The Prodigal Niece Returns

For Fall Break, I went to Minnesota to visit family I haven't seen in nearly two decades. It was a fun trip. They were kind enough to roll out the snow for me. Twice. Thanks, family. They thought I was crazy. It was really cold! When I left NC, it was in the 80s with lots of humidity. I arrive in Minneapolis and it's in the 40s with no humidity!

We went to the Mall of America, which is larger than you think it is. You know it's big, right? Yeah, well, it's bigger than that. I must say that the shoe section of the Nordstrom did not fail to deliver. I deserve a pat on the back for my restraint.

We also took a trip to the...wait for it...Spam Museum. Uh huh. There is such a thing. It was a lot of fun. It's a self-guided tour, including a short movie. They cook Spam and pass out cubed samples served on pretzel sticks. It was my first time eating Spam, which surprisingly made out of pork shoulder, the same meat my beloved BBQ is made from, and ham. It's not actually made from the same creepiness found in hotdogs. And, it's surprisingly delicious! Who knew? I brought home three cans, Hickory Smoke flavor, Spam with Bacon, and Black Pepper, which is not sold in the US.

Here are a few pictures from the Spam Museum in Austin, MN.

I found this quote particularly meaningful as a culinary student.

A friendly reminder

Folks, I LOVE getting comments from readers, especially new readers. I really do. I don't love when readers post links about how we can strike it rich online. Seriously. If you feel the need to post this stuff, get your own blog. Any such comments will be deleted. It's bad enough you've found my email inbox, right?

The only spam that gets posted here is the kind that comes in a little blue can. Cheers!

Cream puffs, eclairs, and seven swans a-swimming

In our last Baking I lab, we made pate a choux (pronounced pot-uh-shoe). You know, cream puff dough. I love cream puffs. I love eclairs more. It's a chocolate thing. I can't help it. I have a problem. Don't judge me. I'm weak.

So, as luck would have it, pate a choux is ridiculously easy to make. You have everything you need on hand in your kitchen right now. Seriously. Water, butter, flour, sugar, eggs. No joke. The choux paste (as they say in the biz) that you use for cream puffs is the same stuff you use to make the cute savory ones with cheese and herbs that get served with wine. Yum!

Our lab assignment included choux paste, chocolate ganache, and pastry cream. We had to make cream puffs, eclairs and swans. Swans! So tiny! So cute! So delicious!

I had to take a picture of this handsome devil. My friend, S., made him. Isn't he perfect?

I brought home my stuff. I shared it with friends. It would be dangerous to keep all this in my kitchen. Especially since I had to "test" about five eclairs before class was over. What? They were small! Besides, I like to think of it was quality control. They would have technically been unsaleable. It's a service I provide. I'm that kind of girl.

Without further ado, my goods from the cream puff lab.

Cream puffy goodness!

Miniature eclairs!

Okay, fine. Five swans a-swimming.

Pie. It's what's for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch.

Friday's baking lab found me with a working camera battery and pie. Three pies, to be exact. We had three hours to make three pies. I was done first. No comment. Because of the instructor, a lot of people have been dropping the class. Unfortunately, it's almost all of the good people. So, I am left with people like the grandmother of 8 who forgot to put flour in her cookies and the Art Institute drop out who asked why we don't use baking soda in bread three weeks into class. Sweet. I spoke to another one of my chefs before Fall Break about this instructor. He offered to speak to the department head. Apparently, I am not the only one who has complained. The good news is that she won't be back to teach again. But I digress.

Here are my pies.

Apple pie (My illustrious instructor was kind enough to demo on MY pie how to cut the top. This was not my decision. Thus is the problem of being finished first.)

Cherry pie

Coconut cream pie

I brought home the coconut cream pie. I shared a piece with Mary Jane and have been powering through the rest. My love for pastry cream is strong. I make good pie. I make good pie crust too!

