so my monday story starts with my battle with the cravat. the cravat is the chef's tie or neckerchief...is neckerchief a word? looks strange. i guess i've never actually spelled it before.
ANYWAY... i taught my husband how to tie a tie. quite a few years ago, in fact. when he came to me, helpless one morning, on his way to his first day as a student teacher, with his tie in a wrinkled, mangled mess around his muscular neck... it looked a lot more like a neckerchief than a tie. he didn't know how to account for his neck, being such a muscular guy, his neck is wider than your average, and his hands just couldn't quite get it to cooperate or lay flat. in the years since, he's perfected it. and nothing looks so good on guy, as a sharp tie and a sparkle in his eye. but i digress. you'd think, then, that the cravat around my own neck would be nothing short of perfection. but alas, the teacher became the student yesterday. because neckerchiefs are NOT made of Italian silk, are not long, and are difficult to tie perfectly. for the past week, i've half-assed my cravat, because it didn't want to cooperate. i felt that same desperation that my husband felt all those years ago, yesterday morning, whilst ironing my chef coat and assorted pieces. unfortunately, my husband was at work (he's now a teacher...probably because of how sharply i taught him to dress...it all comes down to that tie...well, that and being a smart cookie *wink*) however, lacking a teacher, i resorted to one of the modern day conveniences we are all fortunate enough to have these days... Youtube.
not surprisingly, the first video to come up was "how to tie the perfect cravat." fabulous! and so i followed the guy on the video, step by step, and then began to practice on my own. i had my laptop out, poised and ready to teach, resting on one half of the oversized ironing board, and on the other end, my neckerchief, my iron, a ruler (shut up!) and my camera...for photographing the process of course.
there are very few tricks, as it's really a simple process. one of the important 'must-dos' however, is that you have to leave approximately 1 and 1/2" between the point and the long, straight part, as you will need to finish off the neckerchief with a flat, even edge. (hello! hence the ruler i mentioned earlier!)
i ironed it as i folded, since i'm very much a supporter of looking like a pristine, ironed, gleaming white chef. anyway, after a few attempts, i can safely say i have now mastered the cravat. behold:
while i'm at it, in case you wanted to check out the chef whites:
plus my favorite part, the coat with my name on it!
one of the fanciest portions of my monday night was the dessert. prepared for us by Chefs Cynthia and Judy. if you recall, friday night's demos included one for creme brulee, one of the richest, most luxurious desserts you can walk across my desk. i don't have much of a sweet tooth... but i will never turn down creme brulee. and so after our dinner, which included some saucy, spicy type of white meat chicken, a salad of mesclun greens and polenta (yum), we were able to watch as the Chefs torched the brulee. if you don't yet own a kitchen torch, do get one. they are fun. i've made chocolate creme brulee (one of my favorites) and i still can't decide if i learned how to make it because it's creme brulee...or if it's because i get to use a blow torch. probably a little from column A and a little from column B, if i had to guess...
anyway, the creme brulee was PER. FEC. TION. think vanilla bean, think tender and creamy (and you KNOW it's good if I'M willing to use words like that! - only select few individuals will even understand that comment!), think lightly sweet and smooth, and in contrast crunchy and bitter caramel. it's just amazing. and i don't even really need to describe it any further. i will let the photos speak for themselves.
my favorite photo of my creme brulee? i call it "anticipation."
and you wonder why i work out 6 days a week?? luckily, no one makes me creme brulee with any sort of regularity. but god help me if they do. god help us all...
SO... cake! i finally (finally) got to meet my chocolate genoise. and it was pretty darn good. not as deflated as i had imagined. and Chef Cynthia did say that it came out great and helped me start leveling the top (as it had formed a *slight* dome)
now the filling: creme mousseline! AKA German butter cream. it's an amazing combination of vanilla bean pastry cream (one of god's gifts to earth i imagine), and butter.
