Tumultuous Tuesdays - Picture Heavy Post

Today was a rough day, and not just because I got my first kitchen injury! (More on that later)

I know that I've only been in classes for 2 weeks, and that today was only my second day in the kitchen, but I was feeling really down on myself today.  I just kept judging myself and was feeling like I couldn't do anything right, even though everything that Julie and I made came out very well.

Today we were making specialty cookies, and unlike yesterday, each pair was making something different!  This has it's good and bad points - good, because the entire kitchen isn't making the same thing so you get to see different finished products, but bad because you aren't making everything and can still get tested on it on the practical at the end of this module.  So yeah, there's a good chance that I'll be making my own test batches on the weekends - I hope that everyone likes care packages!

Julie's and my assignment was to make cream cheese brownies and cinnamon cookies - yum!  I've never made cream cheese brownies before and was very satisfied with the finished product.  And even though I kept doubting myself and making stupid mistakes, our instructor loved them and we got the thumbs up.  Here are pictures of some of the products made today:

Our Cream Cheese Brownies

Cinnamon Cookies!

 

Delicate Butter Tea Cookies Sandwiched with Raspberry Jam

 Linzer Tortes and Cornmeal Pistachio Lime Cookies

Double Chocolate Macadamia Chunk Cookies

Macaroons, Russian Tea Cookies and Mexican Wedding Cakes

Spritz Cookies

Raisin Spice Bars

 

Sugar Cookies

Ginger Snaps and Shortbread

 

 Pinwheel Icebox Cookies

That's a lot!!  Another benefit of everyone making different cookies is that instead of just taking home what you made, we all share and get to fill our Tupperware containers with a little bit of everything.  

As I mentioned at the beginning of  this post, yes, Brooke Safety is alive and well.  I nicked the base of my left thumb with a knife while cutting butter today.  Now don't worry -  I'm perfectly fine, it's barely an abrasion, but you know how the most superficial cuts always look the worst - it wouldn't stop bleeding!  So I had to embarrassingly walk up to Chef Katie and tell her that I cut myself.  She pointed me toward the first-aid station and told me to clean up the cut, put a band-aid on it and a finger cot.  Now if you've never had the pleasure of wearing a finger cot, let me share this picture with you:

Yes, that's right - it looks like a tiny blue condom, and I had to wear this on my thumb all during class.  At least I wasn't the only one - I definitely saw a couple other people with blue fingers during the day.  Oh well, at least I got my first kitchen injury out of the way - that's the spirit right?

Before I sign-off for tonight, I want to send a special message out to my wonderful friend Monica: Thank you for making my day special and for reminding me that there are people (that I don't get to see often enough) that love me very much.  Thank you for the box and for the gifts - I can't wait to use them :)

Someone likes me!

We go into the kitchen this coming Monday to start baking officially for the first time! Also, we'll be getting our kitchen partners then, because if Project Runway has taught us anything - it's that being able to work in pairs without killing each other is very important! So...our instructor has told us that if two people know that they want to work together already, that they can let her know, otherwise she'll assign one to them. Honestly, I could see myself working fairly well with most of the people in my class, there's just about 3 people that I really don't want to be paired with, including Mr. "I've already missed 3 classes, and by the way, can I wear my baseball hat with my chef's jacket?" So I was thinking to myself - who do I want to work with, and before I could even ask her, she asked me - I like having friends! I am happy to announce that my friend, the cashew, will be my kitchen partner (barring Chef Katie deciding that she wants to assign me to someone else).

Huzzah! Can't wait till Monday :)

Pictures and Klutziness

One of my favorite things about being in pastry school so far (since we haven’t been able to get into the kitchens yet) is that sometimes we get invited to eat the culinary student’s menu projects for lunch. So far I’ve had a home-style menu: tomato basil soup with breaded mozzarella sandwiches, broccoli salad, garlic chicken and almond crescents and an ode to Julia Childs French menu: mushroom filled puff pastry, mini biscuits with garlic soup, celery root salad with mustard, boeuf bourguignon and frangipane crepes with chocolate! A girl could get used to this ☺

I also made a new friend – she’s the opposite of me. Her mother is Catholic and her father is Jewish, so she’s a Catholic girl whose last name is Shapiro. She’s calls herself a “cashew”, which I find hilarious.

So yes, as you may have already heard, I got my chef’s outfit and toolkit today – exciting, yes? Well, as I was opening the items in my toolkit to show Dave, my new chocolate thermometer slipped right out of my hand and broke in half on the ground. Who else would this happen to but me? I already looked it up online, and luckily I can buy a new one fairly cheaply, but I wanted to e-mail my teacher to make sure I wouldn’t need it for Monday, when we first get into the kitchens. Needless to say, she was highly amused and while assuring me that I wouldn’t need it for a while encouraged me to, “not break anything else” before tomorrow. Klutziness, thy name is Brooke.

Anyway, I'll leave you tonight with some pictures of Dave and I both modeling my new chef's outfit:

New Stories and Ridiculous Classmates

Hi everyone!

School has been going well, even though I’ve only had 4 classes so far – people downstate really don’t know how to deal with snow! Last Wednesday and Thursday my classes got canceled because of the snow storm here, and then Monday was President’s day, so we’re running a little far behind to start off with.

I’m a little surprised at how much reading there is – I always assumed that it would be an all hands-on learning experience, but they really want to make sure that you have a good grasp on the history and basics of baking before you’re even allowed to set foot in a kitchen.

