I came to class feeling unprepared, not having spent much time reading up on plate presentation or looking at books or google images. I’ve been out of town on business and just plain busy. I told myself that I would just be inspired by the ingredients and do my best to be creative, something I […]
The week before this class we all drew slips of paper which contained our countries or regions for this class. I drew Ireland, Greece, Asia, California, and Carribean. Then for class we drew from three cups: 2 were countries and 1 was a type of dish to prepare. My first dish was Asia/Carribean/dessert. I greated […]
I’ve been so busy lately I’ve put off writing in the blog and now it’s hard to catch up properly. Wine pairing class was something I was anticipating with a little anxiety. We were going to have Chef Jon Bonnell as our instructor and would be asked to make dishes to go with wine he […]
My cooking partner, Ray OK, think of an assignment so complicated you will surely get a headache–that is the Escoffier class. Pick up the book, Le Guide Culinare sometime and you’ll see what I mean. Escoffier is the first person to codify la grand cuisine, classic French cooking. We got a packet of “recipes” from […]
I’m a big fan of southwestern cooking. I have all of Bobby Flay’s books after all, and a freezer full of Hatch green chiles I bought back in August, and many spices from the Santa Fe School of cooking in my pantry, along with bags of red chile powder, dried posole, and masa in the […]
I’m getting excited about launching my real culinary business, Chef Julia Personal Chef Services. I have created several menus, recipes, and price lists, have business cards and am researching websites. I will have brochures made soon. The big project for our final semester has been to write up our business plan in a very detailed […]
I felt pretty comfortable with the subject matter of this class. I am very interested in nutrition and read a lot about it, particularly eating for health. I am also very aware of special diets for people with health concerns after being around my mother, who was diabetic and then later on a renal diet. […]
Food fads come and go but a trend has the potential to become a long term influence on the market. A few years ago I thought the whole “tapas” trend was silly but I’ve come to accept it and actually like the idea of sampling small plates instead of one large entree. Some current trends […]
Chef Waier showing us how to clean squid Dread, dread–timed cooking. Have you ever seen the show Chopped? Well this class is similar. Chef Waier gives us an assignment and we have 20 minutes to execute it. We had 45 minutes to set up mise en place, then we were told to prepare an amuse […]
Chef Waier delivered a fascinating lecture on classic recipes including some history of haute cuisine, epicurian, Escoffier, Nouvelle cuisine, and fusion. We studied this in CP I so it was more of a review. The class tonight was intended to test our skills in actually preparing the classic dishes. Our recipe packet consisted of: Pork […]