"You have to know the rules before you can break them" : Chef Tom Wong

Well folks they have switched us back to an am schedule, which means i have to get my butt out of bed and be at school by 645 am! gross. But, as soon as you step foot in that kitchen you get a jolt and rush of energy - if only i got that when my alarm goes off...
We are still in skills 2 but with a new professor - Chef Toni Sakaguchi, who is an AMAZING professor! She really takes interest in helping us master concepts, and when she tastes our food, instead of just saying "it needs more salt" or "overcooked" and pushing it aside, she walks us through every single concept of the dish presented from plating and aroma to texture and flavor and all that jazz. This class is about mastering basic concepts of protein cookery - yesterday, I got the highest scores I have ever received here and it was on FISH! Needless to say I was overjoyed. We presented a shallow poached grouper finished with a vin blanc sauce served on sauteed watercress with a basmati rice pilaf and glazed carrots. The only single negative thing she had to say about all those dishes was that my carrots were slightly overcooked (which I disagreed with, but hey thats part of the gig, gotta respect her opinion). Today we are mastering roast chicken, and tomorrow glazed beef short ribs...oh man i love this place.
In other news, have yall been watching top chef? last weeks part one finale was filmed right here in good ol napa! The wine train where they did the quick fire challenge runs right through saint helena, and Brix restaurant where they held the elimination challenge (during a Crush event) is just right down the road! Not to mention I helped cater during the first few days of filming :) Wednesday night, part two of the finale, filmed here again! Its pretty fun to watch them film here and talk about all the wonders of the napa valley in ways hard for me to describe here on this blog.
Before I leave, the picture seen above I saw last night for the first time when I did a google search on Chef Paco Roncero, the chef with whom i worked the conference and who I will be doing my externship with. This picture popped up under the search, and it just so happens to be ME! I might be a dork, but i was excited nonetheless.
Eat well yall! <3

Welcome to the Church of the Holy Cabbage. Lettuce pray.

I know I know, it has been an insane amount of time since my last post. I get so caught up in things here its hard to keep up! Since my last post, we had the Worlds of Flavor conference. It was INSANE! I worked 60 hours mon - fri, and those are on your feet running around like a madman in a hot hot full and busy kitchen. It definitely took its toll, but was ENTIRELY worth it! I got to meet some great chefs, including the great Rick Bayless, Cat Cora, Masaharu Morimoto, Michael Chiarello, Seamus Mullen (Next Iron Chef finalist), etc. Not only did i meet them, but i cooked for them, and i ate their food! I was assigned team Spain, and had the greatest pleasure of working with Chef Paco Roncero from Madrid - one of the leading molecular gastronomists. Which means I learned so much and got to use so many cool techniques, techniques that most chefs today dont use - so when I was prepping something, amazing chefs would walk by and ask me to explain to them what I was doing! cant quite wrap my head around that. The actual conference was 3 days long, and during those 3 days we would hold demos and such, and every day there was a marketplace where every chef (about a hundred from around the world) put out tapas size portions for everyone to walk around and try - believe me, i was like a kid in candy land! My pictures from the week can be seen here.
After Worlds of Flavor, we had one week of Skills 1 left including our knife skills practical! The tray i mentioned in the last post? Well, we had 40 minutes to complete it - 2 onions small dice, 2 onions emanceed, 3 garlic cloves minced, 1/4 bunch of parsley finely chopped, 3 shallots brunoise, 2 potatoes medium dice, and 1 potato julienne. Can you believe I actually finished with time to spare, and got a high score?!
Now that we are back from thanksgiving break, we are in Skills 2. Can you say INTENSE?! The first day was a train wreck - just off vacation I guess most of us didnt have our game faces on, and we werent used to having to turn so much out. We did braised red cabbage, chateau potatoes, duchesse potatoes, glazed beets, and our knife trays. After day 1 we came up with an organized game plan so day 2 was much smoother. We made a parmesan risotto that we finished with olive oil and lemon zest - it was DELISH - i completely recommend using olive oil as a seasoning yall. Anyway, we still have knife trays, but these include some more complicated cuts, such as tournee potatoes and fluted mushrooms. I had to stay after class last night for some extra help on the fluting because that is hard. One should look like this:NOT easy! But you have to admit its sexy...
Today in class we are learning how to make homemade pasta, and im really excited!
I promise ill post again soon, but until then...
eat well! <3>

" Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability. " - John Wooden

Skills 1 started Monday, and is exactly what I thought culinary school would be...boot camp!
The first couple of days we have learned everything there is to know about making a good stock or broth including mirepoix (the mixture of veggies, usually 2 pts onion to 1 pt carrot and 1 pt celery), sachet (the bag of herbs added for flavorings, usually bay, peppercorns, parsley, etc), and so much more good stuff! Did you know there were 6 basic stocks? or even 3 different kinds of mirepoix? More than that, we have started knife skills. Every day we get a "knife tray" with various assigments, we are timed, and then place the final product in the center island for grading. For example, todays tray consisted of:2 onion small dice, 2 onion 1/8 in slice, 3 garlic cloves minced, 3 shallots brunoised, 1/4 bunch parsley chopped, 1 potato baton, 1 potato julienne, 3 potatoes medium diced, and 3 tomatoes concasse (peeled, seeded, chopped). It doesnt sound that bad until i add that every single cut has to be exactly uniform with the one before. When chef grades, he literally takes out a ruler and measures that our medium dice is 1/2 in by 1/2 exactly on every piece! Its intense and time consuming but its exactly what i need - since being here i have learned my single biggest problem in the kitchen is a lack of finesse. Im kinda a madhouse - i like to call it rustic, professors here would call it sloppy. So bootcamp training of knife skills...BRING IT ON!
As promised, i have attached some pictures since i did finally get that camera!!This is what happens when your seafood fab instructor is from louisiana...CRAWFISH BOIL! (yum).Some of the gang chowing down after a days hard work. Gutting live crawfish isnt pleasant...Home-made veal bacon - i promise you, there is NOTHING tastier!The caviar tasting settup - complete with 5 different types of caviar, potato pancakes, minced onion, minced hardboiled egg, mignionette, creme fraische, potato skins, and blinis. Dont forget the BLTS i mentioned in earlier posts!My knives, all ready to go. Why, yes, that is a spain flag I chose to distinguish my knives :)Our first timed and graded knife trays. Do not be fooled - this, plus the 4 onions, took 1 hour and 20 minutes, and i was rushing! Supposedly by the end of the course we will be able to do this in 45 minutes - we have to for our practical!
Thats all for now, I have some hw to get done! Until the next post, eat well!

"If the casserole is missionary style, foodporn takes its devotees into the foodie kama sutra."

Food porn - if you arent familiar with it, get to know it because it will change your life. Todays class - food porn. This week has been pretty good so far; fish fab and I had a rocky start but today made up for it 200%! Basically we spend all day gutting, scaling, skinning, trimming, and filleting fish. Im talking trout, bass, snapper, tuna, grouper, skate, all of the above. And when we prep them, we realllly get intimate with them - to the point where my teammember had to be so kind as to wipe the fish guts off my forehead for me the other day! And the fish smell does not wash off. Its a lingering love really...and since im not so fond of the fish, we do all this work and I dont get to enjoy the afterresult. Thats not to say some wasnt great - we made some skate, which is a ray (like stingray) with a little butter garlic lime capers and parsley and it was DELICIOUS! We turned ahi tuna into poke as well (raw tuna tartar, a little spiced creme fraiche, some caviar and a fresh fried chip = money). Today, however, was our first non-fin fish day, on to MOLLUSKS and all the greatness of clams, oysters, mussels, etc. Today we learned proper technique to shuck an oyster and a few ways to prepare mussels - my favorite being the classic wine butter lemon garlic combo. Chef made one with lemongrass, green curry, and coconut milk which was intriguing, but the curry turned me off. We also turned squid into calamari, which was amazing, duh. So imagine this - a loooong table completely filled with about 5 varieties of fresh oysters on the half shell to be paired with cocktail sauce and a garlic aioli, blue and green lip mussels prepared two ways, a chorizo octopus stew that smelled like spain, and calamari fresh from the fryer. Just looking at it made me giddy. Best lunch by far!! After eating it, the only possible way to explain - orgasmic. I took some pictures on my phone that just didnt do it justice - i promise today I am buying a real camera. So from now on you can truly understand when i say food porn. Tomorrow will be a great example, because the bacon started curing last week in meat fab is ready so we are wrapping our shrimp in it tomorrow! (It will be accompanied with king crab legs, dungeoness crab, and lobster.) Jealous yet? One thing that has definitely changed about me since being here - i cant just eat to eat anymore. If im eating something just to not be hungry, why bother when you can save that space for that amazing life changing meal? Food porn people.
Eat well, not just eat.
PS - my favorite foodporn wesbite is tastespotting.com - check it out!

