One of our project rotations here at school (one which I haven’t done yet), is to create a product to sell in the SHOP. Well, last week my classmate, SONJA, blew everyone away with her project. The challenge was to create a product and package it using only the materials we have at the restaurant, and this is what she came up with. AMAZING! The packaging is so beautiful and clever! Did I mention that Sonja went to art school with one of my ex-boyfriends?

She actually made two version of this chocolate-coconut bar (one with almonds and one without). Here I have the coconut bar. There was also a line of rawlmond joys. Both of these went fast. She had a lot of trouble in production, actually. As soon as she would make a batch, someone would eat them.

Here is an action shot of the production process. The bars are all sold. Don’t tell anyone, but I have the last one. It’s hidden away in my fridge. I was waiting until my boyfriend got here (today) to eat it. We’ll have to keep an eye on SONYA’S PAGE to see if she puts these in production.

These pizza bites were also a big seller. It came with six bite size pizza bits. They were beautiful too. With a green layer and a red layer. YUM YUM.

She also did two lines of granola bars. A blueberry-lime and a spicy curry. I definitely have a weak spot for the spicy curry. I think there actually might be one or two of these left.

Here I am with Sonja (on the right) and HELEN (the same girls I had my picture with on the FIRST DAY). Oddly, they became my closest confidantes. Interesting coincidence…

Last week, we had a discussion about wine pairing. I actually don’t drink at all because I have a lot of trouble with my LIVER. But since this seemed an important topic, I tasted a little.

As with any party, we started with champagne.

Then, we had with this lovely chardonnay and some mango.

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We also tried the mango with some reisling. I think I preferred the chardonnay. I’m generally not a big fan of riesling, but this one was nice.  Still, the chardonnay complemented the sweetness of the mango better.  (All this talk of wine is admittedly making me miss my wine tolerating days.   But I suppose ten years from now, I’ll appreciate their absence.  At least, that’s what I keep telling myself).

This pinot grigio was excellent. Ladan thought it a nice all purpose wine for raw food. I agree.

The next pairing was my favorite. It was black pepper truffle cheese paired with pinot noir.

YUM! I’ve always had a weak spot for pinot noir, and it was amazing with this cheese.

Next, we tried some heartier wines with olives.

This one was nice too. Though I’m admittedly biased towards syrahs and pinot noirs.

Zinfadels can be hit or miss with me, but this one was wonderful.

Generally, I hate rose. It brings a bad association with White Zinfadel. But this one is actually nice. Maybe I should be more open minded.

The last wine we tried was a port. HELEN was gaga over the port. Me…not so much.

All in all, the tasting was lovely. I think I had less than a half of glass of wine, but I definitely paid for it. Good thing I’m not an alcoholic. I don’t think I’d still be here. Regardless, I’m going to be including a lot of these wines in my repertoire (for service). HOORAY!

This week’s Sunday Supper was hosted by my classmate, Hillary. Her menu was a German theme. The first course was these little smoked portobella cocktail sausages with horseradish mustard.

Here was the menu for the evening. Not entirely legible, but you get the idea.

This wasn’t actually part of the menu, but HELEN and I got a little crazy. This was the CHEESE PLATE I’d had my eye on all week. We’ve actually made a sort of unofficial tradition of going to the Sunday Supper’s together. I’ll have to find another date next week when it’s Helen’s turn.

The main course was cabbage stuffed with sweet and sour vegetables in a tomato consomme. Pretty.

My favorite part of the menu was dessert. It was an almond custard filled apple crepe with a port wine reduction sauce. Delicious.

When she’s not busy in the Academy, our Level II instructor (LADAN) doubles as the kitchen director. Last week, she developed some really exotic cheeses. If you are in Oklahoma City at dinnertime, you should definitely check out the cheese plate!

Here is Ladan (well, her hand anyway) demonstrating her technique to me.

The blue cheese is amazing with the candied walnuts.

This cheese looks like a plain. But pair it with some lavendar honey, and it’s a party in your mouth.

Black pepper and truffle flavor. O. M. G!

Mmm…herbs. You can’t go wrong.

And you know what the best part about them is? They’re good for your digestion (not like the other kind), AND they don’t cause ASTHMA attacks. This is a particularly attractive feature for SOMEONE like me.

Things have been heating up in the raw food kitchen here. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t had time to post. So hopefully, the next few days will be a barrage of sorts. I just finished my rotation in the Asian station. Pictured here, is the pho (one of the top sellers in that station). It was my favorite dish when the new menu came out. I’ve been finding since being here that my favorite dish doesn’t seem to last long. It’s hard to stay committed in this environment.