Pie crust is deceptively simple to make and homemade tastes infinitely better than store-bought. You mix a lower-gluten flour with a little sugar and a little salt. Cut in the butter. Add just enough ice cold water to bring it together. Roll. Done. You have pie. I suggest adding a little sugar to a dough to be used for savory pies as it helps in browning. It will not make the dough sweet, but it looks nicer.

I found this detailed recipe on Epicurious for pie dough. The only thing I'd do differently is to add maybe two teaspoons of granulated sugar to the flour as well, again, for color, not taste.

I don't recommend making the dough in a food processor since you have a lot less control. I really do prefer to mix and knead my doughs by hand. I find I have a better sense of when it's ready with my hands than by sight or smell. This pie crust recipe would be great for a chicken pot pie too! We've got some serious fall weather going on here. That would be great today.

I encourage you all to try pie dough soon! Report back with the results! I'd love to hear how it goes!

Speaking of going, here's what's left!

Fresh pasta, exploding blenders, and I need more practice shopping.

Since my last post, I got As on both tests, in Basic and Safety and Sanitation. I wish purchasing was going so well. Ugh. I hate the online class format. It's just basically read the book, answer questions and take a quiz. I much prefer to be lectured at by a teacher. I have a meeting with my teacher on Wednesday to discuss what I can do, review the two quizzes I bombed, and whatever else comes to mind. I'm sure I'll do just fine in Purchasing, I just need a little reassurance right now.

You'll have to use your imagination on the next part. I've been having some camera battery issues and thus, I am photo-less.

A couple weeks ago in Basic lab, we tackled soups. We made consomme, a flavorful, clarified broth. If you make a stock, it's usually a bit cloudy. To clarify it into a consomme, you add clearmeat to it and simmer. Clearmeat is a mixture of lean ground meat (the same flavor as the stock), mirepoix (carrot, celery, onion), lightly beaten egg whites, and an acid (we used a bit of tomato paste). You mix it all up raw (it's really gross), add it to cold stock, and put it on the stove. Once it comes to a boil, you turn it down to a simmer and leave it alone. The clearmeat mixture cooks and attracts impurities from the stock. It floats to the top and forms a "raft." The raft cracks naturally and acts like a filter. It's super cool! Making consomme was one technique I was most excited about learning. You end up with this crystal clear broth with a big flavor. Ours was beef. All I could think when I tasted it was that's what I want next time I'm sick. Yummy! If you try it, be sure to season the consomme with kosher salt! The iodine in other salt will make the consomme cloudy and all your hard work for not! This lab was particularly interesting because it was very apparent who the serious students were. We were the ones standing over our pots talking about how cool this process was. In the soup portion of this lab, we made a cream soup. I chose cream of mushroom. I put my hot soup in the blender, whizzed it up, then set the blender on the counter to take the lid off. I went to pick it up and the bottom of the blender stayed on the table. You know the bottom part that screws on so you can take the blades out? Yeah. Somehow came unscrewed or something while I was blending. Soup went everywhere! It was awesome. Especially since it was my lunch. Luckily, about 7 people in my class offered to share theirs with me. I should have gotten a picture of that mess. Too funny.

In Basic lab, we also made fresh pasta, the week before Fall Break. We made miniature veggie lasagnas in ramekins. CUTE! We also made ravioli and tortelini. The tortelini was so much easier than I thought it would be. We had three fillings we had to make, to be shared by our table. There were three of us at my table, the same three people from the previous week's sauce lab when we made communal tomato sauce. I made the goat cheese stuffing for the tortelini. I used goat cheese, cream cheese, garlic, shallot, mint, tarragon, basil and parsley. It was very good. If I'm not mistaken, this was the first lab we've had all year without a clarified butter sauce!

Oops, I did it again.

I got an A on my Baking midterm! Woot! ::running man dance::

I also had a knife skills practical in Basic yesterday, which I had forgotten about. I got an A on that too. We were out of potatoes, so we didn't have to do the fancy-schmancy tournee cuts that I've been working on. Bummer. There were only 3 or 4 people in that class that were actually bummed about it.

