A Week in the Life of a Culinary Student

I know, I know - you're probably like "What, you start culinary school and then disappear off the face of the planet?" All I can say is...take a look at what my weeks look like now!

Monday

Monday is one of my big work (I've started freelancing)/study days, since class doesn't start until 3pm. I usually wake up around 7, send Mountain Man off to work, and enjoy my coffee and eggs with some HGTV. Around 8:30, I get out my computer and work for about 4 hours. I usually make a light lunch and catch up on some homework while I eat. Since school is about 45 minutes away and parking is generally a mixed bag, I leave around 1:30 to give me plenty of time to get to class. Baking lab is 4 hours long, just long enough to give us some time to proof bread (in a fancy proofing machine) and get a quick lecture on different types of flour. I get home around 8, make a light dinner and spend some quality time with Mountain Man before going to bed early to get ready for Tuesday.

Tuesday

Tuesday is my toughest day. My Culinary Fundamentals lab starts at 7am, so I usually leave my house at 5:50 without showering but definitely with coffee! This is good experience for next semester, when I have to spend half of the semester on campus from 7 to 1 every day, so I don't mind too much. The lab is part demo and part hands-on work and it's generally very busy. So far we've learned two ways to cook chicken (roast and saute) as well as stir-fry and potstickers.

After lab, I usually head over to a cafe in town and study for 3 hours (last week, I studied foodborne illnesses for that length of time) and have about 4 cups of coffee. I then spend a couple of hours walking around Santa Barbara and running errands. My Sanitation lecture class is Tuesdays at 5, so I usually try to stay in town instead of spending time and gas driving back-and-forth. Sanitation is over at 7, and I head home, hope that Mountain Man surprises me with dinner, and crash relatively early.

Wednesday

Wednesday starts similarly to Monday - with a bit of work or studying. My Pantry lab is at noon, and parking is always difficult at this time, so I leave the house around 10:30. In case you were wondering, a class on "Pantry" is a class that covers salads, sandwiches, and egg dishes. Today we spent about an hour and a half trying to identify salad greens. Out of the 20 or so we were presented with, I got all of them except for one that not even my French chef-instructor (who grows his own food, composts, and is quite environmentally friendly) could recognize.

Lab is usually over by 3 or 3:30 so I head home and do a little work or homework. I am the interim choir director for our church choir, and rehearsals are Wednesday evenings, so I head over there around 6:30 (Mountain Man sings in the choir). At 9, I head home, we have a late dinner, and head to bed.

Thursday

Thursday is for work, homework, and errands. I don't have class, so I try to catch up on everyting else, including lunching with friends and doing some baking. Believe it or not, I don't sleep in on Thursdays - I usually have so much to do that I wake up and start working.

Friday

Lecture day. I have two lecture classes (Culinary Fundamentals and Intro to the Food Profession) from 11-4 with a break in between. My new friends and I go to the student-run cafe on campus for lunch (where we'll be working in our 3rd semesters). The lectures are both huge classes, with everyone who's in first semester (about 75 students) and the teachers do their best to make them interesting and interactive, but it's hard on a Friday afternoon! Needless to say, we usually get out early. I head home around 4, and the weekend begins!

Saturday and Sunday

We've been busy the past few weekends, but have talked about trying not to book ourselves solid over the weekends. Part of that is just to spend some quality time together doing something fun, but it's also time for me to cook and practice what I'm learning and to work on recipes for the future. We've actually set aside a weekend in March to just have our families over for dinner and do nothing else except what we want to do in and around the house. I can't wait!


So that's why you haven't heard from me in a wile, but I'll be back. The first few weeks were difficult, just trying to get into a groove that worked, and I was actually pretty exhausted for the first few weeks. But this week was great, and I still have plenty of energy for the rest of the week, so it seems that I've got it figured out!

Prepping for School

I spent a day in Santa Barbara a couple of weeks ago, ordering my uniform, knives, and buying my textbooks. I was, apparently, SUPER early on everything - there was still a full stack of books in the bookstore (I was lucky enough to get a couple of mine in good used condition - even if it gave my little textbook-publisher heart a little ache), and the guy who helped me order my uniform let me know that I was one of the first to come by (he said that there are always a few students that show up the day before classes start and freak out at him). I also got impatient while waiting behind a bunch of confused teenagers in line to get my student ID card - most of them were in line to get help registering for classes, and I decided to call to someone behind the counter who wasn't doing anything and asked him if I could jump the line. I think I got a couple of evil stares for that, but it was worth it - the line hardly moved while I was there.

All of that made me realize I am one of those older, non-traditional students, who go back to school for a career change or for self-improvement, and who are eager, interested, and early with everything. I used to mock those people when I was a teenager - I remember a couple of women that I went on a study-abroad trip with. Before we became good friends, I would sneer at them when they took seats at the front of a lecture, or followed a tour guide around like puppies. But now, I'm one of them! A friend noted that since this is something I want to do, something I'm passionate and interested in, I'm going to take it more seriously than I took my education when I was younger. And all of the younger people might end up mocking me this time around. Which is probably what I deserve.

Here are my knives. I personalized my case with some fabric my mom brought me from Lebanon. I also have edge guards for everything, so I'm not walking around with knives that will stick me at any point!

