Cookaholics Bulletin Board

I wondered about the rain yesterday for you. I thought you may have decided to take the car. It was pretty nasty here, and I knew Bay City was supose to have the same. Be carefull and try to get there safely and have a great week.

Look forward to hearing about all your adventures in the kitchen.

L

I'm here! I am posting this in the Conrad Hilton Library. I haven't had a chance to look around yet, but it looks pretty cool. I did find out where I am supposed to be in the morning and where to park. It's a good thing I came early. I am supposed to be here at 6:00 and not 7:00 in the morning. I must have left that piece of information at home. Yikes.
The ride today was awesome. NO RAIN. It rained almost everywhere overnight, but not today. Most of the roads were wet and I did get misted every time a car passed, but it was nice getting to my motel relatively dry. I tool a scenic route up Highway 30 through the Catskills and what a great ride. Very pretty and 75 miles of winding twisting roads. It probably added 20 miles and an hour to my ride, but it was worth it.
More tomorrow!

Hope your first day went well! Still have all of your fingers? And there's great roads for motorcycling all along the Hudson Valley.
BeckyH

Can't wait to hear about your first day. If you have any energy left you'll have to let us know how it went.
Glad you arrived safely.
Laurie

Day 1

First off let me say that it is HOT outside. Why couldn't I have weather like this on Saturday?

There is 10 women and 6 guys in class. Jennifer Shea did our orientation and showed us Farquason (sp) hall for breakfast. She told us not to be afraid to eat. There is always food somewhere. After breakfast was lecture with Chef Alain. We learned about cutting vegetables, stocks and sauces. In the kitchen we practiced our slicing, dicing, Batonnet, oblique, mincing, wedging and chop. It sounds pretty basic, but I learned many new things. Some of the foods that we prepped was used for our lunch. We are such a good class, that we finished 45 minutes early, so we ate lunch early. We had shrimp, chicken, carrots (oblique cut) mashed potatoes, greens with a vinaigrette, fruit salad, bread and dessert. Everybody loved the shrimp, but I wasn't too crazy about them. They had curry in them and I am not a big fan or curry.

After lunch, we had more lectures and we went over the menus that we are going to prepare for lunch tomorrow. We have been split up into 4 groups. I am in a group with 3 other young ladies.. A Phillipino Dr., a lady from Russia and one from the Dominican Republic. This is going to be very interesting.

We were also given our list of ingredients for our Mystery Basket dinner for Friday. I was so hoping that we wouldn't get fish for our protein, because I don't like fish. We didn't get fish, we got rack of lamb. I am not a big fan of lamb either, but it is better than fish.

After class, my teamates and I went to the library to start working on our menu for Friday. We got a lot accomplished and I feel really good about this project.

Tonight is dinner in St. Andrews Cafe. It will include a First course, entree and dessert with pre-selected Red and White wines. I will post more about dinner after dinner.

Sounds like a great day. You curtainly have a variety of cultures in your group to pull from. It will be interesting to see how you all differ. I bet you'll learn a lot from these woman as well as the course study.

I feel like I'm on a culinary journey of sorts and can't wait to see what happens next.

Are you taking any pictures?

Laurie

I'm back from dinner and it was very good. We started off with some great bread with a Fava Bean dip and Olive oil with Feta Cheese and some herbs. Our appetizer was a Pizza Margherita. This was a wood fired pizza and it was excellent. The crust was cooked perfectly. Next was a salad of mixed greens with a hazlenut vinaigrette and a little bowl of a chilled cucumber soup with blueberries. Next, I had the Korean short ribs with Kimchee, Brown rice and pea pods which was excellent. It was the best part of my meal. For dessert, I had a White Chocolate Cheesecake. It was very good and the presentation was awesome. There was also two kinds of wine. I had a glass of the White. It was wine.
Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Hopefully I won't wake up at 2 in the morning like I did this morning.

Sounds wonderful, Todd....but I hope they have a gym close at hand. that is a lot of wonderful food
Glad you are sharing this with us
ilene

I tried to stay up late so that I wouldn't wake up so early in the morning, but it didn't work. I am still so excited that I was up at 4 and I was in Hogwarts Hall aka Farqhuason Hall at 6 in the morning. I had a ham and cheese omelet and a yogurt parfait. The omelet was cooked perfectly for me, but the inside was still a little cold. They stress very often here to be patient, they are still learning.
I was in the classroom by 6:15 and I had a great talk with chef. Chef Alain has some great stories. Lecture starts at 7 and of course two of my team mates are late. At 9 we go into the kitchen to start cooking. We had four items to prepare today. Asian Vegetable Slaw, Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura, Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage and Stir Fried Shanghai Bok Choy. I made the Asian Vegetable Slaw. It was pretty easy, and I was done way ahead of time, so I asked Chef about Salting the Cabbage first to draw some of the moisture out and he misunderstood me and thought I said Saute the cabbage a little and so he said let's try it. Well, we did it and the end results were excellent. I just tossed it around for about a minute, let it cool and when the time came I put on the dressing. It was very good if I do say so myself.
My teamates all did their recipes almost as well as I did. Marissa, did the Bok Choy, Patricia did the tempura, Eugeniya did the Fried Rice. The Tempura and the Fried Rice had a lot of prep work and they two ladies handled it well. We were almost late for plating because of the Tempura. We were there on time and I am not biased when I say this but our presentation was the best. Having the food service background that I do, I folded a couple of napkins into fans and one water lily and had those as part of our presentation. Also, Marissa and Eugeniya did an excellent job garnishing their plates. Chef filled a paper pastry bag with Hoisin sauce and they piped that around the plate along with some other garnishes. Our plated version was amazing. I am very proud of our team.

Tonight is dinner at Caterina de Medici. I can't wait until Thursdays dinner at Escoffier. That is Chefs restaurant and I am really looking foward to that night.

Todd, the more you talk about Boot Camp the more I know someday I have to attend. Until then I will have to live vicariously thru your posts.

I'm glad you have such a good team to work with. It stands to reason anyone wanting this course and willing to spend that amount of money would already have some basic skills. You are smart to get there early and have time to talk with the chefs, I'll bet you get as much good info from that as from the course.

Laurie