Terri goes to school!: April 2008

4.12.2008

plated desserts

This past week was "plated desserts" week. Basically, restaurant style desserts. Planning ahead, baking crusts and preparing fillings one day, and preparing and plating the next day. We prepared everything - the individual desserts, the sauces, the toppings, the cookies, and the ice-creams and sorbets.

If I haven't gained any weight yet during this program - I gained it all this week! We each had to plate each dessert and then ideally just taste, or eat, each dessert. We plated 2-3 desserts every day in class. You do the calorie math...

Here are some of the desserts we made this week:

4.7.08:
Crème Brûlée with Shortbread cookies

Crème caramel (aka Flan), Orange/Strawberry salad, Tuille cookie and candied Kumquats

4.8.08:
Orange Crêpes, filled with orange pastry cream, served with orange segments and Blueberry Sorbet

Chocolate Crêpes, filled with chocolate ganache, served with flambeed pears and Cranberry Sorbet

Chocolate Marquise Cake, served with Raspberry compote and Crème Anglaise sauce

4.9.08:
Seasonal Fruit Tart (we prepared a mixed berry tart), served with Caramel/Vanilla swirl ice-cream, Ginger Crème Anglaise and a Port Wine reduction

Spinach & Mushroom Jalousie, served with Béchamel Sauce (I ate 1 1/2 of these for lunch that day)

Kiwi Marmalade Tart, served with Lemon Ice-cream, Kiwi Cookie, Kiwi Coulis and Kiwi cubes

4.10.08:
Lemon Tart, served with Mixed berry Sorbet, Basil Crème Anglaise, berry sauce and a crystallized Basil leaf

Chocolate Manjari Tart, served with toasted Coconut ice-cream, Coconut Crème Anglaise dotted with Chocolate Sauce, chocolate covered hazelnuts, toasted/candied coconut

Banana Macadamia nut Financier, served with a macadamia nut Tuille cookie, caramel covered Macadamia nuts, Brown Butter sauce and Milk Chocolate ice-cream

4.11.08:
Pineapple Tart Tatin, served with Frozen Lime frozen yogurt, Kaffir Lime sauce and a pineapple chip

Cold Apple Charlotte, served with Red Currant Sorbet, clear Vanilla sauce, Red Currant sauce and an apple chip

Warm Apple Charlotte, served with Caramel sauce and Green Apple Sorbet

We had our "plated desserts" written exam on Friday morning. We start "Sugar" on Monday. FUN! Can you sense my sarcasm through my text?!

4.07.2008

Exciting Updates

I officially start my internship at Restaurant Daniel on Wednesday. I'm very excited about this. It was a pretty intensive application process - I had to submit my resume with a cover letter, had an HR interview, then got a call back for an interview with the Pastry Chef, Dominique Ansel, then went in for a trial day (12 pm-12:30 am), then the internship offer... On my trial day I worked for 7 hrs in the kitchen doing prep-work and then 5.5 hrs doing actual service. It's a high stress job working service in a restaurant like Daniel!
I'll be interning every Wednesday after school for about 6 hours and every Saturday for 12-13 hours between now and graduation in mid-June. For the month of April I'll be interning from 7 am-7 pm on Saturday's and for the month of May I'll be interning from 12 pm-12 am, which usually means till anywhere between 12:30 am earliest-1:30 am. I'm hoping to learn a ton from this experience.
Special thanks to Raykha for letting me stay with her while I intern!!!

Some more exciting news - George and I will be living in Chicago for most of the summer! George will be doing his internship from June 2nd - Aug 8th. His first week will be spent in NY for training, but after that he'll be in Chicago. I graduate on June 18th and will move out there the following week.
I was originally planning on staying in NY for the summer and continuing my internship at Daniel, but at that point George and I will have lived apart for 6 months and I don't think I could take it much longer.
I won't be able to find a paid pastry position since I'll only be out there for 6-7 weeks, so I'm looking for another pastry internship for when I'm out there. Hopefully I'll have an update on that closer to graduation.