dessert station

After Tableside I rotated to the Dessert station, where Clarisse and I took turns either manning the dessert cart in the dining room or plating desserts in the back.

The desserts we presented/plated all came out of first semester Plated Desserts station. I was in that station once (making things like lemon panna cotta and green tea creme brulee). It was kind of like coming around full circle.

On the day where I got to be in the back, these were the desserts I had to be ready to plate:

Mini apple pie, with dried apple chip, vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce:



Flourless chocolate cake with chocolate sauce, chocolate pieces and cocoa powder:



Strawberry napolean with strawberry sauce and garnish:



Banana bread pudding with whipped cream quenelle, caramel sauce and bananas brulee:



Given the options I decided to be very organized and lay out all the different ingredients I needed to plate each dish. I even make a list:



Sadly very little orders came in, but I was able to use the time to work on my plated dessert project for Advanced Baking - buttered popcorn ice cream sundae.



Don't worry, I'll talk about it in my next post!

san francisco baking institute

For Advanced Baking one day we had the honor of visiting the San Francisco Baking Institute. The facility started as a showroom for professional baking equipment. People would come from all over to test out the high capacity mixers, ovens, etc. But then there's was a lot of interest in the baking side of things (as opposed to the equipment side), so classes were formed. Nowadays the institute is a combination of education and production facility, though it still serves as a showroom. But also the masters of baking there get flown around the world to troubleshoot baking/equipment issues.

So first of all, the workrooms are giant and immaculate. This room is filled just with dough sheeters.



True the nature of it being a production facility, we got our hands dirty (well, just floured) rolling baguette.



Andy, tour guide and baking master, showed us around. After rolling baguettes we were shown to the wood-fired oven, which regularly sustains temperatures above 800 degrees Fahrenheit. It was no wonder that this naan bread he inserted into the oven (on a long wooden paddle) bubbled up pretty much immediately.



It was done in less than a minute (and devoured in roughly the same amount of time).



Then he inserted a rolled out piece of pita dough, which poofed up like magic after it went in. After he took it out we got to try our hand at rolling out and baking naan/pita.



Here's the pita I put in, burnt because of the extra seconds it spent the oven (too much traffic around the oven for me to take it out on time!).



After that we went back to the baguettes, which had proofed, and laid them out on the deck oven belt. We scored them (cut slits) and sent them into the oven.



They came out nice and crispy-crusted, and as an extra surprise we got to take all of it home :)



I signed up to volunteer with the bread-making class this summer, and hopefully there will be more opportunities down the road!

condiments

In Garde Manger we had a session on flavored oils and vinegars, many of which were simple to make, such as this chili oil - just chili flakes in olive oil. However, it was very spicy and would be very effective if drizzled over, let's say, dumplings (as opposed to just dumping some chili flakes on dumplings - not as effective).



The thing about flavored oils is that you can't keep them very long, especially if you are immersing fresh ingredients (like garlic) in it. There is the danger of botulism, that gnarly toxin that grows under anaerobic (oxygen-less) conditions. I would say a week tops. Good thing is that you don't need to marinate ingredients for a long time for the flavored to come out in the oil, as long as you mince/puree them and heat the oil a bit.

Flavored vinaigrettes though, you can keep for a long long time because the acidic environment isn't conducive to bacterial growth. Have to make sure what you're marinating doesn't stick out the top like the tarragon in this champagne vinegar though:



Some of my favorites that Chef made was the basil oil (with the basil chopped superfine and blanched/patted dry so it would stay green) and the fig balsamic puree (that over some goat cheese, or a salad... mmm!).

After that we tackled making some of our own condiments. I wanted to try making hoisin and sriracha, two Asian condiments that I tend to take for granted.

This recipe came out a bit like hoisin peanut sauce.



After that I tackled sriracha... except there weren't red fresno chiles or red jalapenos in house, so I substituted thai chilies instead. I roughly followed the fresh (not fermented) recipe here, though I pureed the ingredients before I boiled them.



Here's the puree. When I uncapped the food processor and breathed in I almost died. If you ever puree chilies... be careful.



The sauce that I eventually got was green and watery, but probably the spiciest green watery thing you'll ever find. Julius and I paired these sauces with Vietnamese meatballs. I love the crunchy meatballs found in pho, but unfortunately the recipe I found yielded the soft regular kind of meatball. (Upon Googling now, however, I've found this alternate recipe, which contains potato starch and sounds closer to the real deal.)

To make up for the lackluster sauces and meatballs I plated the meatballs nicely with special dishware, toothpicks and cilantro stalks.



Here are some of my classmates presenting what they made. To see some of the dishes, click on the meatball photo above and then the "<- Newer" button above the photo on Flickr.



My favorite was the strawberry basil jam. Strawberry + basil = a match made in heaven.

pork adobo with garlic fried rice

For my third and last day on tableside I decided to do pork adobo, because I have never cooked anything Filipino and I thought that would be a good entry level dish.

I pretty much followed this recipe, marinating cubed pork shoulder with soy sauce, garlic, bay leaves and black peppercorn over two nights.

As I was to discover, this was way too long. When you have a soy-based marinade, anything over a couple of hours is too long because the item gets too salty. After simmering it for an hour with water and vinegar, I added more sugar (which mellows salt and acid) and vinegar until it tasted... still salty, but acceptably so.



I decided to pair the adobo with sinangag, or garlic fried rice. I myself was fortunate to have tried an exquisite example of sinangag one day when Clarisse brought breakfast to school from a place called Tselogs. It was delicious, and I wanted to recreate it (or something like it). I found this recipe, but decided to forgo the egg pancake for the Tselogs sunnyside up egg. When you dig into this dish your fork is used to pierce the egg yolk so it can run all over everything, serving as a natural hollandaise sauce.



Before lunch service I plated up this sample dish so the Filipinos in our class could try it and give me "authentic" feedback. Clarisse suggested that I add some slices of tomato. That was brilliant.

Here was how my cart looked like pre-service:



Much like the tuna poke salad, I had orders rolling in one right after the other and it wasn't until my last order (split between two people because I ran out of pork) that I was able to get a picture.



Proud of my first Filipino food attempt :)

jerk chicken with coconut rice & beans

Tableside Day 2 was jerk chicken with coconut rice & beans and mango salsa (from the tuna poke salad).

I love jerk chicken because of it's smoky spiciness. I thought it was high time that I tried making it. And I also thought it would be popular because it's chicken and rice, things that most everybody will eat.

The recipes I found for the chicken and the rice both involved long lists of ingredients, and I was excited about the complexity of spice.

I even got my hands on some Jamaican rum for the chicken marinade.



In Jamaica the rice is made with pigeon peas, but here we substitute kidney beans.



After marinating the chicken I wrapped each piece in foil and baked until the chicken was cooked to temperature (165F). Then as orders came in I would unwrap the packet and sear the chicken on a cast iron pan in front of the customer. Sadly this did not produce the charred effect that I was looking for - grilling would have been much better. I think the chicken is meant to be grilled, because it allows the molasses in the marinade to caramelize (or something) and adds the characteristic smoky flavor.



Also the rice was a bit too hard - I should have used a starchier rice (instead of parboiled Uncle Ben's), that would've soaked up more of the coconut milk. The mango salsa ended up being the best part of the dish.



Not surprisingly, I only sold about half of what I made. Was disappointed, but it just means I'll have to make jerk chicken again.