I picked my first 4 Red Cherry tomato’s tonight….here’s our garden in the backyard…we built the boxes to hold it all and used compost, manure and soil to plant.

So today, we started the mayo race competition.  Basically you make mayo as fast as you can….but the issue is that it’s egg yolk, lemon juice, mustard powder and oil….and it can all break at any point….and the record is 20 seconds….

So Paula went today against Andy….and Paula kicked butt….photo below.  The other photo is my shrimp dish with lentil salad and my wine gastrique sauce.  Oh and Alex looking in the screen door for her ball and mommy.  With Lisa gone, Alex has to get up and eat breakfast and go potty with mommy at 5:30 am and she does not like it.  So when I get home at 1:00 pm, she’s ready to play ball all afternoon.

Ah….Tuna….god do I love it so.  Raw….that’s the only way to eat a good piece of tuna.  So today we had to do Shitake Salad that would be plated with Tuna Carpaccio and then Seared Tuna.  We all had to bring in a spice rub recipe for the seared piece and I used my favorite rub which i’ll put up on my recipe section.

Here’s the resulting product: (my pastry and baking pal Sarah got to indulge in these dishes! I get pastry and desserts in return…)

So we have Summer Break Aug. 11-15 week and I’m finally going to head back home to Illinois.  I grew up in Belleville, a somewhat suburb of St. Louis, only on the Illinois side.  My parents relocated to Smithton, IL to build their dream house and it’s an amazing house to say the least.  My dad’s birthday, as is my sister’s, is August 15, so I’m going to cater a birthday party for my dad at the house with my relatives.  I’m also hoping my best friend since college, Stacy, comes down to see me.  I haven’t seen her since i met her in LA for something that I really could have done without, her brain surgery, but that’s a whole different blog.  But nonetheless, she’s one of my favorite people in this world that I can’t live without and it’s been to long so she needs to come down to see me, since she’s in Chicago anyway!  And I know she would love to post pictures here of us in college when she used to put my hair in pig tails with Barbie pigtail holders….

We started today with working on plating.  We practiced during demo hour with plating 2 versions of a fruit and cheese plate.  It was interesting to see all the different ways people can plate strawberries, grapes, brie, chedder and bread.

When we got to the kitchen, we had to do 2 versions of Grilled Pineapple, Jicama, Red Onion salad, and 2 versions of the Roasted Beet Salad with Gorgonzola.  Here were mine: The first one I did the Jicama kind of framing the main piece, which was the pineapple.  The 2nd one, the jicama and onion were all sorted on top of 1 pineapple sliced in half and place to give height.  In the 1st beet salad, the main piece was the round yellow beet with small dice of yellow and red beet on top.  In the 2nd one, I plated 2 each of the red and yellow beets in the middle, surrounded by the Mache greens and then the medium dice of the red and yellow were stacked around.  I was channeling my LEGO days, but it looked cool.  All the little cubes were situated in random ways and some on top of others, kind of off balance if you will.  Again, it looked cool!

Today we also had our first fundraiser for Charcuterie Club, which I’m in.  We made pulled pork sando’s, potato salad, coleslaw, blackeyed peas (Coco you would have loved it) with rice and Jeff made a FABU creamed corn.  We sold plates in the student lounge at noon for 5 bucks a piece.  Obviously we sold a ton because MAN are culinary students hungry.  We’ve decided to do it again tomorrow because we have some left and they’ll go all out tomorrow.  We got a lot of compliments that the food was amazing.  I can’t take credit for the food because they prepped it in club last week when I was in the Thai Class, but I sold the crap out of them on the admin floor!

Well, Philip and I didn’t win the trip to Thailand, but we had an impressive showing, as did all 10 teams.  We all accomplished a lot in just 3 days of instruction and 2 demo’s.  We all had to do Pad Thai exactly as was demo’d.  Amy and Stephanie, 2 fellow students who are almost done with their schooling, won the trip to Thailand.  Of course we were bummed, but being newbies in the culinary world, I think we did well.  Our chef instructors from school were very proud of all of us.  

I know, Yes….and that’s my pal in culinary school’s name….Yes Serious….so not kidding, and the coolest guy and he told me today that I needed to update my blog.

I’m exhausted this week with Thai class and my regular Garde Manger class so here’s a quicky but I wanted to post a pic of what I made today, which turned out awesome and looks cool.  It’s a crab and Avocado salad….

Today we started the process of making head cheese.  What’s head cheese you ask?  Well, it’s LITERALLY made from Pig Head.  First, you put the heads cut in half into duck stock with a little chicken stock.  Then you simmer for about 3 hours.  (see photo of the pig snout poking out of the stock)  This picture was not taken today but there are some from today that will be forthcoming once I get them.  I know you’re excited to see those! This was the last class and Chef Russ showed me this on his computer and I had to have it to share with y’all. Enjoy! And at least you don’t have to eat the head cheese tomorrow like I do.

