Chef Pro III: Week 2: Recipe Development

At the Zest Fest with Lisa Wright

I have spent the entire week working on recipe development. I volunteered to participate in the Pace Recipe Contest for this year's Zest Fest, held in Ft. Worth on the 11-13 of September. Every year the CSFTW and the Tarrant County College Culinary Arts Program compete against one another on the stage at the Zest Fest. Previous years it's been a salsa contest and the CSFTW has won both years. This year it was a contest to see who could create a recipe using Pace Salsa Verde. A few of us got together with Chef Kurima to brainstorm recipe ideas. I brought in Korean Barbeque with Salsa Verde Slaw served on a fried wonton, Lisa Wright brought pesto and Ray brought some homemade pasta. After a lot of discussion and tasting the idea for a pasta dish using the pesto won, primarily because the Pace website did not show any recipes for an Italian twist on the salsa verde, however there was a vinaigrette like the one in my slaw and marinade. We planned to get together Sunday morning, the day of the contest, and make the final recipe. We were all busy Saturday night trying to think of creative plating ideas and Annie Lebonati came up with one using the idea of tacos but instead of a tortilla shell she used habanero jack cheese in the form of a cheese crisp. The pasta with the green pesto then resembled lettuce. We decided to use some sauteed julienned peppers for color and taste and a grilled shrimp on top. We spent Sunday morning making all the components, made a couple test examples which tasted and looked very nice, then set off for the Zest Fest. Our team and the TCC team made the recipes for the judges who included a TV weather woman, (Rebecca Miller) and the director of the Central Market cooking school. Jon Bonnell tasted the food but could not be judge due to his status as one of our instructors. Sadly, we lost by 1 point. The TCC students made a crepe dish with different fruits and sauces so I guess the judges had a sweet tooth.
Who knows? But, Jon Bonnell ate the entire "taco" and said he'd put in on the menu at Bonnell's (his famous restaurant) so I don't feel so bad. All in all, good experience and good practice for recipe development (and a LOT of work).
After spending all day cooking and running around I still had class from 3-8 that evening. I was pretty tired when class started and knew that we had Chef Gwin Grimes for our instructor. I've been looking forward to having her as an instructor since school started last year. I buy bread from her Artisan Baking Company as often as I can and I think she is very talented, creative, and plain nice. I've taken two classes she's taught at Central Market as well. Our class focused on recipe development and how to write professional recipes. We were given written materials and good information on recipe development and then an assignment. It was like mystery basket all over again! We drew slips of paper with various ingredients and I drew tilapia.
My assignment was to create a recipe for an upscale fish house opening in Ft. Worth. We had one hour to complete the dish and write up the recipe. The next part of the assignment involved drawing one of the recipes the other students developed and making that recipe.
I made a tilapia tostada with creole aioli and smoked sausage cream sauce. It was pretty successful, a little too much dressing, but tasty. I drew Eric's dish, a cheeseburger and fries.
No problem with that and it tasted alright. I was so glad when class was over and I could go home and rest!

The Zest Fest entry for the Pace Salsa Verde Challenge

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Chef Pro III: Week 1

This is it--the final semester of culinary school. It's been one year since I wrote the first blog entry and I will continue posting until graduation. Week 1 was time for testing skills we learned in previous classes. We had knife skills--5 minutes to julienne a potato, brunoise a carrot, and small dice an onion. We had to make an omelet with no utensils and French onion soup within 40 minutes. Then we had the rest of the class to make eggs benedict (with Hollandaise sauce), chantilly cream (whipped cream by hand), pork with a pan sauce, and 1/2 cup of roux. My omelet was very good--but I have spent many messy times in my kitchen making Julia Child style omelets by shaking the eggs and turning them in the pan with no utensils. I also made good chantilly cream. The eggs benedict were OK and I felt good about making decent Hollandaise sauce (something I had practiced at home yesterday!) My French onion soup was fair--onions were not quite carmelized, and my pork was a little overdone and the sauce a little too thick. Overall, not bad but not great either. As usual, I was happy just to have finished everything and not too worried about the performance. I know I can make all these things well and need to fine tune my skills.
We are moving on to some interesting topics now including our future endeavors. We had a few minutes to meet with the chef instructors, Chef Kurima, Chef Waier, and Chef Ray about our plans. For now I have decided to do my "capstone project" on a business involving teaching cooking classes focused on healthy eating. I will need to really develop this idea and come up with 2 classes and the menu for each class.
I have also volunteered to be involved with the recipe development for a contest at the Zest Fest this week. We have to create a recipe using Pace Salsa Verde--more on that later.

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Pastry Pro I: Final Exam

The Pastry Pro I final was on August 19, 2009. I have been putting off entering this post for weeks. I had to leave for a week a couple days after class for business, then we had a week of vacation in Santa Fe. I'll make it short since I have now started the final semester and need to catch up on that one as well.
The pastry class final was hard. We were given a list of items we could make for certain point values and we worked in teams. My partner was Tela, who is very skilled and low key, an easy person to work with. I decided to make pie crust, blitz puff pastry, stirred custard, chantilly cream, and then create a chocolate cream pie and some type of turnover with the blitz puff pastry. Tela made a cake, muffins, and a few other things. Over all everything I made was just OK. My pie filling was a little undercooked and had a "flour" taste. I didn't fold the blitz puff pastry quite right and it was not even when it rose. The berry turnovers I made with the blitz pastry were a little overdone and the filling got burnt. I did manage to finish all my items but the quality was not what I wanted. One problem was the heat in the kitchen. August, ovens, people--all made for hot air. Trying to make pie crust in a hot room is very challenging.
We could have used the outer kitchen if we were thinking clearly--but we didn't.
I am glad pastry class is over and ready to move on to the final semester. I learned a lot of techniques and skills in pastry but I have been trying to move away from a lifestyle that uses a lot of the things we learned in pastry. As much as I love to make pies, cakes, and pastries it is not something I will spend a lot of time doing, although I will use what I've learned to make whole grain and healthier pasties, pizza crust, pie crusts, etc.

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