My nemesis on this station has definitely been the kimchee dumplings. I was definitely grumbling under my breath over these things. Here you can see my less than perfect dumplings. They’re persnickety little buggers.

As the week progressed, I started to get into a flow with them. Once we accepted that we didn’t like each other, our relationship evolved.

The coconut curry is another hot seller on the Asian station (also a former favorite dish).

On my last day, I was dubbed the ‘Dumpling Queen’ by Kelly Lee (the General Manager) here. She DID NOT like my nascent dumpling attempts, and she let me know. So, it was kind of nice to rise above the ashes of my dumpling failure and triumph. Well, at least it sounds good on paper.

Well, my Sunday Supper went off without a hitch. I was much more prepared than I anticipated (though part of that might have been that not many people came). The weather was bad, and business was slower than usual.  RUSSELL brought his camera though and took some really nice pictures (He took all of these except the one below).  I WANT one of those cameras.

photo by Helen Castillo

I did have two very important guests…my parents! This photo was taken by my classmate, HELEN, who sat with my parents at dinner and was apparently very charming. You can read all about her experience on her BLOG.

My parents have been a bit skeptical about raw food. So I was really looking at this dinner as an opportunity to bridge the gap. After all, food brings families together. My mother really appreciates traditional Japanese cuisine. Though for the most part, she hates Asian fusion or any kind of bastardization of what she considers ‘real’ Japanese food.  My father has not liked much of anything I’ve made so far.  So, I would have considered getting him to eat anything a success.

The first course was gyoza. Traditionally, this is served as a fried or steamed dumpling filled with pork, cabbage, and garlic. The raw version featured applewood smoked tofu, cabbage, green onion, and bean sprouts. To my surprise, my mom LIKED them! My dad was a little reluctant. But once he saw that everyone else was eating them, he went for it. I was really surprised that they liked them! The flavor profile on this dish was probably the least traditional of the three.

The main course featured this green spider roll. The roll was filled with asparagus, avocado, red pepper, sprouts, cucumber, and a ‘tempura battered’ eggplant. It came with an arugula salad garnished with shiso, hijiki, crispy fennel, sprouts, and a sweet miso dressing. I thought I was really pushing boundaries with a sweet arugula salad but NO! When I saw that my dad cleaned his plate, my face started turning red! I was so excited.

The dessert was a ‘zen trio’. It featured a green tea mochi ice cream bite, bubble tea pudding with chia seeds, and a raspberry wasabi truffle. I made white chocolate garnishes with candied ginger and sesame seed accents that spelled my name in Japanese (or so I thought). This was especially for my mom. She was SO HAPPY when I brought it out to her (even though I spelled my name wrong – DOH!!). My parents enjoyed it so much that they even called an hour after they left to let me know how much they like it again. It was truly a wonderful success (for me). My dad said that this meal was much better than the LAST ONE they tried. To which I replied, ‘I guess I must have learned something then.’

The rest of the night went pretty well, I think. There weren’t a lot of orders, but I noticed that everyone who did order the feature cleaned all three plates. One table told their server to send me a message…’Domo Arigato’! So overall, I think it went well. I was happy with it, and I learned a lot from the process. HOORAY!

This week has been BUSY. We started a new project with MATTHEW. But since he’s been out of town, RUSSELL has been meeting with us too. Basically, we were each assigned a menu item from the spring menu to develop. I was assigned the green spider roll which was kind of cosmic given that this week is also my SUNDAY SUPPER, and I had planned on doing a Japanese themed menu (my mom is coming and I’m trying to impress her).

This was the garnish for the dessert dish. It’s white chocolate with candied ginger and sesame seeds. It says ‘Alissa’ in Japanese (It’s the only thing I can remember how to write). Russell gave me a hard time about it. He said that on his next dessert, he’s going to write Russell on the plate in English. Har Har.

The dessert plate also features these little chocolates. They’re raspberry wasabi flavored. Matthew said, ‘They’re really weird, but I can’t stop eating them.’ I’m really racking up the bonus points with my instructors this week. Maybe I should have figured out how to write ‘weird’ in Japanese instead.

If you’re in Oklahoma City, you should come to my Sunday Supper tomorrow. Here is a sneak preview. Russell took some really nice pictures of the practice meal I made for the class on Friday. He also gave the class a little demo on taking good food photos. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the pics he took. This is my appetizer. It’s gyoza featuring SMOKED TOFU.

