sushi again

In Garde Manger Chef Oakley decided to let us take a break from station assignments, and to spend a class making sushi. It was very similar to the sushi workshop I attended last semester, so I didn't document much of the process at all, just took pictures of the few rolls I made.

This was shredded rock crab with avocado. I added a line of sriracha to spice things up.



This was spicy tuna with tobiko.



This was a cucumber shittake tobiko avocado roll. I had to take the avocado out in order to roll it up - that's how full it was.



Since I was hungry, I ate each roll almost as soon as I made it. We were supposed to cut the rolls up and present them. Here are Chef's:



Lastly, we made nigiri. I thought the three pieces I made looked like a family.

pâte à choux revisited

Since I didn't document the first class of Advanced Baking, I wanted to revisit the lesson at home. I tried to make pâte à choux (and build a croquembouche) for Valentine's Day, but sadly I failed and the cream puffs came out like cream flats.

My friend offered me the pâte à choux recipe from his work so I gathered the courage to try again. First I combined 1 cup skim milk, 4 oz butter, a pinch of salt and two pinches sugar in a pot. This was simmered until the butter was completely melted. Then I took the pot off the heat and added 1 1/4 cup flour, then worked the mixture with a wooden spoon until a dough was well-formed. Then I added 4 eggs, one at a time and mixing very well between each. The pâte à choux ended up looking like this (it should slide off the spoon, albeit slowly):



Without a piping bag I resorted to making a hole in a ziplock baggie and putting the piping tip through it. Made little dollops for cream puffs.



These were baked at 350°F for 45 minutes, until puffy and golden brown. I was so excited to see them come out like this.



Sadly, when I tried to remove them from the parchment paper, the bottoms came off. This meant I couldn't really pipe cream (or rather, Cool Whip mixed with raspberry puree) into the insides, but I resorted to filling them with a spoon instead and placing them bottoms down into a bowl so the broken-ness wouldnt show. Then I piped melted chocolate and sprinkled powdered sugar over.



Next time I'm going to bake them on a silicon mat and see if the bottoms come off unharmed.

making truffles

After the demo, it was our turn to make chocolate. Marianne and I started with truffles. I made the ganache, which consisted of 4oz heavy cream, 1oz light corn syrup and toasted coconut bits brought to a simmer, then poured over 8oz of white chocolate and mixed together.



While she tempered dark chocolate, I tempered white chocolate for decor work.



Succeeded in making white chocolate curls and a decor piece (from spreading it over patterned acetate paper).



Once Marianne was ready we coated a truffle mold with dark chocolate. Of course I had chosen the fleur de lys truffle mold, which was the hardest shape to fill, EVER.



Once that was done we piped the coconut white chocolate ganache in and covered it.



Sometime after that we discovered that our chocolate had come out of temper, and I freaked out thinking our truffles wouldn't unmold/would just be ruined. Chef told us to throw the mold in the fridge, and about 15 minutes later came the moment of truth.



I was apprehensive but all the truffles in the mold came out, thank goodness.



Here's the assortment of truffles made by all the teams in class.



My three favorites were the ones with lavendar, raspberry and passionfruit ganaches. I made coconut because the truffles were for my mom :)

chocolate demo

In Advanced Baking we're moving into the candy/confections section of the course. To start us off, Chef Mark introduced us to chocolate work - making truffles and various types of decor. The foundation of all of this is tempering chocolate.

Chocolate (more specifically, cocoa butter) contains fat molecules capable of forming different kinds of crystal bonds, but it's only when beta crystals bonds are formed (at a certain temperature) is the chocolated considered tempered - a stable form which allows the chocolate to harden and contract and take on a glossy shine.

Tempering chocolate starts with melting chocolate in a double boiler - at least one pound's worth so the temperature of the end mixture won't fluctuate too rapidly. After all the chocolate is melted (usually at about 120°F), the mixture is cooled by one of three methods: block (introducing a tempered block of chocolate, a quarter of the mixture's weight), seeding (similar to block except it's bits of chocolate that's introduced to the mix), or tabling (working the chocolate over a cool surface like marble). Once the chocolate is cooled to about 80°F, it is warmed up a bit (to 86-90°F) and kept at that working temperature. If the chocolate isn't kept in that range, it will either form lumps and harden (too cool) or the beta bonds will break apart (too hot). As you might guess, the process is rather tricky.



