June 23, 2003 - June 27, 2003

Advanced Baking Week 3, Day 5. Last day. The first five students done with everything got to go home early. Those who finished after them had to stick around and pretty much sit around. It was kind of like the last day of school where kids just sit around signing each other's yearbooks. They played Trivial Pursuit with Chef Mallet.
My blueberry cheescake came out pretty good. I had a tough time getting them out of the ring molds though and my crumb base was waterlogged due to the water bath. I finished my cake yesterday by icing it with whipped cream, coating the sides with graham cracker crumbs, and piping a border around the top. The last thing to do was a dessert presentation from our group project. We chose to do our signature dessert, Floating Iceberg. The base was a sea of creme anglaise with lemon rind and a splash of vanilla. I poached a quenelle of meringue in milk for the iceberg. Blair made the caramel sauce for the drizzle, Eve made the Titanic cookie out of shortdough, Molly made the lifeboat out of sugar, and Jen cut perfect small dice survivors out of strawberries and pears. She also assembled the dessert. The Chefs got a big kick out of the dessert. They were very impressed with the creativity. Chef Mallet recognized the Floating Island dessert as Oeuf a la Nage from a kitchen he worked at. We finished the day with a last bout of cleaning that included wrapping the tables that had product underneath them. Chef Mallet gave us our grades told us that we were no longer maggots and that we muxt take control of our lives because there are people more than willing to do it for us.

Advanced Baking Week 3, Day 4. Note: for all those longing for the days of visuals, I have made use of my camera again, at least for a couple of shots. First day of practicals. I chose to work in the back room. It's more quiet and cooler there. It's also devoid of all the chaos that happens in the main kitchen. We have to do five things: make six portions of a dessert, six pieces of decor, 20 pastries or 12 mini-tarts, finish a cake, and present a dessert from our project. For our project we chose the theme of the last dinner on the Titanic. Eve had the inspiration for that one from a cookbook she borrowed from Jen. The dessert we are going to prepare is Floating Iceberg. It's not from the actual menu like our other desserts were, but it's a morbid rendition of the popular French dessert and Julia Child's favorite Floating Islands which are poached meringues drizzled with caramel in a custard sauce.
I started out with the decor. Before class I made a stencil of a cluster of cubes. It's basically a cube on each face of a central cube. It took a while to pipe out all the lines on the tuile. I got a point taken off because they were a bit underdone, but the chefs thought the design was cool. I worked a bit with James because we picked all the same things for our practicals. Next we worked on the mini-tarts. I thought everybody would do these for their pastry practical because they're easy, but quite a few people chose the eclair route. No one was insane enough to choose petit fours. But I think there would be time for that if some chose to do so. I baked off some small round tart shells, filled them with pastry cream, and conjured up a fruit design. I made a pear base with a slice of strawberry topped with a slice of kiwi, and topped off with the tip of the strawberry. I used Eve's pea scoop to remove the tip of the strawberry and put a blueberry there. Shelby was kind enough to let me use his blueberries that he brought in to use for his panna cotta. After that I worked on my cake practical. I split it, filled it, and masked it. I left the rest to tomorrow. I finished up the day with dessert. I decided to make Junior's cheesecake. I got the recipe from the web. I made the base recipe and added the rest of Shelby's blueberries. I still need to bake it, and unmold them. Hopefully that goes well. The bad thing about choosing cheesecake is that there are only two fleximolds in the class that are suitable, so I chose to experiment with ring molds. In theory it should work. We'll see tomorrow.

Advanced Baking Week 3, Day 3. Final Exam. It took a long time to finish, but I think it went well. We also finished our cake practical with a layer of buttercream icing and a border around the rim. Chef judged it by slicing a piece and seeing if the layers were even. We also had our bag piping practical. We had to pipe five perfect rosettes. I still don't have them perfectly but I think it will come with practice.
Chas and I work on pate a choux today. We made a croque en bouche. It's a pretty cool looking dessert. First we made the pate a choux dough. Then we piped out a lot of golf ball size pieces. Then we baked them. Chas prepared some sugar while Manny and I filled each ball with pastry cream. There were a lot of balls to fill. Chef Roberts made a 10" base of caramelized sugar for us. Then Manny and I dipped the golf balls in very hot sugar and stuck them on the base. We went around and around forming a tall hollow behive. Then with yet another pot of sugar, we made angel hair sugar and wrapped it around the beehive. It was a very stunning presentation. Chef Roberts was pleased with the result. We nestled some chocolate leaves in the angel hair for garnish. The dessert was brought up to catering.

