KateW

I did look at books, I read online, I looked for magazines, found *one* pastry magazine that didn't help me at all. I watched the pastry competition on food network. Amazing stuff but I couldn't help but think, what a waste! Especially when the guy dropped the thing he'd just been working on for 3 days. And none of it helped me with a la minute desserts... I cannot find anything about a la minute desserts besides the old crepes suzette and bananas foster routine. I'm not sure what you were trying to lead me to besides a suggestion to look inside my own mind and yet outside the box. Trust me, I've been searching myself and outside boxes for two weeks. We're getting down to the wire here and I thought you all might have some good ideas. I saw the post about zilla being a pastry chef and someone cut and pasted a dessert menu from a restaurant to her for ideas. I am offended by this for two reasons--one, how is that helping her become creative, as you have so pressed me to do, and two, why can't you be so forgiving with me? I think the word "original" has lost its meaning. No matter what I do it will be a spinoff of something else. Me being "about 20" is almost right. I'm 24.

Well, I guess I'm sorry I asked. Instead of getting ideas I'm getting yelled at for the very thing I *said* was overdone and a bad idea. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think a warm cake with a cold cream indicates something created at the very last second. I could very well heat up a cold cake and pull some chilled cream out of the reach in and call it a la minute but that's sort of cheating, isn't it? The idea of this project is not to wow her with some desserts that have never been done before. We haven't learned the first thing about creating original desserts. We are doing classical recipes and learning how to plate them with the necessary components for a dessert. I think she wants to see what we have learned, not what we can pull out of our ass. Could someone just post a nice photo of crepes suzette so I can draw the damn thing? I think I don't like this class because it's all about plate presentation and balancing things precariously and making it look gorgeous for about 2.5 seconds before the customer drives his fork through it...what a waste. The whole thing just makes me mad. It's sort of the same in savory foods but not quite so elaborate. And things don't BREAK so easily in savory food. I'm not saying I want to put less effort into desserts but I'm just saying I have less of an imagination for it because I am inclined to do simple things. And I just know a bunch of people are going to pull a dessert menu straight off some webpage and get a 100 for it. That pisses me off when I am wracking my brain to come up with things and not getting anything.

Ok, I know next to nothing about plating desserts? Or maybe I'm just trying to be modest? I definitely know more than I knew a week and a half ago when I started this class. Which means I know more than the average person... Ok so I know some pretty good stuff. Yeah I know it's not really fish, but that is what comes to mind when you say sashimi, no? I'll add to this later..time to make dinner.

Tuna in oil, drained and flaked up pretty well and mixed with Hellman's (I usually like quite a bit). Recently started adding capers....and then some kosher flake sea salt to boot. Hey, I make up for my distaste for sweets with a preference for salt. Sometimes this is as far as I get and I eat it out of the bowl maybe with some stoned wheat thins. Other times I like to take some good sourdough bread or something, add a slice or two of Muenster or Cheddar, a slice of tomato if they're good, and make a tuna melt. Damn, my mouth is watering thinking about it. I used to make really ghetto tuna melts, thanks to my fiance. His miracle whip, his american cheese slices, his wonder bread, and the chunk lite tuna he picked up by accident one day (hey, he meant well) and I was all set to start posting at the white trash food thread. But I have rectified that long ago.

Well, I think "advanced pastry" is a misnomer; I'm a culinary major and I know next to nothing about desserts. Last year we had basic baking--croissants, rolls, brownies, etc. This year it's all about members of the creme anglaise family and how to plate desserts like that, using a sauce, garnish and crunch component. Chefette the sashimi sounds intriguing but is that a last minute, hot dessert? And I'm not sure if something alluding to raw fish would really tempt me when dessert time rolls around. Edit: Probably old school also, but how about something like cheese blintzes made tableside with a choice of fruit topping...and a sauce and crunch type thing...OH STOP YAWNING

Well I have to write a dessert menu as part of the project for this advanced pastry class and I'm pretty happy with it all except the one that is supposed to be hot and made at the last minute. I had crepes suzette (yawn). The problem with this is that I also have to draw it and while I'm somewhat familiar with it I don't know how to draw it and photographs of it online are scarce. I also have a feeling everyone else in the class is going to pick crepes suzette. So, what else can I do? No, I do not have to make it...simply write up a description, with a price, and draw a picture.

