Always good to have a plan B.
Spoke with Gina this morning and I will not be externing at Babbo. She has not made up her mind about the job but told me to pursue other avenues. While I am a little disappointed that I do not have the next year all sewn up, the door has not closed at Babbo. She told me to stay in touch and to call her when my externship was done. That should be sometime around late August/September which, if I do not already have employment elsewhere, is when restaurants start to get busy and take on staff. The Fall is the busiest time of the year for restaurants, what with all those holidays and all. My school timing is quite good that way, actually, so I am not worried about finding work when all this is done.
So I called the externship coordinator at ICE and she is going to put in a call to Karen DeMasco at Craft and see if I can extern there. Not a shabby second choice by any stretch of the imagination. I am hoping that she remembers me. I told Amy (the extern coord.) that if she seemed uncertain of who I was to remind her that I am the woman who lives in her building. Hoping that will jog her memory. Craft was by far the most beautiful kitchen I had worked in and the people were very nice. I would be very happy to extern there. Actually borrowed an idea from Craft, this weekend, for tarts for a BBQ Don and I had. I made a pate sucree dough, rolled it out and cut it into 4" circles. I spread frangpipane (an almond paste/filling) on the circles and then covered them with fresh cherries that I had macerated in some Vin Santo. They were very tasty. I believe they do something similar at Craft. I had watched a pate brisee get rolled out into circles and spread with frangipane. I think they put pears on top of theirs. I also made a Mexican chocolate sorbet from Maida Heater that was tasty. Felt like I had the production concept going with those tarts. made the dough a couple of days ago, then then rolled them and cut them out another day. Then I made the Frangipane the day before the party and pitted and macerated the cherries the morning of the party. Then I was a little baking machine, pulling a circle out of the fridge, spreading it with frangipane and cherries and arranging it on the baking sheet. When they were all assembled, into the oven they went. No scrambling, not last minute freak outs, very methodical and efficient. It was cool. I learned that preparation in school and it really pays off.
And Mother Nature decided not to rain on us, in fact we had a lovely afternoon on the deck. A nice mixture of people who all got along well. It was fun. Don and I like to entertain, and he is my perfect partner because he takes care of all the set up so I can focus on the food. We make a good team....
I have to run off to Barnes and Noble to do some research for my cake project. We have to design and execute a 'celebration' cake by the 89 lesson. As you may have heard me grumble before, I am not a huge cake fan, so this project is not exactly tickling me pink. But I am trying to make the best of it and design something interesting. Don has been helping me with ideas, as he is much more design oriented than I am. He has suggested various avant garde patterns and I think I am going to use some variation of this concept. We have to make a two layer round cake and it has to be covered with rolled fondant. (Fondant is a thick and malleable sugar paste, not unlike modeling clay, that can be rolled flat and will maintain it's shape. You can then apply it to a cake like a sealant coat. It gives a smooth and even surface on which to place designs.) I am thinking to maybe use two coats of fondant, the second one with cut outs of some repeating pattern that will let the under layer show through. And that under coat will be of a different color, maybe even a melange of colors. I may be getting a digital camera from a photographer friend soon, if I get it before the cake is done I will see if I can figure out the technology to post a picture...... But don't hold your collective breath.
Hot and sticky in NYC. Feels like July in May, hope this is not a harbinger of this summers weather. We go up to Maine for Memorial day weekend and I am looking forward to it GREATLY. Need some fresh air and green.
A bientot,
Samantha
Just thought I would try and get in the habit of posting smaller and more frequently...
So we're in the wedding (or celebration) cake module. That means for the past four classes we have been sitting at tables piping various forms of icing with little tips attached to the end of a pastry bag onto sheets of parchment paper taped to the bench... Me, sitting at a table for four hours at a stretch, working on fine details? Not a good combination. While I have been doing pretty well, if I do say so myself. My roses look like roses, my basket weave is appropriately basket like and I can even do a passable swag. But by the time the class is over I am magically cranky. Would go bonkers if my job was to sit at a bench all day and pipe decoration on cakes. I like the pace of running around the kitchen, going from stove to bench to mixer to oven with lots of stops in between. This sitting still stuff is not for me. Even when I sit still at home I am usually knitting, so I am not really sitting still. Too much kinetic energy in my body.
