Whoops, sorry.

So…A ton happened in the past few days and I forgot to even put the daily menu in. I’ll fix that now.

Thursday menu-
Endive orange salad with a shallot vinaigrette
Mushroom leek soup
Grilled salmon
Steamed veg
Beurre blanc (white wine butter sauce)
Gaufrettes (waffle cut fries)

I was working on the beurre, and I ended up plating the salmon and the salad. I also did the soup garnish, it was deep fried julienned leek. Which was actually very tasty. I don’t recall what Dad did on Thursday, but I’m sure he posted something. See my picasa site (to the right) for pictures on that.

Friday menu-
Vichyssoise (potato leek soup)
Grilled ono (Also known as Wahoo, it’s a fish with a shark-like texture)
Salad with hard boiled eggs and vinaigrette
Rice with veg
Beurre rouge (red wine butter sauce, which I prefer, but it’s purple)

I worked on the ono. I also got to plate it, since the day before with the salmon, I screwed up which direction the grill marks faced. I redeemed myself, it looked much better. Unfortunately, our soup came out lukewarm (our plates weren’t warm enough and we pulled the soup too early), and our main plate only had warm fish on it, since we got 11 minutes to plate and 7 of those had fish cooking. There was no way we could get seven plates done in four minutes. Just not happening. So the rice and sauces were colder than the fish. But I’m pretty happy with how our plate came out considering we got an extra addition to the plate at last minute and it got messed up at last minute. It had a lot of changes, but we got the plate out looking pretty nice. That one is above if you’d like to see. We got asparagus added, but it didn’t come out right, so we ended up with an asparagus coulis (basically it was pureed asparagus and a little liquid) which tasted just like asparagus. I liked it.

The past two days, I’ve been kind of responsible for getting our production chart up and running. I got our menu, ingredients, and rough times written down so we know what’s going on, as well as pitching ideas for plating. It’s been interesting. Granted, I’m not doing that next week because we have team chefs for the week and that’s their job. But it was interesting to get an idea for it and I think it went fairly well.

Beyond that, Dad got his business name and ideas all up and running so that’s pretty cool. It’s B&B Culinary Creations and he’s “hired” me for it (That’s where the second B comes in). So. We’ll see where it goes from here.

Okay, pictures are up

I've switched from facebook over to picasa, I've updated the link on the right, and I won't be using facebook as steadily anymore. The picasa one is a little jumbled, but it'll get better. And it'll get descriptions. Please bear with me for the changes, I don't have a lot of spare time. Thanks.

The site is picasaweb.google.com/pyricin

No more chicken!

Today was grilled salmon, steamed veggies (red pepper and leeks), waffle fries (thinly sliced), cauliflower soup, and endive & orange salad. Turned out pretty well, I have some nice pics. Today, my dad and I got to talk to Chef Deb (she is a graduate of the same program we are in and is a private chef) about our goals and ambitions. It was very cool. She is just packed full of energy and useful information. We only talked for a little while, but we're going to set up some times that we can talk more and get a little more information. The part that was just awesome for me was that she had this book called Alinea. This book is about a restaurant. I saw a show a while back about this restaurant that actually helped me to consider cooking as a career. The chef doesn't cook anything that's just basic, or filling, or anything like that. His style is an ART. There is no other way to describe it. The things he makes are just beautiful and that is my goal. I will work the line, and I will learn the basics, but that is the ultimate goal. Forget anything else, I have an eye for art and I am going to use it. So it was a pretty good day.

Oh, and apparently there has been a little trouble with the pictures. Facebook was set up to let people in regardless of being in there or not, but it doesn't seem to be working. I'm going to look into a Picasa hosted album. I'll let you know.

Test scores and practical tests

Test score = 100% Woo! Congratulate me and Dad as well plz. He got 100 too. I'm very happy. We also had a practical exam today, it was on knife cuts. We had ten minutes to cut a carrot medium dice, a stalk of celery small dice, and mince a shallot. I got through the carrot with very nice dice, through the celery with decent dice, and halfway through the shallot with a good mince. I was the closest to finishing on my side, so I'm VERY happy with that (I've been very unhappy with my cuts lately). I'm a bit of a perfectionist, if you hadn't noticed.
We did stuffed chicken again, but this time it was chicken mousseline (which is basically a very pureed and strained chicken mixed with shallots, garlic, egg white, and whipped cream) and yes I'm aware it doesn't sound great but it just tastes like chicken. We also had zucchini (which was my contribution), beurre fondu again (which I love), rice, salad, and minestrone. We switched the service order so it wasn't salad first, but still a three course meal. I did the chicken cuts this time, and made SURE the skin wasn't sliding off and getting cut. It kinda annoyed me yesterday. It looked very good, and I was pretty happy with it. I also did the dressing garnish on the salad and helped with the plate layout for the chicken (which I wasn't entirely happy with). It was very geometrical, which is not my style, nor my favorite. Anyway, I have a bunch of pictures up on facebook. They're labeled with Team A/B, as well as what it is and the date. Enjoy.

First quiz

Today was horrible. Traffic was so stupid. Yes, there was snow. No, you don't have to go 2 miles an hour. We got to class an hour late and missed the test. Because of the snow (and more than a third of the class not making it in time) we only got a tardy and no points were taken. We also had to stay after class to take the test. So it didn't end as badly as it started, but gah, I hate snow drivers. The test wasn't nearly as bad as I was anticipating. Granted, I overstudied a lot. Obsessively almost. I only got a couple things wrong, and I'm pretty sure I nailed 9/10 product identification questions. Cuz balsamic vinegar is difficult to identify. ^_^ The only ones I almost had trouble with were questions asking us to list the ingredients and amounts of ingredients for particular recipes, but I figured it out after a minute. We made chicken roulade, rice, beurre fondue (butter sauce), salad with vinaigrette, and a barley soup today. First we had to get a goat cheese filling in (and that was my job today). Shallots, green peppers, and red peppers get sweated first, add thyme, and fold into the cheese. That goes into the chicken thighs (that the bones got pulled out of) and the chicken gets rolled around it. Then we seared the chicken and baked it. They were pretty good (see picture of Team B's chicken and rice above). I did the garnishing on that plate. All in all, pretty happy with it. Oh, and we find out our test scores tomorrow.

Forgot to mention

I have a test tomorrow, wish me luck. Oh, and I added a "random photos" category in my facebook. Enjoy.