Monday, the longest day, or Why haven't I made pita bread before???

My semester began on Wednesday January 6th, but because of the holiday, I just had my Monday classes for a second time yesterday. It's been a little hard to get in the groove of a new semester so far, partially because we had a holiday but also, I think, because i only have classes two days a week. It's also a little weird because it definitely doesn't feel like school.

I have two classes on Mondays. The day is a little longer than my Wednesday, but I have a break in the afternoon. I started the day with Cake Design and Decorating. Two weeks ago, we had to bake two types of cakes with which we will practice decorating for the first part of the semester. We used the same ingredients and measurements but two different mixing methods. The first was the creaming method, which most people know, especially if you'd ever made a pound cake before. You cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs, then alternate the dry ingredients and wet ingredients. This makes a nice dense cake that holds up well to the weight of a large cake. The other method was the Two Stage Method. I was not familiar with this, but I like it. You add the dry ingredients, the sugar, butter, and a little of the liquid (in this case the milk and eggs combined). You mix until fluffy then add the liquid in two stages... hence the name! It makes a lighter, fluffier cake.

This week, we split and filled the cakes and iced them. We practiced border decorations and writing. While it's not Cake Wrecks material, it wasn't fabulous either. I need to practice getting my icing more smooth on the sides. The top was pretty smooth though. That's much easier. This week, my homework will be to bake a cake, make buttercream, and practice piping. Pretty crazy homework, huh?

Here's my cake:

Monday afternoon and evenings are occupied by Artisan Breads. Best. Class. Ever. This is, as I expected, my favorite class. The subject mater is great, the instructor is great, my classmates are AWESOME! My lab only has 6 people in it. It's a nice size. Everyone is really interested in learning, working and teamwork. Our text is The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. Last week we made a white pan bread and a light wheat. The white bread was good, but the light wheat was fantastic. This week, we made french baguettes with a preferment called pate fermentee and pita bread. Both breads were great, but the pita was unbelieveable. It was so easy to make and a super-speedy bake. They puff up like little pillows then slowly deflate. The bread is soft and chewy. If you have any interest in baking bread at home, I'd suggest getting a copy of this book and also trying the pita at home.

Go here if you'd like to see photos of our bread from this week and last.

This is how I started my day.

Be back tomorrow with more details!

Babushka! Babushka!, A Veselka Dinner.

New York City is home to a Ukrainian restaurant called Veselka. The New York Times had an article about Veselka the other day. This restaurant also happens to be a favorite of my friend, M, who lived in New York City for a while. He was recently given the Veselka cookbook. Somehow several of us came up with the idea to have a big dinner party using recipes from this book. Last night, my friends and I celebrated Ukrainian Christmas Eve. Have I mentioned how lucky I am to have friends that can cook? Assignments and recipes went out by email last week. I was assigned borscht. It's a special meatless beet broth in which mushroom dumplings are added. R & E were assigned the dumplings. It was agreed that Team Borscht did a smashing job!

The cookbook has information on the history of Ukrainian Christmas Eve and also included the order of the courses. We began with this little dish of wheatberries, honey, poppy seeds and toasted walnuts. It was pretty good. Wheatberries have an odd texture, chewy, springy and crunchy all rolled into one. Up next was Team Borscht. For those who don't know, I'm half Polish. Therefore I prefer a Polish borscht, hearty, chunky, a wee bit tart with lots of dill and sour cream. This was essentially a beet consomme seasoned with vinegar, sugar and allspice. It's a little sweet and sour. After a few bites, I got more used to the taste. It was especially good with the dumplings.

Course One:


The wheatberry poppy seed dish, kutya, traditionally served as the first and last courses. Since we had SO MUCH food, it was the first course only.


Borscht with vushka, mushroom filled dumplings. Very pretty!


I have to admit that by this point, I was getting full. We still had a ton of food. Oof. We moved on to the cabbage leaves stuffed with kasha and topped with tomato sauce, potato and onion pierogi, sauerkraut and peas, and mushrooms. We also had a couple loaves of challah.

My plate, clockwise from top right: sauerkraut with peas, kasha holubtsi, simmered mushrooms, pierogi with sour cream (I had to cheat on the no-dairy thing, sorry.) and a bit of challah.


The challah



Our final course was the uzvar, a dried fruit compote. My tummy was officially at critical mass by this point, so I had a few bites. I also brought some home to put on oatmeal. It was awesome. It tasted like Christmas.


Dinner was amazing. I think i actually have a food hangover this morning and may possibly still be too stuffed to drink my coffee. With any luck, my friends and I will make this a regular thing, with a different country each time (hint hint).

Ring in the New Year with possums, nuts and weiner cobbler!

I know you all are dying to know what I did on New Years Eve. I know you are. My friends, R & E, live in a pretty rad condo in the heart of Raleigh. They also happen to be a block from where we drop The Acorn and shoot off fireworks. Yes, my friends, my city drops a giant nut each year. Squirrel food if you will. We drop a giant piece of squirrel food to ring in the new year. Could be worse, I suppose. Mount Olive, NC drops a pickle. They make pickles there, you see. Or it could be way worse than that. We could be Brasstown, NC, the alleged Possum Capital Of The World where they drop a LIVE possum and count down to the new year on the Possumtron. If only I could make this up!

This year the party theme was retro food. We had cocktail weenies in sauce, meatballs, a chicken liver pate, slices of pickles wrapped in cream cheese and ham. I brought cream puffs full of butter, smoked salmon and dill, recipe courtesy of my grandmother's cookbook. We had wine, beer, brandy slushies, and some peppermint stick cocktail thingy. And then there was weiner cobbler. Think about it. Weiner. Cobbler.

