composed salads (presentation presentation!)

Strangely enough, after my total body meltdown last week and having to miss three days a school (which was a feat because I wanted nothing less than to miss school), I came back to salad station and found my niche: composed salads.

Composed salads are basically the opposite of a regular tossed salad, because the ingredients are arranged around each other with the dressing kept separate. It is a bit impractical because the diner basically has to mix the ingredients themselves, with not much space to move things around in, but hey, anything for aesthetics right?

The first one I made was a duck breast salad. I had never cooked duck before, so this was intriguing to me. And it turned out surprisingly easy: you take duck breast, score the fat (slice criss-crossing lines in it without cutting into the meat), rub some salt and pepper (and spices of choice) into it, then sear it on some oil in a pan until it gets some color, then put it in a 350 degree oven with the fat side up (so the fat soaks down into the meat) for about half and hour. The best thing about this process is that it works for pretty much all similarly-sized meat.


I was really proud to be able to do the arranging myself - most of the time Chef will come around and do the presentation, but I decided to go ahead. Oh and the duck came out just right too!

And just like how the failed caesar salad dressing made me feel like I would never amount to anything culinarily, this salad did just the opposite by infusing me with hope and basically making my day. I feel like the pursuit of creative endeavors necessarily subjects you to this kind of up and down. The lows are damn frustrating, but oh man the highs.

Next I did a turkey breast salad, which was easier because I didn't have to cook the meat. However, it did involve celery root, which I've never worked with (and which I think tastes like crap). Also the vegetable basically looks like an ornery, wrinkly old man who's no longer interested with complying with societal conventions (and it acts this way too, by refusing to be peeled). I resorted to sauteeing it in some of the curry mayonnaise dressing I made, which didn't do much but did something at least.



Then I decided to do a thai beef salad. Because the beef came in a huge hunk, I put it in a 400 degree oven. About 45 minutes later I heard somebody yelling about brisket burning and I run over and it turns out that somebody had turned the oven to 500 degrees and my beef hunk was all charred. I was sad but let the roast sit for a bit (to cool and absorb its own juices), and then sliced it to find that the insides were okay.



Having done duck, turkey and beef, I decided to go for pork next. Similar to the beef/duck, I trimmed the fat and scored it, then rubbed dressing (in this case, orange balsamic vinaigrette) all over it, then stuck it in the oven. However, unlike beef, pork is something you cannot eat rare or anything less than well-done, so I had to check the temperature periodically to make sure it was cooked through. The standard temperature for pork doneness is 145 degrees, but Chef said to go to 150 just to be safe.



Given all of these composed salads, I earned a compliment from Chef as having "an eye for presentation". Niche talent? I think so!

roasted vegetables and wild rice salad

After the whole caesar salad debacle, all I yearned for was the simplicity of cutting and prepping vegetables (and/or simply being told what to do). The latter not being an option, I decided to do a roasted vegetable and wild rice salad, not only because it would fulfill my vegetable-cutting dreams but also because it was a heavier, "warmer" salad for a cold day.


I love the colors and textures inherent in vegetables. So pretty to look at and interesting to eat.


I didn't use a recipe for this one, just tossed the vegetables in my usual homestyle vinaigrette (which doubles as marinade): olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic salt, black pepper, and dried herbs (Italian blend works fine).


Here are the vegetables after roasting in the 350 degree oven for half an hour or so.


For the starch portion of the salad I boiled wild rice and wheatberries (which almost pop like caviar when you chew them) and mixed them together. In the future I would mix some white rice in and make it more pilaf-y so it would have a more rounded mouthfeel (plus, easier to chew).

The dressing was the original vinaigrette with the addition of roasted garlic/shallots/onions and honey and dried cranberries and parsley.


And again, presentation presentation. Isn't it funny that our tastes have evolved to where we are happier eating pretty things?

caesar salad woes

The first thing I tried to make in salad station was caesar salad. Which in hind sight is one of those deceptively simple American staples that one should not attempt because if one f's up it's shame-inducing AND readily noticeable.