My teacher is hilarious though – she has a story for everything. She told us about how when she was working at one of the first bakeries/restaurants she worked for after school, that she walked in on one of her co-workers taking a bath in one of the giant stand-up mixers that they make bread in! He was using one of those handled scrub brushes and everything and didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed when she found him. She later told the manager who just said, “Oh, it must be Monday…” and she promptly turned in her resignation. How gross is that? I want to know the name of the place just so that I can avoid it.

It’s funny, even though we’ve only had 4 classes, there are a couple of people who are missing classes – which is pretty obvious when you’re in a class of only 20 people. This one guy has already missed 2, including the first class and b/c he was actually there today, I found out that he isn’t exactly the brightest person in the bunch. We were talking about the basic main ingredients used in a bakeshop – flour, sugar, fats, etc and were starting to discuss chocolate. Our teacher brought up that chocolate must always include chocolate liquor and cocoa butter, and so she asked the class, “What is cocoa butter?” He piped up immediately saying, “Something to help heal wounds.” Now yes, it’s true that cocoa butter is sometimes sold as a cream that helps with stretch marks, but come on…if we’re at a culinary school, talking about cocoa butter in regards to chocolate and it’s use in pastry, what is the real likelihood that the answer she’s looking for has to do with a skin treatment? I definitely chuckled a bit to myself.

I also learned that white chocolate isn’t actually chocolate…madness!! It doesn’t have any chocolate liquor, but because it’s 30-35% cocoa butter, it still gets called chocolate, but only here – not in Europe (they’re very precise & snotty like that).

Oh well…we’re going over baker’s math tomorrow which is no fun, but we might be getting our tool-kits afterward which would be super fun! Pictures to follow ☺

First Day of School Fun

"If I could wrap a brownie in a chicken cutlet and cover it in bacon sauce, I would."

- Chef Katie Miranda

That is a direct quote from the woman who will be teaching me about baking and pastry for the next 4 months. Awesome.

I don’t really know how to describe my first day at pastry school, except to say that it probably wasn’t what you’d expect. We got some of our supplies (school bag, textbook, calculator & notebook) and our black chef’s shoes, which look like something I can imagine Pat wearing. The rest of our outfits (jackets, pants & toques) will probably come in sometime next week. As Chef Katie was describing the different components of the chef outfits (she was wearing hers, including the hat), one of my classmates mentioned that she’d seen someone walking around the school wearing a black chef’s hat, and can you choose from different colors? She just looked at her and said, “Yeah, that’s stupid…I don’t know why he has that, but a chef’s hat should always be white.” Funny times abound in pastry school. Aside from that, most of the day was spent getting to know everyone’s backgrounds and personal goals. Chef Katie definitely loves to talk – about everything and anything. She had each of us fill out a sheet with questions about ourselves, and then she went around the room and had each of us tell the rest of the class what we wrote down. I will leave you tonight with my answers:

1. Name: Brooke
2. Hometown: Buffalo, NY – it always amazes me how shocked people from downstate are when they find out that I am originally from Buffalo. Chef Katie looked at me incredulously and said, “How did you wind up here?!?!”, as if I had moved to NYC from the other side of the world as opposed to the other side of the state.
3. Current Employer: Animal Hospital – thank heavens I found a part-time job so quickly!
4. Experience in the Industry: Other than keeping my friends and family in constant supply of hot fudge sauce? Not much.
5. Why did you choose Our School?: Honestly? The cost. Obviously I like the program and the people (otherwise why bother?), but this school cost less than half of what some of the other schools do, which is very important to me right now
6. What is your career goal after graduation?: Eventually I’d like to open up my own bakery with my good pal Lisa (Hi Lisa!!), but more immediately I’d be happy with remaining gainfully employed as a pastry cook.
7. What is something you would really want to learn how to make?: Now honestly, I changed my answer at least 3 times because everyone else was saying such fun things (challah, baklava, etc.), but my original answer was tiramisu, b/c I think it would really impress my in-laws
8. What do you love to make/eat?: Do you really have to ask? Pie!
9. What do you hate to make/eat?: Now this answer won me both hatred and love from my instructor. Hatred for my first answer – pork chops (apparently she lives and dies for pork) and love for my second – chicken wings (I’m sorry, but I hate eating meat off the bone…dirty, I know).

Then Chef Katie says, “You know it’s funny, I usually wind up giving people nicknames while in the program…” and before she could finish, I blurted out, “Please don’t call me pork chops…” She chuckled and told me that she had actually been thinking about calling me “Hot Wings”, although I’m not sure that’s much better.

10. What is the last dish you made/baked at home?: Pizza from scratch for the Super Bowl – yum!
11. What is the last restaurant/bakery you ate at?: Mesa Grill during restaurant week. I didn’t get to see Bobby Flay, but the food was seriously amazing.
12. Who, if any, is your favorite chef?: I was really surprised that so many of my classmates said that they didn’t have a favorite. I said that mine was a tie between Nigella Lawson (my favorite domestic goddess) and Duff Goldman. The one older woman in my class said that her favorite is Sandra Lee, and I had to keep myself from falling on the floor when I saw the look that came over Chef Katie’s face – hilarity. She just paused for a minute and said, “I won’t tell you what I think about her…or Rachel Ray.”