Advanced Baking Week 3, Day 2. Chas and I were assigned mini fruit tarts. I've noticed that pastries lend themselves very to suggestive decorations. I turn a deaf hear to such talk and concentrate on symmetry, balance, and visual appeal. All Chas and I did was to arrange kiwi, strawberries, mandarian orange wedges, and rasperrries in two different designs. The mini tarts were easy to make and everyone will probably choose that to do for their pastry practical. We rolled out short dough on the sheeter machine. Short dough is made for us by the Basics Baking class; very conveneient. Then we lined up the mini tart shells, placed the dough over them, and rolled across them cutting off the excess dough. We docked the shells by piercing them with a fork and blind baked them. Next we filled them with pastry cream. After that we put out fruit designs on and glazed the fruit. Done. the fruit tarts seem to be a popular item. They taste great and it's a nice change of pace from chocolate.
We started our cake proficiency by splitting, filling, and masking a cake.

Advanced Baking Week 3, Day 1. Pastries. Chas and I worked on petit fours. We built it backwards. First we rolled out a half sheet pan of marzipan. Then we spread raspberry on top of that. Next we put on a layer of frangipane. Another layer of jam, followed by frangipane, more jam, and then the final layer of frangipane. At this point, we put it in the freezer for 30 minutes so that it would be easier to cut. Then I cut the cake into one inch square pieces while Chas dipped them in pate a glacier. Bill and Kinsey, the future pastry chefs in our class, piped designs on each piece. We served them at the family meal that the meat fab class prepared.

June 16, 2003 - June 22, 2003
Weekend event: Titanium Chef Grand Finale. for the final round, each team chose a chef instructor to work with. We chose Chef Deflieze as our Team Chef. The protein that had to be in every dish was red snapper. We were lucky to have Chef Deflieze since he is real fast at butchering protein. We came up with the following dishes: Red Snapper Roulade with artichoke heart, and fried polenta, red snapper bisque, pan seared snapper with snap peas, black rice rissoto, and prickly pear beurre blanc, and a peach brule with candied snapper skin. We didn't finish in the top three so I'll just say we finished fourth. The judges were top chefs from around the valley. Half of them were former SCI graduates which was a good thing to see.

Advanced Baking Week 2, Day 5. Blair, Michele, and I worked on sugar. For the sugar station, we made things out of sugar for decoration on the final plates. The first thing we did was to caramelize three saucepans of sugar. We made shields, almond thingys, and corkscrews. It went pretty fast.
We also practiced masking a cake. We split a cake into layers, filled it, and masked it. We are going to finish glazing them on Monday.

Advanced Baking Week 2, Day 4. I was assigned to work on tuiles with Blair and Michele but Chef Roberts decided that I had worked on enough tuiles and I worked on a special assignment with Jim. We made Chocolate caramel mousse cakes topped with crushed pistachios in a chocolate cylinder. The key to the assignment for me was working with chocolate. I got the chance to temper dark chocolate.

Advanced Baking Week 2, Day 3. Switch day. The dessert sides switched to pastries and decor and vice versa. Our group went to decor. Chas, Jamie, and I were assigned to do tuiles. These are like thin crispy cookies used for decoration on dessert plates. The batter we use is pate a cigarette. I made some stencils out of a cake box. Then we put the stencil on a silpat and smoothed the batter over it. After making all the shapes on the silpat, we mixed cocoa powder with a part of the batter and used that to draw designs on the shapes. The teardrop shape I cut out turned into a leaf. Chas chose to use some precut stencils in the toolbox, and Jamie made a lighthouse. Then we bakes them in the oven and cooled them off. It was a pretty easy project; we even had time to do another batch.

Advanced Baking Week 2, Day 2. Working solo on panna cotta. I really enjoy panna cotta even though it's simply gelatinized heavy cream. I put raspberries in mine after about an hour of setting so that they would be suspended in the panna cotta instead of sinking to the bottom. After that I helped Kinsey make Apple Phyllo logs. It's frangipane and apple pie filling wrapped in phyllo. Chef makes us do a bunch at a time and then has us freeze them. They hold well. We had our gel piping practical. Everyone had to pipe designs on five petit fours. I didn't do so well. It's a combination of poor bag making skills and bad luck.

Advanced Baking Week 2, Day 1. I worked with Chas on restaurants. It was a little easier than I thought. We didn't have a lot to do. We cut the Chocolate Guiness cakes that Molly and James made on Friday. Cutting is an interesting process. We have to heat the knife blade with a blowtorch, slice through the cake, pull it out slowly, clean the blade, and repeat the process.

June 9, 2003 - June 15, 2003
Weekend event: ACF Junior Team practice. We did some knife cuts for an hour and then we went over some techniques for our menu. Chef Riposo made us some breakfast burritos. They were pretty good.