A visual aid.

Here's how I remember the recipe as told to me:
1 package of turkey cocktail weenies, wrapped in crescent rolls, covered with a mixture of brown sugar, maple syrup, toped with sliced almonds and baked.

All I can say is that it's delightfully weird.

Choose your weapon!

I thought you would be interested to see the tools I need for school.


In this first photo, left to right, top to bottom:
-Digital scale, peeler on top of scale, pastry blender, 4 pastry bags in 4 sizes plus a few disposable pastry bags
-Bench scraper, bowl scraper, balloon whisk, 2 pastry tip cleaning brushes, measuring cups, measuring spoons, pastry wheel with fluted side and plain side, cake icing comb, kitchen shears
-Channel knife, zester, 3 sizes melon ballers, set of pastry tips, set of large closed star tips, set of large plain pastry tips, Bismark 230 pastry tip (the long one), a couple random pastry tips, plastic couplers, retractable Sharpie, Instant Read thermometer, and pen

The balloon whisk is very helpful for folding in stuff. I finally found the pastry tip cleaning brushes! A channel knife makes the long curls of lemon peel that you find in your Cosmo. The Bismark 230 pastry tip is for filling stuff like eclairs or cupcakes. I've been looking for one for a while. I'm required to have the pen, Sharpie and thermometer on me at all times. Along with a small notebook, it's considered part of my uniform.


Left to right:
Honing steel, small offset spatula, medium spatula, large offset spatula, large spatula, Microplane, bird's beak paring knife (also called touree knife), paring knife, 5.5" utility knife, boning knife, 6" chef's knife, 8" chef's knife, 12" bakers knife

The spatulas will be used in cake decorating the most. The bird's beak paring knife cuts those football shaped potato thingies. The utility knife will be used most in garde manger this semester to cut things like birds out of apples. I really like the 6" chef knife when I'm cutting small things like herbs and fruit. I got the baker's knife for Christmas. I learned the hard way today that BOTH sides of the blades are sharp. One side is serrated, which I knew about. The other side is just a straight blade. I have a big gash across my palm. Oops. Better I do that now than in class and look like an idiot. The serrated side is for cutting airy things like cakes, while the straight side is for cutting dense things like pound cakes.

Yes, I like red. What of it?

Here they are all packed up and ready to go! I have to carry this to my labs. The bag is getting heavy!

Merry Christmas!

I leave you with a video from the best Christmas album ever produced.

Christmas meme

Christmas meme
Borrowed from S over at No Tea For You.

Eggnog or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate before bed, but eggnog in my coffee. Of course, we have a local dairy, Maple View Farms, that makes an eggnog thicker than alfredo sauce. It's wicked good with Mount Gay Sugar Cane Brandy.

Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? No offense to anyone but I've never understood this. Wrapped!!! Santa wraps his presents!!! (In our house, Santa uses a different wrapping paper than the rest of us.)

Colored lights on a tree or white? I like white lights on a tree, otherwise I think they compete with the ornaments.

Do you hang mistletoe? Never.

When do you put your decorations up? Since I've lived on my own, I've lived with cats. Lots of cats. The one year I tried to put up a small tree, we found ornaments all over the house for weeks afterwards. I don't decorate, especially since I have my circus freak Elvis Who Eats The Un-Eatable now. My family puts the tree and decorations up after Thanksgiving.

What is your favorite holiday dish? Christmas Eve dinner is big fat steaks, twice baked potatoes, veggies, the works. So good.

Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Every year my dad makes this big show of how we're going to open one present an hour on Christmas day. We open presents after dinner on Christmas Eve. I like it because it leaves us free to do nothing on Christmas day, or hang out, watch football, etc.

How do you decorate your Christmas tree? I have a ton ornaments, some homemade, some with significance.

Snow: love it or hate it? I LOVE SNOW!

Can you ice skate? I'm no Oksana Baiul, but I do okay.

What is your favorite holiday dessert? I can't really choose just one.

What is your favorite holiday tradition? Christmas Eve dinner is probably up there.

Candy canes: yum or yuck? I prefer the fruity flavored ones. I'm not a fan of peppermint hard candy.

Favorite Christmas show? I haven't watched a Christmas show since I was a kid. It's a Wonderful Life is one of my favorite movies and I watch it every year. I also LOVE Elf.

Wishing you all a happy holiday! See you soon!

Oprah hates me.

I had a dream the other night that Oprah taught my Safety and Sanitation class this past semester. She gave me an A. In my dream, my instructor for Basic Culinary Skills taught the other 3 classes I took. When it got to be time for Chef H to turn in my grades for those classes, he got really busy. Oprah offered to help out. At the last minute, she went through all of my grades (tests, quizzes, homework, etc) and changed my grades from As in those classes to Cs and Ds!

What do you think this means????

Oh the cuteness!!!!

Gingerbread houses that perch on the edge of your mug! Can you stand it? I am SO making these for next year's cookie swap!

I thought you'd like to see what I've been cooking up!

Orange Tropical Punch Grey Poupon Socks! Yummy!

Okay, seriously....

I knit a pair of socks and decided I hated the color. So I dyed them. With Kool Aid. In the crock pot. Neat-o, huh? They went from a Grey Poupon dijon color to a fiery reddish orange. And they smell good too! Go here if you want to read more.