beijing bound?

so yeah... ummm... riiiiight... i've been kinda quiet on this lately. partly because there's been so much going on in the past few weeks. so to keep this short and sweet, march's focus was on Stocks, Soups & Sauces. you might be thinking... *yaaaaawn*... but what i've learned is that a good stock is the foundation of a flavourful soup and more importantly, sauces. who would've known that simmering browned veal bones in water with some caramelised onions, celery, carrots, tomato paste, garlic and some herbs and spices could be so important and delish! bottom line... i made some pretty damn tasty soups and many amazing sauces that will, no doubt, become very important as i progress through the culinary program.

Soup of the Month:
a Lobster Bisque and a Seafood Chowder... both were so good that i had to name #1 and #2 :P~~

Sauce of the Month:
a Saffron Sauce that was to die for!

from the choices above, i guess it's evident that i love my seafood... yummmm :)

i'm now well into the month of april and block 5 - Meat, Poultry, Fish & Vegetable Cookery. it's kind of nice as we're looking after and working the pm shift at the school cafeteria so that means we all get to sleep in a bit and take a break from the 530am wake ups. of course, i shouldn't get too comfortable as we'll again be morning zombies next month!

i'm really enjoying block 5 as we're finally doing some real cooking. i say 'real' because the other months have mainly focused on basics and foundations/components of cooking. whereas now, we're actually taking all the pieces of the puzzle and putting them together to create proper dishes... well... kinda proper as we're cooking in quantity for the cafeteria. nevertheless, we're learning various cooking methods to create dishes utilizing fish, meat, poultry, veggies and matching them up with complimentary sauces and visually appealing garnishes. furthermore, our chef is a gun! the guy is a wealth of information and such a great teacher. it's no wonder he's been on the Canadian Culinary Olympic Team for 12 years... he's also the coach! learning from and watching him work has been amazing. he focuses on working cleanly and efficiently. and presentation is everything! in his words, "if you respect your food, others will notice." wise words from a wiser man.

so what's up with this 'beijing bound' heading? well... part of the reason i've been so busy is because i've been focused on getting myself to beijing. what's going on in beijing? why why why, you ask. well, one of the largest, if not the largest, vancouver catering companies has teamed up with the vcc culinary arts and hospitality program to do a joint venture and cater Team Canada at this year's Beijing Olympics. so after writing up and submitting a cover letter and resume - along with 63 other applicants - i was shortlisted for an interview with the culinary arts department head and the chef de cuisine at http://www.culinarycapers.com/. the chef was very cool. the interview went extremely well and i walked out of the room thinking that i had a good shot at getting in. of course, it seemed like every other candidate walked out thinking they had killed the interview too! that brought me back to reality and i decided to keep a level head about the entire thing. so a couple days passed and no word. another day passed, and still no word! finally, on friday, the department head came around to our class and asked to speak with me. "herman," he said, "you're going to beijing." i'm going to beijing!!! i'm going to beijing!!! i walked back into the kitchen with a smile. all my classmates were asking, "well???" i gave the thumbs up and the class went loud with a round of cheer and ovation. i love my classmates... they're my support system. i'm a happy man. this will surely be an experience of a lifetime. i may not win gold in beijing but i'm proud to be supporting my homeland, Team Canada, and doing it in my motherland, China :).

thanks to everyone for your support and believing in me. it means more than you'll ever know :).

down with the breakfast nazi...