I have two more tests coming up. Tomorrow I have a test on cooking techniques and soups. On Tuesday, I have a test in Safety and Sanitation. It took so long for us to have tests the beginning of the semester. Now it seems like we're having tests every day!

Best field trip EVER!

This afternoon my Purchasing class met on location at US Foodservice. For those of you who don't know, US Foodservice is one of the largest suppliers to restaurants, hotels, and other food service institutions across the US. They also have a great reputation concerning both service and quality. I have worked with them before and without hestiation I would work with them again. Many years ago, I worked in a restaurant. We did a catering for 500 for a furniture company during the Furniture Market week. US Foodservice let us borrow a truck, a semi trailer with both refrigerated and freezer sections to be exact, to hold everything we ordered to do this catering. Our kitchen in our 88 seat restaurant didn't have the room for it all. I digress. They are all about quality and service.

We arrived before noon. I regretted skipping lunch, but hey what are you going to do? A chef consultant came to the lobby to fetch us. He led us up to a classroom and demo kitchen combo. I spied a table full of desserts and was much relieved. On the counter were three giant ribeyes. Not the juicy 10 ounce steak, the entire ribeye piece taken directly off the cow. Three of them. There were two chefs who talked to us. They were super knowlegdable. They both had tons of experience. Their current jobs are to work with new customers, review menus and suggest USFS products that would work for them. Today, they gave us a demonstration on beef quality that included a steak lunch with baked potatoes, salad, rolls, steamed broccoli and desserts. You may envy me now.

The chefs cut open a Prime ribeye, a Choice ribeye, and a Select ribeye. While the side of the cow is whole, after slaughter, the ribeye is cut along the 12th and 13th rib. It is from here that the quality of the entire cow is judged. If there is a lot of marbling, it is considered Prime, the highest quality. Less marbling, it's Choice. Even less, it's Select. You are most likely to find Choice in grocery stores. Prime beef only accounts for 2% of all beef, so it's typically reserved for high quality restaurants. Fat equals flavor. It also helps with tenderness. The Prime ribeye was fantastic. The Choice was pretty good, even though it looked to me to have less marbling than I would have expected. The Select steak was tough and lack flavor. Even without being told which was which, I could tell what I was eating. We enjoyed loaded baked potatoes, Rosemary rolls, a salad with kalamata olives, cukes and tomatoes with a creamy mustard dressing. There was fresh steamed broccoli as well. Dessert was a number of bar cookies, lemon bars, some cranberry walnut thingy and seven layer bars, which I love! Not only was it delicious, but it was completely unexpected.

After lunch, they demonstrated a can cutting. They used cans of tomatoes, all three brands they carry. They have a very specific process for a can cutting. They open the can from the bottom. They strain the tomatoes for a minimum of two minutes to remove as much juice as possible. Next, the drained tomatoes are weighed. The juice is weighed also to be sure it added up to the weight on the can. There are supposed to be a certain amount of tomatoes in each can. Oddly enough, in the highest quality can, it was short on tomatoes. They report it to the packer. So they also lay out the three grades of tomatoes side by side so they can be compared. It was interesting. Not only do they do this for new customers, but they do it regularly to check quality.

After the can cutting, we toured the warehouse. I walked through a freezer that was 63,000 square feet in size. Huge doesn't begin to describe it. We walked through the dry storage area as well. This place is massive. It's the fifth largest division of USFS in the country. They are so efficient too. They showed us the location information and that process. It was fascinating.

We each got a goodie bag with an ovenmit, thermometer, pen, pencil, and a bunch of snacks. We were quizzed also, which resulted in the awarding of more prizes. I got a travel mug, a visor and a cookbook in addition to the goodie bag. The cookbook is cool! Each year USFS asks their chef customers to submit recipes, which they publish. They ended up giving everyone a cookbook.