Advanced Baking Week 1, Day 5. I was on Production today with Chas. Supposedly it was an easy day consisting of a parallel mousse cake, bavarians, and finishing a marjolane. To make the parallel mousse cake we first "prep the bottom." This means to get a layer of chocolate flourless bisquit(BIS-KWEE), which is a thin layer of sticky cake than serves as the bottom layer, spread melted chocolate on top of it, cover it with parchment, invert in onto another sheet pan, and put a sheet pan extender on top of it, so we now have a rectangular box to hold the mousse. All we had to do was put a 3/4 inch layer of chocolate mouse on, freeze it until set, and then an equal layer of white choclate mousse, but this is where our troubles began. We attempted to make white chocolate mousse using a recipe for dark chocolate mouse. Mistake number 1. After an errant batch, we had to start over again. Then we didn't have enough chocolate mousse, so we had to whip up a batch of that. Mistake number 2. It was definitely poor organization on our part. I broke off to do the bavarians and let Chas finish the chocolate mousse. I enlisted the help of JB to help make creme anglaise for the bavarians. I forgot to look in the walk in to see if there was creme anglaise already made. Mistake number 3. After slapping the bavarians together during our dinner break, I had to finish the creme anglaise I started while everybody else was doing gel piping practice except for Chas who was finishing off the parallel mousse cake.

After cleanup, we a our first test. It was reminiscent of the Basic Baking tests. Lots of procedures to regurgitate as well as terms to remember. No big deal. Two more days of desserts. Chef gave us an extra credit assignment worth five points. We have to bring in proof of leisure: a ticket stub, a receipt, something to show that we advantage of the time off. I must admit this will be tough, but I'll think of something.

Advanced Baking Week 1, Day 4. Chas's birthday. In Chef Mallet's class the birthday ritual is a pie in the face. Chas took it on good humor. Chef Mallet made him a chocolate mousse cake to take home. According to Chef Mallet, theoretically it should taste good.
Today I worked with Blair to make cheesecake flavored at our discretion. Since Blair is allergic to dairy products, I was designated flavor chooser. Apple cinnamon, a nice flavor combo, not too exotic. The cheesecakes were literally a piece of cake. We had enough leftover batter to make mini cheesecakes for the catering class.
We then helped Kalei and Eve with eclairs. Blair and I cut the baked pate a choux in half while Eve and Kalei filled then with pastry cream. After that I help Molly cut bisquit for the bottoms of her bavarians.
Chef Mallet gave the lecture tonight on cake mixing methods.We learned that his favorite dessert is Marjolane, a cake made with halzelnut flavored bisquit.

Advanced Baking Week 1, Day 3. More desserts. My assignment today was Sacher Torte with Joe. We had to made four of them. In Basic Baking, we make the cake part. In Advanced Baking we get to finish it. The Sacher Torte is named after Franz Sacher who owned the Sacher Hotel in Vienna, It still exists today and you can have their Sacher Tortes shipped to you for a price. The cake is made with chocolate and almond flour. Joe and I trimmed the tops off and then cut the cakes in half. We spread the bottom layer with apricot jam and put the top layer back on. Then masked the cake with a layer of ganache. Ganache is equal parts of cream and chocolate. It's like a frosting at room temperature. Then we froze the cakes. After that layer set, we poured a ganache glaze on top of it and froze it again. Then we marked it into twelve pieces and wrote the word 'Sacher' on each piece with ganache using a piping bag. Kind of easy only if you can make ganache properly. Chef had to show us how to make after two failed attempts. Boil the cream. pour over chocolate, and mix vigorously.
I also helped Chef Roberts with the Paris-Brest dessert. Name after the oldest bicycle race, it's a dessert with a ring of pate choux, cut in half, drizzled with ganache, filled with pastry cream, topped with whipped cream, and then the top is placed back on top and drizzled with more ganache.

Advanced Baking Week 1, Day 2. First day of production. All the desserts that we make are for the school's fine dining restaurant L'Ecole. We make all the desserts for lunch and dinner service. We had a lecture first to discuss all the things that go on in the kitchen. My assignment today was Creme caramel with Jim. I didn't expect to work with Jim becuase he's not in my group but Chef seems to be treating the two dessert groups as one.

Creme caremel is a simple dessert. We made caramel and custard. Then we lined small disposable aluminum tins with the caramel and then poured the custard in them. Then we baked them in the oven until the custard set, cooled them down, wrapped them up, and stored them in the walk in.

After cleanup, we had a lecture on pate a choux, Chef Roberts demoed that. Boil water, butter, and salt. Add the flour, incorporate into a ball, mix until cool, add eggs one at a time until slow plop, and you're ready to pipe. Pipe into shapes (we do eclairs and swans) and then bake.

Advanced Baking Week 1, Day 1. According to Chef Mallet the title of this course is a misnomer. We learn neither "advanced" stuff nor do we bake. A better title to the course is "Introduction to Pastries." The average weight gain in this class is 7-8 pounds. Chef Mallet encourages us to eat everything we make. Couple that with the fact that we may or may not get fed by Meat Fab, our only choice seems to be to subsist on pastries. Chef will also allow us to snack on fruits, bread, and cheeses in the walk-in. He is very lax in his management style. He is trying to give us the feel of an industry pastry shop: complete with tempermental equipment and allowance of mild profanity, a term he feels is ill defined because what is profane to one person is not to another. We have a project due the third week of class. We have to redo the dessert menu of a restaurant. We have to cost out the desserts, write a paper about them, sketch their presentation, and create one during our practicals on the last day of class. I was invited to join Jen, Molly, and Eve in their group. It should be a lot of fun.