so block 3 – egg & breakfast cookery and basic baking & desserts – has come and gone. now it's time to go get that t-shirt printed saying, "I survived Block 3 and lived to tell about it!" i really shouldn't be calling my chef the Breakfast Nazi. he really wasn't that bad and definitely nowhere close to being Gordon Ramsay ;). he just wanted things... ermmm... done his way. and if it wasn't done his way, you were going to hear about it. the man was, at the very least, excitable. he'd jump to conclusions before you even had the chance to say anything or explain the situation. just from how he addressed the class, you would have thought that he hated us all. "don't do that please!" he would say or "seriously guys, please!" well, at least he was polite about it by saying please :P. but if you took a step back and looked at the big picture, the man was doing more than just teaching us about frying an egg or baking a cranberry & blueberry muffin. he was teaching us discipline, perfection and efficiency, three things that weren't overly stressed in the previous class – not even close. did this make for a stressful class? yes... it was mentally draining at times but you learned to just tune out the yelling and focus on your task at hand. oh... you also learned to not make mistakes. and if you did f*ck up, you didn't let him find out about it!

so all in all, i did enjoy the class, even though the chef reminded me of an episode of Seinfeld that featured a screaming, dictator-ish character called the Soup Nazi :P. actually, i'm rather glad he's the way he is because the class was getting a bit slack. it also weeded out the bad seed in the class. yes, we're now a 20 student class minus one.

in the long run, we'll probably all look back and appreciate the ass kicking that the chef gave us. to have him come up to me, pat me on the shoulder as i was walking out of the final class and say, "real good job," made my month. like the two sayings go... 'if you can't stand the heat, then stay out of the kitchen' and 'what doesn't kill me, can only make me stronger'. i survived so i'm an advocate... now to go print that t-shirt :).

eggs 101...

so i'm a week into my block 3 class and this month we're focussing on eggs & breakfast cookery and basic baking & deserts. you're probably thinking to yourself, "are you serious? eggs? i know how to make eggs!" well... you'd be surprised at how many don't! you might also be surprised at how much harder it is than it looks. fried eggs over-easy... ermmm... easy, right? yeah, probably not rocket science but it does take a bit of skill and timing to flip that baby over without breaking the yolk. ham & cheese omelet? pretty basic but still requires proper execution from pan to plate. and believe me, an omelet can look pretty unappetizing if it's not folded/rolled properly or broken with the filling oozing out from everywhere. shirred eggs? what's that?!! how about a perfectly poached medium egg? you're kidding, right? nope. heard of a 3 minute egg? did you know that it takes 4 minutes? believe it or not, eggs are done to order and should be brought out to the customer that way. even the usual fail safe scrambled eggs can be messed up... seriously! there's nothing worse than overcooked, dried out scramble! so the next time you make yourselves eggs, be patient and put a little love into them... they'll look and taste that much better :).

snowed in...

or should i say, "snowed out?" yip... it's 6:30am... i'm up and i'm ready to head out the door for school. i put on my gear, opened the door and what did i see? a winter wonderland! vancouver's been hit hard overnight and blanketed with at least 5+cm of snow! so mum comes running out of the bedroom and says, "have you heard? the college is closed today!" my reaction? a smile and a pumping fist! wooohooo! don't get me wrong. i love school but whenever you're given a freebie day off during the week, you're definitely going to savour it – even if you're stuck inside all day by the snow! and for some reason, a day off is so much more special when you're not expecting it. the only down side to this is that i wish i could've known last night so that i could've slept in! oh well... i'll still take it... grudgingly ;).

yesterday and sunday, i attended the BC Foodservice Expo, western Canada's largest hospitality trade show at BC Place, to watch the finals of the Iron Chef competition. it hosted many top chefs from around the lower mainland and BC. boy... was i impressed! i was in absolute awe at some of the mystery 'black box' ingredients and the abilities of the chefs to pull out magic from their hats. from python – yes, i said python – to kangaroo and gator, all dishes were mesmerizing. but what really blew me away was the mystery ingredient in the championship round. are you ready for this? are you sure? CAMEL tenderloin and CAMEL sweetbreads! you weren't ready for that, were you? how do you even go about tackling camel??? well, that's what makes these two competitors, professionals. watching these two go at it was inspirational. boy vs girl... hotel vs hotel (Marriott vs Fairmont). and interesting enough, both competitors were chinese. way to represent! ;) both were amazing to watch – so calm and so composed the entire way through. but in the end, only one chef's cuisine reigned supreme and that was Anna Yeh from the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel. i hope i got her name right. my apologies if i didn't! anyhoo, i learnt a lot from watching this competition and all the different competitors' styles of execution and final presentation. in the end, the winner, Anna, represented best. as the saying goes, she was calm, cool and collected throughout the competition. she even threw in a few smiles every so often. that's when you know that somebody loves what they're doing... even when the pressure's on. as i said earlier... inspirational...

