Sweetbreads...need I say more...

Well family and friends I am sorry to say that last week we entered the world of sweetbreads. For those of you who are wondering why I would be sad about that, sweetbread is not bread that is sweet...sweetbreads are liver, kidney, brains, and other organs that in my opinion should not be consumed. To be quite honest it takes a ridiculous amount of preparation and they don't really taste all that good. The famous liver and onions was the dish I had to cook, I did try it...but "ewh gross!". I think that will be my first and last time to try sweetbreads. Thankfully we have moved onto shellfish. Pastry has been fun, we are baking lots of cakes and we have gotten to do some chocolate work, like ribbons and curls.
Shellfish was an interesting venture...as Julia Child would say, "you must confront the animal...no fear" and boy was she right. I entered the demonstration kitchen and the bowl on the counter was making noise and moving. Yes, you guess it...just like jello...ITS ALIVE! To all those who are thinking about attempting to make something with crab, well word to the wise, let your butcher do the work. Many cuts from the shell and little meat to show for the effort, I decided that should I ever open a restaurant crab will not be on the menu.
Last weekend Melissa and I went to Paris and we had a blast. I will say though, whoever thinks Paris is warmer than London is very much mistaken. Paris was FREEZING!!!! We arrived on Saturday morning and left Sunday night. We did everything; Notre Dame, Sacred Heart Church, La Duree (famous for their macaroon cookies), Louvre, Eiffel Tower, and last but not least segway tour! A segway is like a big scooter that you can just ride around on the sidewalks. We had so much fun! We went early Sunday morning, so there were not a ton of people out and about yet. When we got to the Louvre we were able to just ride around all the gardens and glass pyramids, so fun. Around 5 on Sunday we decided to head to the train station; little did we know that we were in for one last adventure. We get to Paris Nord station and there is a super long line to get through security. Well we wait in line for about 30 min and the line did not move and inch. One of the station managers moves the line outside of the train station (yes into the freezing cold) and told us to wait. Of course its France, so no one tells you what is going on. Thankfully there was a very nice couple in front of us, who told us that their had been a security threat and that all the trains were delayed. Three hours of waiting in line later we finally got through security. Needless to say we missed our train (and the 3 after ours). Finally around midnight we got back to London. Word to the wise, don't leave a bag on the train...it will cause major delays and there will be many unhappy people. Melissa and I did have a wonderful time, and we got a great story out of it!
Naomi came into town on Thursday night and I was so excited to see her! Well very early Friday morning I get food poisoning. Ironically, I had just learned about how to prevent food poisoning the day before in class. So sadly Naomi had to go out on her own most of the weekend, while I was sick. I obviously did not go to class on Friday. Come to find out later that day there were about 7 people missing from my class and we all had the same thing. We are not completely sure what it was that we all ate, but we are together like 10-12 hours a day, so it could have been anything. I have two practical exams tomorrow and I am hoping I can just stand up long enough to get through them. I only have about 2 weeks left of school and that is so crazy to me.

So many options for titles...

So many things have happened in the past week it is almost impossible to choose a title for this blog. At the beginning of the week we learned how to make different soups, including crab bisque. Well as many of you I am sure can imagine we used the giant king crab. The crab was most definitely alive and everyone freaked out when it had to go into the boiling water...a priceless moment in demonstration class. It reminded me so much of the scene in Julie and Julia when Julie has to put the lobster in the boiling water and freaks out. Definitely a defining culinary school moment.
Pastry this week definitely became more challenging. We made Madeline's, lemon cake, pistachio cake (which is amazing), chocolate hazelnut cake, and marzipan decorations. For the madeline cookies we had to grease our pans with butter and apparently I put at little too much butter to the point where they were sticking to the molds. You also have to turn them out when they are hot and just out of the oven, otherwise it will be impossible to get them out. Well after my head pastry chef was literally banging the tray of the cookies onto the marble countertops to try to get them out we resorted to using a knife and spoon to get my 16 madeline cookies out of the molds. It was pretty humorous having two of us smacking my hot trays against the countertop over and over. After that fiasco they were a little too dense, but whatever everyone at the dorm ate them in like 5 seconds...so they must not have been that bad. The next day was chocolate cake which turned out wonderfully...minus the fact that I looked like I had been attacked by chocolate and cocoa powder at the end of the day on Friday.