I got my name embroidered on my chef's jacket, a requirement of the school, but cool nevertheless. Incidentally, the pants that are required are not made in women's sizes, so I had to buy some that run large so that they would go over my hips! The waist is a bit large as a result, and I had to cut off about 4 inches off the pant legs and hem them so I wouldn't trip over them. The zipper is about a foot long, which makes it look as though I'm sagging in my chef pants. AND everything is 100% polyester, which seems like a silly choice for clothing that is to be worn around fire.

And finally, my textbooks. The editor part of me went through them and checked out the pedagogical features, the reviewer list, and the design, but the cook part of me just wanted to look at the pictures of food and start trying techniques!

I'm very excited to start classes on Monday, but also really nervous. It's going to be hard work (especially my 7am lab on Tuesdays), and I'm going to want to be really good (like, top of the class) so will have to push myself. And there's that age thing - I'm turning 30 just 2 days after I start classes, and there's a part of me that's quietly stressing out about that - I mean, shouldn't I have had this figured out before I turned 30? What if this is a little age-related crisis? But I try to squelch that voice as much as possible, and be understanding of the competitive side of myself, and be realistic about the hard work. And in the end, I'm really blessed that I can do something like this (a big thank you to Mountain Man for his support) and I know it's worth it to be able to do something I love.

No Meat Meaty Pasta Sauce

I'm an avid reader of the Chocolate and Zucchini blog written by Clotilde Dusoulier - she writes about food and different techniques (bread baking, pasta making, etc), along with a bit on French language and food idioms that may not make sense to those of us that only have some college French under our belts. Her blog eventually led to a cookbook that is simple and lovely - the recipes are not exactly what you think of when you think of traditional French cooking, but there is a strong reliance on fresh ingredients and very tasty meals - something that always makes me think of the little bistros I eat at when I'm in France.

One of my favorite recipes in the book is called Poulet Mijoté à la Moutarde - Mustard Chicken Stew. It's so rich and satisfying, and doesn't take much to put it together - just chicken, purple onions, tomato sauce, herbs, and grainy Dijon mustard. Once you eat all the chicken, you end up with some leftover sauce that is great over pasta. I realized, after making it one day, that mushrooms would be perfect in the leftover sauce, so I emailed Clotilde and asked if she'd ever given that a try. She responded (and quickly) that she hadn't, but that she'd be interested in hearing how it turned out.

So I reheated the leftover sauce and added some sliced mushrooms, and it was fabulous! The mushrooms add an extra punch of meaty flavor and make it seem like a true pasta sauce - not a leftover sauce with mushrooms in it.

The mustard chicken stew has now actually turned into a new favorite pasta sauce that I make often. It's great for when you don't want meat (or are feeding a vegetarian) but still want something "meaty". See below for the recipe!

Mushroom and Mustard Pasta Sauce

Adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 bag of "small" pasta, such as fusilli or penne
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 lb. (2 blue cartons) white mushrooms, sliced
• 2 cans diced tomatoes OR 6 Roma tomatoes, cut into chunks
• 1/2 can tomato sauce (freeze the rest and add it to soup at a later point)
• 2 pinches kosher salt
• a few grinds black pepper
• 1 pinch aleppo pepper (optional, but it adds a spicy kick - you could also add crushed red pepper)
• 1 Tbsp dried oregano
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1-2 Tbsp whole grain Dijon mustard (to taste - use 2 Tbsp if you want it extra mustardy, but drop it to 1 if you want a more subtle flavor)
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped basil

Directions:

Cook the pasta according to the package directions.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the mushrooms and cook until they're brown and shiny. Add the canned or fresh tomatoes and the tomato sauce and stir to combine. Stir in the salt, pepper, oregano, and garlic.

Stir in the mustard and bring the sauce to a boil. Turn down the heat and let simmer for 10 minutes. You can make a green salad during this time, if you want.

Turn off the heat and stir in the basil. Serve over pasta with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese, if desired.

Merry Christmas!

It's the morning of Christmas Eve, and I wanted to send a little note to wish you all a Merry Christmas!

I've been MIA the last couple of weeks, since I've been working at closing out my time at PubCo. I didn't have a ton of work to do - mostly some research projects - but my brain had officially checked out by the time I registered for classes. It started to feel real - that I would be leaving, and that I would be starting on this new career path...and I just wanted to get started! So I said my goodbyes and my "let's have lunch" promises to people I wanted to keep in touch with, and that was it!

I only cried a little on my last day, and it was for the people I would miss seeing every day. And since my last day, I've been a little more emotional than usual, because my grandmother passed away. She was an amazing, strong Christian woman who took care of her family and was madly in love with my grandfather (who passed away a couple of years ago). She had Alzheimer's and we were expecting that things would get progressively worse, but it was still sad when we heard the news. But our joy is that she's hanging out with her husband in heaven!

So it's been a mixed bag this year for me for Christmas. It's been hard getting into the spirit of things with everything else going on, but there are little moments that are helping a lot. I taught a cooking class last week that ended with Christmas cookie decorating and it was silly and fun and I laughed until I cried. We put up our Christmas tree (which we named Bjorn), and it is completely lopsided. It rained for 5 days straight and even though I was absolutely sick of it by the end of it, I loved seeing my friends' pictures of the rainbow that happened on the last day of rain - everyone was so overjoyed that the sun had come out!

