When life gives you apples, make apple cider!

From bottom to top:
--7 bushels of apples
--apple pulp
--pureeing of apple pulp
--final contraption of the apple pulp straining juice, this will sit until all juice is pressed and then will be bottled.

Yes, I am in the process of making apple cider. It started with a phone call from a friend asking if I could drive him and two of my other friends to get 350 pounds of apples (since I have a big enough car to fit them all). Slightly taken aback, I say, umm, what are you buying that many apples for? And they say, we are making sparkling apple cider (apple wine, hard cider). So begins our journey to Meadowbrook Farms, about 30 minutes from school, where we buy 7 bushels of apples, costing 10 dollars a bushel, (about 75 dollars total) which breaks down to about $.20 per pound!
Our night begins by setting up a nifty contraption in which to make the "to-become-hard cider." We buy four 18 gallon plastic storage buckets and cut a hole in the bottom of two of them (we are making two sets of fermenting juice). We then take an oven rack and lay it over the bottom one (without the hole). We lay a sheet inside of the one with the hole on top of the oven rack. The idea behind it is to put the pureed apples into the sheet, and the juice drips through the sheet into the bottom bucket, where it will then ferment. The pulp is being pressed to squeeze the juice out. Once the juice is all pressed, we will bottle and cork it (we know people who supplied us with corks, bottles, and a corker contraption). It will then ferment in the bottle, creating apple wine or hard cider.
The couple who I am making this with already made apple spiced cider this summer using this method, so we know it works, but they made only about 1 gallon where we are going to yield about 14 gallons. And they are taking it one step furthur by fermenting it....illegal? maybe? dunno...
After setting up our contraption, we got to work pureeing the apples. We had a small little food processor, so with that, we were able to puree 3 1/2 bushels in 3 hours. We started around 9 pm last night and finished at 3 am this morning. We worked in shifts, so I chopped apples to be pureed until 12:30 then someone took over for me. I have attached pictures of what we have so far. I also attached a picture of the final contraption.

The cider should be ready around the end of June to drink.

Wines class: the 3 weeks when drinking and studying consumes my life

Wine Studies: The hardest class in the school. I survived! It was difficult. Three weeks long (though now that it is over, I wish it was longer). We divided the class into three parts--New World (USA, Canada, eh?, Argentina, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand), France and Italy, and Spain and Portugal. It is a lot of information very quickly and a lot of memorization is required. I enjoyed the class though. It was nice to have a challenging class again where studying consumed my life.
Every day, we had wine tastings which included about 10 wines. We had to spit the wine though (but I didn't always do that since some of the wines were "out of this world" delicious).
It is one of the most failed classes in the school (three people in our class failed this block and lots of other came very close to not passing). I just did my best to not let it stress me out. I know a lot of people who just died during it because they were not used to all of the studying necessary to pass the class. I did fairly well in the class, though not as well as I hoped. There were two quizzes, a test, and a paper. On the second quiz ( France and Italy) I did not do so well. I just could not learn the information in time because it was so broken up from a weekend, so that brought my grade down unfortunately. I am still very happy with my grade considering the reputation of the class.
I really enjoyed learning about wine. It has always been a subject that overwhelmed me and I did not like to try new wines, but now that I have a wealth of knowledge, I can use it in my future culinary applications. I cannot wait till I am 21 and I can go to a wine store and actually KNOW what to look for!

Seriously? I'm stuck on Family Meal!?!

When I moved to Banquets back of the house (kitchen), I was put on family meal....meaning me and my partner were responsible for cooking lunch (family meal) for the students who were serving. We did not have a part in the cooking for the class, what a lack of a learning experience, or so I thought. I have a little experience in catering previous to coming to school, so I have an idea of how it all works, but being stuck on family meal is something I would consider good for me.
My chef pretty much refused to order anything special for us to make for family meal, except for the protein of the day. He wanted us to learn how to use what, and only what, was available in the kitchen that day (since that would be a real life scenario).
I found it difficult to scrape something up to cook because of course I want to make a delicious family meal....the class before us served baked chicken almost every day with some lame over dressed salad, garlic bread, and a some over cooked vegetables. I wanted to actually make something palatable. But now I see why it was so difficult. The kitchen barely had any useful ingredients to begin with!
I am most proud, however, of when we ordered in flank steak and I made the same beef wellington sauce I made for Christmas break. We had all of the necessary ingredients in the kitchen, i was SO excited to make it! I took Madeira wine and reduced it with tarragon and shallots, added veal stock, reduced it, then added in honey and some cornstarch to thicken. It tasted great! I even impressed one guy in my class who never really took me seriously until he realized that, oh my goodness, I can cook!
As for the flank steak, my partner did not quick hold up his end and we ran late on serving family meal, but the sauce was sooo good! My mom can vouch for me since she ate it at Christmas dinner.

