Santanu's wedding food and Pho

Just a quick post containing pictures from Santanu's wedding and when I went to have Pho with some other fellow classmates from Cordon Bleu

Not too much to say about these stuff, the food at Santanu's wedding was really good, but then I don't eat much Indian cuisine so i don't have much say.

The Pho I've had better, especially the broth but it was the first time i've seen fried shrimp and sauteed meat in a Pho.

Food from Santanu's Wedding



Pho



Bean Sprouts and Thai basil

Dining at Murray Street

This isn’t my first time to Murray Street nor will it be my last, my enjoyment for the food started the first time I went. I was introduced to Murray Street by a good friend and great Chef, Chef Oliver Bartsch. After that first experience going with Chef Bartsch I instantly grew fond of the charcuterie that they offered. After that I found almost any excuse to go and have another meal there, on two separate occasions when friends from Toronto came to visit I persuaded them to go.(which they ended up greatly enjoying themselves) Recently I went to Murray Street for lunch with a few fellow cooks and for dinner with schoolmates from Cordon Bleu.

Pretty much every time I think about Murray Street all I really think about is duck, well duck and their charcuterie. So for lunch when I went with some fellow cooks, I of course ordered the duck confit sandwich. The others cooks that were with me had pulled pork, mac and cheese and the last one also had the duck. The duck club (as its listed in the menu) which came with a butternut squash soup was pretty delicious, the cranberry jam that was in it added to the deliciousness.

For dinner I went with a two Cordon Bleu classmates, we went because one of them was moving to Switzerland. We started off the night by ordering a Charcuterie board, on the board we decided to have the smoked duck breast, country terrine, Fish terrine (I honestly don’t remember what it’s called and can’t find it on the website), grey owl and tomme de haut richelieu. I remember the server asking if we wanted to pick another type of cheese since we picked two goat cheeses, but the girl leaving wanted goat so she got goat. In all out honestly I wish I could just get an order of the entire charcuterie menu on one board and munch it down with some good friends. For mains I of course without a doubt ordered the duck duck duck, the other two had a flank steak and braised rabbit. What I find interesting about Murray Street is that on the menu, other than the duck and vegetarian dishes, everything is a description of their distributor. These menu items tend to change quite often (not sure when they usually make a change), which means you could go in for flank steak today and in a week or two be fed a strip loin. My duck dish was pretty much everything I hoped for and more, I already have a love for duck and on the plate they served me not only duck confit but sliced duck breast and duck sausage. I did have a small taste of the other two’s dishes but I was too engulfed in mine to really put much attention to theirs. From what they told me they’re food was very delicious as well.

Murray Street Website

Please forgive the quality of the pictures, its the best I have without my actual camera. These were all taken with my phone.

Duck Club


Charcuterie Board



Duck Duck Duck


Beef Flank


Braised Rabbit

Pizza time @ Tennessy Willems

Haha! As I said I was going to be making more blog posts, who knew it would literally be the day after I made that post. For today’s adventure I met up with my good friends Jesse and Felix to head off to a new pizza joint in town, the joint is called Tennessy Willems: The Wood Oven Pizza Joint. This is actually going to be the first time in a few months since I’ve had pizza of any sort; the tastes of New Haven still linger in my mouth. Jesse had also prompted me a bit about this place; he told me that the chef used to work in Toronto at Librettos (a place I will have to go to when I visit Toronto in Feb.). As we walked towards the pizza joint I was getting quite excited to be having pizza done the same style as Pasqualino Oliveri our old Chef at The Grand did. That wasn’t the only thing that I was quite excited about; I was excited about the fact that they also offered duck confit pizza (I love love love love love duck, especially duck confit!). Walking into the restaurant the first feel I got was that it’s pretty cozy looking, the very first thing you see is the pizza oven, and it has a seating capacity of 27. We take a seat and right away we got our server with our water and menus, she gives us a few minutes and we make our orders, I ordered the Duck Confit Pizza, Jesse and Felix ordered the Margherita Pizza. Right after having our orders taken down it took roughly 10 minutes for the pizzas to arrive. Right away the first thing we did was check the crust, lifted it to check if it was going to hold its shape and we also looked at the bottom of the crust to see how the color was. The pizza lived up to its name and the crust was great, it had a nice crunch, held its shape and was slightly burned a bit, it’s a wood oven pizza of course there will be some parts with a bit of burnt. My pizza the Duck Confit Pizza was pretty good, the onions gave it a nice sweet taste, the truffle oil helped give it a more of a distinct flavor, I couldn’t really taste the cheese all that much. Over all I would order the pizza again except for the fact that it was a bit dry, since there wasn’t really any sauce other than the oil. I understand from past experience that tomato sauce does not go well with duck confit on a pizza, I’ve yet to figure out what kind of sauce would fit a duck confit pizza although maybe adding a bit more cheese would have helped give it a bit more moisture. Judging by Jesse and Felix’s reactions to their pizza I’d say they were satisfied by it. I’m willing to come back and try it again hopefully with the friend we forgot to bring along, Pat! For sure we’ll remember to call you next time we go for the zaaaa. Overall I’d say the layout is quite cozy, the menu is clean crisp simple, the pizza is great and the service is awesome. For anyone out in Ottawa looking for satisfying pizza I would suggest you go down to Tennessy Willems and have yourself a pizza!


