Cajun and Creole

It is interesting that the Saints won the Superbowl one weekend, the following weekend is Mardi Gras, and the week in between we are covering Louisiana style food in American Regional. Coincidence... I don't think so. BTW... WHO DAT! I loved this week because we could finally make food really spicy, since before last week we were in the boring northeast.

Anyway... on to the food. We made Chicken and Andouille sausage gumbo. This was actually quite good. But it seems that the recipes we get from our book are always inaccurate, we needed almost twice the amount of stock the recipe called for to ensure the flour was cooked out.

Crawfish etouffe is a soup similar to the gumbo, but it more liquid. Very tasty, and spicy (gotta love the spicy).

Tomato and hericot salad was ok, I'm definitely not a big fan of mayo so I didn't really like it.

Our bread pudding was amazing! Chef Pam said it had too much cinnamon, excuse me, is that possible. I think not. I had never eaten bread pudding before and after reading the recipe I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it. Bread pudding is essentially soggy, milk soaked, day old bread. Yeah, I know, sounds appetizing right. But it was actually awesome, I loved it, it was like warm, gooey french toast. It was topped with a whisky sauce that another girl in my group made. Apparently she was trying to get us drunk, I had to cook it down for about fifteen minutes to try to cook out the liquor, but the whisky taste was still really strong. Nice addition to the cinnamon though.

On the second day of Cajun and Creole we made yummy fried oyster Po'Boys. An interesting fact about Po'Boys is that they are sandwiches made from cheap ingredients for "poor boys". These Po'Boys have a spicy Aolle sauce. It was amazing.

For the second time in my life I attempted to work with sugar. Thank goodness this time it worked the first time. When working with sugar it is important to get it to the proper stages before adding any acidity to it, and also to remember it is EXTREMELY hot. So this time I made parlines, very similar to peanut brittle in that they are both sugar morsels made with nuts, but these are softer and closer resemble turtles. Our group was a little ahead of time this day so I went and bought some dark chocolate to melt down and drizzle on top. They were so good, and the dark chocolate was the perfect offset to the sweetness of the cookies.

A day of baking

Sunday I attempted yet another one of Martha Stewarts creations. If you couldn't tell I love her projects. In her last issue of Martha Stewart Living she had a recipe for "pear rasberry heart pies." They are a cute and very tasty mixture between a pie and a sugar cookie with a pear rasberry filling.

It was an extremely easy recipe to follow. Its important that the dough is rolled out to 1/8th of an inch, other wise they will be to thick and the dough will be a stonger flavor then the filling. The filling was awesome, the recipe said to cut the pears to a 1/4 inch dice, next time I attempt this I will put the pears throught the food processor so the filling mixture will be more like an applesausce then small chunks of pear. These cookies were absolutely delightful.

On monday, in baking class, we had a practical on bread, thank God for once our bread came out amazingly. I never though getting bread to rise was such a difficult thing to do, but if you dont get the ingredients exactly right, your bread wont rise. The dough was extremely difficut to roll out and shape though, so thy aren't perfect, but the chef said they had a great crust and great flavor.

I also learned how to make two different types of pie crust. In fact they were the exact same ingredients, just different methods. For both crusts all the dry ingredients are sifted together then butter is hand mixed in. For a flaky crust you add the water when the dough has a flaky texture to it, but for a mealy crust the water is added when the dough resembles corn meal. It is important that the water be ice cold so it keeps the butter from melting.

The mealy pie crust was used for lemon meringue pie. The pie is basically lemon pudding with marshmellow topping. The meringue was very tasty but also very tempermental. It is important to make sure the egg whites are completely whipped and have formed soft peaks before the sugar is added, then its just piped on top of the lemon custard and flamed. I got to use a blow tortch, it was awesome!

This is before the blow torch

and after

The flaky pie crust was used to make pecan pie. Not much to say about the pecan pie, mix the ingredients together then pour in the crust and bake. It wasn't set before we left class so we didn't get to taste it. Not that I was that bothered by that, I'm not really a fan of pecans.

Later this week I will be making food from Louisianna, appropriate since the Saints just won the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras coming next weekend. Also I will be attempthing sugar cookies on a stick for Valentines Day. Stay tuned

Floribbean Day 1

Today was a day filled with citrusy goodness, which my burnt fingers were not a fan of. We had hearts of Palm salad, the dressing that the recipe called for was almost completely mayo, needless to say it was disgusting. So we made a lemon vinegrette instead.

We made corn custard which from reading the recipe I thought was going to be gross, but it was quite enjoyable. A mixture of creamed corn and quiche. Quite tasty in fact, I don't know if I will ever make it again, but at least it didnt suck.

Our protien for the day was supposed to be pan seared grouper, but we didn't have any grouper available and pan searing things is not the healthiest alternative when cooking fish. So instead we had grilled tilapia with a tropical fruit relish. It was awesome! The relish called for a red wine vinegar dressing, but it was a little too sour compared to the fruit, so I added some honey for a little more sweetness.

And last, but definitely not least was my famous Key Lime Pie. Chef Pam said it was the best in the class. It better be, not only have I been making key lime pie since I was little, but apon discovering it in Key West on vacation one year I became obsessed. Pretty much where I found my passion for baking. Graham cracker crust made with brown sugar and cinnamon instead of the granulated sugar most recipes call for, and the whipped cream with key lime juice is the icing on the cake, haha.

it was gone in 10 minutes, the entire class loved it
Hope you enjoyed the first taste of the Floribbean!

Hi people. I am currently a culinary student, and I am looking forward to blogging about my life both in and out of the kitchen. I plan on becoming an amazing pastry chef one day, and hope to travel around the world blessing people with my brilliant pastries. Not only will I be blogging about my life in school, but also my personal experiences with baking at home. I love trying new recipes and decorating amazing cupcakes. Hopefully this is somewhat interesting to all of you! I will try my hardest to be entertaining.

This past week was my friend Skyler's birthday, since I am in pastry school it is pretty much guaranteed that you will get a cake or cupcakes of some sort for your birthday. I have this book called Martha Stewart Cupcakes... most amazing cupcake book ever... Since I will hopefully make every fun creation in the book I showed it to her and let her pick whatever she wanted. She picked ice cream cone cupcakes.

These are the Martha Stewart version. They are so cute, you bake the cupcake straight into the cone. The tricky part was of course getting these cones to stand up in the oven. For the baking I bought aluminum cake pans, turned them over and cut holes into them. This was actually much more difficult than I thought it would be. They kept falling over and I burned myself twice while trying to get them to stand up straight. When i went to decorate them I covered a ceramic bowl in aluminum foil and put the cones into that, this was so much easier.

This is my finished project. The chocolate icing I had chilling over night so it was a little more solid, made for easy scooping. The vanilla icing I piped to look like soft serve. If I ever attempt these ice cream cone cupcakes again I think I will make them in waffle bowls, they will stand on their own and I think they would be super cute with little spoons and such.

Well I am off to work on my 800 word research paper on Key Lime Pie. Need to know anything about the history of Key Limes or anything else in Key Lime Pie, because I am now an expert. Tomorrow in class we are making foods from the Floribbean. Should be fun... Night folks