And this little thing - the lemons on my dwarf lemon tree decided to finally ripen this week. They'd been hanging out for a couple of months, waiting for just the right time, and they're finally ready. So I made a lemon glaze for some Christmas cookies and will be making lemon-walnut biscotti for New Year's. It's funny to me that when I'm supposed to be making spice cake and gingerbread (neither of which I'm a huge fan of), I've got these bright yellow orbs to cheer me up instead.


Next week, look out for a recipe for a new pasta sauce I've developed - it's perfect for a cold night in when you don't want to work too hard. For now, I'm off to finish my Christmas baking (Mexican Wedding Cakes and a Caramelized Apple Pie), and I wish you a very Merry Christmas!

I'm In!

After a night of very little sleep and a morning of refreshing the page every 15 seconds or so, I was finally able to register for classes a week ago! I got everything I need for my first semester which I'm thrilled about, even if it means that I have to take a 7am lab since all the other sections were full. My class list is as follows:

Sanitation
Intro to the Food Profession
Culinary Fundamentals (lecture and lab)
Basics of Baking Lab
Basics of Pantry Lab

And then I have to do 27 hours of catering every semester to get that practical experience I need.

For the next 8 days, I'm still at PubCo, trying to finalize some projects and leave on good terms. I'm planning another cooking class for the evening of my last day and have three new interested people to add to the mailing list. Between December 18 and January 24 (when classes start) I'll be doing some projects around the house that I've been needing time to do, buying my uniforms, knives, and textbooks, practicing recipes, and getting mentally prepared for this major life shift. It will be really strange to not come into the office every day, but so wonderful as well!

A Turkey Tutorial

With Thanksgiving a couple of days away, I thought I'd send along some turkey directions. My sister just made her first turkey for an event her church group hosted at a retirement home, and wanted step-by-step directions on what to do. It's no Butterball Talk-Line, but she told me it made the process really easy. AND, once you know how to make a turkey, you basically know how to make a roast chicken (you'd just need to shorten the cooking time).

If you're making a turkey this year, good luck and have fun. If not, I hope you'll try it (or a roast chicken) in the future, and let me know how it turns out! Happy Thanksgiving!

A Turkey Tutorial:

First, make sure your turkey is defrosted. If you get your turkey a few days before Thanksgiving, you'll want to leave it in the packaging and in the fridge until the day of - that's the best way to defrost. However, if you don't plan ahead and get your turkey a day before or the day of (too scary), you'll want to defrost it in water in the sink. Place the turkey in the sink, cover it with cold water, and let it sit for 20 minutes. Drain the water, and do it again and again and again until the turkey is defrosted.

Plan backwards from the time you need the turkey to be ready. See the grid below to plan:









So if you have a 22 pound turkey and you're not stuffing it, you'll need 4 - 4 1/2 hours for it to cook, and you'll want to leave a little time for the juices to settle. If you need to have it ready to eat by 5 pm, plan on taking it out of the oven at 4:30 - so plan on putting it in the oven at about 11:30 to be sure it's done in time.

Preheat the oven to 450, and then drop it to 350 when you put the turkey in. That makes for a nice brown skin.

To prep the turkey, first you'll need to take out the gizzards. These will be in a little plastic bag in the cavity of the bird. They might have also put the neck in the little hole on the other end of the turkey instead of with the other (smaller) gizzards (there should be a flap of skin covering the hole). If you want to use these to make a stock later (which is also really easy), put them in a ziploc and put them in the freezer. You might also find some twine in a little plastic baggie on the outside of the turkey wrapper - this is to make a little carrying case for the turkey, so you can transfer it to the serving plate from the pan. Keep that for later.

Get your roasting pan ready. If you have a pan with a rack, it would be a good idea to brush down the rack with some olive oil, so the skin doesn't stick. If you don't have a roasting pan, and are using a foil pan, put it on a baking sheet so that it's stable (the foil pan isn't stable enough on it's own).

At about 15 minutes before you need to put the turkey in the oven, get it out of the fridge (or water, if you're doing it that way and really let it drain). Take some paper towels and pat the skin dry. This will help you get a nice crispy skin (the more water on the bird, the less crispy it gets). Once the turkey is nice and dry, put it on the pan or rack, with the legs pointing up - that's breast side up. You'll want to take that twine that came with the bird and wrap it under and around the bird so that it forms a little carrier at this point - test it out to make sure it works. As well, if you have kitchen twine, wrap the legs together - that way, the inside will cook evenly (instead of letting all the heat out of the gaping hole) - if you're stuffing the turkey, stuff it before tying its legs together.

If you're stuffing the bird, you'll do it at this point. Make sure your stuffing is COOKED and COOLED. Putting uncooked stuffing in a turkey will make the stuffing cook, but it will also make the stuffing expand and you might end up with an exploding turkey. Putting warm stuffing in a turkey will just breed bacteria. Your best bet is to make your stuffing the day before, and to leave it in the fridge until you're ready to use it.

When you're stuffing your turkey, you want to make sure that whatever spoon you're putting inside the bird isn't touching your "clean" stuffing - that is, the stuffing that you'll serve alongside the turkey. So, use one spoon to move some stuffing into your "dirty" bowl, and then use another spoon to move it from a "dirty" bowl into the turkey. That way, you don't contaminate your "clean" stuffing.

Once that's all done, take some olive oil and brush it on the bird with a pastry brush. That will ensure a crispy skin. Try to get under the bird as well. Remember that anything that touches the bird should not be put back into an original container - so pour some olive oil into a small bowl and use that. Then, put some salt and whatever other seasoning you're using in a bowl. Take a half a lemon and mush it around in the spice mixture, and then use that to rub the bird. You want to get as much of the bird with this rub as possible, so keep putting the lemon back in the mixture until it's all covered. It doesn't have to be thick, but you want to make sure it's covered.

