Day Twenty-Five

My first day at my internship/stage went well.  I’m helping out (unpaid) a few days a week at a fancy-schmancy modern Asian restaurant with some of the pastry work.  I think I might be making some of the butters and cheeses, too.  It’s a pretty great opportunity for me; I’m thankful to be getting some pastry experience.  The chefs at the restaurant have been really flexible about what hours I work (around school), which I appreciate. 

The only problem: I don’t know very much about Asian desserts.  Are there any blogs or cookbooks you recommend?  This is what I know about Asian desserts: mochi, stuff made with red bean paste, lychee, and…. help.

So anyway, let’s talk about Friday.  Friday was our last day of plated desserts.  We made chiboust again, just for practice.  The picture above the meringue about to be folded into the gelatinized pastry cream.  I made a mistake.  Do you see what I did?  I poured the hot sugar syrup into the mixer bowl, right onto the whisk, so then the syrup splattered and stuck on to the sides of the bowl.  My chiboust lacked strength because of the loss of sugar.  But now you can bet I’ll never do that again; lesson learned. 

Now we’re going to talk about my least favorite dessert we’ve made so far…. and the worst plating of a dessert I’ve made so far.  This first plating I actually worked hard on, but then ended up hating it.  So then I threw together this because we were running out of time.

This dessert didn’t do it for me, but that’s only my personal preference.  A lot of people in my class enjoyed this.  It’s chocolate streusel, chocolate pastry cream, lemon curd, lemon gellee, and earl grey tea ice cream. 



I’m not on the lemon-chocolate bandwagon, and I never will be. 

Another dessert we plated was an almond infused panna cotta, with berry water and a citrus tuile.  I liked this one quite a bit; it was light and refreshing.  It almost tasted healthy as long as you didn’t think about the heavy cream in it. 



We ran out of time and didn’t get to make jellies and preserves.  I think we might have some extra time this week to make them.  This week we're taking our first written and practical exams.  Ahhh!