Chopped!

Found out this morning that I did not make the culinary competition team. I had a blast and actually learned quite a bit doing it so no worries; I'll know more about what to expect when I try out again next year.

The chef in charge of the program is the instructor for a class I had this afternoon, and he talked to me about it some. He said they were actually very impressed with what I cooked, and I surprised them with it.  They weren't expecting a dish like that, especially from a first-year student with no real training yet.  He told me that I was 4th in line to be picked (there were only 3 spots open), so I missed it by one. So I guess if one of the people drops from the team then I could be flagged as a replacement.

Was kinda cool to hear that I managed to surprise (in a good way) all the chef judges.

Tryouts

The Hot Food Team Tryout was pretty cool. I was fairly nervous going in since I’ve only been a culinary student for all of 2 weeks now and had never done anything remotely similar to this before. But I didn’t let those kind of thoughts bog me down. When my allotted start time came, I went to my station, took a deep breath to clear my head, and got to work.

The first thing we had to do was show our knife skills. We had to julienne 2oz of potatoes, create 2 tourne potatoes, and peel and segment an orange (with a knife so the pieces looked fancy). The juliennes aren’t super difficult, but cutting them all the same and to the required size is harder than it sounds. They have to be cut to ⅛ x ⅛ x 2 inch pieces; roughly the size of a small wooden matchstick. Mine ended up a little bigger than that, but I tried to keep them as consistent as possible so they’d all at least look the same.

(None of the below pics are mine, I didn't have a camera with me. I gleaned these pics from the web)

Julienne Potatoes

I’ve never peeled and segmented an orange with a knife before starting school, but turns out I’m pretty good at it. Takes a steady hand so you don’t cut too deeply into the orange when peeling it, and even steadier when slicing out the segments. You have to slice down between the thin membranes of the individual pieces to get a good looking piece, so it’s easy to frak it up if you’re not careful. Mine came out very nice though.

Segmenting an Orange

The big cutting skill is the tourne. You have to end up with a potato that’s 2 inches long, oval in shape (with flat ends), and has 7 distinct sides to it. Picture a barrel shape and you’ll have a better idea of the final figure. It takes a bit of finesse to get it right and the finished product is a fancy looking little potato slice. I’ve been practicing them all week and managed to turn out 2 that looked good enough for government work, so I was happy.

Tournees

Once the knife skills portion was done I moved onto the cooking phase. We got to pick what we made beforehand from either an appetizer, entrée, or a dessert. I was the only person who picked a dessert, and it was something I sort of threw together from a mix of 3 other recipes I had. It doesn’t have an official name but it was a blend of baked apples slices, roasted sweet potatoes, candied walnuts, a balsamic vinegar glaze (technically a gastrique), and a fried sage leaf as a decoration to top it off. We had to make 2 plates, one they could examine and another they could taste. It all came together nicely (except for the glaze, which was a little too thick) and I put it on the judges table for them to critique.

They seemed to be intrigued by it and the majority of their comments were positive. They liked its flavor profile and said it had a good combination of texture to it. While they thought it might be a little small portionwise to be a full-fledged dessert, it would work great as a palette cleanser before a super sweet dessert course, or be a great accompaniment to something like lamb chops. Overall they seemed happy with it, and that made all the work I’d put into it worth it. And I had fun doing it.

11 of us tried out for 3 spots on the team and we’ll find out next week sometime who made the cut. It’d be super cool if I make the team and can start getting myself ready to do this on a more serious scale. If I don’t make it then that’s cool too; I’ll focus on my classes and honing my skills and try again next year. Either way, I had great fun doing this and am very glad I stuck my neck out there and did it.

Week 1

Just completed my first full week of classes and it’s been a bit of a blur; tons of information and old-yet-new experiences thrown at me from all sides: syllabi and class projects; building layouts and professors’ personalities; eating lunch in the car and being surrounded by people half my age. It’s great!

It’s a little overwhelming but I think I’m starting to get a feel for the rhythm each class is taking on and how I’ll need to allot my time to get everything done. I did end up dropping my Psychology class in order to free up some time on Wednesdays and Fridays though. It felt like things were a bit too cluttered and I would be pressed for time since the culinary classes are going to require a substantial amount of commitment outside of normal class hours. No worries though, I’ll take it later down the road and enjoy it then.

Even though I’m just getting started with all this, I’ve already learned quite a bit. They taught several classical knife cuts this week, and I think I did pretty well with them. It’ll obviously take many, many hours of practice to get them all perfect but it should be fun. Next week we turn the stoves and ovens on and get to dive right into things even deeper…can’t wait.

I did do something a little crazy: I signed up to try out for their competition team. This is the team that trains hours and hours each week (in addition to their normal classes) in order to goto regional, state, and national level competitions to prove how good they are. They’ve made it to the national level competitions the last 6 years or so, and even won the national title in ’07. (I believe it was ’07 that they won…don’t quote me on the exact year though)

So even though I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing, I’ll be in the kitchen next Friday night cooking up a dessert dish for the culinary school chefs to critique(all of whom own or have owned their own restaurants, and some have competed at national/international levels for decades). It’s very daunting and I’m extremely nervous about the whole thing, but I figured what the hell. New Me has decided to walk this new path, might as well do it up right. No regrets. At the very least it’ll be a cool experience.