Then the turkey goes in the oven. Remember that it's preheated to 450, and you should drop it to 350 when you put the turkey in. You'll want to keep it uncovered until you get a nice brown skin. Once it's nice and brown, baste it, and then cover it with foil. That will make sure that all the moisture stays in. I usually baste every 20 minutes to half an hour, and just start at the top and let the liquid run down.

When you've got about a half hour to go, stick a meat thermometer in one of the thighs (that's the darkest part of the meat, which takes the longest to cook) and see what the temperature is. Make sure the thermometer doesn't touch the bone, as that will throw things off. The thigh should be around 180 - and that's when you'll want to take the turkey out, get it nice and covered, and let it sit to juice up some more.

And that's it! Easy, right?

For a roast chicken, you probably wouldn't stuff it, but you'd do everything else the same. Your roasting time would be cut to about 1-2 hours.

Pro Pastry Class - Weekend 2

A few photos of this week's pastry creations (the ones I actually worked on)...

Chocolate Angel Food Cake with raspberries and creme brulee topping (and yes, I got to use a flame thrower to toast the top of the cake)

Chocolate peanut butter cups, which were so easy to make, it's not worth it to buy Reese's anymore.

Pecan pie, which I normally don't care for, but Mary's is so not sugary sweet that I actually like it a lot.

Salmon en croute, which is a large piece of salmon dressed up in (homemade - not store bought!)puff pastry and baked, and which is absolutely delicious.

Our final spread on Sunday afternoon. In addition to some of the items I made, there's also lemon meringue tarts, caramelized apple pie, three differerent chocolate cakes, a lemon chiffon cake, tiramisu, and a few other items.

Pro Pastry Class

I don't have a ton of time to write, but I wanted to tease you with this photo of a couple of the baguettes I and my classmates made at my Pro Pastry class this weekend (I think mine is the one on the right, but I'm not completely sure - it could also not be in this picture at all, but on a different table entirely. However, I did make one!). I'm having such a good time, and learning a ton!

For instance, did you know that the reason you should always use unsalted butter in baking is because every butter company salts their butter differently, so you lose control over the amount of salt you include. If you use unsalted butter and then add in salt yourself, you regain that control.

AND, I'm sure many of you know you should always use large eggs in baking, but did you know why? The thing to think about here is the whites of the egg - that's what adds liquid to your recipe, and most recipes are made specifically for large eggs. So if you use a medium egg, you end up with a drier batter. If you use a jumbo egg, you end up with a wet batter.

I also learned that I touch my pie dough too much (which melts the butter and makes for a less-than-flaky crust), so that's something to work on. But I also learned that I knead bread dough especially well (our instructor, Mary, actually made all the other students watch my technique) and whip a good pastry cream.

I have also taken on a quasi-mentoring roll for my class partner, who has hardly baked before and tends to approach baking as you'd approach regular cooking (that is, with non-exact measurements and a "that's good enough" attitude (seriously - she actually said that a few times), which is not acceptable). So I've stepped in to try to help a little, and she seems to appreciate that. There may be an opportunity for me to work as a TA in one of Mary's future classes (all of our current TAs are old students of hers, and Mary mentioned it as a general point of discussion) so I think it's a good sign that I'm already doing that with my own partner.

Mary is great - very down-to-earth and extremely knowledgeable. She trained with Nancy Silverton (an amazing baker) and worked at Wolfgang Puck's Spago for 20 years. She said she likes teaching better than anything she's done in the past, which is evident in the way she works with all of us. We're all at different experience levels, and she's put everyone at ease and made sure we're comfortable asking questions and making mistakes that we can learn from.

The weekend was a little nuts - we started with a Friday evening class from 6-9:30, then had class from 9-5 on Saturday, and then were supposed to go from 9 to 4:30 on Sunday, but Mary could tell we were all just exhausted (she did a demonstration of how to make the layers for a chocolate chiffon cake, and everyone just sat there and stared at her, instead of getting up and looking in bowls and asking questions), so she let us stop at 3:45 and do a little shopping in the store attached to the kitchen.

Our homework this week is to use her recipe and demonstration to create our own chocolate chiffon cake layers. We'll bring them in on Friday to have them assessed, and she'll be able to tell us what we did wrong or right. We'll then use those layers for the cake we'll be decorating sometime over next weekend.

It's hard work, but it's so much fun, and so interesting - and it's made me even more confident about my decision to make a career out of this.

School Update

Quick note about culinary school...I'm in! My registration appointment is December 1 at 8am - a very early time on the very first day! So it's looking good!

Thanks to all for your continued support and interest. I'll be sure to let you know which classes I sign up for! Oh the options...4-hour baking lab...2-hour lecture on the history of food...horray!

Support Systems

I've really been amazed at the amount of support people have been giving me when I tell them about my future culinary-related goals. Everyone, almost without fail, has said that my plans make perfect sense for my personality, my passion, and my values. I've heard a lot of compliments about my skills in the kitchen, along with "well, you like to make sure people are happy and satisfied, so now you can do that with food'. A few (perhaps more business-savvy) people have noted that I'm organized, plan well, and have developed good marketing and promotional skills at PubCo to draw on for a new business venture. If you know me, you know I love being complimented - so I love hearing all this!

