Week 23-25

Week 23-25

Week 23 was the end of B and P. We made some fancy decorated cakes and prepared for our practical. The practical consisted of baking 36 rolls, in two different shapes, 2 sponge cakes, 12 chocolate éclairs, and 1 pie crust. We had to make all of this and present it in 4 hours. I finished in 3 and got a 86% which was one of the highest grades in the class. This was the first practical that some of our class didn’t pass, so it was pretty intense. The girl taking the test next to me did her piecrust 3 times and didn’t have one that she wanted to turn in. She didn’t pass the test…Yikes!

Week 24
Week 24 – 26 will be my last real class, cuisines of Asia. Monday we went on a field trip to a Sake factory in Oakland, Oakland China town, and an Asian mall in Berkeley. Tuesday – Friday we did Chinese, Japanese and Korean food. The food was fun and we all really enjoyed eating all of the different foods.

Week 25 we did one more day of Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. I helped my teammate Cara kill a live crab, which was pretty interesting, and delicious when she coated it in yummy chili paste and stir-fried it. Some of the ingredients are a little weird, like dried whole itty bitty fish, dried itty shrimp, shrimp paste (which needs to be toasted before used which smokes and smells up the entire kitchen. EEwwwww!!!) and last but certainly not least fish sauce! Fish sauce is like Asia’s ketchup. It is one of those things that is ok until you find out how it is made. They take millions of whole little fish and pack them in giant open top barrels in between layers of salt. They let this ferment for 1 year bringing it outside to sit in the 95 degree heat of Thailand until it becomes juicy (eeww) and then they drain off the juice and you have …fish sauce! My chef, Chef Ken, had us make a dipping sauce for our Vietnamese food. The sauce was made from fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, chili peppers, and raw garlic. We made this sauce at 7:02 in the morning. Pre-coffee fish sauce tasting is not fair!

Besides fish sauce I was elected to be the executive chef for our last day of class restaurant project. Next Friday we are having a Japanese restaurant at our school during lunchtime. Sushi, hibachi, and tempura galore. It should be really fun.

Only 5 more weeks of school and we're selling our furniture to our co-workers. We're already thinking about the move home.

I’m off to make crepes for David for our faux Valentines Day. We made a big steak dinner last night and crepes with strawberries this morning. We both work on Thursday so we thought we would celebrate early.

Lots of love to everyone, and I cant wait to see you all soon!!!

Abby