Tennessy Willems website



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What Tennessy Willems has to offer, this is taken directly from their menu

I posted this incase anyone can't read the picture of the menu clearly

APPETIZERS

CHEESE BOARD
3 local cheeses, house-made cranberry-pear chutney, spiced almonds and homemade flatbread ... $10

MACKEREL PLATE
Whalesbone Smoked Mackerel, apple beet slaw, lemon Crème Fraiche with homemade fresh toasted bread ... $10

CHARCUTERIE
House-made Terrine, local derived sausage and cured meat garnished with pickles and mustard ... $10

BC SPOT PRAWNS
Sustainably farmed BC prawns in brown butter with lemon, capers, parsley and shallots ... $10

SALADS

HOUSE SALAD
Arugula served with wood oven roasted mushrooms and fresh parmesan in a Maple and Sherry vinaigrette ... $9

WARM BEET SALAD
Local C'est Bon goat cheese, apple vinaigrette, pickles fennel and tarragon ... $10

CAESAR
Romain lettuce, double-smoked bacon, fresh Parmesan and wood oven toasted croutons in a lemon, Dijon and garlic dressing ... $9

WOOD OVEN PIZZA

MARGHERITA
Fire-roasted tomato sauce, fresh Mozzarella and basil ... $10

THE ELMDALE
Fire-roasted tomato sauce, spicy Italian salami, mushrooms, roasted red peppers and fresh Mozzarella ... $14

HELEN's
Baby spinach, fresh Parmesan, C'est Bon goat cheese, and oven roasted pine-nuts, squeezed with fresh lemon ... $14

GREEK PIZZA
Basil pesto, oven roasted red peppers, Calamata olives and feta ... $16

WILD BOAR
Local wild Boar sausage, carmelized apple, sage, garlic and sharp Cheddar ... $18

DUCK CONFIT
Carmelized onion, white Truffle oil, Riopelle and duck confit ... $18

SOPRESSATA
Fire-roasted tomato sauce, fresh Mozzarella, red onion and Sopressata salami ... $15

FOUR SEASONS
Fire-roasted tomato sauce, fresh Mozzarella, Cremini mushrooms, artichokes, Calamata olives and Capicola ham ... $15

THE CHORIZO
Olive oil, carmelized onion, Chorizo sausage and local C'est Bon goat cheese ... $16

BIANCO
Pear, walnuts, smoked prosciutto, fresh Mozzarella and Gorgonzola ... $16

MAINS

Pan seared FLAT IRON STEAK with roasted fingerling potato wedges and chili dipping sauce ... $18

Roasted, line-caught HALIBUT FILET on a bed of navy beans, grape tomatoes, Oyster mushrooms, and double-smoked bacon with a lemon butter sauce ... $18

House-made LASAGNE with arugula béchamel, C'est Bon goat cheese, fire-roasted tomato sauce, and fresh Parmesan ... $15

SPAGHETTI with organic beef meatballs ... $15

DESSERTS

CRÉME CARAMEL ... $7

LEMON TORTE ... $7

CHOCOLATE MARQUIS Mmmmm... $7

The menu, read above if you can't read whats on the menu from the picture clearly


Tennessy Willems building!


Margherita Pizza


Duck Confit Pizza

To those that still check out my blog

Hey what’s up everyone, been a while since I did a post about anything and decided that I should make a post. In my current situation I haven't had the chance to be going on any food adventures, so I have decided that I shall be blogging about the different types of food I have eaten around the city and the food I've been experimenting on at home or at work. With that being said be on the lookout for many new posts as I continue my culinary adventure.