In my attempt it was not so much the salad that I f'ed up but the dressing I had to make from scratch. It's a good thing to be able to make something that almost everyone else buys ready-made from the store, but in this case, well let's just say that I wish I had bought it from the store.

Making a dressing from scratch typically involves an emulsifying process - that is, since oil and vinegar are two incompatible substances, you have to mix them together with an emulsifying agent or else they will separate soon after you stop actively mixing them. As I've blogged previously, the lecithin in egg whites is an emulsifier (for example, in mayonnaise). For caesar dressing though it's the mustard (explanation here).

But that wasn't the part I got wrong. I just didn't know that in emulsions you're supposed to add the oil last, and slowly, and to a blender already spinning.


I poured some oil in before I started the blender. Then I added the remainder as the blades were spinning, not knowing that it was already too late. Chef came to see my dressing and informed me that it was broken. (The oil was oozing away from the rest of the ingredients, yielding a liquidy mixture and not the creaminess I was hoping for.)

To add insult to injury I tried fixing the dressing, to no avail, wasting a whole two hours on the process. Needless to say I thought I would never amount to anything in the culinary world, much less become the sauce-making goddess I had intended on becoming. All was lost.

I countered my woes by making some bomb croutons (by cutting bread into cubes, tossing it in some oil and spices and then baking until crispy). Glad I didn't f that up. Then I managed to arrange the salad in an aesthetically-pleasing manner.


What can I say, making things pretty really does go a long way (see previous post for my pretty pictures comment, haha)!

i left my heart in NYC

I woke up this morning to this in my RSS feed, a time-lapse video of New York City. It's not particularly epic or mind-blowing (and too much Times Square I think), but it nevertheless awakened the gut-wrenching nostalgia for that once-familiar place and those once-had feelings of belonging and self-affirmation.

I think I figured out the difference between New York and everywhere else - that in New York it is an accomplishment simply to be living there. And the mark of an exciting, high-powered and fabulous life is simply to be taking good advantage of the events and activities the city has to offer. One can simply absorb, or consume, and be amazing by exposure.

I moved here because I wanted to produce, because I found the cost of production (both financial and otherwise) too high and dauntingly prohibitive there. I felt like the barriers to entry are such that you had to either be addicted to producing or living in a community of producers for it to happen.

I needed the kind of no-fault, non-competitive environment that CCSF was offering in order to overcome all of these real/imagined obstacles. But producing things, though a highly glamorize-able ideal, is decidedly unglamorous (and unfabulous, and low-powered, and unexciting) most of the time. It's a lot of hard work and repetition (physical labor) just to get the skills and knowledge with which to be creative, which is, in the end, what it's all about.

So, pretty pictures or not, I'm really learning very slow and ever-immersed in a manual drudgery that seems to be leading nowhere (as being sick and having time to reflect has led me to conclude). It's a hard thing to realize, having left a job and moved across the country to do this, my paltry savings running down as we speak. I certainly miss those New York City days of power-walking from one place to the next, high on potential and the ever-swirling storm of activity, proud and engaged.

But my hands are working now, and I'm feeding people, and I have an easier time convincing myself that life is adding up. In case it isn't though, I have more pretty pictures for distraction's sake.

fun with tartlets

Aside from cakes and pies/tarts we also made tartlets pretty much everyday because they were easy. First butter the tartlet molds, then cut rounds of pie dough to fit the molds, then blind-bake them, then fill them and bake them again (or sometimes just fill them). We often did fruit tartlets, but one day I was low on ideas when Chef walked by and said to fill them with frangipane (which sounded a lot like marzipan). So I combed through the pastry bible looking for f-words and found it.



It's quite striking how the scooped frangipane looks like almond ice cream.

After being baked and topped with some pastry cream, strawberries, and almonds (later also dusted with powdered sugar), they looked quite pretty.

"Cooking has alchemy and theatre, the joy of creation; the sensual pleasure of touching and sniffing glorious foodstuffs; the pleasure of pleasing others."

- Crescent Dragonwagon