I really had a great time. I learned a lot. I met some really nice folks. I ate some great food! This was a valuable experience and much cooler than I expected. Two thumbs up!

Quick check in, with more excitement to come!

I just wanted to let you know that I got a perfect score on my Safety and Sanitation exam. Yup. 100% on the germ test. I've got some good stuff to share with you including the baking practical exam where everything went wrong and a field trip to a vendor. Exciting stuff, peeps.

Tune in next time! After Tuesday, I promise. I'm a little behind on studying for a test in Basic Culinary Skills. Being a straight A student is pretty cool, but I'm spending all of my time on homework.

Knowing is half the battle, or I gross you out because I care.

It turns out that my Safety and Sanitation class is more cool and exciting than I thought it would be. Of course, it helps that I have a great instructor who is passionate (srsly!) about sanitation, knows her stuff, and cares that we're learning and are comfortable with the information. I'm learning a lot in this class, probably more than my other classes. Allow me to share with you some of what I've learned.

One thing she said during the first week of class surprised me, but really it shouldn't. You're more likely to get a foodborne illness at home than from commercially prepared food. Yep. You are. And it makes sense. Professional kitchens are crazy in love with sanitizers. After dishes are washed, they are thoroughly sanitized with either a chemical or 185 degree water. It's unlikely most people do that at home. As well, foods are heated and cooled properly at home and professional cooks are cautious of The Danger Zone. Do you know what The Danger Zone is? No, silly. I'm not talking about the Kenny Loggins song from Top Gun. It the range of 41 degrees F to 135 degrees F, where bacteria flourish, thrive and are generally very, very happy. We use ice baths, ice spikes and other measures to cool foods down very quickly. Putting hot food into a refrigerator, especially at home, will generally warm up the inside if the fridge and put everything else in jeopardy. Crazy, huh?

We all know that our county has rules about cheeseburgers being cooked at least medium well, that most places ban raw (unpasteurized) dairy products, and you're not supposed to eat meat, fish and eggs that aren't cooked thoroughly. But how many of us know why?

And I know what you're thinking. I really do. Because I was thinking the same thing the first couple days of class. "Eeeeew. I'll never be able to eat again!" "OMG. My professor said diarrhea!" But here are a few things to think about.

1. Think about how many times you've eaten and NOT gotten sick. Really. I'll bet it's, like, a lot.
2. Sure, you like food. But I'll bet I can name two things you like more than food. Not vomiting. And not having diarrhea. Am I right?
3. The more you know, the more likely you are to not make your family and friends sick.

I've been studying up on what seems like a million foodborne illnesses, most of which I've never heard of. We all know the big ones, right? Botulism, salmonella, E. coli. That's just the tip of the microbial iceberg, peeps.

Listeria. I'd heard of it. I knew that something something Listeria something pregnant women something. You can get it from raw dairy products, raw meat and ready to eat foods like hotdogs and deli meat. So what's the deal with Listeria and pregnant women? If a pregnant woman gets Listeria, the symptom is...miscarriage. Damn. That's serious. In little kids, it causes sepsis, pneumonia, and meningitis. Not all foodborne illness makes you puke.

Not only do you get Botulism from dented cans, but you can get it from a baked potato that wasn't cooled right. If you're making baked potatoes ahead of time, to be reheated, for the love of all things holy, DO NOT wrap those puppies up in foil. Botulism likes that. A lot. The less oxygen, the more Botulism. Did you also know that if you don't seek medical attention, it'll kill you? There was an episode of Dr. Quincy, ME about it.

You're more likely to get E. coli from produce than from meat. Frail Voiced Vegan Girl is in this class. She thinks she's immune to foodborne illness because she doesn't consume animals. Wrong! Wasn't there an E. coli outbreak a few years ago that was traced back to green onions? It's always the green onions! And lettuce. And tomatoes. And and and.... Oh, yeah. Sprouts. That's a big one.