The support is coming in more tangible ways as well. My sister has come with me to do some bakery research, and sends articles and links to other bakeries we should visit. One friend is brainstorming bakery names, another offers advice as a business owner herself, other friends take photos (and videos during cooking classes - ugh), and still others have offered to assist with marketing, wrapping, and even delivering my baked goods. Even my parents, who I thought might be a little nervous for my and Mountain Man's future, have been exceptionally supportive - buying a book on Lebanese baked goods for me, helping me figure out recipes, and offering suggestions and ideas for my potential future bakery.

I do have one person to win over. Already risk-averse, my mother-in-law seems quite concerned that I will ruin us with my new endeavor. OK, that may be a bit dramatic, but at dinner yesterday, she spent more than a few minutes telling me about bakeries and restaurants she knew of that had failed and neighbors that had started a restaurant and had to work constantly to make ends meet - and even with all that hard work, that restaurant folded as well. She also let me know that she was the only person in her Bible study that brought treats from a "real" bakery - the other members of the group bring things they either make themselves or that come from Costco. She prefaced all of this by saying "I don't mean to scare you..."

The funny thing is that those stories just fueled my desire to open my bakery and do a kickass job at it. I don't do well with people telling me something will be difficult or impossible - comments like that make me want to prove them wrong. So in a weird little way, I'm getting support from my mom-in-law as well. And much of her concern is just risk-related, not me-related.

But along with wanting to prove people wrong who think things will be difficult, I also know I would be a lot more hesitant to move forward if I didn't feel that my support system really supported me. The response has been so whole-heartedly positive that it makes me more confident that I can be successful.

I heard a great quote on a random PBS show a few weeks ago that went something like "All you have to do is redefine success." I think success can certainly come with money and prestige and being able to get everything you desire. But I think that success has everything to do with working hard, planning well, getting honest and solid market feedback, taking a risk at something you love, feeling confident that you've done everything you can to be successful, and knowing that the people you love and respect are behind you.

Cooking Class #2 with Recipes

I taught my second cooking class Tuesday night, with two new students joining the original group. I try to get people who aren't so familiar with cooking involved in things, so it's a lot of me saying "You add in the spices" and "You mash and then pass to someone else" and "You come and stuff this manicotti, even if you just got a manicure". Everyone seems to enjoy being involved, and it's great to be able to eat something we've made together.

Recipes from this last class are below, along with some great photos taken by photographer-extraordinare (and student) Ashley Conlon. You can see more of her photos here.


Squash, Sage, and Ricotta Cannelloni
Adapted from Everyday Food

Prep Time: 35 minutes
Total Time: 1 ¼ hour

Serves 4, but doubles easily.

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp olive oil, plus more for baking dish and sheet
Coarse salt and ground pepper
2 packages of manicotti
½ butternut squash (about 1 pound), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1-inch chunks
2 shallots, chopped
¼ cup plus 2 Tbsp milk
1 tsp finely chopped fresh sage leaves, plus 8 to 10 whole leaves
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
2 cups ricotta (15 ounces)
¾ cup grated Parmesan

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly oil a 2-quart or 8-inch square baking dish. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta until al dente. Using tongs, transfer pasta to a lightly oiled rimmed baking sheet.

Add squash to boiling water and cook until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain squash and transfer to a bowl.

In a small skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium. Add shallots, season with salt and pepper and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Transfer to bowl with squash and add 2 tablespoons milk, chopped sage, and nutmeg; season with salt and pepper. Mash with a fork until a rough purée forms.

Stuff manicotti with squash mixture and place in baking dish. In a bowl, combine ricotta, ½ cup Parmesan, and ¼ cup milk and season with salt and pepper. Spread ricotta mixture over cannelloni and top with ¼ cup Parmesan. Bake until warmed through, about 25 minutes. Broil until top is browned, 2-3 minutes.


Meanwhile, in a small skillet, heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium-high. Fry whole sage leaves until crispy, 15-20 seconds. Drain on paper towels. Serve cannelloni topped with fried sage.

Note:
The original recipe called for wide lasagna noodles (the ones without the ridges on the edges), but I always have trouble finding these, and find that manicotti works well (you're rolling the lasagna noodles into tubes anyway - why not use something tubular to start with?). If you want to try lasagna noodles, you'd just place about 1/4 cup of the mixture into the middle of the noodle and then roll up and place into the baking dish seam side down. A friend (and advanced student) suggested that jumbo shells might also work.

Tarte Tatin
Adapted from a class I took by the baker at Gourmandise Desserts

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

3 lbs Granny Smith or Pippin apples
2 Tbsp water
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp butter
One sheet puff pastry

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Rinse the apples and slice into 8-10 pieces each, keeping the skins on. Sprinkle with lemon juice, if desired.

Place the sugar and water into a heavy metal 10x4 round cake pan and place it on the stove, with the heat on low. You are making a caramel, so you MUST NOT STIR while the sugar and water come together (otherwise, the sugar will begin to form into large clumps, and it will turn into a big lump of hot sugar). You’ll see the sugar start to melt and turn gold, which is what you want. If any sugar crystals attach themselves to the sides of the pan, wipe it down with a wet pastry brush.

Bring the mixture to a golden caramel color. All of the sugar should be integrated at this point. Add the butter and stir. Remove from the heat.

