Day Nine

Wow what a day. Some of us in class who had to go to the president’s orientation spent a lot of time playing catch up today. We made more tart dough using similar methods we had before, we formed tarts. We also put the finishing touches on a lot of tarts, which involved putting fruit on them and Italian meringue.

Italian meringue is a cooked meringue and is made by heating sugar and water to a syrup and pouring it into egg whites and sugar that have been whipped to a soft peek. Continue to whisk in a Kitchen Aid until it is thick and silky. The heat from the syrup cooks the egg white as it whisks. We piped the meringue on top of the tarts and then took a propane torch to them to brown the tops. We also made tarts topped with that orange cream stuff we made a few days ago, we put sugar on top of those and passed the torch over it to give it a caramelized look and flavor.

We started on some other tarts that I was going to tell you about but it is late and my mother insists that I wrap this up and stop making so much noise, I don’t know what she means by that because I am just sitting on a chair typing, but apparently it’s noisy.

I will try and type more tomorrow and answer some of the questions that have been asked. Till then.

Day Eight

To day at school I got to go to the president’s orientation. 3 hours of listening to Allen LeNotre talk on about a billion subjects and throw out so much information it was hard to get it all down. Here are the highlights.

First we all went around and said who we were, where we were from, and what we wanted to do after school. There were a lot of restaurants, bakeries, and what not. I said I want to get into artisan bread, at which LeNotre said that in July a new instructor was coming who was like a bread god. Now Mr. LeNotre was kind of hard to hear, and had a strong accent, but I think he said this guy just finished a ten year study during which he lived like a monk. What’s that all about and how do I get in? When he had written them all down he added some, like country clubs and food writer. Food writer sounds fun. He then said that those things on the list were Niches, and that we all needed to find our niche.

Next he said we needed to find an idol, I was thinking Indiana Jones type of finding idols, but he meant a successful chef from our niche who we could use for inspiration.

Then he went on to talk about tools. He pulled several books and magazines that we should start reading. One was RESTAURANT STARTUP & GROWTH Magazine, and another was Leadership Lessons from a Chef: Finding Time to Be Great by Charles Carroll. He also talked about the recourse center at school and how we need to learn to use, wait for it, GAIL. That’s right, this school has GAIL.

He talked about how we need to practice at home; it will make us better and make our friends and family love us more. Then he talked about putting together a port folio of the great things we make, competitions pieces, awards, and letters of commendation. He said it is a great way to get a job and remember your achievements.

Then he turned to ethics, which was a long lecture about that Charles Carroll guy we mentioned earlier and he made us write down a quote from him. “Complete every job better then it was expected.” He wrapped up by talking about excellences and respect and then sent us on our ways.

There was a lot more covered in there but that’s what I got from my notes.

Went back to class where I worked on my tart dough from the day before, I was much better at it today but still not great. Then we made lemon cream. It was made by heating lemon juice and zests in a pot then tampering it into some egg yoke and sugar, and then heating it back up again whisking the whole time. When it comes off it gets a gelatin sheet that was soften in ice water and some butter. When all the butter is melted cool it down in an ice bath and put it in the fridge. It was really tasty too, just saying. Then we took some of our tart dough which we had formed into rings and covered them with plastic wrap, then filled the plastic wrap with beans and baked the tarts. Why fill them with beans you ask? Well it’s to keep the bottom of the tart from bubbling up while it cooks. The rest of the class had already done this because they did not have to go to orientation today so they started on Italian meringue and finished some of their tarts. I will finish mine on Thursday.

Dinner tonight was wonderful, we brought tarts, and another class brought hamburger filled puff pastry that was served with a compound butter cheese pimento sauce. There was chicken and piped baked potatoes, along with some cabbage wrapped steamed things and some salad. Also there was a giant platter of potato chips a class had made; they were so good I had a hard time stopping eating them. Well it’s late, I gots a headache, and just took a sleeping pill. See you later.

Day Seven

So tonight was an interesting night. It started with massive traffic on 59 resulting in me getting to school with only 10 minutes to spare. This is the reason I leave and hour and half early. Get to school and remember that we are supposed to have new partners in class today, who did I get? Colleen, the same Colleen who loaned me a Batman book, so I think this counts as a win. I asked her if I could put her picture up so you would know what she looks like so here it is.

Colleen, my new Lab Partner.