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For Christmas I was invited by my housemate's family to have dinner at their place, I was also asked to bring along some food. At first i wasn't too sure what I was going to cook, this being the first Christmas dinner I ever had to make any food for. I went through some books, looked at websites and talked to my chef at work about it. Somehow through all the ideas I was looking up and being suggested of, I decided to go with a mini quiche. I originally found the recipe on All Recipes and then taken it and modified it to what I wanted. Essentially the recipe was the same except I used more eggs, less baking mix and green onions instead of parsley. The recipe turned out to be pretty good, but the end result turned out to be a bit dry and needed some ketchup to accompany it. I think where it went wrong was that there wasn’t enough moisture, so I decided that the next time I make these mini quiches I’m going to cut down on the baking mix which hopefully will fix the slight dryness. Cooking these mini quiches was pretty straight forward, sautee the bacon along with the onions + green onions, cool down and then mix in with the eggs + baking mixture.

When we went over to Andrew’s parents house (Andrew is my housemate) there was already a ton of food already made, his mom really went to town in making a wonderful meal. I was a bit scared that the mini quiches wouldn’t be much of a hit and that no one would even touch them since I don’t think they looked a bit like pucks. Near the end of the meal his relatives came up to me telling me they were delicious and just hearing them tell me they enjoyed it made my night. (Well that and my housemate eating a couple of them and telling me to make it again) On a side note, there was a crazy amount of food at the Souter’s and man oh man did I leave with a nice full stomach. His mom even made me my favorite thing to eat at the Souter’s which was deep fried cauliflower Mmmmmmmmmm I can taste it now just talking about it.

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I’d also like to make a quick shout out to two of my friends who also have food blogs, Justin and Jesse. Justin’s blog started roughly the same time as me, I met him while I was doing the work study program at Le Cordon Bleu and he was starting up his program Le Grand Diplome Professional. Which is like the Grand Diplome Certificate, but you also have time to go on a stage and they also include a few other classes that the Grand Diplome does not include. Justin’s a great guy to talk to and usually when we do talk it is at some crazy hour in the morning mainly having discussions about food. Check out his blog @ Le cahier de Justin

My other friend that I’d like to make a shout out to is Jesse; I met him while I worked at The Grand Pizzeria and bar. I mainly worked in the kitchen while he was the head pizza maker out at the pizza oven; he’s also the one that trained me how to open dough and to work the oven. The second him and I started talking about food we became great friends, at first it was just what kind of crazy pizzas we could create but after a while we started talking about any food. He’s pretty much my travel buddy when it comes down to my adventures, him and his brother Josh accompanied me on that Pizza voyage we went on. I’m sure there will be many more adventures to come; I especially can’t wait for the East coast barbeque road trip we’re going to take through America. Check out his blog @ http://jessedevouge.blogspot.com/. His blog is fairly new but be sure to keep an eye out for what his latest food obsession is.



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Below is the recipe for the mini quiches

Ingredients
• 6 slices bacon, chopped
• 1 onion, chopped
• 6 eggs
• 70 g buttermilk baking mix (or just normal baking mix, an example would be bisquick)
• 2-3 bulbs of green onion
• 110 g shredded Gruyere or Swiss Cheese

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease 2 mini muffin pans.(or use a regular sized muffin pan, which fits about 12).
2. In a skillet over medium heat, fry bacon, onion and green onion together for about 5 minutes, or until bacon is crisp. Drain and set aside.
3. In a bowl, beat the eggs. Stir in the baking mix, shredded cheese, bacon and onion/green onion (make sure to cool down the bacon mix before mixing in with the eggs else you will cook the eggs with the heat from the bacon). Spoon into greased muffin cups. (make sure to give it a good spray, I had some slight problems trying to remove them from the pan)
4. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops are lightly browned. Allow mini quiches to cool in the pan before carefully removing with a small knife or spatula.


Recipe from All Recipes with modifications from me



The Mini Quiches


Andrew's Chocolate cheesecake


First plate of food for Christmas Dinner

Pizza Voyage!

Thursday September 17th, was the night that Jesse, Josh and I set out on our Food Voyage for great pizza. The mode of transport we picked was the good old greyhound bus, roughly 9 to 10 butt numbing hours of the bus. After suffering through that pain we arrive in New York City for a couple hour layover and explored the city a small bit. Our first meal outside of Canada was not a slice of pizza, but an amazing smoked meat sandwich from Carnegie Deli. The flavors and texture of the meat were quite amazing; I’d say it is comparable to schwartz’s in Montréal. (I’d have to do a blind taste test of the two together to really pick which one I love more) Before we had arrived in New York Jesse had bet that I could not finish a sandwich from Carnegie Deli, so I took him up on the bet, finished that sandwich and watched him pay for my meal. After that we walked past The Soup Man, (aka soup Nazi from Seinfeld) too bad he wasn’t open yet or else I’d have tried some of his soup. Did a bit more sightseeing and right back on the bus we went on our way to the great pizza heaven of America.

