Tart Time

I'm visiting a friend to meet her new baby girl this evening, and I made this sweet treat to bring along. It's a basic flaky sweet tart crust, with a dark chocolate mousse and cinnamon poached pears drizzled with dark chocolate. Num!

If it tastes half as good as it looks, it will be so delicious. Goodness knows the mousse is tasty, I practically licked the bowl clean after filling the crust heh. It's great to finally have the time to do this sort of thing again, I've missed baking. I used this recipe, it's super simple and makes more than plenty of everything for a big round pie despite the recipe being for a rectangular mold. Cheers!

Something's Fishy

We're still in terrine and tray mode in Garde Manger class - thankfully next week we switch over to sausages and charcuterie. Today we made poached trout in court bouillon, and scallop mousseline terrines on mirrors with tray garnishes of our choice.

I made the little choux pastry garnishes for our tray, it's so simple and quick, and with little discs of the scallop mousseline and some parsley mayonnaise, they were actually quite tasty. Giving the trout a little hot pepper to hold in its mouth also amused me to no end. Plus now I know that mousseline is what the little fish balls in phò soup are made of and I can now make my own. Eureka! Cheers!

Salmon Mousse Terrine and Chaud-Froid

We're in the terrine phase of our Garde-Manger class and today was salmon mousse terrines on decorated chaud-froid. That's just a fancy way of saying gelatinized salmon and cream, on velouté sauce with more gelatin. So. Much. Gelatin.

My partner and I had fun making our undersea scene with little carrot fish and dill seaweeds. The only bummer is I botched the clean whiteness of the chaud-froid with some dark aspic instead of the clear gelatin glaze Chef had prepared for that purpose. Ah well! We still got 84% and I am quite happy. Cheers!

Sticky Toffee Pudding

I was making the sticky toffee pudding, with roasted banana ice cream and candied pecans for the restaurant at the college this week. I'm very happy with how the little puddings came out, as well as the plating. Making little 'cookie' bowls for the ice cream is always fun and easy, too.

There was a birthday, hence the special plate. We were out of chocolate so I just nicked some leftover ganache from another person in the bakeshop and used that to write out the letters. They're a little more blobby than I like but it did the job. Cheers!

Sushi

This week we made sushi in our Garde Manger class. Not bad considering I'd never made any before! Cheers!

Soup Sunday

I woke to a world blanketed in snow today, and it felt like a good day to make some soup. I've been meaning to make a batch of this awesome Pumpkin Ale Cheese Soup for months now, and finally I got around to it today.

 

I always like to add a little more pumpkin puree than the recipe asks - 2/3 of a cup just doesn't seem like enough to me - to give it that added little pumpkin kick. With smoked paprika and dry mustard in here, the flavours need to be robust enough to stand up to those spices.

Now I'm going to enjoy some soup! Cheers!

New Menu

We have a new menu for this semester in the restaurant and we all got together in the kitchen last night to cook and bake up all the dishes - and then stuff ourselves silly eating them. The idea was that we'd all know what they looked like and how they're supposed to taste.

I didn't manage to get photos of everything, unfortunately some stuff got eaten before I had a chance, like most of the main course proteins. But ah well!

Why our chef decided the put a bread pudding and a sticky pudding on the menu was beyond us but eh. I've got the beef mufalleta next week and I'll be hard-pressed to top the one made by my classmate with the onion rings. A challenge! Cheers!

Fly Away Fruit

We had a diabetic in the restaurant last night, so they couldn't eat any of our desserts. I was asked to make up a fruit plate for them, but I didn't want it to be blah and boring, either to eat or make! So I had a ball making an apple-swan and prettying up the dish with fruit and berries.

My Chef told me the guest really loved the presentation and was very happy. Just because something is simple doesn't mean it has to be plain! Cheers!

Lovin' Pavlova

I'm making the vanilla pavlova with lemon curd and fruit for the restaurant this week.
I've very happy with my plating, and I'm glad I decided to grill the mango slices, it really helped polish things off and give it character. Cheers!

