anxious and panicky. As my morning routine progressed, so did my stress level. By the time I climbed in the car, I was in a nearly full on panic. I decided it was time to take one of those little pills the doctor prescribed me. That’s what they are there for, right? When I pulled into the school parking lot, I popped a xanax and hoped for the best.

The feeling I get when on xanax is hard for me to describe. Everything just get’s suppressed. I’m not anxious anymore, just kind of withdrawn and mopey. That’s how I feel, anyways. I feel like my feet get very heavy and I feel like I am moving very slowly in everything I do. I feel like my body gets kind of heavy and it goes all the way to my facial expressions. I skulked around the kitchen and tried to get my dishes done. Again. I’m not proud of the food I put up.

I made pears with a poppy seed cream, spaetzle, and I attempted the braised red cabbage. Let’s start with the worst. The braised red cabbage ended up burning. I just wasn’t checking on it often enough. That’s really all there is to say about it. I should have kept a better eye on it. The spaetzle came out decent enough but when I went to sauté it, I didn’t heat up the pan well enough first so it never really caramelized and got the texture it was supposed to have.



The pears and cream tasted good, but looked like poo. I had a picture of what I wanted it to look like, but the pear was too heavy and squished the cream. This was my THIRD plating of this dish. Eventually I just left it alone because I wasn’t improving on it at all. The flavors were there, but the plate looked like crap. I enjoyed the aromas of this dish, too.



Somehow our team managed to pull out a win again, but it was not due to any of my work at all. I’m very disappointed in my performance last week and hope this week is greatly improved. I am working with my therapist on how to better cope with stress and anxiety.