Arrange the apples over the caramel in a tight spiral. Return the cake pan to the stove and continue cooking over low heat, until a darker caramel color appears and the apples soften (about 5 minutes).

Take the puff pastry and cut out an 11-inch circle (you can use the cake pan to do this before you put it over the heat). Place over the apples, tucking the dough in on the sides.

Bake for 30 minutes until the dough is golden. Turn the tart over onto a plate, and enjoy. This is definitely best served directly out of the oven, so don’t wait too long!

Variations:

1. You can swap out the apples for any hearty fruit. Try pears, stone fruit (peaches, plums, etc), or even persimmons.
2. Try adding black pepper to the apples when you’re cooking them in the caramel. It adds a little unexpected punch.

Dénouement

I've been MIA the past couple of weeks, feeling very unsure about what to write. If my life was a series of mini-novels, my resignation would have been the climax of this particular novella. From Wikipedia:

The third act is that of the climax, or turning point, which marks a change, for the better or the worse, in the protagonist’s affairs. If the story is a comedy, things will have gone badly for the protagonist up to this point; now, the tide, so to speak, will turn, and things will begin to go well for him or her. If the story is a tragedy, the opposite state of affairs will ensue, with things going from good to bad for the protagonist.

After the climax, you have the falling action and then, the dénouement which

comprises events between the falling action and the actual end of the drama or narrative and thus serves as the conclusion of the story. Conflicts are resolved, creating normality for the characters and a sense of catharsis, or release of tension and anxiety, for the reader.

A good writer doesn't spend a lot of time on a dénouement - at that point, the story is pretty much over. And that's exactly how I felt after my resignation went live. For a few days after, I felt exhausted and slept a lot more than usual. I visited my chiropractor, who was astounded at how bad my back was, and attributed my imbalance to the stress of the previous few weeks, before trying to massage it away. I baked for a few parties, started to plan my pies for a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving party we're throwing in early November, and put together the lesson plan for my second cooking class.

I very much feel as though I'm returning to normal, but normal feels a little weird! At some point, all of the frustration, anger, and stress began to feel like normal. Now that it's all disappearing, I don't really want to talk about it anymore, especially not with the passion and fervor that I had before. Now, it's just something that happened and it's moving-on time. This particular story is over.

On to the next! I'll get my appointment to register for classes in a couple of weeks, and will be looking forward to that. I also have a series of professional baking classes in mid-November that I'm very excited about. Tomorrow, I'll be teaching that cooking class, and I'll post some recipes from that later this week. I imagine this blog will be shifting to focus more on food, school, and future buisness opportunities, and much less on PubCo, as my focus begins to shift in real life.

Is there anything in particular you'd like to see recipe-wise? Any parties you're obligated to bring food to and need some suggestions? I hope you feel free to send a note or a question any time you think of it!

New Adventures

Some big things have happened in the past couple of weeks. Mountain Man got a job that will keep us in the area (and is better-paying). I had a couple of important conversations with my boss that have lead to me writing a letter of resignation.

It wasn't a bad situation - she asked me if I was any happier doing my job and I said no, I wasn't but I was going to continue doing my job until I found out whether I got in to culinary school. She was very supportive and said that baking was a perfect fit for my personality and for what I find to be important in life (not just baked goods, but also getting people together and making them happy). So that was encouraging. I went away to Arizona (see here), didn't have a great time, and came home to an invitation from my boss to have coffee and talk about "my situation" (to which I replied "it sounds like I'm knocked up in the 1800s).

During coffee, she said she had been thinking about what we had discussed, and she said she kept getting stuck on one question - "If she doesn't get into culinary school, would she want to remain at PubCo?" And that was the question she posed to me. It was a question I'd not truly asked myself, and she suggested I take some time to think about it - but that if my answer was "no" that her suggestion (as a friend) would be to come up with a Plan B and go ahead and resign now. And this wasn't done to push me out, I know that - but to get me to think about my options if I had to wait to attend culinary school. Stay at PubCo (bleh) or do something else (horray).

I took the weekend to discuss with Mountain Man, my parents, my sister, and my best friend. They all thought me resigning from PubCo would be just fine. With MM's new job and raise, we would be able to get by. I could freelance or work for my dad or get a part-time retail job. Or, the Plan B I landed on and am most excited about - I could figure out how to sell baked goods (pies, really) at farmer's markets and do that a few days a week. Doesn't that sound exciting?

So this past Tuesday, during my one-on-one with my boss, I told her that she was right. That the responsible thing for me to do for myself and for PubCo (since I didn't keep my mouth shut in the first place) would be to go ahead and resign. She said "I knew you were going to say that, but I was hoping you weren't" and was visibly saddened by my decision. She said she remains supportive, but I'm sure there's a little part of her that could have figured out how to make me stay. I wrote my letter on Wednesday, giving PubCo two months to find my replacement - my last day (still awaiting approval) will be December 17.

I'm so relieved. After sending the letter, I immediately felt exhausted - as if all the stress and frustration and anger was keeping me going, and now I had none of that to keep me moving. After a few days of needing some extra sleep, I'm doing much better. Even though I'm sad to be leaving my friends and the wonderful people I work with, I feel so much lighter having made this decision.

So I'm definitely doing this. Either culinary school or selling pies at farmer's markets - or something else entirely! I'm open to ideas (especially what to call a pie stand at a farmer's market) or suggestions or business opportunities (i.e. I'll make pies for your wedding or next event). Send them along!

