Tasting Tour Totals the Treat Tasters (say that five times fast!)

It was back to school today but I don't really think you could call what I did today school because all it really was was eating. I mean, there was walking and talking in between the eating but mostly the 15 of us and our chef just stuffed our chubby cheeks full of not diabetic-friendly sweets ALL afternoon. I'm seriously so full of sugar that I can barely type this blog but to appease my faithful readers (who I thought of today when taking pictures of everything so as y'all could feel like you came along without the calories) I will make an attempt to fight through the cloudy-ness of the food coma and take y'all on a tasting tour of Manhattan.

The first stop that we made was at a lovely bakery in Tribeca called Tribeca Treats. The bakery is owned and operated by a lady who went to the very same un-named culinary school that I am attending and is really delightful. Her space is beautiful and while I personally found her cupcakes to be a little dry, I loved her concept and I thought she had a lot of really great advice for us young(ish) students. At Tribeca Treats I tasted a chocolate cupcake with raspberry frosting and the best part of it was how not overly sweet the icing was and how delightfully the cupcake was presented.


See?!

Next, we went to Marie Belle, a chocolate store. Now, I must admit, the store was lovely. It was chic and it was pretty and it was ridiculously overpriced. We each tasted a single chocolate, the flavour I chose was cinnamon. It was very delicious and had a custom-designed, silk screened little emblem on top of the one-inch square chocolate but though it was perty, it wasn't worth $2.50.


A One-Inch Square Cinnamon Chocolate from Marie Belle

After Marie Belle, we trekked over to a tiny little chocolate store called Kee's Chocolates. It wasn't much to look at but the chocolates were delightful and so was the staff. Unlike Marie Belle, a "brand" that is sold all over the world, Kee's has just two locations in New York and doesn't do any wholesale. They make everything on site and use no preservatives. The chocolates were also wonderfully subtle and tasty.


Pistachio Truffle from Kee's Chocolates

Thank the Lord that we went to Grandaisy Bakery after Kee's because at this point, we needed something savory and boy did Grandaisy deliver. This bakery, which was once co-owned by Mr. No Knead Bread, smelled hideous. I've been in enough barns to know the smell of mice and this bakery stunk of them. The staff were a little unhelpful and the store was totally uninviting but the Roman-style pizza that we had was very tasty. Our group tasted roasted cauliflower, pomodoro (tomato sauce), zucchini, mushroom and potato flat breads and they all quite good despite the fact that they were served intentionally cold...


Cauliflower Roman Flat bread from Grandaisy Bakery

Pleasantly full by this time, our group strolled over to a Bakery/Cafe/Bar in the West Village called Sweet Revenge. At this bakery, they serve cupcakes, have a breakfast till dessert menu and also operate a bar -- there is a lot going on. What is neat about Sweet Revenge is that they have wine/beer/spirit parings with all their extremely large, dense, and full of icing cupcakes. While we didn't try the paring (it was only 2:30 in the afternoon...) our group did taste four cupcakes: the Dirty (a festival of chocolate), the Crimson and Cream (red velvet with cream cheese frosting), the Pure (vanilla cake and frosting) and a Sweet Revenge (peanut butter cake filled with ganache and topped with peanut butter frosting). They were all very big and very rich and very dry but it was a very neat concept to see in action.


A box full of Sweet Revenge Cupcakes

Now, I must be honest with y'all, my faithful readers and tell you that we did make two more stops after Sweet Revenge but blogger.com will not allow me to load any more pictures and my tummy cannot process any more writing about food. I will share that we also went to Bouchon Bakery at Columbus Circle where I tasted a Florentine and we went to Madeleine Patisserie where our class sampled a half dozen (of what I believe is the city's best) French Macaroons. After all our tasting and walking, we were all thoroughly stuffed and tired but I think we had a fun-filled day of getting to know each other outside of the classroom and also a day of learning a little but more about the industry of pastry arts. Hopefully today's blog inspires you to take a tasting tour where you live and doesn't just make you tired and hungry! Toodles till tomorrow!

Carb Heaven Comes By Way of NOT Kneading the Bread

A very exciting thing happened yesterday. Actually, it was happening on Sunday too but that very exciting thing was baked an eaten, finally, yesterday so we will save the semantics for people who don't eat bread. So yes. I made bread. Actually, I made no knead bread and it was freaking fantastic. But, it was a very long process with many steps and many moments standing with a frazzled look on my face looking at the no knead bread cookbook. So, in an effort to spare y'all a verra, verra long post about the recipe and steps for no-knead bread, I will post a helpful link (or at least I will make a gallant attempt to post a link) at the end of this post because being that I'm a no knead bread novice, I fear that my instructions would only lead to un-risen bread...

I'm sure that no knead bread was originally created by some baker centuries ago who hated having to knead -- that person was probably just as lazy as me and therefore I heart them, but it was Jim Lehay of Sullivan Street Bakery here in New York that rose the bread to popularity mere years ago. Basically, the recipe for his bread was published by the New York Times and lazy people (like me) went crazy. I know that I'm a little late to be trying out the bread just now but I've never been a trend follower. However, when amazaon.ca sent me a helpful email to tell me which books they thought I should buy and Mr. No Knead's came up (the book is called My Bread), I was very excited as clearly there would be scores of recipes to make without kneading and actually there are. However, Mr. No Knead says that you should master the basics first so that's what I have been doing since Sunday. The process of the bread making is simple. Mix your flour, yeast, water and salt together in a bowl and let them get really sticky and gooey before you cover the mixture and let it sit for 18, yes eighteen, hours or so. Then, you take out the rising bread, shape in on a towel doused with flour, let it rise a couple more hours and then awkwardly drop it into a hot dutch oven. Then, bake it at 475 (yes, that high) for about 30 minutes covered with a lid and 10 or so minutes uncovered. Then, you remove the bread and listen to it crackle (it actually creaked and crackled, seriously, I took a video for proof) for an hour on a cooling rack and then enjoy. The bread was really good. It was crusty and yet soft. I say was because it is now gone. We ate it all. In a day. And now, I knead to make more.


The finished product -- No-Knead Number One RIP

Don't forget to check out the link!
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html

Hey Yo, it's Fro-Yo

I know that I gabbed and gabbed about the wonderfulness that is the gelato place near our apartment and given the opportunity I would still gab but the fact is that you can't get gelato every night and not either go broke or get fat. So, I took matters in to my own hands and purchased an ice cream maker for cheaper than it would have cost to send mind from Canada or get gelato four times. Yesterday was the test out day and no one was disappointed with the results.

Before I get into the frozen yogurt or fro-yo that I made and consumed with vigour, I should mention that I've started borrowing an idea from a fellow blogger for my posts that include recipes. The blog, which is a very lovely blog and quite fun to read, is called Oh Eat Dirt and it is written by a New Yorker who has a passion for eating local. I'm not so much about the eating local -- though I should be -- but I really like how Miss Oh Eat Dirt highlights her ingredients. So, in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, thanks for the groovy idea Miss OED and now let's get on to the fro-yo.

It is rather funny that I am writing about this recipe just after praising Miss OED because I actually found the recipe on her site. She borrowed it from David Lebovitz's cookbook The Perfect Scoop which is my absolute favorite frozen confection cookbook ever (and David Lebovitiz's blog is pretty great too; if you're interested just google his name and it will pop up). I have the blog back in Canada but neglected to bring it with me as I thought I would not be making ice cream here...HA! Anyway, the recipe is uber simple, in fact it only has three ingredients: Greek Yogurt, Sugar and Vanilla.