This is the green spider roll (my spring menu assignment). It features tempura battered eggplant and asparagus.

The dessert is a trio featuring a green tea mochi bite, bubble tea pudding, and a raspberry wasabi truffle. Wish me luck! I’ve been working way too hard on it. Kind of bordering on obsessive. EVERYONE kept telling me to go home today, but there’s always one more thing. I’ll let you know how it goes…

While we’re on the topic of FANCY GADGETS, I should tell you about the Smoking Gun. I love the smoking gun. It’s basically a way to infuse foods with smoke flavor without heating them. Plus, it has a catchy name which is handy for one-liners (always a plus in the restaurant business where one-liners are a social currency of sorts).

Today, my mission (yes, I chose to accept it) was to smoke these tofu bits.

Basically, it works kind of like a HOOKAH (more social currency). You have some little wood chips in the gun which are burned, and the smoke travels through the rubber tube to some apparatus which contains your unsmoked material. Like so.

Once a good amount of smoke is transferred to your container, it’s sealed off (an airtight container is nice for this) until the smoke settles. The amount of time varies depending on how smokey you want the flavor to be.  Since this was my first time doing this, I arbitrarily chose ten minutes as a good time frame.  The flavor that resulted was pretty strong.  Almost too strong.  I think that tofu (being a fairly permeable material) is pretty accepting of the influence.

The chips are placed here. (Needless to say, somebody was racking up currency today. I wouldn’t want to implicate anyone. But it was not me, of course).

The flavor is determined by the type of wood the chips are made of. Today, I tried four flavors: cherrywood, mesquite, applewood, and hickory. I liked Applewood the best. And so did our new instructor. Did I mention that we have a new instructor here?

RUSSELL JAMES is in the house! He just started Monday. We have some ANARCHY FROM THE UK.

Ironically, I accidentally took this picture of Russell in front of a tray of wheatgrass. Pretty punk rock. He looks almost like Sid Vicious there. In a further show of synchronicity, I found a MUG SHOT of Sid on the SMOKING GUN web page. He’s like Sid Vicious in BIZARRO WORLD. Instead of heroine, he does wheatgrass. Did I mention that Russell was going to be a record producer before he discovered raw food? He’s been filling me in about the UK music scene.

Speaking of, I got some REALLY BAD NEWS today…ABBEY ROAD IS CLOSING!!! I am so depressed. I wanted to get my record mastered there. It was a secret dream. I’ve been working on this record for at least ten years. And the reason it’s taking so long is because I want to do it right. I want it to be recorded ALL ANALOG. The number of places that can accomodate that shrinks daily. But ABBEY ROAD! They’ve been doing it forever. They know what they’re doing, and they have a lot of people working there that have been there a LONG TIME. This is tragic! It’s not just in the food industry where people are cutting corners. This whole world needs a change of priorities.

The lovely HELEN made this delightful bento box for me last week. You can read a DESCRIPTION of the items on her page. But I can tell you that I ate every last morsel of it. The miso broth was perfect. Though I think the hijiki might have been my favorite. I’ve got to figure out how she makes that.

While Helen was busy on the Asian station, Hillary was working on her shop project. This is where one has two weeks to develop a product for the shop. Hillary’s was a raw cinnamon roll.

Here she is showing off her boxed product. Hooray!

I didn’t notice until I got home that in the background of one of my shots of Hillary’s presentation was THIS loveliness. That would be SONJA hamming it up for the camera. Sonja and I are in the Academy this week (as opposed to on the line). Every week our rotations change. Some weeks, we work on the line preparing dishes for the restaurant. Some weeks, we have special projects that we work on in the classroom. This week, Sonja is doing her shop project, and I am on Sunday Supper! Wish me luck…

One of the cool perks of culinary school is that we get to experiment with state of the art equipment. Presenting…the AntiGriddle. It actually looks a lot like lab equipment (did I mention that I used to be a SCIENTIST?).

It’s a lot like a griddle. But instead of searing things, it freezes them on contact. The surface of the antigriddle is cooled to -30 degrees F (sounds like Minnesota). You can pour liquids onto the griddle and they’ll solidify. Here we are doing an experiment with some maple syrup. You can freeze sauces into little garnishes that will literally melt in your mouth. You can also create crazy designs. It allows you to easily manipulate the transition of a medium from liquid to solid.

For example, you could make a spiral out of chocolate ganache.

Or an instant pudding pop.

A little tahini disc with pistachio crumbles.

My favorite was the chocolate disc with curried cashew pieces. YUM!