Alice's Tea Cup

Not surprisingly, on my internship days, I am working my butt off...but loving it. So far I have not done under a 12 hour day, and yesterday was there from 9:30 am to about 11 pm. The thing is, time just flies by...if you keep me busy, I don't notice the time at all, don't feel tired at all...I love it. Some jobs are very standard like hulling and quartering strawberries or pitting cherries, some are more complex like making sauces and components for plated desserts. Yesterday I made a giant batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and then scooped tiny, tiny amounts of it. It goes to show that its not all glitzy, lots of little steps comprise the final picture. Needless to say, I really don't have time to take pictures. I did get one of a dessert one of the pastry chefs made me that used a blackberry fluid gel I made earlier that day and a coconut petit beurre that I partially made the day before.

Rhubarb panna cotta, coconut petit beurre, blackberry gel

On my days off however, I've been exploring the city, and am lucky enough to have a friend from school in town as well. Today we met up at the Upper East Side Alice's Tea Cup for brunch. This place is great. It has a funky, Alice in Wonderland themed decor, 140 or so teas, and the menu sounded great, as was the meal. We already have plans to go back and try their lunch menu.

Teacups ready and waiting at the tables

My friend's swirled oatmeal with berry coulis and fresh berries

Raisin-fennel semolina bread...sounds weird tastes awesome

My vegetarian egg white omelet exploding with veggies with a side of sauteed asparagus and pears

They also make cakes.




I also stopped at a small Farmer's Market this morning and saw some neat produce.

Yellow carrots

Zucchini blossom

Romanesco cauliflower (labeled as broccoli, tsk tsk)

And I have to admit, during my explorations, I stop and go in just about every market and bakery I pass...this was my find today...tiny heirloom tomatoes! Yay!


I'm so enjoying my time here. I love the city and my internship. My only sad thought is that it will be over too soon and I might not be able to run in Central Park like I imagined I would do before then....stupid injury still is bugging me, but it doesn't hurt walking (so I walk all over) or working (which is really important) so I'm sure when I extern here (like I hope to do) I will get my chance...anyway, time to pack for tomorrow and get some shuteye! Night all!

Nougatine at Jean Georges

Tomorrow is the big day...my first day of interning at the Jean Georges bakeshop. I'm so excited (but also a little nervous), especially after eating at Nougatine at Jean Georges on Sunday after unpacking. This is the more casual of the two, but both are at Trump International Plaza and work out of the same kitchen/bakeshops. I had no idea my mom was going to see if we could get into eat when we made the trek up there. I though they just wanted to see the location! It was definitely a pleasant surprise.

The owner and executive chef, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, trained under three Michelin star chefs before traveling to Asia to work. His time in Asia, per the website, resulted in him abandoning the traditional meat stocks and instead working with vegetable juices, fruit essences, light broths and herbal vinaigrettes which "results in intense flavors and satisfying textures." I must agree wholeheartedly to this description.

I started with a signature appetizer, the tuna tartare with avocado, spicy radishes, and a ginger marinade. I could have just eaten this all day and been a happy camper. The tuna seemed to melt in my mouth and the ginger was perfect.



Of course I shared bites of my parent's appetizers. Mom had a Coach Farm's goat cheese and honeydew salad with lardons and endive. I want to say it had a passion fruit vinaigrette...It was definitely a combination I would never think of, sounds a bit odd, but was fantastic.


Dad went traditional with a caesar salad, but in all honesty, if a place can't pull off a decent caesar, you don't want to eat there imo. It was definitely a good caesar.


For my main course, I went with another signature type dish per the waiter: the red snapper with lily bulb radish salad, lavender and white sesame. The skin of the fish was perfectly crisp and the sesame sauce underneath just went right with it. I normally leave sauce behind...not in this case...The little touches of flavors like ginger and sesame really brought out the Asian influence.



I think the bites I managed to get of my dad's poached maine lobster were my favorite of all though, perfectly done, not chewy at all.


And how could I not love mom's meal? Anything with chili I like and she got the grilled porkchop with smoked chili glaze.


As if picking my meal wasn't hard enough...then the dessert menu came...Everything sounded great but I was in a fruity and fresh mood since it was a hot summer day and we were outside. But you have to try the signature Jean Georges warm chocolate cake, right? Basically, with this being "your future career" the final decisions were left up to me...the incredibly indecisive one!


In the end I selected:

The local strawberry vacherin, anise meringue, lemon verbena ice cream, and lavender almonds. This one was placed in front of me and I happily ate most of it. I loved each dessert but I think due to the weather, this one truly hit the spot!



Mango tart, coconut, guava, and vanilla lime sorbet...but I definitely stole many bites of the sweet mango custard filling!


The warm chocolate cake with vanilla bean ice cream...gooey and melted in the middle...decadent and awesome...it was just too warm for me to eat much of it...which I think made my mom happy!


