Saffron Panna Cotta

Saffron Panna Cotta
Originally uploaded by mzones

I made this saffron panna cotta for my fine dining plated desserts class at NECI. When I served it at the Chef's Table (NECI's fine dining restaurant), I served it with an orange sauce. I've done some testing with different sauces since then and have finally settled on peach as the winning combination.

Beach Cupcake

Beach Cupcake
Originally uploaded by mzones

I made some fun little cupcakes for a Hawaiian themed dinner party I'm working this weekend. These will be dessert for the children at the party. My chef just asked me to come up with an idea.

Just in case it's not obvious from the picture. It's supposed to be a sandy beach with an umbrella by the ocean. :-)

Mod 4 Dinner

Mod 4 Dinner
Originally uploaded by mzones

This post has been a long time coming. ;-)

This is a photo of my block (that's the group of students I was in class with for my second year at NECI) at out Mod 4 dinner, two weeks before we finished classes. We had been one more person, Joey D., but he was suspended about 6 weeks before the end of the year.

From left to right...Nick, Amber, mz, and Chris.

Still here! :-)

I've been neglecting my blog again. I'm so fired!

I had a great return trip to the Pacific NW from Vermont. I was able to make stops along the way to visit friends, which was the best part of the trip!

I got settled in to my room at my friend's house in Battle Ground, WA. It's a suburb of Vancouver, WA. I started my internship at Mezzaluna (mezzaluna.biz) Personal Chef Service on the 2nd of April and am having a great time working with Chef John. I share my time with another personal chef at Black Radish Personal Chef Service...Chef Heather, who is also a joy to work with. This is a picture of some cupcakes that Chef Heather made during one of our recent cook dates.

Last day!

I finished my last day of classes at culinary school about an hour ago! I'm so excited to be complete with this part of my education. Now I just have a 6 month internship to complete before I graduate! Yay!

Snowing

Well, here I am with two more days in the classroom and a snowstorm has already deposited a few inches of the white stuff on the ground. It shows no signs of stopping and as it warms up out there, it is expected to turn to sleet for part of the day, then back to snow. I have class from 2 PM to close. Given the weather, close will probably be around 9:30PM.

I have most of my belongings packed and ready for the trip back home. I leave for internship on March 7. Of course, I don't actually start until April 2nd, which gives me time to stop and visit friends along the way. This time, I don't have to return to VT for more school, I'll be finished with school when I finish my internship in August. Woohoo!

Too Much Snow

There was a snow storm that came through yesterday. It snowed part of the night and then all day long. At one point during the day, he accumulation rate was 2" per hour. In the afternoon and on into the evening, we also had some stong winds, which caused drifting of the powdery snow.

This is a picture off the front porch of my apartment building. The apartment manager had shoveled a path to the driveway so we could get out. The walls of snow along the path is up to my waist. My car is buried in the snow and won't be going anywhere for a while.

Meat Fabulous, The Sequel

Meat Fabrication 2 is the class I started this past week. We are building on what we learned in Meat Fab 1 last year...and getting a refresher...but we get to break down more primals (those are the large hunks of "primal cuts" that the carcass is broken down into) into portsions. For instance, we broke down the pig loin primal (pictured here) Thursday into Pork Loin Chops, Baby Back Ribs, Pork Tenderloin Medallions, and a loin roast which we just cut up for making sausage. Yesterday we made three sausage kits, which we will continue working on Monday, one of which (breakfast sausage) used the pork from the loin project. How cool is that!?!?

Wine Dinner

In our Chef's Table class, my group had to create a menu for a Zinfandel dinner. The wines for the 5 courses were chosen by the beverage manager and our chef instructor assigned us a list of proteins, starches and veggies that we had to use. We could add other ingredients, but had to use the ones on the list she gave us. BTW, it was a 5 course dinner. We were responsible for the first 4 courses and the Plated Desserts class was responsible for the 5th course.

We tasted the wines during lecture a week before the dinner and took tasting notes and decided which of the proteins would be the best match for each of the wines. We then met before class the following day and discussed in detail what we would prepare for each dish. At lecture that day, we presented our menu to our chef instructor.

The following week, our dinner was served to a group of 26 people who had made reservations. It was a huge success. We didn't get to taste our dishes with the wines until two days later, but when we did, it confirmed that we had made wise choices when designing the menu. Our chef was very pleased with our menu and we all received an Exceed Standards for this portion of the class. :-)

The photo is of Chef Lynnette helping us plate up the souffle.

