the unbearable lightness of meringue

On an earlier post I mentioned whipping heavy cream in order to make whipped cream. Heavy cream, as you may know, is liquid. Whipped cream, on the other hand, is very much not. The difference between the two is all in the whipping, or the incorporation of air, something I still can't think of as anything but a miracle.



Meringue is another one of these miracles. Whipped egg whites and sugar, basically. My first experience was on Pi Day, when I made lemon meringue pie at the behest of my roommate Daniel. I was so enthused at this first encounter that I literally whipped the egg whites and powdered sugar into meringue with my bare hands, which was a great arm-workout. (Turns out this type of meringue is French meringue.)



Luckily I haven't tried this in the bake shop. With the sizes of the batches we do, my arm would just as well fall off.

As it turns out, I've made Italian meringue (for Italian buttercream) when I poured sugar syrup (boiled to 240F, or the softball stage, more on that eventually) into the whipping egg whites.


(It being buttercream, butter was later added, then whipped cream - who would've thought?!)

And as it turns out, I've also made Swiss meringue (for mousse cake, my crowning achievement in Cakes and Tarts because it's complicated and requires the use of gelatin and Chef said I wouldn't have time to make it but I did anyway). The sugar is incorporated into the egg whites with the use of a double boiler/bain marie (so basically they were mixed in a bowl that was being heated by the steam from boiling water). And then whipped by a KitchenAid mixer until they achieved stiff peaks (the longer you whip, the stiffer the peaks, although I think it's possible to overwhip).



Such a beautiful miracle. Because just think, that was once just egg whites and sugar.

crème, cream, and everything in between

Also on our first day we made vanilla cream pie. Sydney made the crust while I made the cream - which involved using an actual vanilla bean (so much nicer than the extract stuff!). The recipe came straight out of our pastry textbook, which is literally our bible, since we need it for everything we do.



After I made the vanilla cream I had to comb it through a sieve, which was challenging because the cream was thick and didn't want to go through. Despite the difficulty I was extremely excited about the task because it was something I had never done before or imagined doing.

And the thing about the pastry side is that it's a bastion of specialized knowledge, and part of why I came to culinary school was to be privy to that. Most everybody will cook at one point or another, or bake cookies, but pastry is a whole other realm. And even though I don't particularly like pastries or sweets, I am really taking to the process of making them because of the structure and its built-in perfectionism. In pastry there is a right way to go about things - from measuring the ingredients, to the order you incorporate them, to the temperatures they need to be at (and for how long), and it's quite evident from the final product when you have done everything correctly (and thus succeeded). Savory, on the other hand, is composed of a lot of open-endedness and improv, since one can arrive at "delicious" in ten thousand ways, all in varying degrees of taste and texture.

(And getting personal: even though my life goes the way of savory and my personality has evolved to accommodate that, the inner overachieving perfectionist in me really takes to and finds expression in pastry.)

Anyway, after the cream was poured into the pie and allowed to chill, it settled into a firm jigglyness - the "just right" consistency between solidity and liquidity. We topped it with streusel and piped some whipped cream (basically whipped heavy cream, no Reddi-whip here!) on the edge.



The dot of vanilla sauce on the plate was to anchor the pie slice, so that in case the plates were being moved around, the slices would not slide.

And there you have it, just another drop of knowledge in that vast bastion-pool known as pastry.

let us make cake!

The first station I was assigned to on the pastry side was Cakes and Tarts. For those of us on the station, our daily task was to come up with 48-60 plates of dessert. Which sounded impossible until I learned that each cake yielded 10 slices (or 10 plates), and each pie/tart 8 slices. So each day we made some combination of cakes (including cheesecake or moussecake), pies/tarts, and tartlets.

Being that the previous pastry people had left us with a surplus of cake rounds (chocolate, vanilla, devils food, carrot, etc.), all we really needed to do was assemble them. So we got a crash course in cake-decorating.

First we defrosted the cake rounds (generally two for each cake we built), filed off the tops and basted the exposed cake-ness in simple syrup. Then we frosted them with buttercream. For the first one we made, we decided also to add strawberry slices (being that the cake was vanilla).



We quickly learned that buttercream frosting needs to be at the right temperature (and thus consistency) for it to frost nicely. If you look closely at the picture you'll see the unevenness and the crumbly edges that were the result of dragging too-congealed buttercream across the cake surface.



Once the upper layer was added, we frosted it all over the first time, which is known as the crumb coat. This is because the crumb (general term for the innards of any pastry) is still exposed and crumbs (haha) generally come off with the excess buttercream that is scraped off to make the layer smooth. After this first layer of frosting the cake is then put in the walk-in refrigerator for a bit so the buttercream can solidify, yielding a smooth layer for the final frosting.



Being that this was our first attempt at cake-assembly, the cake was still bumpy-looking after the final frosting (or, as Chef Mark put it, "homely-looking"). As an improvement, Chef demonstrated using the triangle-teethy tool (one of the many specialty tools I know not the name of) to create wavy lines of distraction all over the cake.