This week didn’t quite start out that well.  I actually missed my first 2 days of school so far and I wasn’t happy about it.  We had gone down to Eugene for the weekend to the Oregon Country Fair and I came back on Sunday feeling dizzy and nauseaous (how the hell do you spell that word?)  Anyway, I was that way for 2 days and finally went back to class today, Wednesday.  And of course what do we do first thing this morning?  We get the demo on offals….what are offals you ask?  Oh, they are the kidney, liver, heart, brain, stomach lining of beef, pork and lamb.  And if that wasn’t enough on coming off an upset tummy, THEN we got to make Blood Sausage.  Yep, good ole blood sausage just like the English like it.  Which reminds me to ask my pal Cate who’s from Manchester if she likes it.  We get to cook it up tomorrow for breakfast….YEAH CAN’T WAIT!!!

The good thing is that I got caught up on most of my cuts today.  I got to work on a full loin of the pig and break it down into the ribs, short ribs, sirloin, full loin and the tenderloin.  And then I did a rack of lamb.  The only thing I can’t do for another 3 weeks is the ham, which I’ll go and do with him in open lab in the 3 week of the next cycle of classes.

We had the foie gras demo as well today.  For anyone that doesn’t know that that is, it’s the fattened liver of the duck.  And they literally force feed ducks to increase their liver size.  There are only 2 regions in the US that produces foie gras.  One is in Sonoma Valley, CA and the other is in the Hudson Valley out in NY.  I have had foie gras numerous times at really nice restaurants in San Francisco and it is quite tasty if it’s prepared properly.  But again, what a day back after not feeling well for 2 days….right?

We only have 2 more days of this class and we’re done.  Tomorrow I think we are working with the pig head and breaking down rabbit.  Then we’re going to cook the blood sausage and prepare for our finals on Friday.  We have a big written final, a product ID of everything we’ve taken apart from seafood to poultry to beef and then we have to spit shine the kitchen so it’s ready for the next class on Monday.  Oh and we’re cooking up our homemade BACON (be jealous Billie and Maggie and KLynch) and making up a big breakfast.

Next Monday I think I start American Regional Cuisine and next week is also the start of the Thai class in the afternoon.  Next Friday is when we find out who gets to go to Thailand to study there for a week!!!  Wish me luck…

Coming off the win in the Hot Wings Competition, I was sidelined with a shoulder of beef.  Chef Russ demonstrated how to cut down a shoulder of beef into 3 parts:  the shoulder tender, the flat iron (flat iron steak on a menu i have had numerous times at HOME restaurant in San Francisco) and the Shoulder center.   In groups of 3 were were given this big piece of meat.  I asked my group if I could do the flat iron, as Chef said “it’s the hardest to cut but it’s the 2nd most tender part of the whole carcass.”  Of course I wanted to do the hardest cut.

So when it came my turn to cut down this flat iron piece, I couldn’t get my bearings on this big slab.  I could see what it was suppossed to be, but what I had in my hands just wasn’t connecting with my brain.  Finally I got it to the point where I could half it between the elastin that creates the 2 pieces.  In a perfect world,  you should be able to take your knife along this fat and cut this slab perfectly in half.  Well…ya, that didn’t happen on my first stab at it.  I called Chef over….he laughed, I laughed….”I butchered it, so to speak”….and he agreed.  I totally missed the elastin on one side of the cut.  But I also realized that I can’t do it with my boning knife on that part.  It’s all about getting comfy with your knives and I think i would have done a better job halving it with my chef knife….the big 9″ one.  My boning knife didn’t fit the width of the cut of beef.  But no excuses and next time I’ll find that elastin and get that thing in half like I should!

Tomorrow morning we actually get to take a field trip to a meat processing plant.  We have to be there at 7 and who knows what all we’ll see, but it should be cool.

Oh and the funny thing this morning….we had our first beef lecture from 7-8:30 am and Chef Russ was talking about the cuts, how to make things, how pastrami is made, etc…..and what did Justin and I do?  At 8:30 am we ran over across the street to Big Town Hero and got a hot pastrami sandwich….I offered some to Chef but he had to demo the carcass…..so as we were cutting what would become pastrami, I was eating one….is that wrong?  I didn’t think so at the time but now looking back it makes me laugh.  Here’s this slab of meat that we then made the brine for, that we’re going to brine tomorrow and inject with the brine…..and then it’s going to sit over the weekend.  By Tuesday of next week, i’ll be making my own pastrami sandwich.  

I had to….mama was hungry! 

(Hi Mary….i’m coming home to Illinois Aug. 8-16….warn Tommy)