I've been reading this topic for the past few days because I'm currently in my advanced desserts class at school. We made truffles the other day and they came out great. I'm noticing that there are different ratios for different types of chocolate--2:1 for dark chocolate, 2.5:1 for milk chocolate and 3:1 for white chocolate. We pour the scalded cream over the chocolate and whisk. We only let it sit in the walk in for a couple hours and it was hard enough. (we made 3 lbs. total mixture) We didn't add any butter. The milk chocolate was 33% cocoa butter, the people making the dark chocolate ones were using 52%. I don't know what the white was. Also we melted some extra of whatever chocolate we were using and double layer coated the truffles with it. Like I said, they came out really well.

I'm looking forward to being able to cook all day, I really want to get a crock pot or something and make stews and soups. But I will miss tomatoes

Whenever we used to go out to eat when I was little, my parents would bring a baggie of Cheerios and order me a Shirley Temple and I'd be happy for hours. Especially if the drink came with one of those garnish swords and then I would stack Cheerios on it and eat them one by one.

Boiled some store bought fresh (oxymoron? but you know what I mean, it wasn't dried) angelhair. Cut a tuna steak into chunks, sauteed it with some capers, Greek olive tapenade, garlic and olive oil. At first I just put that on top of the pasta, but the pasta came out kind of bland, so for my second helping I reheated it all together on the stove with the pasta and a little more tapenade. In the end it came out a little too oily because I had coated the cooked pasta in oil and also cooked the topping in oil. Oh, and I topped it with breadcrumbs. Alas, I forgot I could have taken a picture with my fairly new webcam, but now it is all gone. I know it would have been better with whole olives but I'm trying to use up this tapenade (from Sid Wainer). The recipe is derived from a recipe in Pasta Fresca, but I don't have the cookbook, my mom does, so I had to improvise. It came out pretty well. I'm home alone this weekend so I didn't have to subject the fiance to my creation. Already I'm thinking of ways it could have been better. But hey my mouth is watering just remembering it, so it couldn't have been that bad.

My mom doesn't really even understand the concept of message boards ('What's a thread?') nor does she know about this site, nor does she know how to use google or any search engine to search for things. I'm not really worried.

My mom used to feel bad if my dad and I didn't compliment her cooking, so I got used to saying "This is good!" after the first couple bites or so, and it usually was good... but now I carry on that expectation when I cook, and I look at my fiance expectantly when he takes a bite of something, and he isn't one to give compliments. Problem is, he'll eat anything agreeably as long as it isn't underdone or really horribly wrong, so I never know what he thinks unless he *really* likes it, and then he'll usually say, "Well, you've outdone yourself!" or something like that.

Get laid? Yeah, re: SuzanneF's comment that going out to eat is not an attempt to make friends, or have a one night stand. Guess you missed that one.

I never even thought about the possibility of fake names. A lot of people in the kitchen at Ruby Tuesday went by nicknames, but I knew their real names...or what I thought was their real names... I wonder if the waiters' names were fake. Hmm...I feel cheated somehow. I personally think it's redundant when waiters say "Hi my name is ___ and I'll be your server tonight"...no way, I thought you were stopping by with an order pad for the fun of it. But I do like it when they say their name. Not because I want to make a friend or get laid, but because it just makes me feel more comfortable.

I've heard some very strong opinions from people who hate it when the server comes up and introduces themselves. It's almost like some people don't want to think of servers as people. I happen to like it when I know my server's name, not that I would ever call across the room, "Hey, Amy! Get me some water!" or anything, but I like having a somewhat personal experience when I go to a restaurant, not just some robot giving me my food and asking if I want grated cheese on that. How do you feel about it, and why?

Woops, realized this thread is about what we *cooked*...hehe. Well I shall start posting what I made in class, even if it is just a tomato and mozzerella salad :)