Though I will include the recipe below, you hardly need it. Simply mix together 3 cups of Greek Yogurt, 3/4 cup of granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla in a bowl and let it sit in the fridge for an hour.

Then, simply put it into your ice cream maker and let it do all the work of churning for about a half hour.


We ate our finished fro-yo with leftover strawberry rhubarb compote on top but next time I make the recipe, I just might add the compote as the fro-yo is still in the ice cream maker because I'm just that bold...and daring. As a little tidbit of advice, I probably recommend eating the fro-yo as soon as it is made because it hardens up really quickly when you put it into the freezer.



DAVID LEBOVITZ'S FRO-YO

3 cups of Greek yogurt (I used fat-free but I doubt fat content would affect anything but taste)
3/4 cup of granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and let rest for an hour in the fridge. Pour into an ice cream and freeze according to the manufacturer's directions. Enjoy immediately or if eating after the fro-yo has been in the freezer, allow the mixture to sit out for a few minutes before trying to scoop.

Have You Heard About the Curd?

By now I have decided that spring in New York means that it rains. A lot. All the time. So, since it is raining here today and I don't feel much like exploring, today's blog is going to be about the Meyer Lemon Curd that I made earlier this week...maybe if I write about a sauce that looks like sunshine, the sun will shine.

If you have never heard of Meyer lemons before they are a much sweeter type of lemons then the ones that we are used to and they also have a thinner skin and a smell that seems to be much orangier than normal lemons. They feel a lot softer and juicer than normal lemons too which is probably part of why they are normally abhorrently expensive; try $17.99 per pound at Mercato Market in Calgary, but here, on sale at Whole Foods, they were $1.99 per pound and at that price, gosh darn affordable. Now, I had other ideas of what to do with the lemons, I found recipes for marmalade and little lemon cakes but when I asked my chef what she thought Meyer lemons were best used in, she told me lemon curd. Since I figure chef has been around the block enough times to know best, I took her advice and found a recipe for lemon curd on epicurious.com (a wonderful website if you have never been, stop reading my blog and go now -- it's that good).


Meyer Lemons

Now, lemon curd has always been something that terrified me because it seemed pretty hard. I thought it involved cooking eggs and making custards and doing all sorts of things that seemed really easy to mess up and ruined the ingredients with -- but I found a recipe that changed all that. Basically, you take lemon zest, juice, butter, eggs and sugar and whisk them over a double boiler until they have visually and tangibly thickened and you have curd. The whole process took about 20 minutes and the results were incredibly tasty. I will include the recipe below but don't worry if you don't have Meyer lemons, just adjust the sugar a bit and keep the other variables the same and your product should turn out just dandy.

I used the curd on toast, in yogurt and on ice cream but you could easily put it into a tart shell or fill a cake with it. Just like the strawberry rhubarb syrup or the pastry cream, lemon curd is extremely versatile. Enjoy!

MEYER LEMON CURD

2 teaspoons of Meyer lemon rind, finely grated
1/2 cup of Meyer lemon juice (the original recipe claims that this should take three or four lemons but it took me five so maybe buy an extra just in case)
1/2 cup of granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 stick of unsalted butter (or half a cup) cut into pieces

Use a microplane grater to finely grate the zest off the lemons and then roll the lemons on the counter to allow them to release their juices. Slice the lemons and juice them over a strainer into a measuring cup. Then, combine the juice and zest with the eggs and whisk until the mixture is combined. Add the cut up butter and place the bowl over a pot of slowly boiling water making sure that your bowl doesn't touch the water. Immediately after placing the bowl over the water, start whisking the mixture and don't stop until the curd has thickened up (in the original recipe, the instructions told me to wait until the mixture measured 160F on an instant read thermometer but I did not find that at this point the curd was ready for me to stop cooking it so I kept going until the curd was about as thick as a creamy salad dressing). After the curd has thickened, use a spoon to force it through a fine mesh strainer -- this will strain out any of the egg bits that cooked and make for a smoother final product. After the straining step, you are pretty much done. I waited for my curd to cool just a touch but feel free to try it right away: but be warned, it is so creamy and delicious it will be hard for you to stop once you start!



The Final Product

Tiny Cupcake Alert!

On a very windy Saturday in New York, Collin Murray and I took a very long stroll around the city and discovered a number of fun new places to delight in. Now, the bakery that I am going to talk about today was a recommendation from a friend of mine at culinary school and neither of us were disappointed. Baked by Melissa is a cupcake store in New York that has two teeny tiny locations around the city. We visited the Union Square location but there is also one in Soho if you are so inclined.

The store itself is tiny and probably no bigger than most peoples' spare rooms and it is also very sparse. It's not kitschy or colorful -- actually, it is kind of austere but the taste of the bite-sized cupcakes more than makes up for it. There are only nine flavours of cupcakes and they are really and truly no bigger than a quarter but they pack a mean taste punch. We purchased a sampler pack of twelve because it really wasn't possible to share one of the cupcakes as they are really just one-biters. In our sample pack was everything from mint chocolate chip to peanut butter and jelly and the cupcakes were remarkably moist and the icing was tremendously flavourful...and the cupcakes were cheap too!


The store front of Baked by Melissa near Union Square -- see how sparse it is inside?


The selection of cupcakes we tried -- cookies and cream, peanut butter and jelly, cookies dough, mint chocolate chip, cinnamon, smore and red velvet (in no particular order).


Collin Murray demonstrating how tiny the cupcakes are

Yeah Hooray it's Marshmallow Day!

An exciting thing happened today...we made marshmallows! It was very delightful and actually very easy. We also made caramel gelee and milk chocolate panna cotta and whipping cream and chocolate and sugar-dipped grapefruit rind and I'm very glad that it's the weekend because all this cooking has made me tired!

The whole point of today's lesson was to learn how to use gelatin and boy did we learn. There are two different types of gelatin: a leaf gelatin which is sold in very thin sheets and granulated gelatin which is a powder (and also is the type of gelatin that we are all most familiar with...ever made jello? Yeah, that's granulated gelatin you are jelling). Oh, and another random fact, gelatin is made of pig's feet -- is that not totally freaky?! The first thing we made was the panna cotta; an Italian dessert which literally means "cooked cream". It was a very easy and quick dessert to put together but it was not nearly as exciting as making the marshmallows and as such, I won't bore you with the process and nor will I bore you will the process for the gelee, especially since even I am not sure what gelee is. We made caramel gelee but it had not chilled when we left school this afternoon. I think it is going to turn out just like fancy-pants-jello though and that does not delight me nearly as much as the making of the marshmallows so that is what I'm going to tell you about.

The process of the marshmallows was really quite simple; we started by making a Swiss meringue, or in other words, by whisking egg whites, sugar, corn syrup and water in in double boiler until it was steaming hot and ribbon-y. Then, we put the liquid marshmallows into the bowl of a kitchen aid mixer, added the flavourings (rose water and pink food coloring) and softened gelatin and turned on the mixer and mixed until the contents were nice and marshmallow-y (ie: until it was thick and triple in volume). Then, we poured the marshmallows onto a sheet pan, letting them set for about an hour before cutting and decorating with chocolate. It was so easy and who knew?! All the times that I bought jiffy puff when it was that easy to make my own! And, who knew that when Williams Sonoma charged $22 for about 18 marshmallows that it was so easy to make your own! Even though our marshmallows were tinted pink as you will sort of see in the picture, they not did not set as pink as we had originally tinted them and then some of that pink tint was hidden by the powdered sugar we had to roll them in, in order for them to not be so sticky. Regardless of this minor visual error, they were quite tasty and delightfully airy and pretty.