Banquets and Catering

I finished my cuisines of the Mediterraneans class. It was bittersweet. I definitely saw improvement as the days progressed. I saw an odd pattern when it came to grading. On the first day of every new country (4 different countries/regions were studied), I had an average grade, but as the days progressed, my grade progressed. I guess that says something for my improvement! All in all, the class was a very good experience. It made me be sure to come to class prepared, to know everything, to not be afraid to ask questions, but to think about the question before actually asking it, and much much more!

I have moved on to the Banquets and Catering class. For the past 7 school days, I was working the Front of the House, so I was a server. Our class catered about 90 students who come into our dining room each day for lunch. They are served a 3-course meal (app, entree, dessert) by us. It is fun for me since I used to be a server, but for others, not so much. I understand how facing people is difficult...but in order to be a successful chef, you have to have some sort of people skills! I have enjoyed it thus far. On Thursday, I move to the back of the house, so I will be cooking for the students.

1/2 way through the hardest class so far!

I have been in the Cuisines of the Mediterraneans class for one week now. I have to say it has been the most difficult class (in a good and bad way) that I have taken here at school. The chef expects a lot, but not too much. She re-iterates how the class has prerequisites, and we have to meet them. We have made stupid mistakes just because we do not do our research. To make this easier to understand, here are the Pros and Cons

Cons:
*Chef is not afraid to tell you your product sucks
*Chef will tell you to start something over, rather than learn how to fix it
*Chef will make you look and feel like an idiot...in front of your classmates
*Chef will talk down to you like you know nothing
*Chef will threaten us....not life threatening or anything, but you know
*Chef expects us to know certain things in the class that we just do NOT know....

Pros:
*Chef is not afraid to tell you your product stinks: she tells the truth
*Chef will work with you if you cannot figure something out (I made churro dough FOUR times before I got it right!!!!)
*Chef will compliment you, if you deserve it
*Chef pushes you to do your best and try your hardest
*Chef constantly reminds us how much money we pay to go to this school and that we should do whatever we can to learn


I think I can say she is the best chef I have ever had because I am really learning from her. She instills a sense of urgency and fear to complete everything on time and to do our research. She does ask questions in class about how much research we have done for that day....often times, it is very little....getting better at that!
*Chef does not spoon feed us information

Goodbye CIA and 2009

I finished my classes today for the year! I completed my baking for culinary class and got to take home a few treats for the fam as well. LOVED that class, but I would never consider switching over to the baking program...but I know now that I do enjoy baking.
I found out who my chef is for the Cuisines of the Mediterraneans when I return to school next year.....the hardest lady chef of all time!!!!!!! Great. We shall see how that goes I guess....should be interesting, especially since I have never cooked with this group of students before. Keeping a positive attitude!

B is for Baking, its good enough for me!

Last week, I started the class called Baking for Culinary. It is a 3 week class designed to teach culinary students the basics of baking--breads, cakes, cookies, doughs, pies, tarts, MMMM. Every day we have tastings of what we made that day. I can feel the pounds being packed on. But I am really enjoying the class. Learning a lot, and baking makes more sense. I now understand the complexity of some of the things we eat (and science). But I have realized that some things that seemed near impossible to do really are not that easy (pie dough...not that hard!) There is definitely an exactness to baking, as we have already seen by mismeasuring things. And directions are crucial, especially when making pastry cream. It is so different from cooking because if a mistakes is made when cooking, it can often be fixed...baking, not so much.
Right now, my homework consists of making a marzipan rose every night and piping out 21 designs. Talk about easy homework! I get to bring food home often, which makes my roomie and my friends quite happy!