Took about two more butt numbing hours on the bus before we arrived at New Haven Mecca of pizza in America. Right away even before going to the hotel we drop into Pepe’s Pizzeria, ordered a cheese pizza and some excellent birch beer. (Birch beer is a type of soda made from herbal extracts, the brand we drank was Foxon Park) When the pizza arrived at our table all hot and steamy, my mouth started watering at the sight of it and quickly took a big bite out of a slice. That first bite was just amazing, the full fat low moisture mozzarella cheese, the oh so fresh tasting tomato sauce (with minimal seasoning) and the thin crispy crust that it all sat upon. Everything about Pepe’s was different from The Grand Pizzeria (Restaurant where I used to work at), especially the way that they cook the pizzas. At the grand we use a wood burning oven to cook the pizzas, while Pepe’s uses coal to heat theirs. The dough that they use is very different form The Grands as well, Pepe’s uses more of a wet type of dough (which stretches with less effort but harder to work with if not familiar with working pizza dough) compared to ours which is a bit dryer. (A dryer dough is a bit easier to work with since it takes a bit more effort to stretch, in turn easier to open without easily creating holes) Here I was with my two good friends Jesse and Josh having awesome pizza, pizza that has been made the exact same way for over 3 generations. At that very moment of eating the pizza I realized that butt numbing bus ride was worth it, this was just the beginning of our pizza voyage.

Afterwards we went to check into our hotel and went on to explore the downtown area of New Haven, as a snack we decided to visit Louis Lunch (A place that claims they were the first to make hamburgers). The way they serve burgers is quite unique here, instead of buns (since burger buns weren’t invented yet) we had toast, there is no ketchup or any types of sauces in the place (they believe that one should taste their burgers without having sauce to mask its flavors) , the only toppings they did offer was cheese (which was a cheese whiz/spread type since processed single sliced cheese didn’t exist yet either), tomato and onions. This place like Pepes have stuck to their roots, they to this date still use the original toaster and broiler type device to cook the toast and patty. Eating that burger, I’d have to say that I wasn’t expecting too much since it was just a patty with sliced bread with some veg, but surprisingly it was quite good.

Having that small snack we were ready for the next pizzeria, the next place in my honest opinion had the greatest pizza every even better than all the other ones. The only catch was that it isn’t traditional pizza; instead of the normal tomato sauce and cheese combo they used mashed potatoes and bacon. BAR was the name of this amazing pizzeria, along side of great pizza they also produce their own brand of beer and are host of a nightclub. Our standard pizza of choice to compare all the different pizzeria was the most basic cheese pizza. Using that as our standard we were able to compare the crust, the sauce and the cheese. If I was to strictly judge who had the better cheese pizza, it would have been Pepe’s hands down but BAR was still amazing due to their unique untraditional pizza. (Which I love love love and can’t wait to go back for some more) That night ended with us watching The Town, which I found surprisingly good for a movie I knew almost nothing about.

The following day was a big day for us for it was the day we would make the trek over to Modern Apizza. Modern Apizza as its name suggests uses the most modern type of heating compared to the other pizzerias, instead of using coal or wood they use oil to heat up their ovens. As usual we ordered the standard pizza and birch beer, just as I thought Pepe’s was amazing, Modern Apizza blew me away. With Pepe’s their sauce was amazing, but with Modern’s it wasn’t just the sauce but the combination of everything that made it so good. It was so good that Jesse and I even ordered a second pizza to enjoy, the second one we added meatballs which turned out to be very delicious. To kill some time before we had dinner we did some more sightseeing around the Yale campus, sat on a bench at one of their courtyards, we also visited the Yale art gallery.