Its a bit crazy to think I might play some small part in these masterpieces in days to come. I really have no idea what they are going to have me doing but obviously I am starting at the bottom. No matter what, this is such a great opportunity for my future!

Arrived

I'm officially settled into my housing for the month of July in NYC! I'll be interning 4-5 days a week normally but am looking for things to do on my off days...any suggestions?

Breaking from Bread

And like that, my first baking and production class came to an end Thursday. My apologies for going MIA once again. The last few days have been pretty non-stop. I drove home overnight Thursday and promptly spent the day sleeping! Its just a brief stop in York though. Tomorrow morning I'm getting on a train to NYC and then start interning Wednesday at Jean-Georges! I'll be doing four days a week there, and only know one person in NYC but would love to meet people...just throwing it out there ;)

Anyway, back to breads class...I'm definitely sad this class is over. I really enjoyed it and absolutely loved the chef. Since my last post my group rotated through a few more stations...

Challah-I only got to try braiding one before I had to go divide our other dough. Its one of those things that I have a hard time doing. Even as a kid, I could barely do a standard braid!


Cinnamon raisin bread-Chef upped the amount of raisins and cinnamon from the last time it was made in class and it tasted better, but we still all thought it needed a bit more cinnamon.


Sourdough using our sour starters-The product of Gus! He lived on though in the communal starter that was created from everyone's excess. One of Gus's "kids" made it home with me and my 'rents really liked it :) What was really interesting about this was every team did their own sour starter. On the bread eval day we went over each team's loaves and noted the differences in not only appearance, but aroma, flavor, and texture. It demonstrated how tiny things can affect the final outcome.






Pretzels-Best pretzels I have ever tried. I got to dip all the pretzels in the lye solution. They were mixed and shaped the day before by another group. The lye solution is super caustic so I resembled a mad scientist with goggles and yellow gloves...it was interesting to wear all that and then have a toque on as well!




Bagels-Again, another group made and shaped them the day before but I did the dipping in the boiling water.


Ciabatta with poolish pre-ferment-I was in charge of hand mixing the ciabatta which was quite the workout and quite messy, so no pics yet of it. A friend of mine took some so if I get a hold of them I'll get them up. Unfortunately this was the last day and we were also deep cleaning the bakeshop to shut it down for the summer. I was a little bummed to not be able to see how the inside turned out...I'm assuming it was good though. Here's our poolish, bubbly and alive :)


Besides all that fun with bread, we had our shaping practical Monday which I think I did well on: 96 for my baguette, 95 for my round, and 93 for my braid. We also had our final and our first Grand Buffet! I and a few others assisted Chef in setting up our table. LOL, setting up a display table is a lot of smoke and mirrors per Chef to attain height and visual aspects. It came out well I think.




Alright, I have to go unpack and repack so I'm not bringing too much with me to the city! I have no idea if I'll be allowed to take pics while I intern so that much is up in the air right now but I do plan on continuing blogging and getting back to more frequent posts. Thanks for hanging in there with me lately! Also, I am blogging about my experiences at school at chef2chef.net now! My blogger name there is Bakerface so check it out if you like!

Random fun: The Chef that teaches cookies, tarts, and mignardises gave me this mini loaf of cheddar jalapeno bread the other day. He sees me run and always talks to me about it. I can't wait for his class!

Check those Ears

Friday, are you serious, its Friday?! This week just flew by! After Monday we switched to two day rotations on stations in breads class so Tuesday and Wednesday we spent doing multigrain and breakfast pastry/breads.

Tuesday we used Chef's sweet dough recipe to make monkey bread.




Wednesday we made sort of a quick danish with the same sweet dough, cream cheese filling, and a coconut crumb topping. Both of the breakfast items went downstairs for the next day. I never make it to breakfast and eat in my room due to running but its pretty cool :)


Yesterday we again switched stations to honey whole wheat, some of which gets walnuts. Challah is also on this station which we might do today. Chef had us scale it on Wednesday but decided to not have us mix it yesterday. I jumped in to assist the current oven team while they were loading some breads and got to score some of my honey whole wheats. Both multigrain and the honey whole wheat get a belly cut score. I'm hoping these two examples were ones I did because its what we are looking for...a nice "ear" which is that lip. It also demonstrates the three tones you want with the ear being darkest, the cut section lightest, and the sides sort of in between...beautiful :)


I'd also like you to meet Gus. Gus is our sour starter that we started on Monday. I thought up his name yesterday in the middle of my run. Such strange thoughts come at those times haha.



This final part has nothing to do with bread...well I guess it sort of does...The mixology club had a Maker's Mark tasting and discussion Wednesday night. The speaker was discussing what went into it, why it is better than the rest etc, and besides the required corn and malted barley, it also gets red winter wheat...so that relates to bread. I was surprised that I actually liked this stuff and its cool how it is a very hands on production. The speaker actually went down and worked through the various production aspects as part of his training.