June 2, 2003 - June 8, 2003
Weekend event: ACF Junior Team tryouts. This is the second time I'm trying out for the team. I feel a little bit wiser now having gone through International. I know what Chef Santos is looking for in terms of knife cuts and platings. I feel ready. The reason that we're having tryouts is that half the team stopped coming to practice. They had practice every Saturday. Apparently they were only doing knife cuts and people wanted to do more cooking. I'm okay with just knife cuts because I know I don't practice them enough.So I made the team, but it seems like just the beginning. The first competition is in October, when I start my externship. I think I'll stay in the area for my externship because of this. There's going to be a lot of knife cut practicing over the next six months. I think that'll be good. I needed a compelling reason to work on my knife skills.
The tryouts was pretty neat. There was a pretty low turnout, so I had an even better chance. I'm not sure why the spirit in this school has died. I think it's due to the weather. I think it'll pick up again in the fall. We had to five knife cuts in 30 mintues and then we had to make a plate in an hour. It was just like International only a tad harder. Our protein was chicken, so I just sauteed the breast and finished it in the oven. For the starch I made risotto. I made some spinach, batonnet carrots, and fennel for the vegetable. The sauce was just a plain old veloute. I could have improved on the sauce and the presentation, but I was in a bit of a rush at the end. The chicken and the risotto were cooked well. So were the vegetables I think.

International, Week 3 Day 5. Test 3 and knife cut test 3 and market basket. I ran through the test in about half an hour. I guess I could have scrutinized it more, but I felt like starting my knife cuts. I practiced before class with the tournes, but I just couldn't get them right for the test. Maybe there was a little test anxiety. We did have a thirty minute time limit. My julienne and brunoise were a bit big as well. Today being the last day, we got to cook whatever we wanted. I started prepping for a beef stir-fry, but Michele and Fran also wanted to do a stir fry, so I switched to grilled flank steak and Dauphinois potatoes instead. It came out pretty well. I threw together the Dauphinoise potatoes from what I remember from how Chef Rosenberg did it from the Wine dinner in March. It came out all right I think. Joe liked it which means a lot because I value his palate. After cleanup, Chef Santos gave us a farewell speech. He told an inspiring story about a woman who attempted to swim 26 miles to the shores of San Francisco from some island. The woman gave up a quarter mile from the shore. In a news conference she lamented, "If I could only have seen the shore." Chef Santos said that our future is cloudy sometimes because our vision is impaired by self-doubt or some other force. We must persevere because the stars are within our reach.

International, Week 3 Day 4. We presented our country reports today. I pretty much finished at the last moment. We didn't have to speak if we didn't want to, but it counted towards our class participation grades. I thought some people dragged out a bit too long. But when I went up to do my report on Italy, I would up taking the most time. There were fellow classmates signalling me to wrap it up when I was only halfway done. I didn't really prepare for the oral presentation I was just talking using my paper as a guide. I thought I could zoom through all 20 regions of Italy 30 seconds at a time. Apparently talking about the Northern regions took longer than I anticipated. I felt bad about boring the class to death; maybe next time I'll try to practice beforehand. About a third of the class presented their papers. I felt it was a good opportunity to practice talking in front of people. Although as the class representative I do talk in front of the class on a weekly basis.
Mexico. The most popular day of food. Probably because we are familiar with the flavors and know what we are looking for in terms of taste. Jamie and I made Chile Rellenos. Jamie roasted the aneheim chiles while I sliced the pepperjack and gathered the rest of the ingredients. We also decided to make a sauce, so Jamie made a spicy salsa that we added to a bechamel base that Kinsey made. We were rushing at the end to batter and fry the chiles because we needed about twice the amount of batter that the recipoe provided us. I discovered that I have the ability to whip egg whites very fast. A good thing to know. But we got our food out in time. After cleanup, we had a test review. Chef Santos basically ready off questions from two old final exams. I felt pretty good about the material.

International, Week 3 Day 3. Plating 6 - lamb rack. The last plating. I was up until 2am composing my plan for the plating. I decided to made a roasted lamb rack with wild mushroom polenta, carrots, beets, artichoke hearts, and simple red wine sauce. My main focus was on presentation. I made a cone of polenta, surrounded it with four chops of lamb on puddles of sauce. For the vegetables I used a melon baller to make spheres of beet and carrots. I slice them in half and made balls of half carrot and half beet. I put this on top of a quartered artichoke heart and put one of these vegetable setups in between each lamb chop. But course there were still mistakes. My carrots were undercooked, I burned the bones of the lamb rack and my sauce was starting to break. But my lamb was at the perfect doneness and I got a 17/20. Very please with room for improvement. I think I'm gettin there. I just wish there were more platings.
South America. My dish was Peas Portuguese. An interseting dish of peas cooked with onions, and served with chicken, ham, and bacon on the edge. To finished the dish, eight eggs are cracked on top of the peas and cooked until they are set. I was a tad late since I misjudges how loing it would take for the eggs to set. Chef Santos finsihed the dish in the broiler. Other items on the menu were Ceviche, Crab empanadas, chancho adobado, halibut escabeche, poblano mashed potatoes, calamari rice, black bean soup, bean and asparagus salad, and rice pudding. Lecture was about North America.