A perfectly lovely rose marshmallow drizzled with dark chocolate.

Now, just so y'all know, there is no school again until Wednesday because our school is on holiday for Passover Monday and Tuesday and then on Wednesday, our class is not going to be in the kitchen because we are taking a field trip to a number of New York City bakeries. So, if you don't see a school-related blog in the next few days, I haven't quit school to join the circus, we are just not in session.

R.I.P Eggs -- March 22 to March 25 -- You Will Not Be Missed

Today was a very exciting day because it was the last day of egg week. Thank God. Seriously. If I never see another souffle it will not be too soon. The reason that we made souffles again today is that we were not only making souffles that contained flour today, as opposed to yesterday, but we were also learning a variety of different techniques for making the bases of these floured souffles. As such, we learned how to make Bechamel (a Mother sauce...sorry, I got no clue what this means but I'm sure google does), Boile (pronounced boil, which made it very difficult for me to follow when the chef was boiling the boil), and Pastry Cream. The pastry cream was my favorite because it is something that I've always thought was terribly difficult to make but it was actually quite easy, tiring because you had to whisk constantly for about 15 minutes but easy.

Like yesterday, the first thing that we made was our chocolate souffle and it was a relatively easy process. First, we made a roux (melt butter and add flour and stir until it is a blonde color -- blonde like me as my partner said) and then added milk and whisked until the mixture was thickened and had become a Bechamel sauce. Then, we melted chocolate and waited till both the chocolate and Bechamel were cool and then we whisked some egg whites and sugar and separated a few egg yolks and added coffee to them and combined everything together into the Bechamel/egg yolk/chocolate mixture but the whipped whites. Those we folded into the batter gently and slowly like any good folder would. After that, it was easy as pie to finish the souffles, we ladled them into souffle cups, leveled them and baked them until they were just right. They were delicious, and to me, better because they had flour in them, sorry Dad. I say that because I think the flour gave the souffles a little more support and therefore they seemed much more substantial and less like eating chocolate flavoured air.

I won't bore y'all by going through the other two souffles in too much detail, needless to say, the process was pretty much the same for all the souffles. Make your base, cool your base, whip your egg whites, fold your egg whites into the base, ladle into ramekins and voila! Souffle. However, the pastry cream is kind of a neat thing to talk about a little more. Like I said, I always thought that pastry cream was really tough to make and apparently there is a method that is tough but that method is the "old school" method as our chef said and we learned the "new school" method. Again, all the "new school" method involves is throwing all the pastry cream ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, flour and eggs) together into a large saucepan, turning the burner on to low and whisking until the cream is thick and has no lumps. After you cool it, which we did by placing a bowl of the cream into a bowl with ice in it and just stirring until the cream cooled, you can do a lot of different things with it. You can fill tarts or eclairs, you can put in on cakes, you can eat it with a spoon, heck, you can even make it into a souffle! The other neat thing about pastry cream is that you can use different flavourings in it too. Our group used coconut milk instead of regular milk but you could also put vanilla or other kinds of essences or extracts into the cream as well and it would probably turn out rather well.

As you can probably tell, I am super tired of eggs and so I am not sad that their moment in the sun has passed. However, it does delight me to inform you that tomorrow this blog will feature not the tales of endless souffles but tales of marshmallows made by hand and all the excitement that that entails!


So long souffles! You were good while you lasted but we're not sad to see you go.

I Feel Fancy 'Cause We Made Souffles Today

I guess I should just call this Egg Week, because today we had egg souffle day and oy vey was it tiring. Don't get me wrong, the four hours of class went fast but sheesh, there was a lot of whisking, a lot of praying, and a lot little souffles to sample around the kitchen. And, tomorrow will be more of the same because since today all of our recipes were for souffles made without flour and tomorrow we are making souffles with flour...

So, souffles; apparently the word originates from a French word that literally means "to blow up" and that is exactly what the whipped egg whites in souffles do when heated. Now everyone in our class was very worried about what would happen as each and every person opened the oven to place their trays of souffles in because as we all know, you must be very careful when baking souffles because any movement or disturbance of air that is anywhere near the little ramekin while it is baking is kryptonite for the souffle's magical rising powers...but we were wrong. Our chef said that those myths that we have all heard about souffles are totally incorrect and she was right. We opened and closed the oven doors numerous times, hell, I even took my tray out for a few minutes and not a single souffle fell. Eggs are kind of miraculous that way I guess and I know it was a big ego boost for myself and my fellow classmates to have such healthy looking souffles all class long.

I won't bore you with the details of every souffle that we made because some of them weren't even that good...like the banana souffle that smelled lovely and tasted way to moist and banana-y; but I will tell you about my favorite one, the chocolate souffle. My partner and I started by melting chocolate with coffee over a double boiler and then stirring in butter once. After the chocolate mixture had cooled, we added egg yolks and then whipped egg whites with a pinch of salt until they had formed soft peaks and then we gradually added white sugar and whisk until we had softer but not stiff peaks. Then, we folded the egg whites slowly into the chocolate, poured the souffle mix into buttered ramekins and popped them into the oven until they had risen, about 14 minutes. When we took them out, Chef said they were perfect. Moist but not funny, firm but not dry and they tasted good too. My partner and I shared one and then unfortunately had to toss the rest of the souffles because they don't keep; after they cool down, they fall and look like a sick chocolate mousse -- not tasty or delicious.

Before I sign off, I should mention that the pictures from today are of our chocolate and banana souffles. They were taken at the un-named culinary school I attend because even though my oven is dirty, it's not That dirty...


Step One: Soon to be souffles, with rounded off tops, waiting to go in the oven


Step Two: First peak at the chocolate souffles -- note how they have risen just a smidge?

Step Three: Banana souffles (which photographed a little better than the chocolate)
almost finished baking


Step Four: Voila! Perfectly Risen Banana Souffle!

Scrambled Eggs

Today we learned what happens when you leave the pot full of eggs on the double boiler for just a little bit too long...as the title suggests, scrambled eggs. It wasn't the end of the world but it did make for a bit of a cleaning and measuring rush! Unfortunately, the scrambled eggs were only one of our problems today as we also had meringue cookies that tasted vaguely like chlorine. Now, before y'all go and ask 'what did you do to them', every group's meringues tasted like that, not just ours. Our chef was very, very disturbed by the taste and talked to four other chef-instructors but for the life of us all, we couldn't figure out why they had such a funky taste. It was especially puzzling to us because we made two bunches of meringues and the other failed to taste like any form of Clorox product. Very weird. Very puzzling.

