Custards Up The Whazoo!

I woke up with enough time to get all of my homework done and my uniform washed before class. Phew! When I showed up to class with my typed assignment, some of the students mocked me saying:

“Jonathan has to type his assignment. It isn’t enough that Jonathan speaks French! Teacher’s pet!”

In my defense, I thought we were supposed to type it, I’ve only ever said one word to Chef in French, and I highly doubt I’m teacher’s pet. Ha! I know they say these things all in good fun. Well, I hope. Chef made a comment in class about how he loves two things about American food—cheesecake and fried chicken. I could have died from laughter. Did I not just blog about fried chicken this week? I’m pretty sure that I did. Well, even though this may seem like a “brown-nose” statement, I full-heartedly agree with Chef. Cheesecake is delicious and fried chicken, wonderful!

We made New York style cheesecake. Apparently, this particular style of cheesecake involves cornstarch and heavy cream. I was able to fill two six-inch cake pans. Yes, cake pans. You see, in most bakeries where they are making several cheesecakes a day; they prefer to use cake pans which are dampened and lined with plastic wrap suitable for oven use. “It’s bettah dis way!” (High-five to the handful of you who know what I just quoted). As soon as our cheesecakes were in the oven, we removed our crème caramel and pot de crème out of the refrigerator and plated them for Chef.

“Your kahrahmel eez dahrk. Zee French love bittair kahrahmel like ziss, but zee Americans do not.”

So I guess he liked my bitter caramel. Honestly, I was just trying to match the burnt amber color he produced during the demo. He didn’t say much about the chocolate pot de crème.

“Good.” Silence.

The awkward silence usually indicates that he has finished his critique and I should leave his presence. Maybe not that harsh, but that’s what I do. With a simple, “Thanks Chef,” I make my way back to my station. Unfortunately, we were forced to keep our cheesecakes in the freezer so we can plate them on Monday. As sad as I was about not being able to bring them home or even taste them, I was sufficiently happy with my crème caramel and pot de crème.

My Creme Caramel as it was presented it to Chef

I stayed on campus to attend a workshop that will enable me to work different catering events for various companies that provide food at major events including events such as the Academy Awards. It takes many hands to feed that many people so chefs like Wolfgang Puck hire students from Le Cordon Bleu to work One Time Events (OTE) and gain real industry experience. In order to work these OTE’s you must attend a workshop and since today’s workshop was the only one I could attend this month, I decided to go in case I wanted to earn a little money on the side and work an event. The meeting wasn’t until 6 however, which left me stranded at school for additional three hours. I researched and caught up on emails. There was a buffet in Lab 2 (a buffet, as far as I understand, is when a class is working on table presentation skills and they prepare a table of different kinds of food and anyone who is at the school can come and snack on whatever they have prepared. Their theme was Audrey Heburn and their colors, light blue and silver. It was okay. The food looked incredible! It was all different kinds of seafood which I thought was odd of them to pair with Audrey Heburn. I wanted to try everything so I loaded my plate. It was a bit disappointing actually. I ate this kebab that had a shrimp on it that tasted off. Their drink of choice was cucumber lemonade. Yes, it was gross! Don’t let your curiosity fool you into thinking, “Oh, this could be good,” as mine did me. After the buffet and the meeting, I quickly returned home so I could take pictures of my food before the sun went down—we only use natural people.

After the photo shoot was done, the kids, Yolanda, Hunter, and I inhaled the crème caramel and the pot de crème. DELICIOUS! Not too much happened that evening. Since I am still without friends (I’m going to work on that, I promise), I decided to treat myself to a movie. I went to a night showing of “Robin Hood.” Euh, it’s a RedBox type of movie for sure. Oh, I forgot to mention that I received a massage from Paulo. I don’t know if I’ve blogged about this earlier. I taught Paulo, who is four, how to give massages. For those of you who are not aware, I am severely addicted to back massages. My poor brother Ben had to endure my whines or shaking of my shoulders beckoning him to give me a back massage practically every night when we were roommates last year. Often, he would refuse. However, Paulo, in his impressionable state, was eager to learn and now walks up and down my back (he doesn’t walk on my spine DAD so no need to explain that strange back condition that runs in our family—I can see you making the hand motions that visually explain what happens to the back—love you) in exchange for a little back massage of his own—which he loves. I walked back home, talked with Yolanda and Hunter until I started feeling this strange tingling sensation in my face. As it worsened, I figured I was having a slight allergic reaction, I decided to just go to bed. Should have taken medicine that night! Just wait until you hear what happened…

Pot de Creme & Creme Caramel (before releasing, plating, and garnishing)

Chocolate Pot de Creme

Spoon of Chocolate Pot de Creme

Creme Caramel (Flan)