Piece Of Cake

After weeks of being out of the bakeshop, we’ve finally dusted off our rolling pins and gotten back to work. This week marked the start of our 3 week course in basic and classical cakes. This class is a sort of review-plus of our culinary techniques class, taking what we learned and building upon it. As of now, it pertains mostly to decorating, but I’m sure we’ll be adding to our repertoire of production techniques in the coming weeks.

After a brief rundown of the class and review of some basic techniques, we launched right into production. The first items of the week were raspberry cheesecakes and a variety of tarts. The cheesecakes were more like a warm up, acting as a sort of refresher for the motions of the bakeshop. They were a simple production with a delicious result. For the tarts we utilized the creaming method as we had done previously with cookies and pound cake. We made 1.2.3. cookie dough, or pate sucree as it is also known, which was rolled out and molded into tart pans. Each group was responsible for a single kind of tart. These included, apple, fresh fruit, pear, plum, and walnut varieties. My group produced the Hawaii tart, which consisted of a thick layer of caramel and macadamia nuts, covered in a thin layer of Kaluha ganache. As is the norm for our productions from this point forward, our desserts were sliced up and served to students dining in Farquharson Hall for dessert.

After cheesecakes and tarts, we moved onto layer cakes, starting with a refresher of the vanilla butter cream cake we had been tested on in our baking techniques class. Despite everyone in the class being required to produce their own cakes, we were only allowed to make one recipe of buttercream per group. This supplied each person with half the amount we had previously been allowed to use. To me, this seemed like an impossible task, as I had very nearly run out of butter cream when frosting my cake in the previous class. Amazingly, after watching our chef’s demo, I realized just how much ingredient I had been wasting. In the food industry, product is money. Learning how to properly assemble this showed me I was throwing away what would equate to half my profits. Everyone managed to frost their cakes, though the combination of us being out of practice and utilizing new techniques lead to some less than desirable results. At the end of our class, we were asked to do a self critique of our cakes. If we deemed them sellable, they would be served in Farquharson hall the next day, If not, they would go in the blue bin (food waste). There were no buttercream cakes to serve for Farquharson the next day.

Chef assured us that this happens with every class, and that the next day’s
production, a mocha butter cream, would be 100% better. Needless to say, he was right. Although my cake was still rough around the edges, I definitely felt more comfortable with the motions. At the end of the day, our class of 19 had 19 sellable cakes to be sliced up and served.

Moving on from buttercream, we tackled a slightly different beast, frosting with whipped cream. This technique would be utilized in the construction of Black Forrest Tort, a German classic consisting of Kirschwasser soaked chocolate cake layers, cherries, and whipped cream. The frosting technique was the same, and chef informed us that some would find it easier to work with it while others would find it more difficult. I fell into the “more difficult” school of thought. Although whipped cream is easier to spread, It deflates as you work it, making it near impossible to correct mistakes.

Week one concluded with carrot cake frosted in cream cheese frosting and topped with marzipan carrots. Next week moves away from the standard frosting procedure as we head into mousses and creams. The program has really kicked off now and I can’t wait to get back into the kitchen next week for some pre Thanksgiving fun. Till then, I’ll be practicing.

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Cafe Savory – Week 2

After being thrown into the culinary frying pan last week, I’ve started to find my rhythm in the kitchen. Although it still feels like a foreign language, my culinary skills have started to develop. My knives no longer feel like dangerous objects to be feared, but more along the lines of extensions of my hands. It’s exciting. As someone who hasn’t done a lot of cooking in his life, it feels good to be delving into this other side of things.

  We started the week off the classic potted dish, chicken fricassee. This flavorful chicken is braised in stock and white wine. It’s then removed from the pan before adding heavy cream to the pan juice. The emulsion is then reduced to nappe consistency, before being tossed back with the chicken. The end result is an incredible, velvety tender meat, with a beautiful rustic appearance. To acompany the dish, we made glazed carrots, and utilized the leftover rice from the previous week to make fried rice.
The next class was spent discussing proper pan frying techniques before, moving into pastas and cheese. Each group was tasked with making a filled pasta of their choice, along with a batch of fresh cheese for the filling, and fresh mozzarella to be served on the side. The fresh cheese was made by adding vinegar to boiled water and agitating. This caused the whey protein to separate and cheese curdles to form, which were then filtered out using a cheesecloth. The end result was something akin to ricotta cheese albeit slightly more acidic. The pasta was made with a durum flour based egg noodle recipe. My team chose to make a simple and fresh dish, consisting of ravioli, garnished with a tomato brochette and balsamic reduction. The chef was pleased, and so were the team’s stomachs. The next day was somewhat laid back, as the chef demoed shellfish cookery and had everyone grill steaks for dinner.

With the breakneck speed of the program post fundies, I only have one week left of Café Savory. Pretty soon, I’ll be back to the bakeshops, and then on to externship. This final week is sure to be filled with many more delicious things, that I will be certain to post about.

Life In The Kitchen

“You’ve gone over to the dark side,” said a passing chef to one of my classmates
earlier this week as we stood outside K-19, our home for the next 3 weeks. After completing Fundamentals last week in a rather spectacular fashion with our Showcase, we have officially moved into our second semester, starting with a culinary crash course called Café Savory.

Café Savory is designed to give us bakers, the basic skills necessary to ultimately produce the savory food offered by the Apple Pie Café. After spending a week as a cook, I’ve got to say, I am quite far outside my element. Whereas baking is an exact science with a clear beginning and end, cooking is a chaotic and random art form. It’s like the difference between classical music and jazz, or Jackson Pollock and da Vinci. As someone who values schedules and precision, cooking is a bit too anarchistic for me. I certainly value the end result, but unlike baking, it feels foreign and unnatural.

We started the class discussing our knives and basic cuts, before jumping into practicing them on onions, carrots, and potatoes. As someone with an aversion to sharp things, it was a bit terrifying, but as I practiced the skills more throughout the week, the motions became more fluid and I got the hang of it. The veggies we cut were sautéed by our chef and turned into tomato sauce, which was served over pasta for family meal.

The next day we learned about stock, which became a sort of central element that
was built upon for the rest of the week. While the stock cooked, we used potatoes that we had chopped the previous day to make gnocchi. Each group made sauces to accompany the potato dumplings, which we ate for dinner.

The next two days were devoted to soups. First we produced French onion and minestrone, splitting production of each among our group. The second day, we made cream of broccoli and consommé. I was in charge of the consommé, which was a rather interesting yet disgusting looking production. The end product is an extremely clear and flavorful broth, but getting it there requires the production of a scummy looking raft of meat, eggs, and vegetables that settles on top and filters the impurities. We also learned about vinaigrettes, producing salads to accompany our soup dinners.

On the final day of the week, we learned about the mother sauces, vegetables, and starch cookery. My group made chicken veloute, while the other groups made a variety of others, including béchamel, which was turned into cheese sauce for macaroni and cheese. In addition to our sauce, we produced a batch of rice pilaf, learning about different grain lengths and cooking methods.

Although I’m certainly not a cooker, I can appreciate the other side of the culinary world. After completing the first week, I feel a little bit more comfortable with these new tricks of the trade, and I am cautiously optimistic about what’s to come in the rest of the course.