International, Week 3 Day 2. Plating 5 - chicken. For this plating, we were allowed to choose our own starch, veg, and sauce. I planned out a dish with curry couscous with peas, tourne carrots and turnips, and supreme sauce. It came together well and I got a 17/20, my highest grade yet. I felt pretty good afterwards. The grades for platings actually mean a lot more to means than test grades. I wish we had platings every day.
Molly had an accident with her knife. She sliced off a little chunk off the tip of her middle finger on her left hand in the middle of the plating. I saw the little flap of skin on her knife. She stayed for a bit and then went to the doctor. She actually came back right before we put out family meal. She's got a lot of toughness and drive in her.
India and the Middle East. My assigment was Cabbage Salad, but the morning class had a bunch leftoverl Chef Santos gave me a recipe for Aash-e Aab Lee Moo, a Persian rice dish with peas, onions, and mint. Other students made vindaloo, falafel with hummus, salatat knodar, sambosic bilahm, tandoori chicken, lemon rice, mulligatawny, basal mahshi, lamb curry, and cauliflower with tahini. Lecture on Mexico to end the day.

International, Week 3 Day 1. Test 2 and knife cut test 2. A test is a test. Again I feel the advantage of my mind and the ability to retain facts about food. Knife cuts are humbling. No matter how many times I tourne a potato, it seems like a new experience every time. Maybe it's because I only tourne 5 or 6 at one session. If I had to do 200 hundred of them for a meal, it would make me better. Julienne and brunoise. It's hard for me to be consistent on such a small scale. The only thing I can do is practice. Today we made food from Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. My assignment was Singapore noodles. It's made with chuka soba, shrimp(Jen helped peel and devein them for me), pork loin, garlic, onions, green beans, carrots(I used the class' knife cuts), bean sprouts, and spring onions. Our group leader Amor'e helped me prep a lot of the vegetable while I figeted with the pork. I sort of overcooked the noodles but it all came out in the end. Other menu items were steamed whole fish, gado gado - cooked vegetable crudite, nonya chicken and lime curry, sizzling rice soup, stir fry snake beans and cauliflower, eggplant with tofu, pork satay, crunchy stuffed tofu puffs, pad thai, and tom yum gong. Lecture was about South America.

May 26, 2003 - May 31, 2003
Weekend event: Taste of the Nation. This annual event is put on by Share Our Strength which raises money and awareness for anti-hunger programs. About 60 students helped out with the event. Top valley chefs were there with tables to serve little paltes of food to the guests. I helped out in the VIP room which was held in the Demo Kitchen. I helped Chef Christoper Gross and Michel Richard with their dishes: Braised boneless short ribs with red wine sauce, and chocolate peanut cruch bar. There were two seatings: one at 7pm and another at 9:30pm. The Chef did demos of their dish while we plated in the back and took their cue to serve to the audience. There were about 30 people at each seating. We plated the short ribs on potato mousseline, a small frise salad, and a dash of mushroom powder. I thought the mushroom powder was a great use of the gills of portabello mushrooms which are usually waste. Chef Richard's dessert was simple two small squares of chocolate peanut crunch bars on top of a coffee sauce. I didn't get a chance to wander around much because I didn't know I was allowed to. I did partake in famuly meal which was a hearty lasagna and garlic bread. Before the event, I helped out an Arizona Republic reporter with a blind tasting of supermarket hotdogs. She had four chefs: Matt Cater of Zinc's Bistro, Christopher Gross of Christopher's Fermier, Bradley Thompson of Mary Elaine's at the Phoenician, and Michel Richard of Citronelle taste test Nathan's , Ball Park, Jennie-O, Hebrew National, and one other I can't remember. The clear loser was Jennie-O. I think Nathan's was favored by a couple of chef. I grilled the hot dogs and helped to serve them. The dhefs didn't take more than one bite of each one. I haven't seen the article yet, so maybe it was scrapped.