First chef tells us to make a Pate a Foncer, which I guess is tart dough. The butter, flour, and salt are worked together in a kitchen aid with a paddle attachment until they look like sand. Then add sugar, egg, and milk and continue to mix until it looks kind of crumbly. Then dump it out onto a floured work surface and work it together into a nice round dough ball, then smash it into a patty and wrap with plastic wrap, and toss into the freezer.

Ok so chef tells us to make Pate Sablee aux Amandes, or Almond Sugar Dough. It stars by mixing butter, salt, and powdered sugar in a kitchen aid with a paddle attachment. Then the egg, almond powder, and flour go in. then just like before, finish on a floured work surface, wrap and freeze.

Next we made Chiboust Cream; witch starts out similar to Vanilla cream. Whisk pastry cream powder, sugar and egg yoke in a bowl, and boil milk with orange zest to infuse it with flavor. Then temper the two together into a sauce which goes back on the burner to come to a boil. You must stir continuously with your whisk because as soon as it boils it thickens up to a cream, and it is a thick cream. Then take it off the heat and add in some gelatin and flavoring. Then of course whisk up some meringue and fold it in and Boom, you got your cream. We then took it over to some rings on a sheet pan and filled them right up and tossed them in the freezer to chill.

Filling rings with Chiboust Cream.

Next was Almond Cream, easiest thing of the day. Cream some butter and sugar in a kitchen Aid, add almond powder and Rum. When it looks like a moist batter scoop it out, and put it in the fridge. Man did that rum stink thou, I bet if you were to drink it you would go blind.

Next chef had us get out our firs dough and showed us how to Foncer. He said that is the technique we will always use, I looked it up, it’s the process that you line a pan with a pie dough. First roll out your dough and then lift it with your rolling pin onto a tart ring. Then lift your dough from the outside of the ring while pushing it into the corners of the inside of your ring. Then you loop part over on top, cut off the extra, and then to a neat little crimp design. Sounds easy, well it’s not, it’s hard. If the dough gets too warm it tears, if you roll it to thin it tears. Chef Rudy laughed at me and said it will be a hard week for me. Little pastry ring and big hands he said, makes it hard.

Chef putting the finishing touches on a tart dough.

The day was not without incident either. Dropped a few things, screwed up once and had to start over, and couldn’t get my tart dough to, well stop acting like a little tart. To top it off dinner was nothing but fish and I missed Rock Band at Gary’s. I really could have used a turn at singing Rebel Yell after school. Oh well, maybe next time.

Ok I just read what I wrote and it was very technical, and let’s face it, I hate writing technical. So here are some cool highlights. Chef Rudy has taken it upon himself to tease Daniel over the last few days. And some of the gals in class have taken to saying Daniel steels everything, in a joking manner of course. Daniel, being the laid back guy that he is, is ok with most of it, and even taken to claiming to have stolen a few things. There is no evidence to support his claims, and we had to let him go. Monique is one of the gals in my class and apparently made contact with a company that sells vanilla and got us all a discount. She said that we should call her Mo, or is it Moe, can girls go by Moe? Also what is up with the cuisine class cooking all this fish? No offence but fish stinks, both literally and figuratively. When are they going to cook steak, or pizza?

Day Six

Ok so first thing first. Got to school and Colleen, who I had loaned my copy of I Kill Giants to, had brought me her copy of What Ever Happened to the Caped Crusader. It is a story that is both Batman and Neil Gaiman, so it’s bound to be good.

Then chef had us whip up some Chantilly Cream, whipped cream with powder sugar and vanilla extract, for the top of rice puddings. Then we topped that with fruit and chocolate. It was the same way we finish most of what we do these days.

Finished Rice Puddings

After that we mixed fruit in a syrup and topped dozens of little cakes that the chefs had made that morning for an open house they were having tonight. Know some of you are like, Open House, Little Cakes, why didn’t I tell you about this. The reason is the open houses are for perspective students. So the whole class became a working machine as we put the finishing touches on these pastries, our first real taste of working as a team on the same thing at a time. At times it was hectic but we learned how to organize and get it done fast.

Then we prepped ingredients for Beignets. Some of you have asked me what I mean when I say prep the ingredients, well we measure them on a scale while in plastic containers. I took a picture. From the left we have egg whites, milk, yokes, yeast, oil, a combination of all purpose flour and high gluten flour, sugar and salt.