Clostridium perfringens gastroenteritis. Like, what? This is carried in the intestines of both animals and humans. It loves The Danger Zone (41-135F). You usually get diarrhea and severe abdominal pain. Here's the best part...commercially prepared foods are not often involved in outbreaks. Straight from my book. It's commonly linked to meat and poultry and foods containing meat and poultry, like soups and stews. Next time you make chili at home, and you get, uh, a little rumbly afterwards, it's not the beans that are bothering you.

Bacillus cereus is a bacteria that produces two different toxins. It's the toxins that make you sick. The each cause an illness. One makes you throw up. The other gives you diarrhea. You can get this from cooked rice, like fried rice and rice pudding. Milk, meat and cooked veggies can also carry this. This can be prevented by heating and cooling foods properly and holding food at the right temperature. Think cookout or church picnic. Don't let that stuff sit out for more than 4 hours.

Did you know you can get a staph infection from food? You can. Staphylococcal bacteria are carried on the body, including the nose, hair, throat and infected cuts. You can transfer the bacteria by rubbing your nose then mixing the pasta salad by hand. If the bacteria is allowed to grow, it'll produce a toxin that'll make you sick. Cooking will not destroy this toxin.

Shigella can be transferred from feces to food by people who don't wash their hands. It can also be transferred to food by flies. (Again with the cookout!) It'll give you bloody diarrhea and abdominal pain and cramps. Charming.

Norovirus and Hepatits A can be transmitted from ready-to-eat food contaminated with feces and from shellfish from contaminated waters. Hepatitis A however is a vaccine preventable disease.

Our old friend Salmonella. Yes, you can get this from chicken and eggs. Did you know that you can also get this from beef and dairy products as well as produce? The best way to prevent this is to prevent cross-contamination. Buy color coded cutting boards and be strict about it. Sanitize. Wash hands and equipment if you're in doubt. I knew someone who got this and is now horribly lactose intolerant as a result.

If you eat shellfish, you're in for a treat. Neurotoxic Shellfish Poisoning. Amnesiac Shellfish Poisoning. Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning. They're pretty self explanatory. This happens when bottom feeding shellfish dine on toxic algae. Cooking, freezing, etc. doesn't prevent this. This freaks me out a little. Do you have any idea how much I love mussels?

Anasakis is a parasite you get from raw or undercooked fish. It has two symptoms. A tingling in the throat. Coughing up worms. Let me give you a minute to reread that. Coughing. Up. Worms. I've actually seen this in halibut I ordered years ago in a restaurant where I worked. I didn't know what it was, but I knew I wasn't going to serve this halibut to my guests for $25 a plate. (I sent it back) They are little round, pinky-yellow worms that make you cough up more worms.

I still have a few more flash cards, but I think you get my point. Cooking at home, being vegetarian, buying organic, none of this makes you immune. Heat and cool your food correctly. Wash your hands. Cover your hair. Wash your gadgets and cutting boards thoroughly. Buy food from stores you trust. Don't buy clams from some toothless redneck selling them from the back of his rusty 1974 Ford pickup. Ask your meat and fish guy where their products come from. This helps prevent foodborne illness. Burying your head in the sand because diarrhea is icky is bad.

This class that I previously thought was going to be lame will be one of the most useful I will take in culinary school. This is really good information. I'm still nervous about my test on Tuesday, but I'm feeling better about it. If you want to do more reading on the subject, here's a link to the CDC's page.

Baking I Lab, biscuits, coffee cake, and muffins.

Last week in Baking I, we had three assignments. Our current lesson was on Quick Breads, so we made biscuits, muffins and a sour cream coffee cake.

My biscuits rose higher than anyone else's. Mine were a little saltier too. My instructor gave me high praise saying mine were better than her's.


Blueberry muffins, where the frozen blueberries sank in spite of having been dusted with flour. Still tasty anyway.


Sour cream coffee cake. My streusel topping wasn't very good. Okay, it kind of sucks. My butter was way too soft. Lesson learned.