And voila! First cake assembled.

front, back, or... outside of the house?

It's almost been two weeks since I switched from savory to pastry and I have yet to put up a pastry post because I've been so busy.

I recently took a hostessing job at a popular, upscale kind of place, and it took took 7 out of my 10 spring break days, long continuous hours of being up on my feet, seating people, setting and resetting silverware, bussing tables, rearranging seats, fetching menus, wiping counters, taking calls, making reservations, checking statuses, quoting wait times, etc. etc. etc.

It's an interaction type of job, where people flow past you, an endless stream one hour and a trickle the next, but you're lucky if you can steal a moment to yourself. It's strange because in culinary school we're well-acquainted with the intensity of the "back of the house", in the kitchen where everything is time-sensitive and the interchange of ingredients and hands and heat oil and fire occur simultaneously and in a perilous blur. You can burn out easily working in such conditions, in the restaurant business, but I've found the "front of the house" no different, so far.

In the restaurant where I work, the front of the house is defined by a near constant + necessary vigilance in maintaining oneself presentable and courteous to all, whereas the back of the house is busy but there is music and conversation and food and camaraderie! And perhaps best of all, no interactions with customers ever.

Don't get me wrong, I do love connecting with people, and I do want a people-centered job, but the type of interaction matters completely. At my last job it was hard too, alternating between self-directed office tasks (mental freedom!) and brief but charged interchanges with (or should I say, disturbances from) the formerly homeless tenants I served. But looking back I would prefer that, if only just to be able to sit.

Ideally I would like a job where I am afforded mental freedom, stretches of productive time to myself, but also focused periods of meaningful exchange with people. So I know what I want, but I don't know where to find it. Story of my life, maybe. I just have to keep looking - front, back, inside, around, everywhere.

food for fifty!

On one of the free days I had during my spring break last week, I made a dinner for 50, the largest group I ever cooked for. So the reason this happened was because when I first moved (back) to California, I went to visit my sister Iris at UC Davis and experienced one of her multi-faith community's Wednesday Night Dinners. I enjoyed it so much that I offered to cook one of the dinners in the future, and my spring break was the first opportunity to do so.

I decided on a Thai-themed dinner because: 1) Thai is my favorite cuisine and yet I don't know how to make any of the dishes, so this was a good chance to try, and 2) Thai cuisine has many vegetarian options, which was one of the requirements of the dinner since the menu had to accommodate everyone's religious dietary restrictions.

To make it easier for me (since I only had a few hours to cook so much for so many people), for appetizer I simply did store-bought salad mix (with some carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes thrown in) with peanut dressing, and for dessert I simply did fruit cocktail with almond jello. (There was some anxiety over the kosher-ness of the jello, but thankfully I found that it was made from agar-agar, which is derived from seaweed, thereby kosher and vegan to boot.)

So the actual day-of involved me taking a train (almost two hours) to get to my dad's house to use his car, grocery shopping (almost two hours, despite using allrecipes.com to adjust the recipe to 50 servings, then the handy "add to shopping list" function), driving to Davis (two hours), prepping and cooking (four hours), etc. etc. Thank goodness Iris was able to find me two helpers (thanks Rose and Ashley!) to help me cut vegetables.



Although I planned on using this coconut curry tofu recipe, I found Thai curry packets in 99 Ranch (Asian grocery), so I ended up following the directions on there. It involved sauteeing the curry paste in some oil, then adding coconut milk and brown sugar to taste. Really easy considering the amount of flavor it yields, so it's surprising I've never tried to do it before.

At some point I figured out that all of the ingredients were not going to fit in the same pot, so I divided everything into two pots. From my experience in cooking I've found that it's really important what order you cook things in, even if they all end up together. In this case, the tofu and carrots went in first, because they would take the longest to get tender and absorb the curry flavor. Then I sauteed the mushrooms with onions and basil and scallions on the side (to soften them and develop their own flavors) and added those in. Then went the yellow bell peppers and snow peas and baby bok choy. And then I let everything just stew together.



Sadly, my one regret with the curry was that I stewed everything for so long. More specifically, I wish I had added the snow peas and bok choy last, because of the color element (stewing = loss of green color), and also because the snow peas could have retained their crunch and made the curry more palatable. Oh well! I'm just glad everything was done on time (ahead of time even) and was edible :)



And Iris was happy :)



And people got fed :)



My favorite part of the meal was actually dessert. Not only was it the easiest to make, I also thought it was the most delicious. The almond jello came powdered in packets (one brand looks like this) that I simply stirred into boiling water, then let cool and set in shallow pans, then cut into cubes. And then I opened some cans of fruit cocktail (and some cans of lychee, to stay Thai/Asian) and combined everything. So good. I ate two bowls myself and promptly passed out due to food coma and general exhaustion.



I think the best part of all this is that the experience has enabled me to cook more Asian in general, using ingredients like soy sauce and cornstarch and ginger and scallions (instead of my usual defaults of garlic and onion and Italians herbs). Finally I am living up to my heritage!



And I made curry again, this time with the snow peas crunchy.