First the yeast goes in the milk and gets mixed up and tossed in a kitchen aid, then so does the flours, yokes oil and salt. They get whisked up on a high speed before going in a covered bowl to proof or rise.

While they were rising chef Sebastian went to the white board and drew us some piping designs. They were pretty complicated and we had to copy them down onto paper.

Chef Sebastien drawling piping designs

After that we whipped the egg whites and sugar and then folded it into out dough. Not an easy task mind you, but we got it there. Then it was off to a pan of hot oil to make the beignets, and as it turns out I am not that great with working with sticky dough. But we got them made.

After that we melted some chocolate and put it in small piping bags we made from parchment paper and piped the designs chef had taught us. We did it and I must say that most of us did it badly. But piping is a skill and it takes lots of practice. After the chocolate dried on our parchment paper we scrapped it off and put it back in a bowl, cleaned up and went to Thursday Night Tasting. There were all sorts of meat and sushi tonight along with 3 soups, one of which tasted like buttery asparagus, and demanded most of my attention. Also there was some lamb and some puff pastry full of forest meat, these were good too. Chef told us that when we come in Monday we have to have new partners, I wonder who I will end up with?

Day Five

Today started out kind of slow. I had to go to this other meeting were the new students were supposed to hear from the Big Boss himself but it didn’t pan out. I spent the first hour of school sitting around a table talking about classic cartoons and making fun of Daniel, my lab partner, because he had never heard of Thundercats or He-Man. After that we returned to class were all the other students who didn’t have to go to that meeting were making waffles.

Chef then showed us how to cut our Roulardes. Then we covered the ends in whipped cream and Almond, and put powdered sugar all over the top. The class filled a few trays with this and took them to the café area in time for the other class’s brakes.

My Roulardes

Then we started on Imperial Rice Pudding. It all starts with washing the rice and then cooking in for ten minutes. Then another rinse in cold water and back in the pan with some milk and sugar till the rice is done. Remember to stir the whole time. Then cool to 25 celcies in an ice bath before folding in some vanilla cream, (we make vanilla cream so much that I don’t even bother mentioning it any more) and then whipped cream. You only want to whip the cream to soft peeks for this application. Then we ladled it into little cup things and put in the fridge.

Daniel my Lab Partner ladling our rice pudding.

After that chef showed us how to turn parchment paper into piping bags, not as easy as it looks. After that it was time to clean up and have diner in the café. To my wonderment when I walked in there was a big bowl of French onion soup. Suffice it to say I had a ton. Then another class brought in their Japanese stuff they had made. Shrimp and vegetable tempura, Teriyaki meat skewers, some sort of roll, and some egg things. I had some of the veggie tempura and skewers, and rolls, not bad if I say so myself. Then I came home. Not a busy day but a fun one.

French onion Soup

Day Four

So tonight was a good night, let me tell you why. Waffles, that’s right I said Waffles. Can I get and amen? Got to class and found out that I had come to school without a hat. How can that be you ask? Well I was in a rush to get out today, no one in my class had a spare hat on them, and so it looked like I might have to buy one in the boutique. So I went to ask if I could get into the boutique, but they just loaned me a hat instead. W00T.

I get up to class and on the board is written the three recipes we needed to prepare that day; Waffles, Crepes, Sponge Cake for a Roulade. So I prepared the first two, very similar recipes prepared in a blender. First you add wet ingredients like milk eggs and butter, and then dry like flour, baking powder. The crepes had a cool thing in them, Grand Marnier. Grand Marnier is a liqueur made from a blend of true cognacs and distilled essence of bitter orange. We then cover and set aside those to rest and get started on our Sponge Cake.

The sponge cake is of course lots of egg. 50 grams yokes, 86 grams whites and 130 grams just plain egg. The whites are of course whipped up with some sugar till soft peaks, and then the rest of the eggs are mixed up with some sugar and Trimoline. What? You don’t know what Trimoline is? Well silly it is inverted sugar syrup of course. Need more of and explanation, go to Wikipedia, what do I look like, a dictionary? Trimoline is sweeter then sugar and we use it to make things Softer, Moister, and Last Longer. Chef kept saying that and all I could think of is this. What if you do not inverted sugar syrup? Use honey in the same proportions. Once this is mixed up fold in the egg whites and get ready with a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and a metal frame in it. pour it onto the sheet pan and use your off set spatula to spread it then inside the frame, then remove the frame and cook. When it comes out you have a thin layer of sponge cake on parchment paper that can be turned upside down, spread with Jam, and rolled up into a Roulard. Ours are sitting in the fridge over night, mine has blueberry jam.