Enough with the problems from Egg Day Numero Two, there were good things that happened too. One, I hand whipped whipping cream which felt awesome and our group made verra, verra tasty chocolate mousse. However, before we worked on the mousse, we worked with two different types of meringues. The first type, which is referred to as the French method is created by whipping egg whites and a pinch of salt until they are nice and soft peak-y and then gradually adding white sugar into the mix and continue mixing until the meringue gets nice and fluffy and shiny and perfectly lovely. We made the meringue cookies with the French meringue and then moved onto Swiss meringues. Swiss meringue is much stabler than French because when you make this kind of meringue you are actually dissolving the sugar into the egg whites when you are beating them together over a double broiler. After the mixture get hot to the touch, you can pop the bowl into the mixer and continue to whip the meringue until it is cool to the touch. Then, you can do a whole bunch o' things with Swiss meringue: you can make butter cream if you whip in butter; you can make stencils;
put it on top of tarts; or you can just make plain old cookies.


One of the perfectly adorable meringues that tasted terrible but looked tasty. Plus note, if you see an imperfection in the meringue, it is from my cat Gus who got on the counter and tried to eat it...

The last thing we made was chocolate mousse; which is where the egg scrambling came in... When we made the mousse, the first thing we did was melt chocolate and butter together over a double boiler. Then, we took the egg yolks, sugar and grand marnier and we whisked and heated them over a double boiler until they were thick and frothy and then we let them cool so you could mix everything together, without scrambling another batch... While we waited, I whipped the cream and by that time the chocolate and eggs cool enough that they could be mixed together and then the whipped cream could be folded into the chocolate mixture -- slowly and gently so as to not deflate the light airy mousse. The mousse was so delightfully delicious that I can't even describe it but if you come to New York (not an open invitation though y'all...small apartment...) I will probably still have some in the freezer...


Crazy delicious chocolate mousse

Thunder, Lightening, and Egg Day!

It's raining in New York again and thank goodness for Collin who brought my rain boots for me at school or I would have been floating home on ruined flats! Did you know that when it thunders here, you don't see lightening? Random fact I guess, but I'm pretty sure it is thundering and lightening because the two usually go together but I could be wrong. It could be neither thundering or lightening, my upstairs neighbour could just be reorganizing furniture...

So. Egg Day. Hooray for egg day and all its egg-y-ness! It was actually a really fun day at school because not only did I get a new partner (who I like and who works and helps clean -- what a concept!!) but it was the first day that our cheeks got really red. We started by learning about the parts of the egg and some fun egg facts. For example, did you know that you can tell how old an egg is by how big the air sac inside the shell is (yeah, egg's have air sacs...I never realized either)? If the air sac is rather large, the egg is old because as the egg ages, the cells inside start to break down and the extra space that opens up from the breaking down is taken up by a growing egg sac. Also, because fresh eggs have smaller air sacs, they will not float in cool water but as they age, they will start to float. Cool, huh?!

After Egg 101, we learned how to made zabaglione, a Italian custard that I always thought was crazy hard but which is actually quite easy. Basically, you take four egg yolks, four ounces of Marsala and four ounces of sugar and put them into a double boiler over simmering water and whisk until the mixture is warm and the bowl is hot to the touch. Then, quickly, take the bowl off the water and use a hand mixer (or if you have one, it is easier to use the bowl off your kitchen aid mixer to warm and whisk the custard and then make the kitchen aid to do your work for you!) to cool down and thicken up the mixture. After the custard is pale and thick and ribbon-y, you can pour it over fresh berries for a delicious dessert. Make sure you serve the zabaglione warm though or it will separate and look nasty...

After the zabaglione, we made mayonnaise by hand (which sounds A Lot harder than it is) and then we did a number of different tests with egg whites. We beat them with sugar, with yolks, into soft peaks, into stiff peaks and then we beat sugar into stiff peaks and soft peaks and foam and then we beat them in copper bowls and stainless bowls. We beat them a lot and my arm is tired but it was fun.

Tomorrow, when I take my row boat to school, I am excited for all the egg work that we are going to do. We will be working on souffles and mousses which will make for one tasty afternoon!

Strawberry + Rhubarb = A Party in Collin Murray's Tummy

I have just finally delivered a on a long-awaited promise to make something with strawberry and rhubarb in it for Collin Murray. It took A LOT of whining but finally he wore me down and neither of us complained about the results.

Since I'm a little lazy, I was looking for a recipe with that involved very little work and Martha Stewart's Everyday Food, which I consider to be one of my food bibles, delivered in a big way. With only four ingredients and ten minutes worth of total work and cooking time, really, how could you go wrong? Basically, take two stalks of rhubarb and a big clam shell package of strawberries and cut them into medium-sized pieces that are all relatively the same size. Then, take a 1/2 cup of granulated sugar and 1/4 cup of water and put them into a medium-size saucepan with the strawberries and rhubarb and turn the burner to a medium flame. Then, just stir everything together and wait till the rhubarb starts to break down, about 6 to 8 minutes. I think that I could have let mine simmer a little longer and let the strawberries break down more but I also wanted the syrup to have a little texture too so I didn't want to wait too long and have it just be liquid. We ate the strawberry rhubarb deliciousness over vanilla ice cream but you could easily eat it over waffles or biscuits, or if you let it simmer longer and let it get all nice and thick, you could use it to fill cookies or cakes. It was verra tasty indeed and if you have some spare rhubarb, instead of giving it away to anyone who will take, try the sauce. You might end up not giving away any rhubarb this year!


Step One: Put the cut up strawberries and rhubarb into a sauce pan with the sugar and water


Step Two: Let the fruit get happy until it looks like Step Three


Step Three: After the syrup looks like this, turn it off and allow it to cool before using. Martha says that in the fridge, this syrup will last a week but it can also be frozen

Step Four: Eat up! Doesn't it look tasty?

Macaron Day!

So, have you heard that macaroons are the new cupcakes? Me neither. But today in New York, a very famous pastry chef named Francois Payard decided to try and reverse the cupcake mania that has gripped North America since Magnolia Bakery was featured on Sex and City. Basically, there were about eight or so bakeries in New York today that had agreed to participate in Macaron Day and if you went into one of those bakeries today and said you were there for Macaroon Day, they gave you a free one. Now, I am all about the cheap but after your free one, if you wanted to buy any macarons, all the proceeds went to City Harvest which is a non-profit organization in New York that deals primarily with feeding the homeless. Basically, it is a win-win situation: free macarons and feeding hungry New Yorkers. Collin and I went to Bouchon Bakery to partake in Macaron Day, which is Thomas Keller's restaurant/bakery in Columbus Circle and the teeny-tiny macarons that we received there were absolutely delightful. Macarons, which, because I think I forgot to mention it are meringue, almond paste and sugar cookies sandwiched together with a flavoured buttercream or jam, are always delightful, but for some reason, today's selection tasted like little drops of sunshine...enjoy!


First of all, if you have never seen one, here is a macaron, in fact here are two, a lemon one and a caramel one.


Collin's macaron with a quarter to give you an idea of just how much New Yorker's are willing to give for free.

Cat Bites and Fruit and Pizza -- Oh My!

I am going to make an attempt to not write this blog like a schizophrenic person but I make no promises as a lot went down today and it actually makes me tired just thinking about it. To start, today I was bit by Princess the pet store cat and it really hurts. Still. I am not happy with Joe the pet store man but what can you expect from a girl-cat? One minute she was purring and licking, then next minute she bit my thumb. Needless to say, she and I are friends off.