Busy Cooking

I'm responsible for the Dark Chocolate Mushroom Millefeuille with White Bean Purée in the college restaurant this week. The flavours aren't to my liking but I'm happy with how it looks at least. Chocolate, rosemary and mushrooms shouldn't mix, so far as I am concerned! Still, it's fun to assemble. Cheers!

Scholarship Weekend

I was one of the lucky few to win a scholarship from the Canadian Hospitality Foundation and part of that was being invited to their gala award ceremony and charity ball down in Toronto. My boyfriend lives about halfway there so I took the opportunity to visit him too. Unfortunately only the scholarship winners were given a free dinner, everybody else had to pony up $450 a person so I attended alone. The food was divine though! Not to mention how I felt in the lovely dress my boyfriend bought me for my birthday so I could have something decent to wear to the ceremony.

My mountain-man and I :) And yes that's a bear skin rug on the floor behind me. I love his cabin home. I didn't get to stick around too long though since it was still several hours drive to the ceremony in Toronto. The food alone was worth it!

They did a lot of modern stuff with their food presentation, like this plastic 'papillote' instead of using wax paper, which was really neat. Although I got the impression that non-foodies were more than a little confused by it.

 

The wine was free-flowing and delicious, including a sparkling wine later in the evening. Their sorbet presentation was gorgeous too; instead of in a dish, it was served in an specially made ice bowl with a little electric candle in the base lighting it from the inside. There was even live entertainment!

By the time dessert came around I felt like I was going to explode. There was even a cheese plate after the dessert, but I didn't photograph that because I was too far into my food coma. But I actually got to eat some edible gold leaf, fancy! I drove home late and slept like the dead that night.

The Sunday with my honey was leisurely. We went out for a paddle - he paddled, I enjoyed - on the lake and generally just enjoyed each other's company. I cooked us up a leg of lamb for dinner and we drank plenty of tasty wine. I snapped this last photo off the Monday morning when I was leaving to drive home and head to my afternoon classes. It was a decadent and most enjoyable weekend all around. I still have a bunch of photos from my class trip to Niagara to share too but I have a ton of homework to finish - which explains my general absence here - before I get around to that. Cheers!

Orange Duck

I was tasked with the duck in the college restaurant this past week. Decent for the first week open but turning all those little vegetables ate up a huge chunk of my time and I couldn't come up with a creative garnish. Hence the lame little piece of orange supreme.

This week I'm doing service work in the dining room so I don't have to worry about cooking anything, but next week I'm on starch and vegetables. I have to come up with tasty and attractive vegetables that can be easily portioned. Exciting... Cheers!

Bonne Fête

I baked a gateau moka for my mother's birthday again this year. This was a mother's day cake the first time I baked it for her, and she's asked for it every time a cake occasion arises since. I was very happy with how this came out for once, which is rare for me. I'm a terrible perfectionist!

This just tastes so good with its coffee butter cream, coffee-syrup soaked genoise cake, toasted almonds and chocolate covered coffee beans.Cheers!

Sweet and Savoury

I often invite myself over to my parents' to cook for our weekly meal. I brought crême brulée for dessert to my parents' and made us cilantro, lime and yogurt marinated chicken wings on the charcoal grill.
Then I had extra key limes so I made a key lime pie with chantilly cream border. It's naturally a pale yellow but I wanted a green filling to echo the lime so I mixed in a few drops of food colouring. Cheers!

Hummingbird Cake

It was my father's birthday this week and I baked him up a cake I'd never tried before. While I have no trouble spending 6 hours on one dessert confection, I was looking for something simple and quick this time around. Hummingbird cake to the rescue! A dense, flavourful cake made with bananas, pineapple and loads of delicious pecans. It's so simple you just need two bowls; one for the dry, one for the wet (okay technically 3 if you count one for the cream cheese icing) and the most involved part is chopping the pecans and I just used the little mini-processor attachment on my immersion blender to do that. This cake was so delicious! I highly recommend it if you need a great cake in a pinch. Cheers!