"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!