Hey, now that I'm at school I can post the interesting things they serve us in the dining room! :) At 5:45, half our class goes to the student-run dining room to eat the food from the classes that day. Depending where you sit you either get International cuisine (the class I am in now) or French. Thursday: first time (and only time so far) I've eaten in the dining room. Four of us sat at a table in the French section. The waitress, a Korean native, came over and painstakingly pronounced the whole menu in French, and then realized it was a set menu. First, we got a cream of asparagus soup. Very good, but not totally pureed and had some small bits of asparagus in it still. I prefer my cream soups totally smooth. Next was an endive and mixed greens salad with what seemed to be a yogurt dressing, not too flavorful. "It tastes like pool water" someone at my table commented and I could see their point. Next, what seemed to be little potato pancakes, they looked like scallops at first but were not. Also very bland. This came with a sauce that seemed like a buerre blanc with a hint of lemon. Next, sweetbreads. I'm pretty sure I've had them before but couldn't remember what they were like. They weren't bad...had a sort of chicken texture to begin with and then gave way to a mushier mouthfeel. I know what they are, thought about what they are while I ate them, and it didn't bother me. We also got an ounce of white wine (that is how much they are allowed to serve) which I believe was Sauvignon Blanc. It was quite acidic. We don't get very good white wines at the school, in my experience. It took the dining room too long to serve dinner, because they do some tableside cooking, so we did not get dessert. I prefer eating in our own kitchen classroom because we get so much more variety and we also get to taste what we cooked! But it's a lot of fun to sit down and relax in the dining room, too.

re: the grabbing hot pan handles, I always drape something over the handle of something that is hot. a rag will do. just make sure its dry or there is a whole new set of accidents :)

Let's see, store bought anything seems to be a no-no, but I haven't mastered jellies or peanut butter or pasta sauce...so sue me. Also we have white bread, frozen meals, and usually hamburger/chicken helper or some sort of old el paso taco or nacho kit or whatever. Let's not forget the soda and Bud. Oh wait, we're out of those. But usually...

Wow, that is nice. I can't even begin to dream of that stuff...

I just got back from visiting mom for a couple days. Had to use the dreaded salad spinner for drying parsley and for some reason I was doing it wrong (in her mind), and mom was criticizing me, so I said, "Do you want to do it?" and she said "No", but I think she thought I was asking her seriously. I said "Ok then" and I think she still didn't get it. We made meatloaf, or rather she handed me the measured out ingredients and I combined them. While I was dicing mushrooms she said "Those mushrooms have to be really small", and I said "Oh, smaller than this?" (about a 1/4 dice) and she came over and said "Oh, that's fine." She hadn't even looked before she said anything! The meatloaf turned out well. We had leftover mashed potatoes and I had some carrot sticks. Her knives were reasonably sharp this time.

Ok, so the store bought veggie burgers are gross. Are they gross because they're pre-made, or are they gross because the stuff they're made from is gross? I guess what I mean is, is it like the difference between store bought mac and cheese and home made mac and cheese? Could you make a good veggie burger at home not using TVP? There's got to be a way.

My now-fiance bought a knife set and block for mom for her birthday without telling me and I cringed when he told me, like the day before we were going up there to celebrate. My mom has had the same knife set forever and she keeps it on a magnet that's mounted to a wall, which makes my skin crawl especially when I have to take a knife off or put it back. I think she uses the new ones too though. Maybe she puts them away when we aren't there

My mom is a really good cook in my opinion. She has taken lots of classes with some well known chefs and has been to cooking school. She never cuts any corners or uses white bread or margarine or fake mayo or fake cheese, and one entire cupboard is devoted to dried herbs and spices. Even though I too am going to school she assumes I know nothing. "Wash those vegetables before you peel them" "Don't forget to clean up after yourself" "Why are you doing it that way?" "I think those need to cook some more" *grabs the spatula from me and takes over* So um, why does she ask me to do something if she always thinks her way is better? Oh, I get it...she wants me to do it, but she wants me to do it her way. She is pretty good with having appropriate cookware and everything but does not sharpen her knives. She always asks me why I want to bring my own knives when I come over. "Because they're sharp" I say. Recently she did sharpen her knives before I came over and it was much better. I could actually cut through parsley. And then she always says "I love cooking with you...it's so much fun" and I have to nod through the tears...

At home, I salt things without tasting them because I made it and I know what it tastes like and if that particular dish needs more salt. I don't just add more salt to the dish because my fiance doesn't like really salty things. But I do. Which leads me to admit that I put soy sauce on white rice, because I like it that way. In the Japanese restaurants I frequent, I don't think the purpose of the sushi is to flavor the rice. You get your big plate of sushi, which already has plain rice, and a big bowl of plain rice comes with it...what would you suggest I do with it? Order some chicken teriyaki just so I can flavor the rice with something? Nah...I flavor my rice with soy sauce I also really like couscous with soy sauce on it. The instant couscous.