Also must report that our current (and last) teacher is perhaps our best, Chef Rebecca. She is knowledgble, comprehensive, articulate, patient and friendly. Overall a very good combination. Wish that she was teaching us something other than wedding cakes and chocolate. Could have used her teaching style for the cakes module. There was so much information that we needed to absorb about cakes and Chef Reeni, though very sweet, was not great at teaching it all. We got our graded final exams back last night and while I am not a grade whore, I was dissappointed to see that she had taken two points off my score for a question that I had confirmed the answer with her. It was something about the components of a Miroir. In her description of what the four parts were there was no mention of the Genoise Mousseline, which to my mind was a crucial element. I confirmed with her personally what she expected our answer to be for this question and it did not include the Genoise. And then on the actual exam she knocks off two points for my not including the Genoise. Apparently others had the same problem. I am not going to go redress this issue with her, but it was indicative of her teaching style. We were somehow just supposed to absorb by osmosis what she wanted us to learn? So that's how the cookie crumbles.
Tonight we need to tell the externship people where we want to be placed. I had thought up until yesterday that I knew just where that would be. However I had a conversation with Gina yesterday that made me unsure. She is apparently trying to decide between myself and another girl for the actual job that will begin 7/7. But the externship now seems to have been reduced to one solid month, August. I explained to her that school requires me to take a full six weeks (at least) to complete the externship. I cannot do the 210 hours straight. (Not to mention that I am would need to take a leave of absense to start an externship a month after classes end) She said well, we can work something out. I am very pleased to be being considered for the job, me still a pastry student and all. However if I do not get the job, I do not want to be relegated to a one month externship in August. So my thinking has changed. Unless I hear back from Gina otherwise today, I believe I will be requesting Craft and 11 Madison Park as first and second choices for externships tonight. I will call Gina myself before I go off to school if she has not called me. I do not want to make bad blood. But it feels like the situation between myself and Babbo has changed since that first interview, each time I have any contact with them. I do not think any of it has been with bad intentions. But I am feeling taken advantage of nonetheless. Trailing there gave me the confidence to believe that I will not have any real trouble getting a job out of my externship. For that I am grateful. But I wish I had more info about the exact nature of the externship being offered the first time I met with Gina. I would have pursued the Craft situation more if I had known what I know now. I am hoping that my name will ring some bell with Karen Demasco when she gets the call from ICE. And same for Nicole Kaplan who I have not seen in over two months.
By tomorrow I will know much more.
A bientot,
Samantha
CODA: Don wants me to mention that he was so bowled over by the two wines we had with our meal at Blue Hill that he was perfectly happy with what he ate. We had a Gruner Veltliner and an Angleano (?) and I must admit they were pretty special. I think because I was driving I may not have paid them as much attention as he did. Also it is now part of my job to scrutinize the food.
Goodness, went to the blog site and saw an empty page. Horrors! We shall remedy that at once.
Trailed at Babbo on Sunday. Great kitchen, wonderful people, amazing food, I'm hooked. What had appeared previously to be a sure thing is now not so. I am not freaked out, but I am not the only candidate for the job. It seemed a little too easy before. Guess that Gina had had a talk with Mario about the position and they had agreed that they really needed to meet a couple more people before giving the job away. That actually only makes sense and seems fair. So while I am still assured the externship if I would like it, Sunday night was trailing for the job. Now seeing as how I am not yet out of school, I thought it quite fair that I was trailing for a possible job in the kitchen at Babbo. Gina told me to stay as long as I wanted, but if I needed to leave to stay till 9. I stayed till 11. I was trailing a very nice woman named Mayaliss who went to ICE a year and a half ago, externed at 11 madison Park and then got the job at Babbo immediately after and has been there since. She started with plating and has now worked her way up to production. She was doing a double on Sunday to rearrange her schedule so I got to work service with her. She was very patient and explained everything and taught me how to do the desserts at Babbo. By the time I left I had figured out how to do a couple of them. I think I did a pretty good job. Called Gina the next day and said I was very interested in the job when she got around to making a decision. She says she will let me know in a week.
After I had been there about an hour Mario came in (Batali, chef/owner, Food TV regular) and oversaw the line. He looked and acted just like he does on TV. Trademark shorts, Orange hightop sneakers, red hair in pony. He was serious and friendly at the same time. He asked me who I was and welcomed me. A little later on he actually made me some pasta (which was fabulous, of course). I was not fawning, didn't tell him I love his food, but I was impressed with him in the kitchen. Didn't put on airs like a celebrity, obviously in his element in those surroundings. And I could tell from the way people were treating him that he treats his employees well. The kitchen has a good vibe overall.
