It’s the halfway mark – term 2 of 4 is finished, which means I’m halfway completed my diploma. So far, it’s been an interesting ride, and I’ve learned a fair bit, but have high hopes for the second half. Way more lecture classes than anticipated, which hopefully will help us out in the long run. Next term, I’m taking an Artisan Breads class, European Tortes, and 2 lecture classes (clearly am v. excited about the lecture classes, I can’t even recall what they are called!!)
Finals were fine. Predictable, rather long, but just fine. Pastry was interesting – 2 intense days, 3 hours each, where we had to make a birthday cake (of white genoise, which is a light whipped egg sponge cake, Italian buttercream, 8 rosettes on top, and “happy birthday” written on top in chocolate), lemon sabayon tarte, croissants, and eclairs/profiteroles. It was tight timing, but fully do-able.
Post-finals was even better 🙂 Five of us girls went for post-exam bellinis at 11am….it was still patio weather, so 3 bellinis later, it made for a fun afternoon. We did some window shopping, checked out Williams Sonoma (my new place of work – new post to be made on that note!!!), and later went for a super yummy dinner at one of the city’s finest restaurants. A bit too $$$ for student budgets, but they have an amazing deal every night from 5-6pm, where you get a 3 course meal for $30 – and considering mains are all $30+, it was a steal. I had the heirloom beet salad with hazelnut vinagrette and homemade cheese ‘canneloni, then the braised beef short rib over onion parmesan orzo (OMG amazing!!) followed by a deconstructed cheesecake of some sort. I’m a bit over the whole ‘deconstructed’ phenomenon. Sometimes it’s kind of fun when each component is essentially a dish in its own (ie. if you did deconstructed strawberry shortcake, don’t just serve Whipped Cream on it’s own. It would have to be like a vanilla mousse or something else that satisfies the whipped cream quotient of the recipe, but be entirally edible on its own. You know what I mean? This cheesecake was a bit awkward to be deconstructed, as the cheese was quite soft so it was sort of pooled in the bowl, with a pile of graham crumbs. I don’t know – I wasn’t sold, but the heavenly onion parmesan orzo made up for it entirelly.
So now I’ve got 2 weeks off till next term – the break is always very, very much appreciated. I could get used to this ‘2 weeks every 3 months’ deal!!
Pastry 101: final exam

blackbox competition
Our skills class had our practical exam on Wednesday and a written exam on Thursday, and once we finished that test, we got to do a black box competition. Black box is similar to Iron Chef where we have a mystery ingredient and a set time frame in which to create something.
We had two hours, and our final dishes would be judged on taste, appearance, creativity, use of special ingredient, and cooking skills. It would be judged by our chef, two other chef’s from the school, and the president of the BC Chef’s Association (who is in our textbook!)! Our mystery ingredient was pork tenderloin and fillets of sole (white fish) – we only had to use one. Not exactly a black box then (because in the true black boxes there are usually all sorts of other ingredients which you had to use) but definitely no complaints! Apart from those two proteins, there were an assortment of vegetables, plus we had flour, oil, etc.
I decided to use the pork, as it is less delicate than the fish, and honestly, I couldn’t think of anything to do with the fish. The hardest thing was deciding what to make, so as I planned out some ideas I started prepping a few ingredients. In the end, I decided to make a meditteranean-style pork roulade. For some reason I equate pork to heavy fall/winter dishes, especially German dishes where you’d eat it breaded or with sauerkraut. So, I decided to make a German dumpling called Spaetzle (kind of like pasta, but the dough is runnier and is boiled) and do a roasted red pepper sauce with it. For the pork, I roasted garlic and tomatoes, and I smacked the pork really thin, covered it in the garlic, tomatoes and basil, rolled it up and secured it with butcher’s twine, and grilled it before popping it in the oven. It looked really pretty when it was sliced up. Too bad it was still semi-raw on the inside, so I had to grill the individual slices to cook them through. Ended up with grill marks I didn’t want, but hey, at least it was cooked. The spatzle was awesome….in class we’d made it sauteed in olive oil and topped with cheese, but this was a much lighter way to enjoy it.
In the end, my friend Leslie (who made this amazing spaghetti squash ravioli with sole on top) and I tied for first place! She won overall in the end (there could only be one winner) because her pasta was incredible, but I was still pretty happy with the overall results.
This was our class at the end, minus four people who weren’t there that day. Next time those whites get worn is in pastry class! (However, for Father’s Day today I made the best cheesecake ever – a S’Mores cheesecake, with graham cracker crust, rich chocolate filling, and marshmellowy-merienge like topping. It is incredible – recipe is in the current issue of Bon Appetit if you’re inclined to do a little baking!!!)
homework follow up
It sounds like you guys were hoping for a real ‘official’ winner….I wish that were the case to find the best ever type of chocolate. I was actually doing a comparison between the different levels of cocoa solids (the 70%, 85% and get this 99%) types. I actually really like the 85%. The more cocoa solids, the better. Haven’t tried the 99% though, just found it yesterday and at $4/bar  my class gets to be the guinea pig on that one, I’ll just sample it at the same time they do.
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