First distill (clear), under aged, fully mature, over aged

Under aged, fully mature, over aged

Random meal:

Cornmeal crusted pompano stuffed with shrimp and wilted spinach

This was actually much better than it sounded or looked. Like a lot of my meals, I turned it into a composed salad using the salad bar.

Just a few more hours to go until the weekend! I can't be lazy though! I have so much to do before we get off school next week and to prepare for Monday! Its our shaping practical...eek. Have a great Friday all!

Another team's poolish pre-ferment the other day...Pre-ferments give a jump start on fermentation of the dough resulting in a few things like less yeast needed in the end product, strength, shelf life, and flavor. This pre-ferment is made with equal parts flour and water. The high water content makes it super active but also does not hold long. We make our pre-ferments the night before so this type does not work for weekend holding.

Autolyse Mixing

It seems a bit strange to say that we are already at the halfway point in hearth breads. Today is day 7 and a quiz day. I'm a little nervous, but feel pretty confident. Yesterday was my team's last day on ovens and lean doughs.

Chef had us make a biga as a pre-ferment on Friday. Its a quite strong pre-ferment so a method of mixing called autolyse was utilized. In autolyse, the flour, water (and sometimes the pre-ferment) are mixed just until the form a homogenous mass and left to sit for 15-45 minutes. The yeast and salt are left out until this time frame is complete. They are then added and mixing is completed until there is the proper level of gluten development. Basically, this method is good for strong doughs. An enzyme called protease decreases the strength part of gluten making the dough easier to work with and creating a more extensible network which means more oven spring and light, airy bread. It also absorbs more water in this method and decreases mixing time which means less friction and oxidation (which equals better color and flavor). Its pretty cool. Our baguettes had some nice, irregular holes.

Biga and water (the malt syrup was also added after the shot)

Salt and yeast added after 15 minute rest period

Trying to warm up the dough...due to the biga being in the fridge all weekend our dough was a little cold which slows fermentation. Chef had me stretch it out to bring some room temp air to it before the first fold. This wouldn't work on huge amounts of dough, but for our 30 pounds it was ok.

Two of the school's restaurants are closed on Mondays so we don't have to make as much bread. Some teams did some extra "fun breads" like...

Cinnamon raisin


Pizza rolls


And the ultimate...sticky buns





If you weren't drooling enough....


Weekend meal highlight

The Main Street Bistro in New Paltz for Sunday Brunch

Hummus plate to start



Pitcher of sangria


Hendrix veggie burger with sprouts, smoked mozzarella, avocado, and mushrooms on 12 grain bread. It was awesome, and I ate just about all of it minus the shared bits. They must make their own pickles as well, it definitely wasn't your standard "straight outta the jar pickle." It had a much lighter taste but was awesome.


My friend's sweet potato fries


Time to get my whites on and head to lunch then class! Our team is moving on to multigrain bread today! Send good quiz taking vibes my way!

A rainbow over the CIA

Hamburger Rolls-Day 3

Well folks, we're already a week into Hearth Breads. My team switched to the oven team and lean dough team yesterday and we will be there through Monday. On Day Three however, we were in charge of hamburger rolls. They came out pretty well I think :)

We scaled all of our ingredients out the day before and as soon as we got to class I mixed up the sponge for our rolls....for some reason I failed to get a picture of this.

After 30 minutes, the ingredients all went into a larger mixer.


Entering the pick-up stage where its starting to form dough.


The clean-up stage where the sides of the bowl begin to get cleaned. We check hydration at this point.

In second speed where gluten development occurs. Its pretty cool, you'll start to hear this snapping sound as the gluten gets strong and the mixer stretches and folds it. Its air pockets snapping.


We were looking for intense gluten development with a full windowpane.


Our dough got a mini-fold after exiting the mixer and then was allowed to bulk ferment before it was divided and pressed in the dough divider (this is actually lean dough for cut rolls, but wanted to give you an example). We took two of each of these and pressed them together and rolled them into rounds.



Then they were egg washed and squashed and allowed to sit for 10 minutes.

Its a really strong dough, I had to use all my weight to flatten them.

Then egg washed a second time, squashed a second time, and sesame seeded.


Into the proofer!


The finished product


Meal of the day:

I went to the Americas kitchen for dinner. I'm not sure what part of the country they were in, but I'm thinking midwest, I was too hungry to check...I had cornmeal crusted trout with wild rice and I think it was a carrot sauce. Its so pretty...Of course I ripped it apart though and used the fish on a salad and picked at the rest.



I'm excited for my second day of oven team. It went fairly well yesterday. We get sent to dinner early and come back early and Chef left me in charge for a bit because she had to step out of the room. I'm glad she trusted me with instructions to finish up the day's baking! I hope today goes smoother and even more effeciently. Have a great Friday!