Chef Ruddy putting Jam on his sponge cake.

Chef Ruddy Rolling his Cake.

My cake with Blueberry Jam.

I must admit that I burnt my cake some and did not like working with it, but I did enjoy spreading the jam, it was quite a cool technique

After that some of the class went to another kitchen to work with Chef Sebastian on Crepes while some of us stayed and mad Waffles! Chef busted out the Waffle Iron and we went to town, as much as one can go to town watching a waffle iron. It actually gave me some time to talk with some of the other students. Some of you have asked about the other students and how we get on and I am glad to say that we get on very well. We laugh and joke easily and help each other out, and no one seems to want to kill each other. Also today chef and I talked about how much we both like French Onion Soup. I said the key is to have the right amount to go with the bread and cheese you have and he said the key is to remember to ask for some more.

After that we cleaned up because it was dinner time. One of the advanced cuisine classes had made some food for dinner and we went to eat it. it turned out to be mostly fish and gelatin stuff, so I did not indulge much but the presentation was excellent. There was this orange colored sauce smattered on the plates that was amazing, see exhibit A. after that I came home watching the lighting and blown about by all the wind. When I got home I eat some Chinese food and came up stairs to type this. Oh look we caught up, better stop typing then.

Day Three

Welp, here we go, really don’t ant to type now but I guess the point is to type while it is all fresh in the mind. The day started out by making Bavarian cream. It is a lot like the vanilla cream sauce that we have been making only you add gelatin (8g) and fold in whipped cream. Then we poured that on top of the chocolate mouse already in our cakes and let them sit in the fridge.

Then we made more meringue, still the French stuff only we learned how to cook it after it is piped into a form. Usually you cook it in hot water or milk at 90 degrees Celsius, but we did it the AMERICAN WAY, in the microwave. Each one gets about 15 seconds of zapping dosed out at about five seconds at a time. Then they are allowed to set up in the fridge to become more solid.

After that we made more whipped cream and piped it onto our cakes. We put fruit and chocolate and stuff onto to make it pretty for tasting. Then bowls were filled with vanilla sauce we had made yesterday and meringue rosettes were floated in them and topped with chopped almonds.

All this was carried into the dining room where it was presented along with the food all the other classes had made. I got to try some very good sausage along with an amazing potato and leek purée. I think it was leeks, it might have been something else but it was good.

At the end of the day on Monday I would have never thought I would be getting the hang of this already, and at the end of the day next Monday I may not feel the same. But it is the end of the day Thursday and I feel pretty good about the work I did this week and the things I learned. I wish the chefs were more expressive so we could really know what they thought of us, but they only express those sentiments to each other, in the middle of class, in French.

Day Two Redux

In todays redux I will be addressing questions about the school and the programs offered asked by you, the reader. And when I say you the reader, I mostly mean Johann. The school offers two types of programs you can take, a diploma program that is all Lab work, and an associate degree program that is a combination of class work and Lab work. I am on a diploma program so I have no class work. There are still quizzes I am told and probably some tests.

Now for a history of the school and its founders; there once was no school and then came along Allen Lenotre, son of Gaston LaNotre, who was considered to be one of the best pastry chefs and caterers in the world. At lest that’s what his Wikipedia article says. There is a picture in the school of Gaston LaNotre with Sir Rodger Moore, and he was James Bond so that’s good enough for me. Long story short Allen and his wife Marie opened a school and now I go there. Want to learn more then you should look here and here.

The school has lifetime placement for its graduates and I understand that they are pretty good at getting them jobs. Which is good for me because I am so bad about getting jobs, I love not working.

Now for Andrews’s question, why is the white chocolate green? I do not know but I suspect that I will learn at some point, and at that time I will tell you. Also Andrew there a lot more then 2 bona-fide French chefs here in Houston, and they teach at this school. I bet that’s why they come here, defiantly not for the weather.

That’s is all for today, there are still plenty of lady finger scraps at my house if any of you want some.