For the past two weeks I have noticed at night there is an animal that gives off a very high pitch screaming sound every few minutes all night long. I never really figured it out, because I just assumed it was someones super annoying dog. Well come to find out in the courtyard behind where I live is a female fox. In case you were wondering, yes, it is mating season...and yes, they sound like a girl screaming when they make their "call". I decided to google it and here is what I found..."Q:I live quite close to london and therefore have quite a lot of foxes where I live. It's quite often that I am kept up all night with the sound of them making a horrendous screaming noise which really freaks me out as it sounds so similar to a childs scream!"
A"The scream is a contact call, used by one fox to locate another. It is used particularly often by a vixen calling for a mate during the breeding season, so you may hear it more often in late winter or early spring. The foxes you hear aren't fighting or in pain, so don't worry." If it continues for another week I think that fox better watch its back, because our dorm is getting quite irritated.
My cousin Melissa came into town on Thursday and we have been very busy doing various London things. On Friday night we went to a very famous restaurant next to my school that only serves steak and french fries with their secret sauce. We all knew it must be good because there is seriously a line out the door every single night for hours. Don't worry it was AMAZING! I will most definitely be going there again. On Saturday we did Portobello Market, Covent Garden, and the London Eye. At Covent Garden Tube stop we were warned on the tube that the lifts were not working and that we should just stay on and get off one tube stop up. Well we decided that we would go ahead and get off at Covent Garden and take the stairs. At the base of the stairs it said "emergency stairs, this staircase has 193 steps"...we thought it would be fine, but let me tell you that 193 stairs is about 9 flights and our legs were burning all 193 spiraling steps. Next time we will listen to the tube conductor.
Chinese New Year was on Sunday, so one of my friends from school took about 5 of us out for legitimate dim sum. We had all the traditional dishes served on Chinese New Year. She ordered for all of us and we ate SO well! I tried lots of new foods...including chicken feet, which I must say I still have not made up my mind about. Then we went off to China town where we saw dragon dancers and tons of Chinese lanterns strung across all the streets. On our way back we decided to walk through Harrods for about and hour. I have my big roast chicken test on Tuesday, so everyone pray that it goes well.

I heart the butcher!

My puff pastry turned out wonderfully, I know many of you were concerned! Haha! I guess the third time really is the charm when it comes to making pastry dough. I walked through Hyde Park last week on my way to class and I got to see some of the Royal Horsemen (I do not know their official title) training their horses in the park. It was really cool.

Well in cuisine we have ventured into the wonderful and frightening world of meat from large animals. Last week I walked into the demo room and there was a rather large mass wrapped up in paper sitting on the counter...it was a lamb (dont worry not with the head or fur). We learned how to make rack of lamb and how to essentially butcher a lamb. I have mixed feelings about the process. During our practical we had to "French bone" the ribs...this is when I learned to appreciate my butcher SO much more! It is actually really hard and takes quite a while to do. The practical test on rack of lamb was not my best, because I burned my hand pretty bad on a pot. I wont go into detail, but lets just say that my hand blistered up quite quickly and I was almost in tears. For those of you who know me, know that for me to almost cry means I thought I was going to die it hurt so bad! After that I still had 6 hours of school left and a test on a pear pastry..which is delish. My classmates were so wonderful and helped me though the practical since I only had my left hand to use the entire time.
Saturday was great, I met some friends from school at an amazing Asian restaurant. After lunch we did a little shopping and just hung out. Sunday I went to my friend Jasmines flat, we have gotten to be good friends, and we cooked away for about 6 hours. It was so nice to be in someones home and to get to practice a bunch of things that will be on our midterm.
I did not have to start until later in the afternoon today, so I was able to do a little sightseeing and exploring for a few hours. We learned how to cook different cuts of beef in class and we made a roast for our practical test...it was my dinner and a tasty one. Sadly I forgot to bring home a knife and fork...so as barbaric as it was, I just ate it with my hands!