International, Week 2 Day 5. Chef Santos started off with a lecture on Oriental foodstuffs. I actually tried a fetal chicken egg. I didn't have it raw; rather it was boiled. It tasted like chicken and egg. It's a little disturbing to take a bite and see that you've eaten the head of a developing chicken. some other things we got to sample were tamarind, fresh lychees, dragon fruit (milky white opaque flesh with tiny black seeds). We also had some thawed durian. Interestingly enough I had some fresh durian over Easter break in Pasadena. I like it a lot. I used to be afraid of trying it due to the strong odor, but I guess my palate has developed. The difference between the fresh stuff and the frozen stiff is the texture. The fresh stuff is stringier while the frozen stuff is mushy; the flavor is the same. I think I prefer fresh, but frozen is still good.
Australia. My turn to be group leader again. No one in my group really needed help. I worked on pork satay for Monday's family meal. I made the marinade with Jim and Rodney. Then I sliced and skewered the pork. On the menu today were spice chicken and lentil salad, scallops with black bean vinaigrette, yabbie salad with gazpacho sauce and potatoes anna, potato pancakes with sweetbreads, shepards pie, oysters, tazmanian salmon burger, goat cheese olive fennel tart, and roasted tomato soup.

International, Week 2 Day 4. Plating 4 - Fish. Ocean perch with sauteed spinach, tourne carrots, haricots vert, rissoto, and a beurre rouge (red wine butter sauce). Another struggle with the plate. My sauce broke, my rissoto was a little burnt, my fish still had some bones and scales, and I was late. I'll get it right one of these times. I think I'm starting to get used to cooking under time pressure.
China. Surprisingly, the worst food day of the three week block. I'm not sure why. The food was just not very appetizing. Deborah and I were assigned fried rice. Easy enough. But I misread the time our food was due, so I had to rush last minute with everything. I personally thought the recipe was lacking, but I followed it. We were missing ham which provides a key component to the overall flavor. My mom wanted me to bring in some Chinese sausage. That would have saved the dish, but I forgot. On the menu was lemon chicken, vegetable chop suey, chinese bbq pork, chinese cabbage, spring rolls, whole fried fish - I talked Eve into easy the eyeball and she nearly gagged, stuffed lychees, peking duck - actually turned out well, chow mein, halibut with pineapple, and stir fried taro with carrots. Lecture was on India and the Middle East.

International, Week 2 Day 3. Plating 3 - NY strip with tourne potatoes, batonnet carrots, haricots vert, and rosemary Maderia sauce. What did I do wrong this time? Well, I over cooked the steak to medium well instead of medium rare, my potatoes were undercooked, my sauce was gummy, and I was late. More to improve on.Japan. Jamie and I were assigned gyoza pork dumplings. When I told Chef that my dumpling folding wasn't up to par he said my mom would be disappointed at me. I guess that should be true, but we usually buy our dumplings frozen at home. Turns out that I fold em just fine. We saved a lot of time beacause the morning class made a lot of extra stuffing. So we only had to fold and fry. Other students made Carrot Kinpira, Vegetable tempura - by the way mushrooms should never be used for tempura in my humble opinion, shumai shrimp, sukiyaki, soba noodles, bamboo rice, miso soup, daikon, sushi - maki rolls with various fillings, negimayaki - rolled beef, chicken teriyaki, sunumono - cucumber salad, and pureed corn soup. Today's lecture was on Singapore, Thailand, Mayalsia, Thailand, and Indonesia.

International, Week 2 Day 2. Test 1 and knife cut test 1. The test was pretty easy even though the chef didn't give a thorough review like the other instructors do. Five days worth of terms done in matching style, some true or false, and a few short answer. The knife cut test was interesting. In one hour, we have to produce 2 ounces of julienne carrots (1/8" x 1/8" x 2 - 2 1/2" matchsticks), 2 ounces of brunoise (1/8" cubes) and three tourne potatoes (seven sided football shape measuring 2" with 3/4" diameter). I got a point taken from each cut for a 7 out of 10. Not bad. The time limit for the next knife cut shrinks to 45 minutes and the last one is 30 minutes; all with the same production requirements.
Germany, Belgium, UK, Norway, and Sweden. Jamie and I made Poulet Facon Bayeux. I think it's a Belgoum dish since they're cuise is heavily influenced by the French. We roasted 12 rock cornish game hens, quartered them, topped them with royal glacage that JB and Krystal made, and browned them under the broiler. Other students made kottbullar - swedish meatballs, zweibelkuchen - onion tart, bergens fiskessuppe, shepards pie, sauerkraut with sausage, spaetzel, rotkraut, and fish and chips. Lecture was on Australia.

International, Week 2 Day 1. Memorial Day, no school. Recovering from food poisoning. Not from school because no one else got sick. It's more likely from eating leftovers at home because my mom got sick as well.An interesting development surfaced. Richie left for home to get married. Apparently, he will return to be with us in Advanced Baking and finish up the last two weeks of International another time.

May 19, 2003 - May 25, 2003
Weekend event: I actually sat out a Sunday event at the Ritz-Carlton called Wine, Women, and Jazz. It featured about 20 of the top women chefs in the valley. However, on Saturday I did assist Chef Gwen Walters with her dish for the event. I helped her make 130 summer rolls. It was sauteed carrots, onions, peppers, cucumbers, grilled chicken, cellophane noodles in sesame oil, and mint leaves wrapped in a rice noodle wrapper. Very good stuff.