Foodie: n. A person who has an ardent or refined interest in food; a gourmet

"in the culinary fast lane, where surprises are expected and foodies beg to be thrilled"

So from previous posts, you might remember the cheese poster for Humboldt Fog? Well Cypress Grove was kind enough to send me a tshirt and food carrier after seeing the post, how great is that! So once again yall, check out their cheeses they are exquisite.
So today was the final for meat fab, which I feel really good about. After the test we spent the rest of the classes making sausage! It was actually REALLY cool. Like, we cubed and heavily seasoned the meat, ground it, emulsified it, and then stuffed it into casings and hand twisted it to make link sausages! Nothin beats fresh sausage. We also got to try the corned beef we have been making for the last few days and it was DELICIOUS, so tender like butter. So now that meat fab is over, tomorrow morning we start fish fab. Which im concerned about. Those of you who know me know that i do not care for fish, and since i dont eat it i dont know a darn thing about it. But it will be ok, its good to learn and I really do want to at least be able to appreciate fish, plus after fish fab we are on to skills one! Big stuff :)
We had another special presentation today (we have about one a month - the first was the beer one i mentioned in earlier posts). Todays was on PacoJet, a new wave "icecream maker". I put that in quotations because it is so much more. It basically makes icecream in THREE MINUTES, but can be used to make peanut butter, pastes, and really cool molecular gastronomy tricks - playing with textures. For example, he got the juice from a cucumber, and put it into the PacoJet and came up with frozen cucumber powder! One of the great things about this place is being so in the now with the culinary world, which includes great presentations on new wave technology which really does have a ton to do with our success in this industry.
I hope everyones doing well! In other news i bought my plane tickets home for thanksgiving, Im real excited! Thats all for now, but big things BIG things are happening next week so keep your eyes posted :)
eat well! <3 coco
So since i have been putting some hours under my belt, i have saved enough to finally go buy another digital camera which means lots of pics so yall can get a visual of the settup here are headed your way!

"food is our common ground, a universal experience"

Hey yall!
It has only been a week since my last post this time but so much has happened! For starters, last weekend was crazy with work - I did three events! We had friday off from school but i was up early to work to prep for the crazy weekend. On friday night we had a private dinner party, and we get to the house and my chef says ok you got it, ill pick you up when you are done. he just left me! and it was GREAT! I made a baby mache salad with baked goat cheese and a peach champagne vinnagrette. The main was a purple potato crusted halibut with herbed polenta and black truffle oil. For dessert we had a lemon sabayon tart with a honey marscapone. It was all so delicious! Then saturday morning we got there real early to prep for two 100+ lunches we were catering. The first was a corporate party with 130 people, and we made 3 different kinds of sliders (italian sausage, vegetarian, and beef), smoked tri tip with my homemade bbq sauce, roasted vegetable orzo, jalapeno corn bread, veggies with a green goddess dip, baby greens salad with goat cheese, pears, and candied walnuts, and bangin choc chip cookies and lemon bars. And thats not it! For the SAME DAY for a memorial we made a whole other batch of food i could go on and on about! So we prepped all the food, then Chef dropped three of us off at the party and we ran that on our own while he went and dropped the other food at the memorial. It was a CRAZY weekend, but intense kinda hard fun if you know what i mean, and a great experience.
So monday was our first day finally in the kitchen! Every day from 7 to 130 we have meat fabrication and id, which is basically a butchery class. To give you an idea, the first day we did chicken and learned how to do all the different cuts, how to debone, etc. Tuesday and wednesday were beef, today was veal, and tomorrow is pork. All I do is manhandle meat all day but its really interesting - to finally see where those strips and chops come from on the animal and how they all fit together is fascinating. So im on my feet all morning, and then twice a week i go from school to work - basiclly on my feet from 7 am to midnight! This weekend we only have one event tho so it will be good to sleep :).
I have to run to work now, but I will update more this weekend because BIG things are coming! until then, eat well yall!
<3 Coco

Humboldt Fog by Cypress Grove

Hey yall! Cant say much because I have to run off to work, but I just wanted to let everyone know what I was one of the winners of the cheese poster competition I mentioned and my poster will be permanently displayed in the main building! Kinda cool. Also, im now officially servsafe certified and done with the classroom portion; on monday we are IN THE KITCHEN!
will post more soon, have a great weekend! eat well - <3 COCO

PS - this is a freaking amazing cheese that I am now obsessed with and its available all over the place because its internationally recognized as one of the best goat cheeses and has won tons of awards so go check it out!