Next on the roster was school today. Whole man, what a schmozel. Each of the groups in the class made five different things with fruit. Our group made candied grapefruit peel, poached pineapple, strawberry salad with balsamic and basil, roasted apples and dried pears -- like I said, schmozel. Due to the fact that there are only so many places in which to plug in induction burners in the kitchen (because, I don't know if I've mentioned this but our classroom doesn't have a cook top, it just has induction burners -- which are awesome) our group had to combine with another group (which makes five people in a group...ahem) and it was pretty crowded. Due to the fact that the others in the group were totally not paying attention to the chef's instructions, I made the executive decision to start on one of the recipes separate from the group and really just focus on that recipe and on measuring ingredients and washing dishes and correcting the mistakes that were made because of the not listening instead of standing with the rest of the group and moving at a snail's pace. Therefore, I will share with you how to make candied citrus peel and not how to make the rest of the smorgasbord that was prepared in Kitchen 501 today...

So to begin it is best to cut the top and bottom off the fruit and then quarter the fruit to make it easier to remove the peel from whatever kind of citrus you are using, be it grapefruit, lemon or orange. you want to leave all that pith-y white stuff behind. Then, after you have removed the peel, slice the rind into strips and place it in a pot with enough water to cover it all. Then, bring the water to boil, drain the rinds and fill up the pot and repeat the boiling process three more times. After the last boiling, you remove the rind from the water, empty the water and make a very concentrated simple syrup (about 4 cups of water and 4 cups of sugar...Not diabetic friendly) and bring the syrup to a boil and then add the peel back into the syrup and simmer it until the peels turn translucent and become tender. In the recipe, this was meant to take about three hours, for our group, it took about 45 minutes. As our chef said, 'don't pay attention to the paper, pay attention to the pot'. So then, you let the rinds and syrup cool overnight and then I don't know what to do with them because, obviously, it hasn't been overnight; but I do know that our chef said we could sugar them...

After the fruit marathon at school, Collin picked me up and we did a fair amount of touring about our Chelsea neighbourhood. We went to the Chelsea Market, which is an amazing and very overwhelming (especially when you are hungry and there are strangers getting far too close to you) old brick building that is home to both the Food Network and a lot of other specialty food stores, bakeries, wine shops, butchers, fish mongers, etc. After Chelsea Market made me hungry, Collin and I decided to go out on this lovely New York evening for a real New York slice of pizza in The West Village. Man alive was it busy in the Village this evening. Between the men in skirts (not kilts, actual skirts) and the women wearing bunny rabbit face-masks, it was definitely an eclectic selection of diners who joined us at the very busy Keste pizza on Bleecker Street. A girl in my class recommended the place to me and after a Very long wait, our pizzas were very good. Collin had the pizza with basil, fresh cherry tomatoes, burrata (uber-fresh buffalo mozzarella) and olive oil and I had a pizza with marinara sauce, arugula, mozzarella, prosciutto and olive oil -- his was better though and so I made him share.

We had a little gelato on our way home and though it is a nice night out in New York, we were a little walked-out and also a little crowded out for the evening. However, this weekend the forecast is for pure sunshine and so I can hardly wait to get out there and explore and then come back to our cozy apartment and do a little piping. Stay tuned y'all!

I Guess I Am a Two Post a Day Kind of Girl...

So, I always vowed that when I did start a blog that I wouldn't be obsessive and blog twice a day or sixteen times a day but the gnocchi I made for dinner has forced me to go back on my word.

Now, let's remember that I've not been taught how to write a recipe in school yet and furthermore, if any of you have watched me actually cook, I rarely measure but I am going to try and do my best to provide you with the basic instructions to make this delicious dinner.

6 slices of bacon, cut into 1/2 inch strips
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 14oz can of diced fire roasted tomatoes
1/4 cup half and half
1 14 oz can of artichokes, sliced into fourths
1 package of store-bought gnocchi
Juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley
Freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

So to start, I chopped the bacon and let it get all nice and crispy in the pan and then I took it out and threw the onion in the bacon grease to get all nice and cooked up. As the bacon was cooking, I put on a pot of water to boil for the gnocchi and then after about 5 to 7 minutes on a medium high flame, the onion was almost finished cooking, so I tossed in the garlic and let it cook for about 30 more seconds, just until I could smell the garlic. Then I tossed in the can of tomatoes and let everything get all happy and hot together before I pulled the sauce off the burner. Using an immersion blender (though a regular blender would be fine) I just pulsed the sauce until it was starting to smooth out -- I wanted to leave a little bit of the texture of the diced tomatoes in there, although, blending isn't a must, you could easily skip the step without fear. Since I noticed that my gnocchi water was boiling, I added the little dumplings to the salted water and then added my tomato sauce backed to the pan along with the cream, artichokes, salt and pepper and lemon juice. By the time the gnocchi were done, the sauce was warm and all amalgamated together and I threw the gnocchi into my saute pan and mixed everything together because there was infinitely more room in the pan to mix than in the bowls. After plating, I topped the pasta with a little bit of Pecorino, a bit of bacon and a little touch of parsley. It was seriously delicious. Honestly. I took a picture for y'all but it won't taste as good if you try to eat your screen as it did here in NYC.



Sorry for the lack of parsley in the picture...I promise it tastes better with the parsley!

Good Day, Better Cupcake

Well, the pate de fruit was not a total flop, but it wasn't a total success either. The mixture gelled but it definitely was not as firm as the other students, and the lack of an acid, in this case, the lack of the cream of tarter (the ingredient that was mistakenly forgotten) produced a much sweeter pate; the other student's pates were much more balanced and no so sweet-tooth-y. Oh well, there will be other days and other pates. Until then, the question of what to do with all these sweet little cubes is another story. Pate is meant to be eaten as an after-dinner treat with chocolates and sweet wine but we have enough pate here to feed about 40 people...

A Little Jelly


A Whole Lotta Little Jellies

Today, the bulk of our day was focused on fruit identification, tasting and basic cutting skills. We used our Big Daddy knives and our wee paring knives and I had a pretty good day with the cutting. I'm not sure what's going on with the majority of the students in my class but it seems as though most of them don't ever use knives outside of the class. I mean, it's scary how terrible some of the knife skills of my classmates are. Scary like someone is going to cut off a finger. Scary. However, the only thing scarier than people not knowing how to use knives, it people not even knowing how to use a vegetable peeler. In our tool kits, we have what I have called for years the 'world's best peeler', and really, there couldn't be a better peeler (seriously, kuhn rikon vegetable peeler, it's like $5.50, finish reading my blog and go get one) or an easier peeler to use; however, a lot of them had a really rough time with them. We peeled apples and pears and then we sliced the apples into 1/4 inch slices, the type of slice we were told that we would use for a fruit tart; and the pears we sliced into wedges. I found the slicing and dicing to actually be pretty fun, especially since I had a cook's tool revelation. I have never used a melon baller before today but I will never not use one again. If you don't know what a melon baller is, it is a small tool that has two different sized circular scoops on either end and it is used to make melon balls (duh!?) and to remove the seedy centres of apples and pears and other like fruits. It was so easy to use and so fast and so perfect. I really delighted me. Truly. In fact, I think you should probably pick up a melon baller when you go out to buy your peeler.

After the apples and pears we supremed oranges, another of my favorite things to do, and we also supremed lemons. If the term is not familiar, supreming is just a term for segmenting citrus fruits -- you cut the top and bottom off of the fruit and then remove all the skin and all the pith off the fruit and then simply follow the membrane lines with your paring knife, removing the fruit in segments. I love this technique because it makes oranges look so pretty in salads and desserts but today was the first day I had ever tried it with lemons and it was equally delightful. I was one of the only students who had ever tried this technique before and it feels good to know things and be good at something when I know that eventually, I'm going to be so clueless it hurts.