International, Week 1 Day 5. We started off with a double lecture on Japan and China. It felt very familiar.
France. My assignment today was Sweetbreads. I was supposed to work with Deborah but she was absent. A couple of other people were absent as well. Since we have Monday off, they probably took the advantage to have a four day weekend. I was excited to cook sweetbread since I've never handled them before. It was a pretty good experience. It is soaked in milk overnight to remove the undesireable flavors. I poached them in court bouillon until they were cooked. They I cooled them down and removed the membrane and veins. It was combined with hame, chicken, mirepoix, and mushrooms and then topped with puff pastry to form a crust. I didn't have to make the puff pastry as Baking did that for us. I just rolled it out. Manny helped my make and cut the chicken as well as rolling out the crust. I finish with time to spare. Other students made sausage wrapped in brioche, coq au vin, endive meuniere, soup aux moules, quiche, potage cressionaire, strawberries romanoff crepes, skate in brown butter, casoulet with duck confit, lorette potatoes.

International, Week 1 Day 4. Plating 2 - Pork medallion, with tourne potatoes, medium dice carrots, haricot verts, and a port thyme sauce. I overcooked the pork, Chef wanted it medium and I was at well done. I burned the sauce and was trying to save it. I lost track of my vegetables and they were overcooked. I need more practice at juggling multiple pans at once. Instead of trying to save the suace it would have been much faster just to start over. Live and learn. There are still four more platings.
Italy. My assignment today was Pasta e faigoli, a soup of pasta and beans. I burned the beans on the first try. Luckily enough were soaked the night before to give me another chance. I also burned a little of the pancetta and mirepoix. I fished out all the little burnt pieces when I added the stock. I think I was a little thrown off my the mistakes I made during my plating. It came together in the end. Other students made chicken marsala, polenta, mushroom risotto, osso buco, tortelli, insalate di melanzane - eggplant salad, bruschetta, veal piccata, potato gnocchi, sunchoke gratin - a sunchoke aka Jerusalem artichoke looks like a knobby potato, insalata russa, and zucchini ripeni.
After cleanup, we had another double lecture of France and Germany, belgium, UK, Norway, and Sweden.

International, Week 1 Day 3. Plating 1 - Salad. So in this class we have six platings. We would have seven, but we have a holiday next Monday. For the plating we have an hour to duplicate the plate that the Chef demos for us. Today, Chef Santos demoed four salad plates. We didn't have to duplicate his though; just compose a salad. His platings were elegant and seemed so effortless. I guess that's why he's the Instructor. We were allowed to use anything in the walk-in except the stuff on the speed cart which was to be used for the family meal. The other restriction was that we were not allowed to use mustard or egg to emulsify our vinaigrette. I made a pear salad with a pear and sage vinaigrette and a goat cheese patty. I made the mistake of making the vinaigrette in a food processor instead of a blender so it didn't emulsify. I put too many pear slices on the plate so my portion control was off. And I hid the goat cheese which should be more highlighted because it was the most expensive item on the plate. Learning is good.
Greece, Morocco, Lebanon, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. I was the group leader today. I helped Deborah with the tortellini filling for her dish tomorrow, Amor'e with Green Beans with Tomatoes, and Gabe with his Osso Buco also for tomorrow. I spent a lot of time making veal stock: roasting bones and cutting mirepoix. I also helped to roll out pitas for family meal. Other students made Paella, assorted tapas, spanish tortillas, hummus, tiropetes - cheese and egg rolled in phyllo dough and fried, roast leg of lamb, Brandade du Morue - patties of salt cod and potatoes, moussaka, baba ganoush, tabouleh, and quail with fruit.

International, Week 1 Day 2. Russian. I got an easy dish to make eggplant caviar. Bake an eggplant, peel and chop it. Cook it with onions, garlic and tomatoes. Let the flavors meld together. Adjust the seasoning and you're done. We served it room temp, but it is usually served chilled. The key to this dish is to caramelize the onions while the eggplant is baking. It adds a hint of sweetness to the dish. Other students made blinis, chicken kiev, pojarski, salmon koulibiaca, and pirogis. When we in Basic Baking and came over to International for dinner it was a scary experience. Now the roles are reversed, I think we have a greater appreciation for the food because we know what's in it. I also think that our class is good at following directions which I believe translates to better tasting food.
Cleaning up the International kitchen is notorious. The floor is never totally clean. There's alway squibs, little particles of stuff, on the floor. I think it's because the wheel on the tables are dirty. We roll them back and forth to clean the floor underneath. I also think that people are as detail oriented as others.
We had double lecture today. We learned about Greece, Morocco, Lebanon, Spain, and Turkey before family meal and Italy after kitchen cleanup. The Mediterranean lecture was mainly about Spain. In these lectures we go over terms and they we discuss traditional and indigenous foods and factor that affect the cuisine: climate, terrain, geographical location, tradition, religion, education, and economy.