Pics of the appetizers from the wedding

"A meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye"

Greetings yall!
Ok im so sorry its been so long since my last post...please dont lose interest! Its just things got real busy here real fast, and if i had free time to myself i spent it catching up on sleep! Its a whirlwind but i am loving every second of it.
So since my last post, I was hired as an assistant chef at Grahams Personal Chef and Catering Company! We do private dinner parties, weddings, events at wineries, and every weekday all the deli salads and hot lunches for 3 local gourmet markets. When i say deli salads i dont mean your average potato or pasta salad either - we make over 50 gourmet salads, and they are delish. Basically its just me, a friend of mine from the program who started last week, and Chef Graham. Its busy and hard and demanding but i learn so much, its great practice, and a lot of fun! Check us out at http://grahamspersonalchefservice.com. With that I catered my first major event last weekend - we served dinner for a wedding party of 140. Our appetizers included figs stuffed with blue cheese mousse, polenta canapes with wild mushroom, grapefruit and beet skewers marinated in blood orange and honey vinnagrette, pate served on brioche with carmelized onions, and goat cheese - grape - pistachio "lollipops". For dinner we served chicken with a fine herb sauce, seared scallops with a sunchoke cream sauce, butternut squash and spinach gratin, glazed carrots, and a pomegranate and candied walnut salad. We didnt do the wedding cake, but we did make chocolate cabernet truffles to pass. Everything was so delicious! Did i mention for everything we make homemade stocks, vinnagrettes, even our own mayonaisse? Needless to say im learning tons, getting crazy practice, and servin up some great food. LOVE it!
As far as school is concerned, we finished our first block and this is our last week of the second block - it goes by so fast! Almost done with food safety and product knowledge. Food safety is the servsafe class, so needless to say its pretty boring but important. Product knowledge is intense - every day there is new theme, say mushrooms or greens for example, and we learn everything there is to know about all the varieties and sample them and have to remember it all! Its a lot of information so the tests and such are pretty challenging. Our finals for this block are on friday, which means monday we start a new block and are FINALLY in the kitchen! We start with meat fabrication and ID every day from 2 - 830! Yes, i dont start class til 2 as opposed to 830 right now, which is great right? I mean i hate mornings. but WRONG! Since i have pm classes, that means i will work the morning shift at Grahams. This means I have to be AT work at 6 AM - alskd;jf;lkdsajf;lkdsaf.
So when im not in class or doing hw or at work, im trying to soak up everything this area has to offer because thats all part of the experience! For example yesterday we were up early to check out the napa farmers market, then went to a dahlia farm - GORGEOUS flowers.
Thats all for now, I need to tackle some of our many projects we have going on right now. One is called "my life as" and we are basically writing a paper on the complete production and food process for an item we were randomly assigned...mine happens to be cacao nib to hersheys kiss :). The next is a paper on a recent interview I did with a vendor at a farmers market, and another is a poster creation and presentation on an artisan cheese of our choice - i chose a local cheese, humboldt fog cypress grove goat. Its a crazy cheese! But the winner has their poster framed and hung in the ventura center which is a huge deal.
Ok yall, I promise to make time for more posts and regular updates. I miss the east coast and everyone back home so much! Hope yall are doing great. Until the next post...eat well! <3

Hey guys I dont have time for a full post now, but I just wanted to let everyone know...
IVE BEEN HIRED FOR MY FIRST PERSONAL CHEF GIG!

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food"

Hey yall!
So San Fransisco was amazing, but needs more investigating. There is just far too much to do in one day! It's a good thing I live so close now... :)
We have a couple projects going on in class now - the first is a presentation on our desired externship. (From april 19- September 11 we are required to participate in an externship, or off-site internship with a list of approved members of the culinary world). If everything goes according to plan, I will be interning with Via Veneto, a Michelin star restaurant in Barcelona, Spain. (Check it out at http://www.viavenetorestaurant.com). HOW EXCITING! Spain has one of the fastest growing cuisines in terms of popularity and culinary recognition today. And, duh i love Spain!
Our second project is a menu development group project. We are to create a 4 course menu with one central theme and present this to the Chefs here at CIA along with a costing form. This is a big deal - it's our first real interaction with some of the bigwigs here, and our first chance to make a good impression and show them what we are capable of. My group has decided to use chocolate as the theme and serve dishes prepared using chocolate as a savory ingredient. When we finish, Ill be sure to share the final product with yall!
Today there was a welcoming reception for our new class which just reiterated the class and high level this insitution is based on. All of the chefs are experts in their fields and i simply cannot wait to learn everything I can from them! Before school started I was nervous and scared and couldnt help but think - am I a poser? I have no business here...do I know anything about this? But since day one i am only more and more assured that this is where i am meant to be. Its a thrill a minute and I love it so much.
In other news, I am currently exhausting all possible resources trying to find a job. Just to show you how far I am reaching right now, I just applied for a job with the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group! For those of you who dont know, thats like the mozart in the culinary field. Keller is the only American-born chef to hold multiple michelin star ratings ever; he also won Best Chef Award from Time Magazine and has won consecutive James Beard Awards for best chef. He has 4 restaurants and a bakery - all except for one (per se in ny) are here in napa, so i figured, why not at least try? Im giddy at the very thought of working for him!
Things are getting busy here with job hunting, the project, and externship preperations under way. I could not be happier!
Until the next post, eat well yall! <3