After the cutting, we went through a series of dried fruit tastings that ended on a very crystallized ginger-y taste that not even a maraschino cherry could tame and then we piped chocolate for what I felt like hours. I do feel like I'm getting better at the cornets and the piping though but it is going to take A Lot more practice to be able to write on a cake.

Tomorrow I'm not sure if we are going to commence our work with eggs or if we are doing to continue with the fruit preparation by starting to poach, dry and sugar different fruits. Whatever we do, I will be there, freshly sugared up by an enormous cupcake that my new friend brought me in today. It "was" (and I have to say was because I already ate it) as big as Maude's head, was as chocolate as chocolate can be and was so full of sugar that by 1pm tomorrow, I promise you I will still be vibrating!

As a total sidenote that is WAY off-topic (sorry, Dad, I had a totally hilarious New York City moment today. I saw a Fed Ex package sign on the door into our building that read, and I kid you not: "I left ya package at ya door". Sigh, don't ya just heart NY?

First Bad Day

First things first, we are real people again and have our own Internet and cable -- this blog is no longer operating off on an illegal Internet connection thanks to Time Warner Cable.

Now, for the not so hot part, school was not that great today. We started off by practicing our piping which actually went pretty well. I think that if I keep up my practicing at home, I may one day have talent in the piping area. Then we got into our groups and our chef showed us how to make pate de fruit. Now, do not kid yourself that you say this in the way that it appears to be spelt, we are in a French-based baking and pastry school here. Phonetically, pat do fru-ee, was a difficult combination of sugar and pectin, glucose and tartaric acid and a raspberry fruit puree. My group, which today consisted of three people, the extra member being a student you didn't come to class yesterday and who was late on the day we were given partners, had quite the time. We each measured out ingredients and I set up the cooking station but when it came time to actually begin cooking, the artist/bartender failed to read the recipe and ruined half our ingredients. So, we started again and I began warming up the puree, once it boiled, we added a small amount of sugar and pectin and let the mixture boil for about two minutes. Then we added the rest of the sugar and when that was mixed in, added the corn syrup-like glucose and waited until the liquid heated up to about 218 F. Now, the recipe very boldly stated that we should not let the mixture heat too quickly as it would not evaporate enough to set, but artist/bartender girl and the non-breathing late girl were adamant that our temperature was fine and it was not heating too quick. I felt differently but was over-ruled and so when the mixture was heated to 218 F, we poured it into a greased pan. Since I was doing the actual cooking, I didn't look at the recipe before we poured and so I didn't notice that we forgot to add one more ingredient before we poured...I noticed when I was cleaning up but by that time it was too late. We asked the chef if we should begin again but she said that the missing ingredient wasn't really necessary and that the mistake we made would allow the rest of the class to learn. She is right, but it is annoying to have made such a mistake and to be paired with people who are spaced out. I mean, one of them ate my snack. Seriously?! The pate has to firm up overnight so I guess we will see how it turns out tomorrow; Collin may have to eat my spoils... Anyways, it is only two more days with these two people and then hopefully luck will be on my side and I will get someone who really is into what we are doing. You know you have bad partners when you ask for a spatula and they can't pass one to you because they don't know what a spatula is...

After the horrible pate making, the class was supposed to watch a video on kitchen sanitation but we had a malfunction so our chef taught us how to cute onions. She informed us that she couldn't stand that pastry chefs usually don't know how to cut an onion; how could you not know how to cut an onion and be in culinary school?! Anyway, I finished my onion well ahead of everyone else, I knew the method and helped the girls around me with how to hold the knife and how to best cut the onion, so I guess that is a positive. At least I can make up for my forgetfulness by helping the others who are not sure of the basics that I do already know.

Tomorrow I am not sure what we are going to be up to. Hopefully our pate de fruit turns out, if not, I'm going to require a cupcake to cheer me up. A Big one.

Ginger Snappy

Before get into this blog too deeply, I figured I should share a little tidbit about our chef instructor since she will be making several cameos in this blog at least until we start our next module. She, Chef Nameless, is a delight. I was very scared that the chef-instructors would yell but the most she ever does is raise her voice to get our attention. She practices piping with us and nibbles on chocolate or bread or cookies or whatever food is around almost all the time. She is very kind and very Italian and obviously very passionate about her craft. She is also very encouraging and helpful whenever you need a hand. I heart her. Plain and simple.

Ok, on to the events of today...a very exciting thing happened...we got to bake Gingersnaps! Although as our chef said, this was not a day where she was teaching us baking but it was more an exercise for us to get used to scaling out ingredients and measuring out liquids. It was a lot of fun. My partner had not only her proper uniform but she also had her tools! Gasp, what a concept! We worked not too bad together, in fact, the chef told us that ours were perfect! I'm so surprised that so many of the people in my class don't know simple things like how long to cream butter for in cookies or even how to cookie scoop to put the dough onto the sheet pans. I guess I knew more than I thought I knew because I was giving a lot of direction to my partner.

The other exciting/terrifying thing was using the oven in the classroom. They are called deck ovens and are about nine or ten feet tall. There are actually three ovens in the deck and each one can be set to a different temperature and there are special injectors for steam when you make bread -- they are rather intimidating actually because of their size and how many dials and buttons they have but I will figure it out in good time because any oven that can bake 18 half sheet pans at a time is a good oven to have around even if it was an odd to have to use a ladder to remove your cookie sheets from the oven.

After we had baked our first batch of gingersnaps, our chef asked each of the groups in the kitchen to change one specific aspect of our recipe, be it an ingredient or a procedure and then to note the results. Our group changed the amount of time that we creamed the butter and sugar from about three minutes to ten minutes but other groups had to do things like change the baking soda to baking powder or remove all the granulated sugar in their recipe and replace it with all molasses. Man alive was there ever a mo-lasses tang in that cookie. After all the groups had finished baking, we lined up the cookies, discussed the changes and results and tasted our spoils. It was very interesting what simply adding an extra egg does (it made the cookies look, technical term here: "yucky" but helped them to retain moisture) or by changing the flour to a high-gluten variety (which made the cookie quite crisp and a little browner).

These cookies are the ones from the first batch that Collin didn't eat.

After we had finished our baking, we practiced piping for a while -- all those cornets went to good use, and then we did some baker's math. I hate math and today was no different. I think that with practice I will get it but every time I get out my calculator, I am reminded of why I studied liberal arts...

Tomorrow we are doing a jams and jellies tasting which is quite exciting but I wish that I had some of Rod's Famous Raspberry Chambord jam to slip into the tasting -- it would blow the socks off of all the students and the chef without doubt.

Hard Crack

So, little known fact that I'm going to share with you all: my neighbours smokes the pot. He smokes a lot of the pot. In fact, he smokes so much pot that I may be high now, just being on the same floor as him. It's ok though as I find the kittens to be much calmer when under the influence...