Here was our menu:

1st Course:
Game Hen Consomme with Game Hen and Brasied Cabbage Ravioli
Edizione Pennino Zinfandel, 2002, Rutherford, Niebaum-Coppola Estate
2nd Course:
Bayley Hazen Blue Cheese Souffle with Radish Salad
Hendry Block 7 Zinfandel, 2003, Napa Valley
3rd Course:
Monkfish Osso Bucco with Golden Beet Fettuccine, Chestnut Gremolata,
Marrow and Zinfandel Sauce.
Rosenblum, San Francisco Bay Zinfandel, 2003, Carla's Vineyards
Intermezzo:
Raspberry-Zinfandel Sorbet served in a Tuile Cone
4th Course:
Veal Breast Roulade & Grilled Lamb Chop
Roulade stuffed with Veal Sweetbreads and served with Tomato Jam
and Pommes Anna. Lamb served with Cranberry-Cherry Chutney and
Baby Root Vegetables.
Ridge, California Zinfandel Late Picked, 2001, York Creek
5th Course:
Fig & Pinenut Beggars Purse, Poached Fig and Zinfandel Reduction
Rosenblum, Rosie Rabbit, California Late Harvest Zinfandel

Back to the kitchen

Ah. Finally I'll be back in the kitchen. Today I start the A La Carte cooking class at the Chef's Table. We'll be learning the art of cooking on a fine dining line. So, we should have access to different ingredients that we have not worked with before because of the cost. Venison, foie gras, wild boar, lobster, etc.

My group have been out of the kitchen for 5 weeks now and we all agree that we are more than ready to get back into our chef jackets and play with knives and fire. ;-)

Operations Management

This class has been a complete waste of time. I mean. You go in thinking that you are going to learn something about starting and managing a restaurant, but you come out not knowing any more than you already knew from other classes that you've been in. Oy! I'm not happy and I'm someone is going to hear about it. Too late to help me, but maybe it will help other students down the road.

So, there's an Excel class as part of the "financial analysis" piece to this class. There is not much finance and little to no analysis. The instructor sits at the front of the class and literally tells us each keystroke to make. Go to cell A1 and type in the name of your restaurant, etc. I mean. He leads us through the building of templates that we will us for our project to show projected sales, expenses, etc. How stupid is that!?!?!

This same instructor teaches a lot of the classes in the BA program. So. I'm thinking to myself, if this is an indication of what the BA classes are like, I would never consider NECI for my BA. There are schools that have stronger academic programs for hospitality.

Breathe

My last quarter (we call them modules, mod for short...so that was Mod 3)was really busy and I was drained. We had long days scheduled in the kitchen combined with some very involved projects that I spent my time out of the kitchen working on. So, I haven't posted much here. :-(

Mod 4 started out pretty easy for me and my 4 classmates. We had table service at Chef's Table, which is from 3PM to close. Our projects for the class were really easy. I made it through another table service class without spilling anything on anyone. Yay! We were able offer a table side dessert on our last 2 days. We had a cart set up for making Bananas Foster. The only problem with it is that our instructor priced it at $10 per person with 2 min order of 2 per table. Let's see, $20 for 2 bananas and some cheap liquor...I don't think so. Okay, so you get to watch someone light things on fire at your table. Still, not worth the price. We actually managed to sell one on our last night...but we didn't hold them to the 2 order minimum.

I ran a drink special when I worked my stint at the bar. The restaurant manager liked it so well that he is going to put it on the regular drink menu. How cool is that!?! It was a Spiced Cranberry Sunrise....spiced cranberry syrup, orange juice, ginger ale, and white rum. I had to give up the recipe for the spiced cranberry syrup.

Today I'm starting a new class. It's Operations Management. It's a pretty basic introduction to restaurant management. I think we have to actually prepare a business plan for a restaurant concept as our project.

Just 48 more classroom days until I'm off to my second internship. :-)

Ice Carving

Bullwinkle Ice Carving
Originally uploaded by mzones.

In Garde Manger class, we produce all of the food and displays for Sunday brunch at the Main Street Grill. We spend 4 days preparing foods such as canapes, salads, terrines, pates, omlet station, a roast for carving and some hot foods. We also do presentation items such as aspic platters (decorative work on platters using a very thick geletin) used for serving the terrines and pates. We also do an ice carving every friday afternoon. This week we decided to carve a moose, Bullwinkle specifically. Rocky was one of the aspic platter designs.

(In this picture, Chef John is using the dremel to create handles for moving the sculpture.)