And if I somehow pull off the underdog thing and actually make it, what better way to become a good chef than by competing against the best students in the country.

Run for the Border

Went on a "let's get out of the house" road trip today. Did a few random things around Asheville, then hopped on I-26 and went north. There's a couple inches of snow on the ground pretty much everywhere, from the snowfall yesterday.

Karen Wynne had one thing right about today though, it was bitterly cold with that wind blowing.

Ended up crossing the border into Tennessee for a bit and the snow started really picking up. Managed to get some decent shots of the area though. Very pretty there.








This is the highest bridge in North Carolina, and it has built-in de-icing capability. Little nozzles automatically spray out de-icing stuff so people don't go careening into this peaceful little valley below in the winter time.

Ice Water

Didn’t accomplish much this weekend; it was too cold to do much more than stay in and try to keep warm. I did head out for a bit on a random drive Saturday afternoon. Drove towards the Blue Ridge Parkway (it’s closed due to winter weather though) and ended up driving south along the French Broad River towards Brevard.

Just as I went under the Parkway, I drove by a small park along the river and noticed something odd. There were trees leaning over along the bank with the tips of their branches dangling in the water, and everywhere they touched there was a white patch of ice. It looked kinda cool from the car so later when I turned around, I decided to stop at the park on my way back home.

It ended up being one of those things that you randomly do on a random drive that became the memory that makes the day special.

Not only was there ice formed on the tree branches, it was covering everything near the bank. It had formed in these cool ripple shapes from the water moving over it, and even had a layer of snow on it in places. I didn’t get many pics since I didn’t have any gloves and the wind was gusting constantly, driving the temps well below 0 ºF. In the few minutes it took to snap a dozen or so pics, my hands were burning they were so cold.

Very, very glad I stopped though.

All the pics are here.

Camping

I went out camping with a friend last night to test out our new hammocks. It's slightly different than a normal hammock setup in that it's made for camping (lightweight, attachs to tree trunks, is insulated, etc.) You tie the hammock between two trees and then hang a tarp over it to protect it from the weather and help keep the wind off of it also, which helps keep the setup warm.

It was rainy and the temps dipped into the 30s, but I was nice and dry inside my hammock. My feet got a bit chilled, but other than that I was decently warm all night long. And it was an extremely comfortable sleep too. Just a gentle swaying in the breeze; almost like being rocked to sleep.

I was kind of hoping to wake up to snow on the ground this morning but it looks like the storm waited til this afternoon to start sputtering. Couple inches on the ground now and it's still falling steadily. Fun fun.


The hammocks set up and ready for sleeping.


A view of the hammock from inside the tarp.

New Toy!

My new toy arrived today, a Blackberry 8330! I was kind of surprised it came today since I just ordered it yesterday, but that's one thing Verizon's good at. Guess they want you to get their gadgets fast so you can hurry up and get addicted to them and buy more.

I never really had much of a desire to own a Blackberry though. I was actually looking for something that could send & receive email from deep in the woods when someone suggested a smartphone might be the best answer. So I logged into Verizon (they have the best coverage in this area) just to see what options were available. Lo and behold, I was able to upgrade my current phone to the Blackberry at no charge, beyond a small monthly increase in my calling plan of course. I know that's how they sucker you in, but it's cheaper than the other options I was considering. A few mouse clicks and a FedEx package later, I have a new toy to play with.

And my inner geek is beside himself with glee...so shiny...so many buttons...

Animal Visits

I was a bit under the weather this past weekend, so I spent most of it around the house doing a lot of napping and being lazy. Not that that's different than my usual weekends, but I at least had an excuse for it this time. The fact that I was sick and slightly feverish at times may have contributed to some of the dreams I had. None of them were particularly odd or anything, but I had quite a few of them and that's unusual for me.

The main theme of my weekend dreams appeared to be animals. There was a family of enormous black bears in one of them. Enormous as in: larger than the size of my car. They weren't doing anything much beyond hanging around the yard, but their size was a bit startling and there was 8-10 of them. Another dream involved a baby goat (a kid?) that I had to walk around on a leash. It was one of those dreams that jumped all over the place and was extremely fractured and odd. The fact that the goat put the leash on itself with its tiny human-like hands should give you an idea of the weirdness factor.

The coolest by far though was the one with Shelbe. I was flying in the dream too, so that made it even better. I was swooping up and down in the sky flying over meadows and around trees, and all the while The Shelbster was running at super speed on the ground beneath me. I'd fly down to pet her and she'd jump up to meet me; we both were having a blast. It's one of the best dreams I've had in a long while and hopefully I'll have it again soon.

Max Patch

I went on a bit of an outing this morning. A friend and I drove up to Max Patch. It was my first time on a "bald" (grass-covered treeless peak) and also my first time setting foot on the Appalachian Trail, but it will not be my last.

The place is simply stunning. A complete 360° view from the top, and the morning was crystal clear and crisp and that made the view even better. It's been described as a "Sound of Music" type place and that fits it perfectly. A twirling Julie Andrews singing to the hills would not have been out of place at all.



The pics I took of the trip can be found here.

Anyone who is ever close to it should definitely take the time to stop and see it. The parking area is at the base of the bald and it's just a short walk to the top; not strenuous by any means. I can't wait to go back.