Walking around the Yale campus and downtown New Haven we built up a nice appetite and went straight to Pepe’s for a nice dinner. As we arrived we were met by a line that went from the front door all the way to the parking lot. This was the rumored line that we would have to endure in order to eat more delicious pizza. At first it seemed like a long line, but it started moving at a pretty decent pace, it’s also where we met a family from Boston in town for a pizza. I also managed to meet Taiwanese couple that was in town for schooling. Having the Modern Apizza taste fresh in my mind, we were able to compare Pepe’s and Modern’s pizzas, at the end it was a very very close call but Modern won with a higher overall score. We had also tried their famous clam pizza, which the three of us not being clam lovers did not like so much. In our travels we managed to visit the top pizzerias mentioned many times in many pizza books except for one pizzeria which was closed for vacation just when we decided to visit New Haven. This last pizzeria is called Sally’s, said to be Pepe’s long time rival, they as well have been around for nearly 3 generations and as well have not altered the ways they make their sauce or pizza. From what Jesse has been telling me their pizzas aren’t made in a round shape, instead they look more like squares or rectangles, it is definitely a place that I’d loves to visit on my next New Haven Trip.

The final day of the trip we only went to Modern Apizza for dinner since we all slept in and missed lunch. I find us ending up at Modern as the last pizzeria was quite fitting, since it ranked the best by our standards, but I would have killed to have more of the mashed potato pizza. After dinner we had a concert to go to and on the way there it seemed like we were super speed walking the entire way. The walk which took us about 30 to 40 minutes from the hotel, took us only 10 to 15 minutes from Modern to Toad’s place where the concert was held. We watched Broken Social Scene, there was another band that opened for them but Broken Social Scene was so amazing that I don’t recall what the other band was called.

Leaving New Haven was a bit sad, not only did we have to endure the butt numbing bus ride but we also had to say good bye to some delicious pizzas. The one good thing about the ride back home was that we went through the Boston area and drove through Vermont, which was quite beautiful. Overall this trip lived up to the hype that Jesse built us on before we left, the pizzas were way beyond what I was expecting, the city as well had a lot to offer in terms of its people, the scenery and the food we ate. (well mainly pizzas but we did have wings and breakfast at the diner near our hotel) I very much look forward to my next trip to New Haven, hopefully next time I’ll get to eat more mashed potato pizza!

Modern Apizza



Frank Pepe's Pizzeria




BAR

My days spent in the Production Kitchen at Le Cordon Bleu

My days spent in the production kitchen of my school
Literally just minutes before typing up this blog post, I had a conversation with a good friend about how I haven't done much on my blog and that I should probably do something. He suggested that I blog about my time spent in the production kitchen. What is that and why I'm there you may ask, it is part of this work study program that I participated at my school. It’s pretty much like a working scholarship, I work in the production kitchen for 6 months and in turn they pay for 1 of my sessions in school. They also decided to change the program while I was the work study student, instead of having 2 students working at once (one mentor and one new guy) they changed it so that there will only be 1 student per 6 months. It was some shocking news to me, I already knew that I was in for lots of work and hardships but I guess they had to one up me and put me alone. It was quite nerve wrecking when I found out the news, I kept debating if I should continue on with the program or refuse to be in it. This one topic kept me awake for many hours just thinking and debating, but in the end I decided to take up the challenge.

My first few weeks in the production kitchen were pretty rough; I’d forget many things or do many others incorrectly. My biggest fault was that I was not organized enough, kept thinking that I could remember it all in my head and I’d be fine. In truth I wasn’t fine at all and Chef Christopher knew it, which is most likely the reason he loved to yell my name. Over a few days of yelling, more yelling, chef sat me down and explained that I should be using a notepad as well as the whiteboard. After that conversation I got into the habit of going over what had to be done for the next day and filling up the whiteboard, as well as filling up my notepad with the tasks that Chef would give me. (Full my notepad stayed, till I learned how to organize my volunteers better and get them to handle most of those tasks) Learning how to use the whiteboard and notepad was only half the battle to being organized down in production, learning how to keep the fridge and daily volunteers in order was the other half. Trying to teach new volunteers how production worked and trying to organize the other volunteers so that they were productive was quite the nightmare for me. Not only did I have someone asking me where this is or where what is, I’d have Jacqueline, Chef and other Chefs asking me where this or that was. Over the period of about a month or so I quickly developed the skills I needed for conquer these major obstacles. My skills may not have been the best but I’d developed enough that I could tackle them without over stressing myself. Proud of the fact that I’ve developed new skills and thought I would be completely ready for what production had to offer I was dead wrong. The fact is learning how to organize myself was just the beginning of it all, on top of trying to stay organized I had to make bread, check/receive inventory, making stock, etc. My first 3 months of making bread pretty much was a disaster, I could barely shape the bread in the shape of a baguette. Making stock was one of my favorite tasks to do in production, even though we had to make stock almost every other day. The aroma that came out of the pot when you made the perfect veal or chicken stock was just heavenly. Since I was the only work study student I had to speed up my learning process, what might take someone a week or two to learn I had to do it in a few days. Some of what I learned stuck on right away and some took a lot longer like baking bread. (Which I think took me about 3-4 months before I could do it without asking for help)