Chef Mark demonstrated the tabling method (also the most messy). His trick for the chocolate to stay in working range was to keep the bowls on heating pads (the ones you can buy for cheap at a drugstore).



With the tempered chocolate he coated a hard plastic truffle mold (available online here). Excess chocolate was poured out since it was just for coating.



Then the truffles were filled with a ganache mixture (made from chocolate, cream and light corn syrup). The truffles were then sealed with more tempered chocolate and left to cool/set.



We knew when the truffles were ready to be unmolded by looking at the bottom - the ones which had contracted away from the mold were ready.



Then Chef moved on to decor work. To make these chocolate cigarettes he laid down a strip of white chocolate, combed through it with an adhesive spreader (available at hardware stores), then spread a layer of dark chocolate over it. Then he took a bench scraper and angled it 45 degrees into the strip, scraping forward in one quick motion so the chocolate came off the marble and curled into a cigarette.



Then there were chocolate ribbons/curls, made by spreading chocolate over acetate tape and combed through with the adhesive scraper. The tape was looped over and left to set - once the chocolate hardened the tape could be peeled off and the chocolate curls were left.



Then Chef demonstrated designs on acetate paper. An easy one was the marbled design, which involved dripping different chocolate lines haphazardly on the sheet, then spreading more chocolate over those lines.



Here's the finished marble design, with the acetate paper peeled off.



Chef had used a heart-shaped cookie cutter on the marble design before the chocolate set, so after it set he was able to pop those pieces out. Here's a broken piece that's still very pretty:



Patterns can be created by spreading the chocolate over all manner of surfaces. Chocolate over bubble wrap yielded this honeycomb design. Ingenious, and very cool.



Chef says the hardware store is the chocolate maker's supply store, but you can really find inspiration anywhere.

arepa special

When I was backpacking in Europe over winter break, I crashed with friends and friends of friends to save money. By chance I stayed with a Columbian guy named Fernando in Amsterdam, and the night I arrived he taught me how to make arepas from scratch.

There was no real measuring involved, just four ingredients: corn/masa flour, butter, salt, and hot water. And a lot of kneading. I enjoyed the experience a lot, so for Latin Quarter specials I naturally thought I would try again, this time on my own.

Without any native Columbian experience I consulted some recipes online for measurements, and settled on: roughly 2 cups masa/corn flour, 2 tablespoons melted butter, 2 big pinches of salt, and 2 cups hot water. Mixed everything together and kneaded the dough hard, then pinched off dollops and patted them flat between the palms, then rounded the edges. The dough rounds were then placed on a flat top griddle, flipped every few minutes until both sides were browned. I was really afraid that I made the dough wrong, since the rounds felt very fragile, like they would break apart. Thank goodness it worked out.

For the filling I used leftover chorizo, shredded chicken breast, mozzarella and black beans. Heated/melted everything together.

For a sauce I wanted to make chimichurri, because the last time I had chimichurri sauce it was so delicious I knew I had to make it as soon as I got a chance.

I made a modified version of this recipe: I used equal parts parsley and cilantro (about a fistful of each), and also added some dried oregano and sugar. I also made the sauce an emulsified one (dripped in vinegar with all of the rest of the ingredients in the food processor spinning). The sauce came out tasting stronger (in the mustard sense of strong) than I remembered - maybe it had to do with the emulsion, or maybe just because it wasn't accompanied by a well-marbled steak. I had Chef Morse taste it though, and he gave the OK, which was a huge relief.



To serve, I cut each arepa open, coated the insides with chimichurri sauce, then stuffed it with filling and garnished with diced tomatoes. The combination worked really well together. My only complaint was that the arepas were a lot thinner then they should have been - ideally the outside would be crispy and insides soft. Mine were so thin they didn't have an inside, they were just like crispy flats.



In the end I sold out of all the arepas I made. There was one guy who ordered two at once, and I remember seeing him sitting down to eat them. It was a strange and kind of exciting feeling, to watch someone buy and enjoy something you made. Definitely different than feeding someone you know, but a satisfying feeling nonetheless.