I survived pastry boot camp (day 5...and beyond)

The last day of pastry camp was seriously a blur. We got to class and quickly watched demos of finishing a chocolate mousse cake and a bavarian cream cake. Then we finished our fruit tarts, baked up our palmiers and wrapped up all our food to go. A quick graduation certificate ceremony and a class review later, we were free to go off on our own into the pastry-filled sunset.

Then came the fun fun fun trip home. First I had a 2 hour drive from Hyde Park to Albany, made two hours only because I had to stop and take a nap halfway through because I nearly fell asleep and hit the rumble strip on the side of the freeway. Yes, it was scary. This is what happens when you try to drive on the NY Thruway after not having slept a full night in a week. Then I had my flight from Albany to DC, an hour layover in DC, followed by a 6-hour flight home. Like I said, fun fun fun.

And now I am back home. Not sure what's next for me in the pastry category, but in three days, I start work again. Can't believe this mini-sabbatical has passed by so quickly. I wish I could say that I am more enlightened about life or even my work, but I think I'm just more well-rested than anything else. We'll see how long that lasts. ;)

Playing with sugar and my beef with buttercream (day 4)

Quote of the day: "California? Oh yes, that place filled with nuts and raisins" - Chef Schorner, referring not to the produce but the human inhabitants of the Golden State

Today I played hookie. I'll get that out of the way now. I skipped my usual 3-course lunch at the CIA and went to McDonald's for some fries and a filet-o-fish. And diet Coke. And yes, it was glorious. One good thing about playing hookie though, is that I got back from lunch early, and Chef Schorner taught me how to play with sugar and create cool sugar domes. Sweet!

Moving on -- today we finished frosting and decorating our cakes. Let me just say for the record that I hate buttercream. It's fickle and fussy and it doesn't like me. However, with a whole lot of help from the chef and repeated attempts, I'm happy to have produced my first buttercream-filled cake. I happen to think it's pretty hot. ;) We also sliced up our puff pastry for palmiers, and made a yummy apple tart. I think that might be my new pie!

Dinner today was at the American Bounty, which serves up, well, America's bounty. I had the soup sampler (which included four soups ranging from cheddar beer to alligator gumbo), the free range chicken cooked two ways (stuffed, and sausage), and the vanilla panna cotta with spiced earl grey sauce for dessert.

And with that, the last day of boot camp is upon us. Tomorrow we bake up our palmiers, finish our fruit tarts and figure out what other pastry goodies await us in the future. Oh, that and I have to go home. :(

Adventures in pastry cream (Day 2)

I survived my second day at boot camp. In retrospect, today actually passed by pretty quickly, even though I almost fell asleep in class more than once. We had early lecture again, followed by pastry cream galore (or hell, if creams are not your thing) -- we filled cream puffs and eclairs, brulee-ed some creme brulees, glazed bread puddings and presented our first set of desserts. It was magnificently decadent. (I know magnificently is not a word.) Lunch was wild rice and mushroom soup, prime rib (for lunch!), and profiteroles that we didn't get to since we were stuffed with cream puffs.

In the afternoon, we had a really interesting lecture on tea and coffee by one of the professors who runs Apple Pie Bakery, the cafe on campus. We sampled 6 different coffees side by side, and then 12 (yes, a dozen) teas and tisanes side by side. It was awesome and very eye opening. Conclusions? I still love my espresso straight up. And drip coffee is still gross.

Dinner was at the St. Andrew's Cafe, which I admit made me a bit homesick since the health-conscious, Asian-influenced cuisine was very similar to what you would find in SF. I had a spinach & arugula salad to start, followed by a pan seared salmon with a soy-orange glaze, served with shitake and edamame and steamed brown rice. Yum yum yum!

On deck for tomorrow: we conquer puff pastry, buttercreams (that was tomorrow and not today), and cookie dough!

Pastry Boot Camp kicks my ass (Day 1)

It's 11pm, and I'm exhausted after day 1 of Pastry Boot Camp at the Culinary Institute of America in beautiful Hyde Park, NY. We started with orientation at 6am (yes, 6am -- that's 3am to my jetlagged body), and then went straight to lecture, 4 hours of production (that's baking time), lunch, then lecture and critique, campus tour, R&R (afternoon break, or nap time, as I call it), and then dinner at Caterina de Medici, the campus's Italian restaurant. And I am pooped.

Some observations from day 1:

-Our instructor is this really awesome, slightly kooky pastry chef who's credited with bringing the crème brûlée to America. No joke. The guy is a bad ass. He used to work at Le Cirque (remember Top Chef with the fish and potato recreation dish episode?), Tavern on the Green and the Savoy Hotel in London!

-The food here is really good. It's like food from work (cuz it's all gourmet and free), but not all obsessively organic. For lunch we had this incredible wild mushroom risotto with sausage, a salmon dish (fish was cooked perfectly!), and cheesecake. Dinner was at the Italian restaurant where I had beef carpaccio (too much oil) and a tube noodle pasta called garganelli with a green pea and prosciutto sauce. It was delish! Dessert was tiramisu, of course. :)

-In class, we made pâte à choux (base pastry for cream puffs and eclairs), pastry cream, and a custard based dessert. Our team got bread pudding. Not sure how it all tastes yet since we are finishing them tomorrow, but preliminary critique says that our pate a choux was excellent, our pastry cream was slightly bubbly (not good) and our bread pudding was "okay". Not sure what that means

Tomorrow we are making cakes...sponge cake and chiffon cake and buttercreams!!

Oh, and did I mention that I was exhausted. Time for bed. Pics from the beautiful campus can be found here.