Week One of CIA

Hey everyone! It has been way too long since I updated, and I promise this will actually be a regular thing from now on! I got to St Helena a week ago, and only just now got my internet working! But now that it's in action, be prepared for a long post because we have lots to catch up on! ...
Class started on Tuesday, and let me tell you...I LOVE this school! It's everything any foodie ever dreamed of. They literally call it the North American Food Mecca, understandably so. Classes are set up so that we take a couple courses in 4-6 week long blocks and right now everyone starts with culinary math and intro to gastronomy. Culinary math is basic algebra but applied to costing and yeilding, etc, and grasping metric conversions. Pretty easy and straightforward, but necessary. Intro to Gastronomy is a GREAT course - it is the study of food, and its relationship with culture. The Chef professor, Chef Briwa, holds tastings for us as well. The first was a cheese tasting of mimolette, and it was absolutely delish - I liked it paired best with walnut, or surprisingly enough, chinese five spice. Our next tasting was of olive oil, and I learned tons that I never knew even though I use tons of EVOO every day! Todays tasting was samplings from the farmers market that was this morning, and we had excellent melons, peaches, cheeses, and wines. Really truly learning how to properly taste has been great tho, and I feel like I can appreciate a multitude of flavors in a whole new way now.
One of the best parts about the CIA is lunch. We break class to eat together in the testing kitchens what the other classes have been preparing all morning. Because this is practice, they make tons of different foods, so we get to try a little of a lot. For example, so far I have most enjoyed roasted beets with goat cheese, sauted broccolini, and lemon-olive oil sorbet. Our "everyday food" here has consisted of potatoes au gratin, beef tenderloin, hanger steaks, or veal schnitzel, and its always accompanied by a variety of freshly baked breads, homemade salad dressings, and fresh juice concoctions (ie desert pear lemonade). And the desserts - theres always an assortment of cakes and truffles. And this is EVERY DAY!
If the meal plan is the best thing about CIA, the second best has to be the professors. So far I have only had one Chef Professor, Chef Briwa, but others who I will be having soon include the great Tom Wong and Ken Woytisek. The professors not only really know their stuff and have tons of field experience, but they are passionate about food and excited to help us on our way.
I could list things off all night about what makes CIA the mecca, but I have to mention this - everyone Im surrounded by every day, inc. everyone in my program is a FOODIE. We are all extremely excited and passionate about food, and what better place to gather than Napa Valley? There are only 17 people in the Culinary program, and including the Baking and Pastry AOS program there are 30. Ages range from 18-40's, and we come from all over with various backgrounds and experiences. That means that we are all so different, with a few key similarities, and it makes for a real great interesting and fun bunch.
Sorry to go on so long, but basically one week through the program and I LOVE it here. CIA could not be better, and outside of CIA, Napa is the perfect setting for this experience. In fact, tomorrow a group of us are heading to San Fransisco, sure to find some good eats.
Sorry again for the delay, expect regular updates from now on, and in the meantime, eat well!

Greetings from Memphis!

Hey yall! So far the trip has been great - I absolutely fell in love with Nashville and Memphis! In Nashville we grabbed some great soul food at Loveless Cafe, as featured in a biscuit throwdown on Food Network! Delish. And in Memphis...ribs, what else? Rendezvous, also featured on FN, had hands down the BEST ribs I have ever eaten. And, because of course we went to Graceland, I had to have a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich - what kind of Elvis fan would I be if I didn't?
From here we head to Arkansas, Colorado, Arizona, and then Cali - can't wait for the hole in the walls we have yet to stumble upon!
Eat well!
<3

California, here we come...

In less than 17 hours, Dad and I set out for our cross country road trip: destination, napa! We'll be stopping in Nashville, Memphis (finally), Denver and Bolder, and the Grand Canyon before arriving in Saint Helena on the 21st. Orientation is on the 24th, and then I will be well underway!
Check for updates about awesome foodie finds along the way!
Until then, eat well!
<3