Thursday, September 23, 2010

Wednesday, 9/22/10 – Level 6 Day 6 (Pastry)

Let's start this Wednesday ditty out with a little riddle. True or False: It is incredibly hard to navigate around midtown Manhattan when every single member of the UN General Assembly is staying at the hotel across from your office building. Answer is to be expected – True. I have seen more detectives, cops, secret service and hired drivers in the past 48 hours than exist on an entire season of NBC primetime programming. They're usually very nice and polite, and will not bother you unless you're being an idiot, but it's important to remember that I can sometimes be an idiot. I was walking down the marble steps in front of my office building the other day, on my way to another long night at school, when I popped in my headphones and absentmindedly slipped past the obvious bright blue NYPD barricades, making my way to the nearest intersection to cross the avenue. Needless to say I was intercepted by an excited and anxious junior agent, likely assigned to his first big gig, telling me that the entire area was blocked off and I'd have to remove myself from the restricted area, walk up three blocks, cross over two then go back down two blocks just to get to the subway entrance that I could almost reach with a long arm. I was of course cooperative, but it made me think a lot about this unstable city I call home. Hundreds of the world's greatest leaders, all gathered in one crowded, dank and often hostile place to attempt to solve the world's problems. One wonders why they didn't pick a remote Caribbean island, with free-flowing margaritas, white sand and All-You-Can-Eat crab leg night. It's an amazing thing, that I could have literally picked up the penny dropped by Ban Ki-moon and breathed in the air expelled by Guido Westerwelle and had no idea who was existing in the same space that I was at that moment. But I guess that's the case on the other 360 days of the year. I doubt anyone would let someone super important within a mile radius of someone like me, but in a city like New York you never really know what's going on around you.

Despite the heightened security, I got to school just in time to consume more sugar than my body could process in one night. This obviously led to some internal dissonance, but I powered through the night long enough to make two batches of caramel that immediately solidified so hard around my metal spoon that the handle bent 30 degrees. The caramel was meant to be used to dip grapes, which are then pulled quickly up and taped to the cabinet, leaving a delicate line of curled sugar that, when the grape is inverted on the plate, stands inches above the plate and sways. It's beautiful, but for some reason we were having a really hard time getting the caramel to stay solidified. It kept dripping down the length of the wispy tail we had just created, and was sliding down off the grapes and onto the table. Before we knew it we had a little grape graveyard, and the caramel wasn't looking any better. As we were having troubles apparently we were experiencing a terrible thunderstorm outside, the second in a week, causing the kitchen to be one large, damp heckhole, the worst conditions for dipping grapes into hot caramel that is meant to harden.

Our pastry chef, one of the proctors of the final exam, claimed that she was tired of students complaining that they never had the chance to make the dessert they had been asked to make for the final, so she now holds a mock final on the last day of the pastry rotation for each group. My last day in pastry will be Friday, so I'll have to make four full plates of each dish in the allotted time, something I'm nervous about having enough time to do. Sure, we have three hours before service starts, but making lady fingers, a green apple Bavarian cream, a layered chocolate cake with coconut filling, chocolate ganache, caramel-dipped grapes and a sour cherry reduction in three hours is going to be a challenge. Pair half of that with a fish dish and that makes for one stressful final exam.

Some of my classmates were asking me about my new job as we killed time before class. "Jackie, you're the only one of us that will graduate from the French Culinary Institute and actually be called a chef at work." Interesting…interesting indeed.


German Chocolate Cake with Coconut Filling, Garnished with Caramel-Dipped Grapes and Sour Cherry Compote


Green Apple Charlotte with Red Currant Sauce and an Apple Chip



Another variation on the charlotte dish: Green Apple Charlotte with Red Cherry sauce and Red Cherry Sorbet

Wednesday's Dessert Special: Pumpkin Cake with Candied Walnuts, Tuilles and Salted Caramel Sauce

1 comment:

  1. Love that grape, but I am drooling over that pumpkin cake!

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