Straight from the Oven: Has it really been five months already?

What do food babies, crepe souffles that are capable of driving you stark raving mad, and saw chains (aka chain saws) have in common?? Week 18 at ESCF.

We started off the week with the much beloved catering class where attendance topped out at a whopping 50%! There were only two items on the menu for our 5 hour class which seemed unusual until we learned that we were making coulibiac, a classic Russian dish with 6 components: brioche, parsley studded crêpes, duxelles (mushrooms cooked in butter with shallots and lemon juice), garlicky spinach, basmati rice pilaf, salmon, and bechamel sauce. While chef was telling us about all the different layers, I'm pretty sure my eyes were popping further and further out of my head as the items became richer and richer.

Assembling the coulibiac was probably one of the most entertaining/heart attack inducing experiences I've had at school...13 layers of richness. When all of us finished, we looked at our "food baby" and were pretty sure it weighed as much as a small child, if not more. However, in the end, when it was time to taste, the coulibiac was much lighter than we expected and quite tasty. We also made pizza in class and although the crust could have used a boost in crunchiness, the tomato/onion concassé on top was nice.

The first 6 layers of coulibiac

The "food baby" before baking

Whoa!

The inside

Pizza

We had our last restaurant service on Wednesday (yay!) and since our chef of the week was out sick, yours truly was summoned to be chef for service...yikes! The chef of the week is responsible for running the pass and since my only experience with this is watching a certain chef on Hell's Kitchen go ballistic on the pass because the food isn't coming out quick enough, I was more than nervous. Chef added to my anxiety when he told me all 3 desserts were à la minute and a pain in the butt...Perfect!

I'll spare you the details of servers waiting 20 minutes for desserts and me realizing I NEVER want to be at the pass again. Let's just say that at the end of the night, we were all relieved it was the last service. We also had service on Thursday but since we were serving the ice cream cakes we previously made, we only had to prepare cookies as an accompaniment.

Pre-dessert - Super rich rice pudding with strawberries,

strawberry juice and crushed meringue

Rhubarb/apple compote with a dried rhubarb slice,

fromage blanc sorbet and nougatine tuiles

Anis infused créme brulée with red fruit compote

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the third dessert we made that evening, crêpe soufflé. This is probably due to the fact that after waiting 15-20 minutes for it, the waiters whisked it away the moment it came into view.

Friday was a pretty fun day. We put on giant trash bags and took chain saws and chisels to huge 150-200 lb blocks of ice. Carving ice turned out to be easier and much more fun than carving Styrofoam although the fact that ice melts (Oh, really? One of chef's classic quips) made our mornings a little more difficult. Chef told us we could change our subject but since I'd already had experience carving a shell, I forged ahead and it came out fairly well for an amateur.