It is hard work, no doubt about that. Long shifts, this place serves a lot of food. 220-260 people a night. Usually comes in three waves. The first one was ok, the second one was a little tough, not sure how one does that alone. I left before the third installment, but imagine it was probably like the first one. I will be happy to extern there, would love to get the job too. However feel that if I don't I will be well prepared, and connected, for the job market. Feeling more confident about my skill level, and my ability to pick things up and move quickly where necessary. I can do this job. Really liked Gina's desserts and the way she plates things. Everything I tasted was excellent, and it was all presented elegantly but not self consciously. Some pastry chefs seem to need to clutter a plate with lots of extraneous stuff, in my mind to hide the lack of flavor or basic execution. Not so with Gina. Her plates are fun and inviting but don't disguise the creature on the menu. I would learn a goodly amount working for Gina. Cross your fingers.
Last week we went to Blue Hill at Stone Barns for a mixed celebration dinner. I have been wondering why I didn't report right back about that meal. I think it is because ultimately I wasn't that impressed. My palatte is becoming more and more refined and I am becoming more interested in honest food done simple yet well. Felt that the Blue Hill dinner was a little too heavy on the fresh food gimmick and not enough on the actual conception of the dishes. Early plates came out with artfully arranged and unusually executed small courses that I can now barely recall in substance. My main course was a pig combo (not pork but pig) that was unremarkable. And then the desserts reminded me why I declined the externship offer. They were strangely tasteless. I am not by any means attempting to be a critic. I do not have the vocabulary nor the experience necessary for that task. But the meal did not impress me the way some have.
Last night for our one year anniversary we went to The Grocery on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens. This is the restaurant that landed in the top six of Zagat's with all the big Manhattan guys this year. We had a nice meal, but again I was not overly impressed, maybe because I had the memory of Babbo fresh in my mind. I thought most of meal was good but not amazing. We had a lovely appetizer of roasted beets with goat cheese ravioli that I thought was quite good. And there was also a tasty duck leg served on a bed of risotto. But the Skate was dry and the octopus app was a strange combo with cucumber and avocado. The desserts were OK, gingerbread steamed pudding and a rhubarb crisp. But the rhubarb was very watery and the pudding didn't have enough sour cream accompaniment.
Picky picky.
Have a question I wonder if anyone can answer. What's up with all the French in Fort Greene? There must be at least 4 French restaurants over there, three that we have now been too and all good, although spotty on service. But I am just curious why there is so much French food over there?
Cakes module ended last week with the exams. Fear that my 4.0 gpa is slipping, only got a 94 on the cake practical. And now I will have more opportunities to slip as we have started the wedding cake/chocolate section. If I can get through the wedding cake part ok I will be better with the chocolate I am sure. And then graduation is 6/29. Hard to believe that the end is in sight. I have almost finished my pastry and baking courses and will be thrust out into the restaurant world presently. How life can change even when you think you know what you are doing....
a bientot,
samantha
Not being a mother I send this greeting with part of my tongue in my cheek...
I have been remiss in my blogging entries lately. I apologise, I have been traveling. Well, actually Don and I went to Oklahoma to visit my mother. I had a Monday off for no apparent reason so we took the opportunity to go visit mom who Don has never seen in her element. It was a very relaxing trip, there not being much to do in Oklahoma, so we came back refreshed. The twitch in my left eyelid that was starting to worry me went away. My mother has a property with 14 horses, 6 dogs and a cat. It is in the heartland of America, her closest neighbors are cows. It is very rural. Quite beautiful countryside, the people are nice, although the one thing I don't get is the lack of fresh produce with all those farms around. They don't eat anything fresh, it all comes from a can or a bag or the freezer. I do not understand how in this land of farmers we have gotten so far away from our roots that even on modern day farms there is no kitchen garden. The climate is perfect for it. My mother has mint and rosemary in her front yard, thriving despite their benign neglect. (My mother lives and breathes horses, it is very nice to see her so happy in her element, a far cry from the restaurant biz, but obviously where she wants to be)
