mulligatawny soup.

So I looked at a new apartment today--if I didn't mention it before, I've got to be out of this temporary arrangement here by August. Anyway, the place is great. A two-room studio, lots of built-in shelving, really cute architecture. Gas stove (fuck yeah). It's in Shadyside, rather than South Oakland, which makes it very close to my job. Very nice area, overall.

It's expensive. The rent is going to be 500 a month with utilities included, with the exception of cooking gas and electric (pretty negligable). I could potentially get a place with a roommate for much cheaper, and probably stick around in Oakland. But you know, I really don't want to be in a crummy building in a shady area, living with or around a bunch of drunken college kids. I want to have my own place where I can have people over if I want, do my cooking, have my little herb garden in the window, etc. I think what I'm getting at is I don't want to be a student in student housing with dorm furniture and immature roommates--I want to be a young professional with a home! So I did my budget, and I figure I can do it, so long as I can delay paying first month's rent to hold the apartment until I get paid this week. Things are going to be tighter once I live there, with juggling loan payments, rent, and staying alive, but I think I can make it.

The restaurant will owe me at least a small raise in the coming months too. I'm really getting good on the line, and I actually feel like I'm well-appreciated at this job--I've been volunteering for latenight shifts, trying to help out with cleaning as much as I can, I never call off, etc. The chefs get me to create amuse-bouche for VIPs now, which is a sign that they trust me to not suck at making food. And I actually show up to work. I didn't realize until recently that finding employees who are simply willing to be at work on time every day is the toughest thing about being a chef.

this is my habanero plant

Schedule for this week: I've got the weekend off, latenight on Tuesday and Wednesday. So it's five days of school and work, which is cool, but somewhere in between all that, I have to manage to write a biography on Alain Ducasse, due Friday morning. And I'm not gonna make it the minimum 500 words. It needs to be good, at least in the sense that it shows I passed the English portion of the SAT (not terribly common among PCI students).

The week's going to be good though, especially in anticipation of having a weekend with no responsibilities whatsoever. I'll update more often as I'm on the computer writing.

day off

Rump roast with portobello jus liè, ancho-garlic mashed potatoes, cinnamon-sage turnip rissolè.

daube de boeuf bourguignon

93% on the practical. Perfect chicken fabrication, nice whipped potatoes, vegetables, etc. Great sauce. Apparently I used too much garnish in the forcemeat and my piping skills need work (which warrants seven points off? wtf?).

Tomorrow I'll be doing a roast, some kind of vegetable. I've got a decent amount of produce on hand and a few mushrooms to compliment the dish, and about eight ounces of my homemade brown stock (which has completely gelatinized in the refridgerator due to its excellent quality) for a nice sauce. I need to get some batteries for my camera, but I'll try and document the event. Everyone should know how to cook a big chunk of beef. It's going to be a lonely dinner unless I can find someone to dine with me. Roommate will be out, girlfriend is gone, don't really know too many people that aren't working/are my friends. I don't even know how many of my friends in the Burgh read this thing anyway.

Donating blood is a good experience. I think watching a vein in your arm fill up a good-sized plastic bag with blood in six minutes brings us a little more in tune with our vulnerabilities. Combined with the added bonus of free cookies and orange juice, and the dramatically altered effect caffeine or alcohol can have on you following the procedure, it's something everyone should go through routinely. It also kind of irks me when perfectly healthy people say they don't do it because they're "afraid of needles". You're going to opt out of helping to save lives because you can't stand seeing your own blood run out of you? And you want to do what for a living? Cook? Get used to carving off pieces of your flesh while you've got ten orders of grilled salmon on your hands, and watching latex gloves slowly fill with your own blood. "How did I get all this port wine reduction on my apron? OH MY GOD!"

~"being in love's a lot like searing off a piece of fish. There's that initial sizzle that gets you all excited, but then, if your pan's not hot enough, it ends up sticking and getting all ruined and messy and... I don't know where I'm going with this."