Day Two

Here I sit with grilled cheese sandwich in hand to tell you a tale, the tale of my second day of school. It’s a story of how I cut my fingers, my Lady Fingers, or as chef called them sponge fingers. As you can guess we made sponge fingers today. It was a lot like making meringue only we added the yokes back in along with some flour and stuff. Then we piped it out onto out parchment paper in cool little rows and baked for 6 minutes. Oh yea we topped them with powdered sugar first, yum!

After they came out of the over we trimmed them up and put them in rings like this.

And them we made Chocolate Moose. No that’s not right we made Chocolate Mousse! We made it with real dark chocolate too. We grabbed a whole bunch of it and chopped it super fine with our knives. Then we made a cream like we did yesterday and strained it onto the chocolate as it came off the induction burner. It all melted and was wonderful but wait, there is more. We whipped up some heavy cream in the kitchen Aid to make whipped cream, and folded that in with the chocolate to finish our mousse. The first time I let mine whip too long and I made butter. Oh well. So we filled our lady finger rings half way with mousse and put them in the fridge for Thursday.

Then we busted out our caramel creams from yesterday and flipped them out onto platters, thus finishing our Upside Down Caramel Creams. Each one was given a rosette of whipped cream and a little white chocolate square to finish them off. They were then taken to the brake room for us to eat after class, alas, I did not partake but did here that some were better then others.

That is all for now, I must to bed, or the semblance of bed, whatever comes first.

Oh, I brought home a mess of Lady Finger scraps and put them in the fridge, first come first served. If you want to come tonight call my cell phone.

Day One Redux

Now that I have slept, and regained all my hit points I have decided to revisit yesterday. I may do this on occasion to bring up points I may have missed or answer questions.

First some points that I missed. Eggs, eggs are considered to be around 50 grams. 30 grams are whites, and 20 are yokes. That is a nice little rule of thumb one can use. Cream sauce, weather it be vanilla or any other flavor is the base sauce for many things in pastry, including Ice Cream. I go to school three times a week: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Class starts at five and can go as late as 11:15. I am in the level one pastry class which will go for 20 weeks then 10 weeks of level 2 and 10 weeks of level 3. There are 10 people in the class now and I hope it stays that way.

Henry wants me to write about my interaction with other students. Mostly so far Henry there has been a lot of blank stares and shrugging. We are all struggling a little and have had little time for interaction. I did talk to one student who was reading the zombie survival guide, and we had a nice talk about that. And yes Henry I can bring a camera to class and I will do so from time to time.

David says that he always wanted to use a vanilla bean, and rightfully so. They have a wonderful smell and tons of flavor. You can use the vanilla bean up to three time so we do not throe them away. After the first use they can be cleaned and dried out to be put inside sugar, to make vanilla sugar. I am told that they can be used again in another application after that, which is a good thing because vanilla bean can be expensive.

Day One

This is a Blog that I am writing about going to school at the Culinary Institute LeNotre. It is a fine French school on the north side of Houston TX, and I am going for their Pastry and Bakery Diploma program. For those of you who are unfamiliar with baking it is more like chemistry then normal cooking, it is also a lot sweeter, thus the name of the blog, The Sweet Science.

Today was my first day and I met my Chefs, there were two of them and they were very French and had very French names that I do not remember at this time. It really is unimportant to learn their names because you can always call out “Chef” and one of them will come a running. They were good guys with strong accents and black aprons (as apposed to ours which were white). At the beginning of class everyone was nervous and had a hard time understanding the chefs and what to do. Did this stop our chefs? No! They plowed us forward into the crafting of a Vanilla Cream Sauce. Eggs, milk, sugar and a vanilla bean came together to make a wonderful sauce, or at lest I hope it is wonderful because we really didn’t try it. We just packed them away in the fridge and moved on to a custard and caramel combo whose name escapes me at this time. It was kind of fun making caramel on our induction hot plate, but it was a pain to work with. Those went in the fridge and we continued on to make French Meringue, which was 300 grams sugar, 300 grams powdered sugar, and 300 grams egg whites. It was a little tough to work with but we put into piping bags and got to make some fun designs on parchment paper.

By now it was 10PM, time to clean up and go. It is now 11:54, I am home, I am tiered, and I am going to bed. Come back tomorrow for another late night rant about my time at school.

PS: I totally cut my thumb while working with some vanilla bean.