International, Week 1 Day 1. I have been kind of dreading this class for a some time. They used to post grades of students in classes and I would see one or two A's every time. I also heard a lot of things from students saying how tough things were and how stressful things get. We'll see how it goes. Our instructor is Chef Santos Villarico and his associate is Chef John Deflieze whom we had for Charcuterie. We had hours and hours of lecture. From 3:30-10, Chef Santos told us about the rules, policies, and what to expect. At the end, he finished with the first lecture on Russia. We were finally back in the kitchen but still no cooking. This class is Saucier and Catering rolled into one. We learn about the cuisine of 20+ countries, have three knife cut tests and six platings as well as three written exams. Each day we make a dish for family meal pertaining to a particular country. Tomorrow's meal is Russian. The class is split into five groups for cleanup duties: washing pots and pans, kitchen manager duties, floors, stainless steel, and walk-in and fryers. Within our groups, there is a group leader who helps out with everyone else as well as working on miscallaneous projects for the chef like making a dish with other group leaders or making stock. I'm in group 2 with Michele (she and her husband Fran just joined our class, they were one block ahead of us but missed a block due to illness), Amor'e (she's retaking the class), Jamie, Deborah, and Gabe.

Recap of the rest of Management and Nutrition (April 14, 2003 - May 18, 2003)
Let me condense six weeks of management and nutrition down for you. There were some tests. We had about three to four hours of lecture each day. Throw in a demo from a traveling chef and a picnic at Chapparal Park and there you have it. I spent a lot of time doing other things like volunteering at a Bon Appetit event at the Greyhawk Golf Resort. There were a lot of famous chefs there but I didn't get to meet many of them. I was busy prepping and helping to make a cake with the Chef Bruce Tanner and Chef Robert Cacciola who has coordinated the past 11 James Beard Awards Galas. I got a chance to speak with Chef Chris Bianco. He is the owner of Pizzeria Biano. Coincidently he won this year's James Beard Award for Best Chef of the Southwest the following week. I had a chance to eat there with Molly, Jen, and Eve. Some of the best pizza I have ever eaten. That's a lot considering I grew on the East Coast chowing down on NJ and NY pizza. I also did some golfing here and there, helped out with graduation, and ran an 8K race at night.

April 7, 2003 - April 13, 2003
Weekend event: Scottsdale Culinary Festival. On Sunday April 13th, Eve, Gabe I did a demo of Bananas Foster in the Demo tent at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival. We gave away about 200 samples of Bananas Foster. There was a slight problem igniting the rum at the beginning, but it lit eventually. We were part of the Great Arizona Picnic at the Scottsdale Civic Center. There were lots of restaurants with booths selling tastes of their foods. There was also a Beer Garden(which I missed) and a Maragarita tent. Being a vendor, we got to go into an event called Cooks and Corks (normally $40) where there were wine tastings, cooking demos from top valley chefs and more food from different restaurants. I got to see Chef Brad Thompson give a demo involving gnocchi and a morel cream sauce. He is the executive chef of Mary Elaine's at the Phoenician.

Management, Week 1 Day 5. I'm not sure how interesting these entries will be because I'm in the lecture portion of school. I hope I can make it through these classes and learn something.

Management, Week 1 Day 4. First day of Nutrition. Our teacher for this part of the course is Regina Shadwick. A true Southern lady. She also works at a resort for a spa. She has a masters in nutrition, but is not a chef and requests us not to address her as one.

Management, Week 1 Day 3. Diversity lecture. Chef Pasquet was out today, so we had Chef Flynn. Diversity is a touchy subject. I think the lecture was geared more towards ignorant caucasians. I use the term ignorant in a non-negative way although to me it always has a negative connotation. Being an Asian-American, I feel I have a very open mind towards diversity. To me each person is different no matter what their race, culture, gender, or whatever. I try not to fall into the trap of stereotyping. Some may see this attitude as naive, others as open-minded. To me it's just my nature not to assume information that is not given. Maybe it's my scientific mind at work. Who knows?

Management, Week 1 Day 1. Management. First day initiations. Policies, new books, homeworks, overviews, introductions, etc. For management, we are united with our sister class so there are about 60 of us in class. We were also joined by three other students who need to complete management for one reason or another. We get out earlier, around 630pm. But what does that really mean? Less education? More time to do more homework. The teachers encourage us to highlight the book. This is one technique I have never found useful in my school career, but I'll give it a try. We have an interesting restaurant project in which we have to eat out at a restaurant and answer about ten pages of questions about it. Then we have to transform the information into a narrative like a restaurant review. We split up into groups of 6 or less. I formed a group with Eve, Manny, Jen, Molly, and Lara. We're going to Tutti Santi, an Italian restaurant that Jen had been to.Our instructor is Chef Pasquet. He has a lot of experience in business as well as in the restaurant industry. He has a lot of mannerisms like Rodney Dangerfield that makes

lecture interesting. But please don't compare him to Captain Kangaroo.