we're offline...

the week's now come to an end so my team's official done with our stint on-the-line and is now officially offline. it's been a very hectic week but at the same time, a great learning process and heaps of fun! it's been one big adrenaline rush and it was the first time i've ever worked a short order grill in a kitchen. so as expected, i had a few butterflies on wednesday when it was my turn to take command as the 'Grill Master'. no... i didn't puke but i couldn't have been more nervous during the first 5 mins of service. but i soon learnt that once i get into a rhythm, there's no stopping me! the fact that we were cooking right in front of all our customers became secondary... even tertiary. it didn't matter that there were 15 people lined up watching me and waiting for their orders. as the saying goes, 'if you can't handle the heat, then stay out of the kitchen!' i definitely withstood the heat and rocked it through the hour of service. when it came time to close the kitchen, we were told that we had done approximately 70 orders... maybe more! woohoo! we were all high fiving each other as our chef told us that we did a stellar job and that he's never seen the line that busy and hit that hard before! nice one, team!

so obviously, drinks and pool were in order at our local bar! i think we spent everyday at our local this week :P. ah well... whatcha gonna do? when everybody's on such a high after service, there's no better way to celebrate. it was a great bonding experience too. they're such a great crew to work with. no egos... just all praise. and that's why we've done so well this week as tempers could have easily flared. but we all kept cool heads and did what we needed to get the job done.

we definitely got to all know each other a lot better this week. what was funny was the fact that a few still didn't know my age. so when it was revealed, there was total shock... again! one of the first comments, aside from the usual "you look so young!" was, "well, no wonder you're a star! you've been cooking for ages!" my reply, "ummm... actually, i've never worked in the food industry. just lots of cooking at home. i'm actually a cartographer." that was nice to hear as sometimes i wonder how i'm doing in the kitchen and if i'm keeping up with everyone. thanks guys, you're all-stars too! :)

on a final note... 'veggie burgers with bacon & cheese' weren't a one time occurrence during the week. there actually seems to be quite the few who indulge in this combo! i'm pretty sure they're not vegetarians who are needing a bacon fix. of course, i have heard from one time meat-eaters-turned-vegetarians that bacon is one of their most missed meats! hmmm... *raised eyebrow*. on the other hand, if you're trying to be healthy by having a veggie burger, wouldn't adding bacon and cheese defeat the purpose? hmmm... *raised eyebrow again*. well... what can i say that i haven't before... bacon makes things taste better ;)

we're online...

or should i say... "on the line"? so i'm finally back after a 3 week xmas break. a very nice break but boy, was my body clock thrown out of whack when classes started up again! 5:30am starts were a bit challenging after noon wake ups had become the norm. but i'm into my second week now and the groove is definitely back. I'M BACK! oh yes!

so this week, my team's on the line and looking after all hot sandwiches. today was our first day in the cafeteria and it sure was an eye opener. i never new how popular our caf was with students. we sure found out today! busy busy busy! 60 orders in an hour of service. that's an order a minute so our 'grill master' had to be on his game today. and he was! his A-game was definitely there! our team worked like a well greased machine – all helping each other out and having each others backs. it was beautiful. our team rocks!

"order of the day":

a veggie burger with bacon and cheese

i'm like, "ummmm..." and the girl immediately responds, "that's for my friend!"

yeah... sure it was ;)... haha... but who am i to judge? remember my entry on bacon and how it makes everything taste better? even for vegetarians? probably not :P