I am burned out like a goddamn candle. School is becoming something that I just have to show up for in the morning and get over with so that I can get on with my real life at work. When this waking up for school shit is over, my life is going to improve so much.

I'm just so exhausted. I consumed six or seven cups of coffee the other day just to stay awake at work and I'm about to go do it all over again, and then again tomorrow, except tomorrow morning I have my practical exam in Advanced. Supreme de Volaille, which involves grinding meat, making a mousseline style forcemeat (stuffed underneath the skin of the bird), and roasting a whole chicken, in addition to vegetable and starch and sauce production in and hour and fifteen minutes. If I mess up anything it's quite possible I'll have to take the class again, about 200 dollars out of my pocket.

Okay, done with this shit now. I'm gonna go get it done--I moved up here to be a stronger person.

argh, my day off is almost over.

A stew that I made tonight. I began by browning the beef at very high heat, then added quartered cloves of garlic and diced onion with tomato paste to caramelize, flour to incorporate a blonde roux, then my homemade beef stock, and allowed it to simmer for an hour. I added a garnish of carrots and turnips, and fresh sage.

The Coquille St.Jacques--a half dozen scallops covered with a royal glacage inside Duchesse potatoes. It's not terribly appealling if done wrong--a royal glacage is equal parts Hollandaise, whipped cream, and cuisson (fish stock thickened with beurre manie), which will seperate into a pool of congealed egg yolk and butterfat if measured incorrectly. The cholesterol content of the dish is mind-boggling anyway, even if executed well.

Medallions de veau aux fines herbs et au champagne. Tenderized veal medallions sauteèd and served with a sauce of champagne, creme fraiche, dijon mustard, and fine herbs (parsley tarragon, chervil, and chives). I was happy to have the oppurtunity to work on this dish--the sauce is incredible and complements the mild veal perfectly.

Potato Leek Soup. Not exactly the same thing as my recipe but rather nice, nonetheless. When I made this, Chef had me press it through a sieve which yielded a very smooth product.

The Navarin of Lamb--leg of lamb cubed and braised in brown veal stock. This is what I based my stew on, or at least its technique. The browning of the meat at the beginning is crucial. Without the caramelization, the sauce will not have the same richness.

Crepinette de Boeuf. A section of beef tenderloin browned, and wrapped in a mousseline style chicken forcemeat, garnished with shiitake mushrooms, shallots, garlic, Madiera wine reduction, and chiffonaded spinach.

jambalaya jam

le fond de cuisine

"The ideology of a stock needs to be understood," he said, reclined but, as always, precise, quiet, and alert. "It all goes back to respect."

-Thomas Keller

Spicy Mango-Onion Chutney

Get together a Vidalia onion, a few cloves of garlic, a lime, two almost-ripe mangos. Cut the onion and mango into brunoise (1/8 inch dice), or roughly chop if you don't care. Mince the garlic, and cut the lime in half for juicing. Sautè the onion, gently, in extra-virgin olive oil until lightly caramelized. Add garlic and cook the raw taste out. Deglaze with all the juice of the lime. Don't use an aluminum saucepan for this--the acid in this and the gastrique that will be made will turn the chutney gray and poisonous.

Add the mango, and immediately after, add equal parts brown sugar and balsamic vinegar (I used a strawberry-infused balsamic). Once it comes to a boil, the gastrique--vinegar and sugar boiled together which makes up that potent taste in pickles--is finished, but if you have too much liquid in proportion to mango and onion, let it reduce a little bit. It's not a bad idea to concentrate the flavor a little anyway. At the end, adjust seasoning with black pepper, kosher salt, and cayenne pepper. It should have heat, but not the kind that distracts from a good meal. I plan on using this with some pork chops given to me by a co-worker; they've been marinating for about a day now in his mixture of beer, cayenne, and a few other things that I haven't been able to figure out.