At this point in time you’re probably thinking wow what hardships I must have gone through, it was not all that bad. There may have been days where I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die, but there were also many where life was glorious. Being down there in the production kitchen has helped me become more organized, improved my leadership/communication skills, improved my kitchen skills and has strengthen me as a person all together. At the end of it all, I’m extremely happy that I decided to take on /complete this challenge and leave with new knowledge as well as more confidence in the kitchen.


I'd like to thanks all the Chefs and all other Cordon Bleu staff for taking care of me during those 6 months that I was the Work Study Student. I'd also like to thank all those students who came down to volunteer in the Production Kitchen, your help meant the world to me.(even if you thought you were a chicken running around with its head cut off, you were all more than useful) Last but not least I'd like to specially thank Chef Christopher, Chef Armando, Jacqueline, Helen and Gordon for always being there offering me advice and guidance for when I needed it most.

Exam Tomorrow!

Been a while since I wrote something on my blog and well time flew by and guess what tomorrow is my final exam! But before we get into that, a quick fly by of what's been going on with school and all those workshops we have. We've all been doing pretty decently in our workshops, even gotten complimented about us cooking vegetarian. Chef did ask why we couldn't be producing food like this when he gives us a nice cut of meat or fish.

There was however one day where everything pretty much screwed up, nothing was going my way it was as if I couldn't cook at all. The day just so happened to be our practice exam day, aka the whitebox exam. I had a plan, I had all the things needed, but when I walked into that kitchen that day it all went wrong. I was suppose to have 5-6 elements per plate and they were suppose to look pretty good. Then disaster, this reduced too much or that didn't cook all the way through and that was starting to burn. I was really really frustrated and I told myself just calm down breath a bit and get back into the game. I did do exactly that, yet nothing seemed to be improving too much. In the end I managed to serve something rather than nothing but I was quite late in serving and my plates were just bad. It was a pretty depressing day for me, I guess everyone has those days where they just can't seem to get anything right, I accept that but it was still a brutal day in the kitchen. Looking back at that day now, I feel like I lost some confidence when things started to mess up and started to give up. Thinking about it now I should have remained calm, and just move on and to never give up.

I'm not the kind of guy to just get up and quit, but that day was just horrible and I was reminded about not quitting under pressure again a week or so after. It was our last demo with the Chef and he decided to try something new with us. He gave us a list of ingredients and said okay your all going to be split into 4 groups. we were split up and then asked to come up with a four course meal with all the ingredients there, it didn't have to be super fancy as long as it could be done within an hour and half. Now here's the real kicker, after he picked one course from each of our groups, he then picked four students to come up and cook that menu. I was one of those four to be picked and lets just say I wasn't too happy about it. We went on doing this demo explaining what we were doing when the chef or everyone else asked. Preparing the dish wasn't super hard, but going into it unprepared with no notes and your peers asking random questions out the blue was quite frustrating. Things went alright, but near the end I messed up cooking my rice and felt really annoying/embarrassed at the same time. Having done that my confidence went out the window and cracked under that pressure, so I threw in my towel and burst out the door. Later on my chef found me and told me that even tho I messed up, I shouldn't have ran away. I should have just continued going on with what I was doing and complete the task given. The most important thing was that he told me I should never give up.

Roughly within a week I was reminded twice to never give up hope and to continue fighting till the very end. I like to live by a never give up never back down way of life and somewhere I lost it. I guess in a way it was a good thing those things happened right before my exam time and rediscovering my way.

Right now I'm a bit tense about my exam tomorrow morning, but I'm having good feelings about tomorrow. Gonna get my game face on and be ready to rock and roll, then be done with school. As rough as the weeks before my exam have been, I've not given up on myself and an confident that I will do good and pass. With all that being said I should go back and do one final overlook of what I'm doing tomorrow and get some sleep.




Menu that I will be preparing for the exam


App: Pickerel mousse, snow peas, carrot wrapped with asparagus, and a orange cream sauce

Main: Wild mushroom and Liver stuffed Duck Leg, roasted cherry tomatoes, braised white asparagus, parsnip puree, and a mushroom sauce