Your Favorite Spot

The CEO of PubCo likes to tell this story about how he one day went to a university campus for some meetings and saw some "signs" that universities are alive and well. He thought that construction sites on campus were a sign that the university had money and were growing. Seeing tours and kids going through orientation was a sign that, yes, kids are still going to college. And melting bikes (that is, those bikes that are left behind during spring vacation and sort of "melt" into the asphalt) are a sign of...hmm. I don't remember. Even though I've heard this story twice, I still don't get the melting bikes thing.

Well, today, sadly, I'm visiting a university campus. As I'm still trying to do my best at PubCo until the judgment is handed down on culinary school, I'm spending the next three days visiting professors, asking what they're teaching and researching, and whether they might be interested in writing a book. It's one of the most important parts of my job since it involves prospecting, but it's also my least favorite. Especially now, when I know (I hope) I'll be leaving in a matter of months. But I'm doing my best.

For lunch, I've parked myself on a couch at the Starbucks located in the business school building, and I've been watching the students in and out of the cafe. Every single kid is doing at least one of the following: talking on a cell phone, using a laptop, listening to an iPod. I can write about the technology takeover (I don't see anyone reading a print book), but that's not what's interesting to me.

This Starbucks seems to be a favorite haunt for some people, in the same way every other Starbucks is for others. There's a girl behind me tutoring another girl on her computer, and she was tutoring someone else a few minutes ago. Two guys just walked in and went immediately to the free water station and left without ordering coffee. One girl has been here long enough to warrant going to the register a second time (I missed the first time, but she's been here longer than me). The kids behind the register (and they really are kids) are loud and laugh a lot when the line has been dealt with.

Even though it's in a different state and on a university campus, it still feels familiar to me. It's the same green aprons, the same not great, but consistently good enough coffee, the same drink names being yelled out. You can go to a Starbucks in Paris and you would find the same thing (although, why would you?). It makes me think of home, in a weird little way.

This is not to say that my future bakery is going to become a global brand with homogenous locations all over the world. But it is to say that Starbucks has done a pretty good job of becoming a comfortable and safe spot and that's something to admire.

It begs the question: What's your favorite home-away-from-home restaurant or cafe? Why? Is it the ambience? The people you meet? The fact that they allow dogs? And if you don't have a favorite spot, why not? What would make you commit?

So that's what I got from my campus trip today. And I didn't see any melting bikes.

The Application Is In!

Just a little update on culinary school...after checking the site and refreshing my page every couple of hours from 6:15am on, the application for a Spring 2011 start to the culinary school of my choice opened up. And I've submitted my application! It was a breeze - due to the first-come-first-served nature of the program, it was a really basic application without any essays or proof of culinary skills or anything like that. I sent it off and it feels great.

Now we wait. In about 2 months, I'll be able to register for classes, and as long as I'm one of the first 60 students to enroll in Sanitation and Culinary Lab 1, I'm officially in! So keep your fingers crossed!

Autumn

Autumn has arrived in name, but not yet in spirit. Since the first day of fall, we've had triple-digit days and more heat than we saw all summer. No cooling down and no need for light sweaters since it's hot enough to still consider a beach day a serious option for a Saturday.

But it HAS arrived in small, sneaky ways. The pumpkin patch on the side of the freeway has put out its bales of hay and its jack o'lantern decorated sign announcing its arrival. The pumpkins have only just made themselves visible, and I was pleasantly surprised last week when I caught sight of them out of the corner of my eye driving down the freeway. Leaves on a few trees here and there are changing color, people are setting out their Halloween decorations, and the coffee shops are offering their pumpkin-related drinks and snacks.

I'm most excited that autumn has arrived in the food world. Cans of pumpkin puree are stacked in tall, precarious formations at every grocery store. Squash and dark greens are taking up more space in the produce section. Tomatoes, cucumbers, and avocados are in lesser supply through my CSA box - instead, I'm being offered squash, potatoes, and pomegranates.

It's so exciting to me, because it means that the food we make, and the food we're drawn to, changes along with the season, even if it is still 105F outside. It means that it's time to get creative with apples, pears, and pumpkins - instead of the peaches and berries of summer. It's time for stews, soups, and chilis instead of crisp salads. And it's time for some very rich flavors - cinnamon, nutmeg, maple syrup, and caramel.

I'm looking forward to this season's food, and I'm looking forward to sharing some of what I make with you. But for now, here are a few recipes that are inspiring me as we head into autumn:

Blue Cheese and Red Potato Tart
Chili with Chicken and Beans
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread
Granola (recipe at the end of the blog post, and really, do add the coconut, which is great)
Apple Cake in an Iron Skillet

Getting Out of My Funk

I have been a little down in the dumps recently, to the extent that when I mentioned to some friends that I thought I might be depressed, one of them said "You are!" with the conviction of someone who was watching things fall apart in front of her. I went home and asked Mountain Man if he thought I was depressed, and he asked if I felt depressed...and when I thought about it honestly, my response was that I did.

I'm not a sad person, and I generally have an optimistic attitude. But all that has been happening at PubCo has made me sad. What made me really sad is that a friend of mine put in her resignation last week. She doesn't have anything lined up, but she is so unhappy here that she just had to get out. Another friend put in her resignation yesterday for similar reasons. Both already seem much happier - even with all the worry and stress that not having a job in two weeks brings.