School was fun today although I did feel my blood pressure raise a few times. We were randomly put into teams of two and I was put with the artist/bar-tender who still has yet to pick up her uniform, or her tools for that matter. I'm sure she is a nice person but when she, who is a little snotty anyway, invites the girl who was almost a half hour late to class and who also seems to be a non-breather, it irks me. Then, she, the artist, takes over. I wanted to get in there and use my tools and work that caramel but I had to shove to do it. Usually I am not a person who shoves, but I figured that this whole going to cooking school in New York thing is kind of a once in a lifetime thing and I ought to push in there in order to get the full benefit of the experience. So I did. And our caramel was perfect. Basically, we heated a pound of granulated sugar and a 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice until it resembled liquid amber and then we played with it. This stage is called hard crack stage, hence the title of the post today. With the caramel, I made a basket. Isn't it pretty?!


Tomorrow we actually get to bake. It will be interesting I am sure. Hopefully artist-girl has her tools and jacket -- if I have to wear the pants, so does she.

In other culinary news of interest, Collin and I made our first New York City roast this evening. It was darn tasty. The roast was an eye of round which we roasted with garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper and olive oil on a bed of diced red potatoes, orange, red and yellow peppers and red onions. It was lovely and we would have taken a picture for you all but it was just too tasty looking to compose a picture around. Personally, I think it was the horseradish sauce that Collin concocted that really made it scream yum, yum, yummy!

Ok, that's all for today. Sorry for the short post, but we are doing laundry downstairs in the community laundry room and it's our first time. Constant attention must be paid to those socks...Toodles!

Oh My Land, Chelsea is Being Invaded by Frenchies!

And by that, I do not mean those lovely people from the land of croissants. Or from the land of poutine for that matter. By that, I mean that almost every gay man in Chelsea was sporting a very cute accessories today in the form of a French Bulldog. Man are they cute -- the dogs I mean though of Dorothy's friends were very handsomely dressed today. There were Frenchies in studded collars and Frenchies in varsity sweaters, even the Frenchies without adornments were too cute for words. Sigh, if only it weren't a mortal sin to have a dog in a tiny apartment. And for those of you who have threatened terrible things if I get a dog while here, once again I say, I just think they are cute. I am NOT getting a dog.

While it was meant to be merely a cloudy day in New York today, it turned out to be yet another day of sporadic downpours. One minute I was buying Tiffany blue rain boots and the next minute I needed them out of the box and on my feet. We tried to not let the rain stop us though, making stops around the city at Trader Joe's wine store (in a word, alcoholic heaven) and at the hideously busy Whole Foods in Union Square. While it was just retarded to try and enjoy shopping there today, I was delighted that the store had an escalator for shopping carts. You just let the mechanism grab your cart and while you ride up to the second floor of Whole Foods, your cart follows you. It's great! Plus, it makes shopping on a two-floored store actually rather enjoyable because you don't have to carry three baskets around with you to try and pick out all the food stuffs you need.

In the evening, after practicing cornet making, which I do believe to have almost mastered, and also after doing a little practice-piping, we went to a place that I'm not even sure I want to tell my 14 or so readers about. More heavenly than even the Trader Joe's Wine Store is a tiny, and I do mean miniature, dessert bar on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The restaurant is called Chikalicious and it is run by a lady, named Chika, and her husband. For a mere $14 you get to delight in three courses of desserts -- an amuse (or a little taste to begin your meal), your main dessert (an ever-changing selection) and then three delightfully petite petit fours. I first read about the place last year in a book that my friend, the Queen, bought for me in New York. If you like dessert and are headed this way, it is a must-have. By the way, the book is called "New York's 50 Best Places to Eat Dessert". Anyway, so I read about Chikalicious in this book and when we were here last May, we ate there three times. Three times in about 36 hours. It's really that good. This evening we were lucky and didn't even have to wait in line to get in, there are no reservations here, and were seated right at the bar to watch all the action un-fold. The amuse was a jasmine tea gelee with coconut sorbet and for the main Collin had what he always has, fromage blanc cheesecake (fromage blanc is sort of like ricotta but without the little granules, it is a little sour but that's just how he likes it) and I had a warm almond cake with toasted almond ice cream and a salad of apricots and amaretto gelee. Sigh. My mouth is watering just remembering it. We finished out dessert with a trio of petit fours; a square inched coconut marshmallow, a piece of lemon poppy seed pound cake (it was about an inch long and about a half an inch wide)and a Hershey kiss-shaped dollop of chocolate mousse on a nickel-sized piece of chocolate wafer topped with a cocoa nib. It was a wonderful meal.


Outside Chikalicious looking in -- it's not the kind of place you take pictures in, sorry!

After our dessert we walked across the street to the Chikalicious Dessert Club (the sister-restaurant to Chikalicious which has places to sit but is mostly a to-go kind of bakery) and purchased a cupcake, cheesecake to go and two macaroons, one rose flavoured, the other one a salted caramel. Needless to says, after our actual dinner tonight, we greatly enjoyed our Second desserts of the evening.


Rose-flavoured macaroon


Collin's cheesecake to -- because he just can't get enough NY Cheesecake...

Since someone mentioned the soy blue cheese to me, I thought I would make and effort to capture the wretched stuff; though hopefully I am not arrested the next time we go to West Side Market for taking So many photos in the store but I really wanted y'all to see the fantastic cheese selection at the regular old grocery store, and also see the Tiffany blue soy cheese that I will never, Ever taste no matter how much you pay me.


Soy Blue Cheese...


The amazing cheese selection at West Side Market on the corner of West 15th Street and 7th Avenue. There were a lot more views I could have taken to show you all just how big the selection is but I was being closely watched. And followed.

Stay tuned tomorrow, when doing my reading today for tomorrow's class, I noticed we are going to be working with caramel...and making...decorations?!

Rain, Rain Go Away

So I realize that I said I probably wasn't going to blog till Monday but some of my followers (ie: My Father), insisted that I share the days events.

It was a very rainy day today. Very rainy. And windy. Very Windy. Everywhere you look is the detritus of dead and abandoned, inside out umbrellas. All in all, it was not a pleasant day in which to explore New York but we wanted to get out and at least try to see the city so we took the subway uptown to the Upper West Side and did a little specialty food shopping. Some of you may not have heard of Zabar's but it is a specialty grocery store that has a wide array of kosher food products and a crazy selection of fancy-pants cheeses. We picked up brie, Muenster cheese, smoked peppered Gouda and tallegio for not really that much money. Since we were planning on a wine and cheese dinner tonight, the selection and prices at Zabar's made our evening's fair not that expensive! Not to mention, last weekend, we picked up some of the infamous 3 Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's -- this is NYC on a budget baby!

Anyway, Zabar's is lovely. I've made a habit of taking a trip uptown to visit the store almost every time that I come to New York because of their wonderful selection, and also because they have a kitchen gadget store upstairs that delights me. Today we saw a Tiffany Blue VACUUM!!! I almost passed out I was so excited and I made Collin take a picture of it so I could remember it for always. Also, another reason to stop by Zabar's is that I always feel as though I just may run into Ina Garten there. If you have ever watched her show, "Barefoot Contessa" on the Food Network, she loves to talk about 'her dear friend Eli Zabar' and his 'fabulous bread' (we bought some of that fabulous bread today)and so I always hold out a little spot of hope in seeing the lovely Ms. Garten at Zabar's -- it is definately her kind of store.