Line Cook at Main Street Grill

Okay, so I've been in this new class for 1 1/2 weeks now. The restaurant, "Main Street Grill", is open 6 days a week, so I only have one day off and it's filled with homework, laundry, etc. I've already completed most of the stations, which are pantry (that's soup & salad), sandwich & pasta, and saute. Tonight I start on the grill and my final station will be the fry station.

We've had a good demonstration of what position in the kitchen is the most important. It is not any of the chefs or cooks or servers. It's the dishwashers. We have one really good dishwasher who normally busses and runs food for servers, it pays better (servers share tips with bussers) than washing dishes. But, when he is washing dishes we never run out of saute pans or pie tins (used for heating stuff in the oven) and he always picks up the dirty saute pans that we drop into hotel pans as we use them on the line. It's so nice and things run really smoothly on the line. Last night was not such a night. The other dishwashers cannot seem to keep up with the dishes and they put the pans off to last, not a good idea. Nor do they pick up the used saute pans so I frequently made trips to the dish pit with dirty pans. At one point, just happened to be during a rush, we had no clean saute pans or pie tins and I needed to get orders into the oven and cooking on the stove top. Incidentally, I ended up having two orders fade from my short-term memory into the black hole only to be rememberd when the chef wanted me to plate them. Ooops! I managed to get them out, but it was more of a rush than it needed to be.

Note to self. Pool tips and share them with the dishwashers. It's financial incentive to work smarter and faster. (NECI does not do this.) Always treat them with respect and remember to thank them for a job well done!

Taste and Flavor

My first rotation this time around is a class called "Taste and Flavor". It includes a wine class and a nutrition class, which is more of a food science class, along with a lab in which we explore what we learn during our lectures. The basis of the class is the 5 basic tastes: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami (a Japanese word meaning savory or meaty). These basic tastes are all sensed by the receptor cells on our tongue. We've learned how they affect each other, for instance salt increases umami and reduces sour, bitter, and sweet. Well, if something is both sweet and sour or sweet and bitter, salt then reduced the bitter or the sour making us able to perceive more sweet.

All of this will eventually get us to a place where we are better able to make adjustments to "balance" tastes on a plate.

Flavor is actually taste + texture + aroma. We aren't really allowed to use this word in class. The chef instructor calls this the "f" word. I've noted that he as used it several times, but I still am bridling my tongue. We are to be specific when describing food in terms of the taste, texture and aroma. I will have a prototype of my final dish which I will complete on Monday. I have not a clue what I'm doing and won't even be able to think about it until Thursday when I sample and am assigned a wine to serve with said dish. YIKES!

Day Trip to Stowe

Originally uploaded by mzones.

Yesterday my roommate and I took a day trip to Stowe, VT. It's only about a 15 mile drive from Montpelier, for for some reason I never made it over there during my first year at NECI. It's a cute little town. The Von Trapp family, of Sound of Music fame, moved to Vermont and settled in Stowe in 1938. The Trapp Family Lodge there draws a lot of visitors, but I didn't bother to go see it.

Half Way There

I completed my internship when I clocked out last night. This has been a great experience and really served to reinforce what I learned at school as well as adding to the knowledge. I'm so surprised at how quickly my first year of school has gone by and am looking forward to starting my second year. Orientation is September 6th followed by a sanitation review and welcome back dinner. I'll get my class schedule for the first quarter during orientation.

For now, I'm concentrating on packing my belongings so that I can load them into my car and drive back to Vermont in just a few days.

Shrimp Scampi with Angle Hair Pasta

Shrimp Scampi with Angle Hair Pasta
Originally uploaded by mzones.

This was a special that we ran during lunch at the Inn on Biltmore Estate last week. Mmmm.

Biltmore House

Biltmore House
Originally uploaded by mzones.

I've let too much time pass between postings. I am still at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC, on internship. I will have completed this first internship in just a couple of weeks. Wow, 6 months sure has gone by quickly.

I have learned so much and been able to apply the techniques that I learned at my first 6 months of school at NECI. I am looking forward to moving on and completing my second 6 months of classes at NECI. Following that, I have another 6 month internship before I finish my culinary education.

I have an apartment lined up in Montpelier for my second term. I will be sharing a 2 bedroom apartment that is very close to Main Street, where most of our classes are, with my classmate Maimai (pronounced like my-my). She is from the Philippines and is in the Baking and Pastry program at NECI.

I finally took this picture of the Biltmore House on my day off yesterday. I had a photo tour assignment for school that I wanted to include this in.

Enjoy!

Cheese & Fruit Platter

Cheese & Fruit Platter
Originally uploaded by mzones.

I was on loan to the Bistro this evening and one of the things I did while I was there was put this cheese and fruit platter together for a group dinner.