Day 5

Friday.

Enhanced sauce.

We made a few emulsifications today as well as got some tofu and panna cotta started.

We made an apple and arugula salad to go with our macadamia goat cheese.  It had candied hazelnuts and a white wine vinaigrette.

I accidentally dropped my mandoline guard by the sink and look what I found! A plant growing out of the drain.  How cool is that little man?

Corn and mint ravioli in a tomato fondue.  I want to eat the tomato fondue with a cheese sandwhich.

Can I make a raw grilled cheese?  I will put my brain power towards it.

End of week 1.  Cheers!

Day 4

Plant based Sauces and Specialty Sauces.

Theresa tried to show us how to roast coffee beans.  No, roasted coffee beans are not a mother sauce.  That's ok though.  They are pretty interesting.  The roaster didn't like the power supply at MKOKC, unfortunately, so it didn't work.  We may field trip out to her place to see the beans in action later in the month.

Today we made a Thai salad and a green curry.

This salad is amazing.  It has coconut meat noodles and pineapple in it.  The dressing is a creamy sesame which is the perfect combination for the pineapple.  The noodles are soft and contrast perfectly with the curried cashews.  I wish I had thrown in a handful of cilantro.  I used it for garnish, but it would have been a perfect addition throughout.

The green curry was not my favorite.  I like the technique, but not so much the curry spice.  We used kelp noodles along with coconut noodles and spiralized squash.  Summer squash is in season and delicious right now.

Day 3

Tomato Sauces

Today we made a romesco and a muhammara.  The muhammara was for our mezze plate and the romesco was for some king oyster mushroom calamari.... yum.

We also, grabbed our mac cheeses and flavored them.  Then we herbed the outside and put them in the fridge.  They will be used multiple ways as they age.

The herbs I used were dill and parsley.  I also cracked a little black pepper on it.

The mezze platter.  Zucchini hummus with eggplant bacon, hemp seed tabouli, muhammara with olive and orange crackers.

King oyster mushroom calamari with tartar and romesco sauces.  The calamari was good, but I put too much oregano in my breading.  Oops!

Day 2

Day 2 was Vegetable sauce. 

We made a simple veggie stock using juiced carrot, celery and tomato.  We dehydrated our our sauces to thicken them.  Then we used them to make an amazing modern take on miso soup.  It was incredible.  The soup has chopped avocado, tomato, macadamia nuts and pine nuts in it.  

We made and plated our beet gnocchi.  Both cream sauces were amazing.  We made a quick parsley gremolata with lemon zest to add brightness to the heaviness of the cream and root veggies.  We made two different shaped gnocchi.  I like the smaller traditional shapes.

We did other things that I didn't take pictures of and can't remember.  I think we made curried cashews to dehydrate...maybe.

OKC take 2!

Week 1 was awesome.  And slow.  It has taken me some time to get back into the swing of things.  It is again an all girl class.  There are 5 of us. These posts will be a bit condensed and I will post them all at the same time.

This week we focused on mother sauces.  The traditional French mother sauces are: bechamel, espagnole, hollandaise, tomato and veloute.  In raw cuisine, they are a bit different.

Day 1 was cream sauce. We made a sage cream sauce and a truffle cream sauce to plate with beet gnocchi.  You will see these later in the program.

We made milk.  6 different kinds.  Then we tasted them to see the flavor differences.  I made oat groat milk.  Which I found surprisingly delicious.

The other kinds we tasted were Pecan, Pistachio, Macadamia, Walnut, Hazelnut and Cashew.

After we made our milks, we sweetened them.  Sweetening really changes the flavor of some of the milks.  Then, with our milks we made chocolate custard.  We used avocados as the base.  It is amazing how different each pudding tastes just using a different flavored milk.  Also amazing, it does not taste like avocado.  Yumm. :)

We made eggplant bacon (they don't do it in level one anymore) and olive and orange crackers for a mezze platter that we plated later in the week.

We started a macadamia nut goat cheese and cashew cheese to age over the month.  Something interesting with nut cheeses; you can only ferment them for up to around 48 hrs, but you can age them for a month(maybe more!).

After Graduation

Things got crazy.  We went out with Miki the Japanese Geisha.  We had sushi and drinks.  Then we went to the Copa, which is a gay nightclub.  No offense Oklahoma City, but the music there sucked.  I will not be returning.  Then Sat morning, we got our bikes out and returned them to Bike One.  Go to Bike One!  Then grabbed Big Truck Tacos on our way out of town.

My one regret is that I didn't eat at Big Truck Tacos sooner.  It was amazing.  Definitely chek them out if you like Mexican food.

Then we were off to St. Louis to stay the night on our long journey back to NYC.

(I guess I never posted this.  I adding labels to some older posts and this was in there.  Some pics for you if you miss my OK days.)

The Bees Knees

Matt and i saw the coolest movie yesterday.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekoeQodrVoM

Did you even watch the trailer?

Come on.  Don't be a dick.  I tried to make the video watchable from my blog, but I don't know how.  I am a wee bit blogger illiterate.  Go back and watch the trailer.   Gees.

Go see Queen of the Sun.  It is amazing.

The reason I haven't been writing is because I was going to start writing about our super cool CSA share.  But the spring rains caused the farmers to plant late and our first CSA pick up has been moved to the 23rd.  It was supposed to be the 7th.  So, you don't get to hear about cool NY produce until late o'clock.  Sorry sucka.

As an apologie I offer you this.  Pictures of cool Oklahoma City Stuff.  Mostly signs.