2 POUNDS of butter.
surprisingly, it's remarkably light in texture and creamy, not greasy. it's an incredible filling and one that i'm sure my family members will be excited to see make an appearance in some of their upcoming birthday cakes. (calm down!)
because it's so light, you can be a little more heavy-handed with filling your layers...so i was. heavy handed. and it's a beautiful filling as well - just to look at. it's light, and dotted with thousands of vanilla beans (i've mentioned my love for those right?)
while my cake was chilling, we made pate a bombe buttercream. and then...added chocolate!
as i said last night, the only thing better than buttercream...is chocolate buttercream. (!!)
the only thing healthy about it is that you can only eat a sliver, due to its richness. but that's okay, because i guess it just makes the cake last longer. and the only thing better than cake...is cake that lasts and lasts. it's so rich in fact, that i could easily imagine placing it up on a deli-slicer and shaving off slices thin enough to see through. but that's just me. most humans gobble it up in seconds. and i don't blame them really. it's stupid delicious. stupid!
i'm practicing my skills of icing a cake to flat, perfection. and i'm getting better in leaps and bounds. i mean, it's only the forth class, and i'm shaving minutes and minutes off my process. it's awesome...time is money after all!
while our cakes were chilling again, we practiced some piping techniques. shells, reverse shells, ropes, zig-zags, rosettes, fleur de lis (think stylized lily flower)... i decorated my cake with shells, and more shells. and we topped it all off with Gianduja. you can thank the lovely, passionate, sexy people of Italy (Turin, to be exact) for the invention of this intense chocolate. it's chocolate...with hazelnut cream or paste mixed in. it's... heaven. hazelnut...another one of my most favorite indulgences. we shaved giant blocks of the Gianduja (whose name i capitalize out of sheer respect for its deliciousness) and gathered a small pile of them in the center of our cakes. behold...my finished product:
but then it was time to leave... so i don a different persona once class lets out and i have to make it back uptown, on time and unscathed. ...
i raced through the dirty, wet streets of NYC late at night in order to get to my train. in my sprint, plasti-dome in hand, backpack slung across my back, sneakers and terry capri pants, splashing god knows what all over my legs (don't ask...it's dirty down there), several people called to me from afar, from the dark alleys and corners of the city, from cars...or more specifically a garbage truck: "HEY! gimme some cake sweetie!" - and ONLY because my husband was a former sanitation worker do i love garbage men. (most of them anyway)...i stopped, turned to the guy in the truck and said "can't! it belongs to someone else!" and he yelled back "LUCKY GUY!" and I yelled "YUP!" and then darted down the stairway into the subway (at 11:45pm! looky who's getting so brave!)
on my sprint back upstairs when i got back uptown, a homeless woman called to me. "hey miss! can i have a piece of that cake??" and you know, for a split second I almost thought i should just give it to her! but she was almost 50 feet from me, and between us stood rigid and imposing bars from floor to ceiling, separating the Metrocard turnstiles from the tracks. "NEXT TIME!" i shout, as i leap across a large pool of... water? and double skip steps up to the street. i hear an echoing "okayyyyy!" before i reach the top. as i race back through the streets near penn station, i see the familiar brightly lit billboards through the fog and misty rain, so i know i'm near my destination, which means i will DEFINITELY make my train. as i get near the stairway BACK down to the trains, two cops are approaching from the opposite direction. "excuse me miss!" and i stop dead in my tracks. what? are they going to tell me not to run?? that would be ridiculous. but the tall, cute one smiles and says, "where are you going with that cake?" and i laugh..."back to long island," i reply. "can't you give us a piece? we're out here all night." ...okay i'll play along, i think to myself. "sure!" and he widens his eyes, grasping the seriousness of the situation he created. almost afraid he says, "oh i'm just kidding!" and i wink and say, "so was i!" and he smiles and starts to laugh. and with a shot, off i go, racing down to the trains, the streets a little happier because of some silly girl, with her plastic cake dome, running around the streets of the city, with promises of cake, spreading just a little bit of happiness. and my superhero persona is born: mandycakes, the inconsequential (sometimes subterranean) superhero and her trusty sidekick, plasti-dome. (that is SO going in my next book!)
so suffice it to say, i'm getting some fabulous foundational skills. i'm going to be a delightful hostess, with the mostess at my next dinner party...or BBQ, or shin-dig. or any other thing i might make a cake for. my husband happily stood by the table, holding a left-over christmas paper plate, after getting home around 1am from the train station, where he continues to insist on picking me up. he stood there, grinning in his PJs, holding the plate, smiling.
i pay him in cake. and i pay him well.
more to come!
xo
m
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