But in all our trips to and fro we saw only one garden where vegetables were being grown. Instead of farm stands they have Walmart superstores where their produce is trucked in from California/Florida/Texas. And I have to say that I had the most tasty and delicious steak, I have ever prepared myself, from meat bought from the local supermarket (not the Walmart). This store apparently has a reputation for their meat, most of it being local. This made sense as just about every pasture we passed had cattle grazing. These people like their beef. And not being anything like a vegetarian I was happy to indulge in the local product. It truly was a flavorful and delicious flank steak. What beef is supposed to taste like, but rarely does. Now if only I could have had a fresh salad and some springy asparagus and ramps with my steak I would have been in heaven. I don't know what it is about our culture that we don't value the most basic and important, and still simple, pleasures of good fresh food. The American president of the Slow Food movement recently wrote an Op Ed in the NY Times about how the current trend for locally grown produce should be expanded to include indigenous strains of American food produced accross the country. If there is a rancher in Arkansas raising a particular variety of pig, that has been raised in that region for generations, then there should be a way to get his pork to Illinois or Nebraska or LA or NYC so that others can enjoy the fruits of his labors. The idea being to foster indigenous foods so they don't die out and we don't all end up eating the same type of pork. There are many reasons why this is a good idea. If anything were to happen to that one type of pig, a microbe were to attack it, a disease wipe it out, we wouldn't have any pigs. And also diversity of the palate is good, good for mankind, good for the planet, good for the collective psyche. I am a big believer in the Slow Food movement. (they have a website slowfoods.org, check it out) The whole concept of fast food is antithetical to the good life. We all need to slow down and pay attention to our meals. They feed our bodies, but they also feed our souls. We need to sit down and connect with those we love, and those we just like, over a good meal. When we sit down we need to really taste that food, recognize what we are eating. Take a moment to thank the farmer, the rancher, the dairy, the vintner that provides with the experience to feed our bodies and our souls. What is more important in life than connecting with where we come from and what feeds us? Uh oh she's getting on her soap box....
I was just really disappointed to see the lack of fresh food being consumed in the middle of American farm country. And for what? A bigger SUV? The newest Juicy Couture jeans? A better interest rate on your CD? The biggest house by the water that you only visit once a year because you are working too hard the rest of the year to get to it? Bigger is not always better. Small local purveyors of native goods are better than the Gap. I prefer to know that the chicken I am eating lived in a field in upstate New York than in a cage with 20 other birds somewhere in Indiana on a commercial poultry farm that is polluting the local water supply with the overflow of chicken shit. We should all encourage our local producers by giving them our business. Shop at your local greenmarket, most cities have them these days. Or join a farm coop and support your local farms by buying directly from them. The more people who eat good food that doesn't come wrapped in plastic, the healthier our agricultural economy will be.
Enough of that. You want to read about pastry not farm politics. We are coming to the end of the cakes module. Tuesday is our final exam for this section. We will need to bake up a layer cake on Monday and then on Tuesday we will make buttercream and frost the cake. We will also have a written exam on cakes. I feel ready for both. Also feel ready to be done with cakes. The only problem with that is that the next module is split between wedding cakes and chocolate. Looking forward to the chocolate part. I am not a chocolate freak but have noticed that my palate has become much more refined when it comes to the substance. Do not like the cheap stuff, can definately taste the difference between say Ghiardelli and Valrhona. Made a lovely chocolate cake by Deborah Madison from the Greens cookbook while we were in Oklahoma and the only chocolate available there was Ghiardelli. The cake was marvelous, I modified it slightly at the last minute because I did not have enough coffee and so substituted some marsala, but it was the chocolate flavor that I noticed was lacking. I have always made brownies with Scharffen Berger and we made them in school last week with whatever chocolate they provide for us. It was fascinating to me that I could tell the difference in chocolates. So my palate is developing.
So I am looking forward to the chocolate studies, but a couple of weeks of wedding cakes? UGH! I don't care about curlicues and rosettes and the like. May let the GPA slip a shred and miss some of those classes. (probably not, I have that old puritan work ethic pretty deep) Hard to believe that we only have 7 weeks left of classes. This thing has cruised by. I have to say that I am gratified to think that I may actually have a job when this is all done (at Babbo). I was a little nervous about quitting a well paying job in this economy to lauch myself into a new field at my age. To think that I may have already secured employment is reassuring.
I actually have to go celebrate Mother's day, we are going to go to the new Blue Hill at Stone barns on the Rockefeller estate with Don's parents. I will report back on my meal. Blue Hill is a very good example of a restaurant that is supporting locally grown food. They have a farm where they grown vegetables and raise chickens, cows and sheep for the restaurant. It is an experiment that was written up in the NY Times food section a couple of weeks back. It is out there (Alice Waters is the US queen) go find it!
a bientot,
Samantha