My sadness has been evident to a lot of people, most notably, my boss. I think I've mentioned before that I think my boss is great. She sincerely cares about her employees - and not just about how they're doing at PubCo, but also how they're doing in life. And last week she let me know that she could tell I haven't been happy and asked me what I've been thinking about PubCo and about my job. And I had to let it all out.

I don't need to go into things too much, but I did let her know that I have been researching culinary schools and that my goal would be to start classes in January, thereby ending my time at PubCo. And her first response wasn't to try to convince me to stay or to throw money at me or anything like that. Her first response was to say that it made sense that I would want to do something that I was passionate about, that I loved, that I was good at, and that matched with my values. And then she went on to ask which programs I was looking at and even suggested a program one of her friends went through.

After 15 minutes of that, we looped back to things here - why I wanted to leave, what wasn't working, and what I wanted to do in the next few months, before I find out about culinary school. My answer was easy - in the meantime, I'm going to continue doing my job. That's the only thing I can do - and if I can do anything to help things for my colleagues and friends, then I would do that too. She let me know that there was no need for the higher-ups to know all of this until everything was certain, which makes me feel a little safer than I might otherwise.

After this very intense conversation, I left to have lunch with a new friend who knows what's been happening, and after I told her about my talk with my boss, she said "you seem so much happier than the last time we had lunch." Another friend suggested that her picking up on that should be a sign that this is the right decision.

Over the weekend, Mountain Man and I took a little road trip, and the whole time, all I could think about was the bakery and new ideas for baked goods. But when I came home, and Mountain Man had to leave for a few days for an interview, I got sad again. But it was a different kind of sad.

This was the kind that isn't only sad, but is also questioning and doubting and putting me down, and thoughts of "you can't do this" and "what makes you think you'll succeed" and "you're crazy for leaving a steady job" started running through my head. I got up to try out a pie idea I had with all of those thoughts tainting everything, and I blame those thoughts on the fact that I forgot to add sugar to the pie and that I didn't add enough liquid to make it a true, gooey pie. When I took it out of the oven, there were no bubbling juices and the fruit was still a little crunchy. The nasty thoughts came rushing back and I spent the rest of the afternoon moping about how I'm not a pie genius like the girl from The Waitress, and things like this happen to me all the time when I bake. I don't have enough basic knowledge yet to know exactly what needs to go into a recipe to make it work perfectly the first time. So I moped, and I sighed, and I even cried a little.

And then I got sick of myself and had to force those nasty thoughts out of my head. No one is automatically great at anything, unless they are a genius or a child prodigy. People have to work at things to be good at them. Culinary school will teach me the basic skills, and in the meantime, I get to try and maybe fail but always try again at making something truly delicious. And anyway, it's not worth it to be sad about things you can't change - the only thing you can change is how you react to those things and what you can do for yourself.

I do think Dolly Parton helped me out of this funk a bit - on our road trip, I visited a Cracker Barrel for the first time and bought a Dolly Parton CD from the gift shop, which included a song called "Better Get to Livin'". All the lyrics can be read here, but I'll leave you with this verse:

I said you'd better get to livin', givin'
Be willing and forgivin'
Cause all healing has to start with you
You better stop whining, pining
Get your dreams in line
And then just shine, design, refine
Until they come true
And you better get to livin'

More about Photos

On my excursions through various food blogs today, I found this:

http://www.adamcpearson.com/

If you want to see some truly gorgeous photos of food, check out his portfolio. Wow.

Cake Photos

I've been in a bit of a writing slump recently, so decided to try my hand at food photography instead. I'm not a great photographer, as I've never had to be - my dad, my sister, and now Mountain Man are the photographers in the family. I don't think I have the patience to set up a good photo like they do. And I prefer snapshots anyway that capture a particular moment - my camera is always full of strange photos of people I don't know (a couple embracing on the banks of the Seine) or weird things I notice in nature or architecture (a palm tree wearing sunglasses and a nose, bales of hay lined up in rows, a blue door). So my food photography isn't spectacular as I know I try too hard. I will need to hire someone to take photos of my food in the future!

I made this cake for my assistant here at PubCo, who had a birthday today. This is a little adaptation of a Nigella Lawson recipe - it started out as a plain (but delicious) chocolate cake, and a couple of friends suggested adding raspberries to liven it up. The joy of Nigella Lawson is that all of her recipes are generally perfect as is (unlike Martha Stewart's recipes, which always need tweaking), but are also generally simple enough to build on. This cake was a perfect foundation to add raspberries, but could also work with crushed espresso beans (and the addition of coffee to the frosting) or you could make it a cookies-and-cream cake and do a white frosting with Oreos sprinkled inside and on top. Or peanut butter! Or caramel! Ooh, there may be more cakes in my future...

Anyway, here's the cake:

Top row: Dry ingredients; the two layers (so much easier when you don't have to cut the cake in half)

Middle row: Chocolate for the frosting; smashed raspberries with a bit of sugar to help them mellow

Bottom row: The middle of the cake; cake sandwich

The final product!

Soliciting Ideas

I so love hearing from you all (my 12 or so readers) that I thought it was time to solicit some answers to the following question:

What is your favorite baked good?

Think about your favorite bakery and what they do best, or about what you always look for when you step into a new bakery. Or think about what you love to make yourself, or what you love to have made for you.

C'mon, don't be afraid...I want to hear from you!