After Zabar's, where, inside the store it was so wet that they were putting down sawdust to sop up the tracked in rain, we were literally blown down the street to Citarella. Citerella is like Zabar's on a smaller scale and at a larger price. The store is more modern and there is actually space to move in it but I have never found anything there that I couldn't find at Zabar's for a better price. Needless to say, we had a Long look around in the store in the hopes that we might dry off. It was a terribly fruitless endeavour but it made for some interesting food browsing. If you are interested, the burrata at Citarella is 2 dollars cheaper than at the grocery store near the apartment...I need a hobby.

After Citarella we went a store that my father has been raving about ever since he came back from New York in the middle of February. This place, called Fairway, is truly amazing. I have never scene produce stacked so high up that people literally needed ladders to stack it. And, there is just bundles and bundles of fresh herbs and beets, and lettuces and fruits -- it is rave worthy. Unfortunately, it was so busy that we really weren't able to give it a good look but we will definitely be back. Any place that has gallon jugs of BBQ sauce called "Bone Suckin' Sauce", must be good. Side note, I had to stop Collin from taking a picture of the sauce, he was Very excited. Upstairs in the market, the floor is all organic and restricted diet friendly. I have never seen so many different types of soy yogurt and did you know that you can buy meatless beef tips? Ek. Oh yeah, speaking of wacky food, I saw, for the first time ever, soy blue cheese. I am going to take a picture one day of it but just imagine a Tiffany Blue block of cheese...needless to say it was the first time that the color hasn't delighted me...

Tomorrow we are going to be doing a marathon grocery shop and I will be piping and making cornets till my eyes bleed. I've got to be good and it clearly is not going to come without a lot of practice. Sorry my description of the cornets was so lame; I am going to take a picture of the diagram and post it sooner or later. Until then, enjoy these pictures from our rainy day in New York.


Zabar's Entrance on 80th and Broadway


One of the many rooms inside Zabar's, notice how high everything is stacked!


The entrance to Fairway Market

Look at those apples!

The Knives are Out!

It is pouring rain in New York City and I'm afraid that I might drown in a puddle. Tomorrow the main agenda is for me to find some fetching rain boots and to not be swept away by the rain.

It was a really fun day at school today. We tasted all sorts of dairy products -- 5 different kinds of butter, who knew there were more than two kinds of butter?! And then we tasted a vast array of dairy products. For the record, un-whipped whipping cream is just as tasty as its whipped friend is...

Then, and this is the exciting part, then we got to use our knives. No, we didn't cut anything edible, nor did manage to cut their own self, we just cut, parchment paper. I know, I know, big whop, right? I'll get to that later though. The first cut with the shiny new knives was exciting. One of the girls in my class refers to her knife as 'Big Daddy'...I doubt she's scene the play, but it is quite hysterical to her her talk to her knife in class. Coincidentally, she also hummed Barry Manilow's 'Mandy' while piping so I think she and I are going to get along just fine. As I said, no one cut anything but paper today, but it is really just a matter of time. I'm not sure that any of us are quite prepared to handle a 10 inch chef knife when the standard is an eight inch. And, I was fearful of my wrists as the girl next to me had only had two cups of coffee for the whole day and was a little bit shaky -- not a good thing with a 10 inch weapon in your shaky grasp!

Anyway, we cut the parchment to make these little cones called cornets. You use them for time when you are piping either just a little amount or for decorating and the like. Well, I'm pretty sure that's what you use them for. Let's all remember that one should never take anything I say on this blog as law, I am just a student after all. So, the cornets, or as another student suggested, culinary origami, were tough. Our chef just whizzed right through hers and I was pretty sure that it would be easy, as was everyone else, and boy were we wrong. Basically, the idea is to take a rectangle of parchment paper, fold it in half and cut it, and then fold it in half and cut it again. Then you fold your quarter sort of on the diagonal and then you cut the two cut the two loosely defined triangles and you have the basis for your cornet. Not that this will make any sense, but you take the two corners on the short side of the triangle and bring them together and then you wrap the third corner around and you have, theoretically at least, made a cone. You sort of finagle the cone into being "leak proof", ie: you look down the cone and make sure that you can't see the light in the bottom and then you fold the excess bit in at the top. I realize that this probably makes no sense, but I can just hear the cries of indignation if I had not posted some form of direction as to making them. Oh, and if I forgot to say this, you use your knife, sliding through the paper, to cut...

After making about 15 cornets, and finally feeling like I had the knack for it, I gave piping a whirl. Now, please understand, I don't pipe. I don't draw. I bake cookies and sprinkle coconut on cakes occasionally but I generally don't bake when there is true artistry required. So the piping was an eye opener. I can tell you that I will be practising. A lot. That 2 pound block of chocolate in my fridge from Trader Joe's, it's a good thing it was cheap because this weekend it is all getting melted over and over again to practice the art of the pipe!

As I said, it is rainy in the Big Apple and will probably be rainy till Sunday or Monday so if you don't see a post till Monday, I've not been mugged, I've just not got anything exciting to share because I'm holed up in the apartment to practice the piping! Thanks for reading!

First We Wait...then We Bake!

I survived. My first four hours of baking and pastry school was exciting and nerve wracking and well, a little tedious. My class is an odd assortment. Mostly ladies, the folks seem to hail mostly from around the NYC area and come to the still nameless culinary school for a variety of reasons. Out of the 15 or so in the class, two people have been let go from their jobs and twice that many were ladies like me who already have a degree but were looking to do something more with their educations. IE: They got a degree in something liberal-art-y and can't find a job that doesn't require them to answer phones in a dental office. Anyway, they seem like nice folks who will be fun to bake with for the next few months.

And speaking of baking, there is going to be a lot of it. In fact, if you are going to be in the Tri-State area anytime prior to August, send me an email and I'll send you home with a few dozen pastries. After all, there is only so much that my house-fiance and the homeless people I meet walking home can eat!

Today was just an orientation and one of those hideous meet and greet around the table type deals. It was painful. How many times do we have to hear your sad tale of just wanting to make cupcakes for the rest of your life and how Mom approved but Dad wanted you to get a 'real job'? Ugh. It was a touch tedious but like I said, they all seem like good people. And they all look just as hideous in their checkered pants as I do.

Tomorrow there was a rumour we are baking something but I'm not going to hold my breath. We have to go through scaling and measuring and I'm sure how that will go as I am terrible at math on the best of days and the whole American system versus Metric system is bound to make my hair curl a little. Hello, I was an English major for a reason! Oh, and my scale. My scale has a lock and unlock button that I will have to use (now please read this with your best imagined New York accent) 'glue with some Elmer's AND make sure it's glued into the UNLOCKED position'. Oy. That will be interesting. Oh yes, and there is something called a dairy tasting going on tomorrow too. I can hardly wait to taste the different teaspoons of butter and cream and milk, oh my.

Speaking of cream and milk, I've discovered the new love of my life (sorry Collin), it is called L'Arte de Gelato and it is a little slice of West Village heaven. We walked down to it three nights in a row now and even though the walks are done out of a need to slim down (ahem, this is pastry school I am attending, one has to off-set the tasting somehow), we always end up with gelato on the way home. Collectively, house-fiance and I have experienced a plethora of flavours and they are all divine. They are featuring an olive oil gelato at the moment that was actually pretty tasty and their marscarpone and fruity yogurt varieties are also heavenly. So, if you are in the area, check it out: 75 Seventh Ave South. I promise you won't be sad you did.

I will let y'all know how the scaling goes and if I violate the school's strict no swearing policy...until then, thank you for your support.