Semi-Homemade Meals with Abby and Sara

E-mail conversation a few weeks ago:

Me: And I am more than happy to come help make dinner if you want! It would be fun. So many options w/French food...

Abby: I am TOTALLY Going to take you up on the cooking offer...then I can also be a subject of a blog post. And people don't have to eat microwaveable french fries, which is what I had come up with so far for the French theme.

So now I will be faithful to Abby and make our meal the other night the subject of a post on this illustrious blog.

Our book club read The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Note: this book is critically acclaimed and was loved by many people including my mother. However, none of us really liked it...I could not get into it for the life of me. What gives?) which takes place in Paris. So, naturally, French was the cuisine of choice for our Monday meeting.

Abby and I menu-planned via Gchat at work and decided upon a quiche for our main dish. I found this recipe for a scrumptious-sounding Broccoli Garlic Quiche from now-deceased Gourmet. We vetoed making pie crust from scratch; too laborious for an after-work dinner. Abby informed me that ready-made pie crusts could be ours at the click of a mouse thanks to the urban lifesaver that is FreshDirect.

Abby found a very French-bistro-sounding salad to start with: Endive with Goat Cheese and Bacon Dressing. When I showed up at her apartment early to help cook (knives in tow!), she had all of the ingredients for both recipes ready to go.

I began making the quiche filling right away because it would need 45-50 minutes to bake. I cut up the broccoli into florets and boiled them for a few minutes in salted water, then drained and cooled them. Although Abby does not own a whisk, we made do with her hand-mixer's beater attachment to combine the eggs, half-and-half, garlic, and spices. We added some cheese, but a lot less than this recipe calls for. I poured the filling into the lovely pre-made pie shell and decoratively placed broccoli florets into the egg mixture. Ta-da...into the oven to bake. Making a quiche (with pre-made crust) is oh so easy!

For the salad, Abby began cooking up bacon in a skillet and setting it aside on paper towels once crispy. I used our makeshift whisk to mix together mustard and red wine; once the bacon was cooked, I slowly added some of the bacon fat from the pan. There you have warm bacon dressing! We crumbled the bacon over the endive leaves and tossed it all with the dressing. We didn't end up using goat cheese, but this salad was wonderful with just a little grated Parmesan sprinkled on top.

The quiche came out of the oven perfectly fluffy and moist. FreshDirect's crust was quite delicious too! We enjoyed it with some glasses of wine and steamed haricots verts with shallots and thyme that Abby bought from (you guessed it) FreshDirect's roster of sides. This dinner could be an excellent feature on Sandra Lee's show, Semi-Homemade Meals. We finished with some purchased French pastries, just as the French do!

Book club member Laura B. enjoys a piece of quiche (on a very large plate!)

Ina's Meatloaf

I just realized that the titles of this week's post and the one before it sound like an advertisement for Food Network! I guess I am making more FN recipes lately since I now have a personal connection. But I've always loved Ina Garten—her show, Barefoot Contessa, and her recipes. She and her food are both so down-to-earth, approachable, lovable.

Our friends Andrea and Justin came over for dinner last night and I wanted to make something different...mainly, something not chicken. I went to the FN website and searched Ina's top-rated recipes. Sure enough, the whole first page was chicken dishes—if you've ever watched Barefoot Contessa, you know that her adorably dorky husband Jeffrey loooves chicken!—but then I got to Turkey Meatloaf. The comments were all raves, and I was intrigued.

It's been a long time since I've had meatloaf—definitely not in recent memory. But pretty much anything Ina touches is delicious, so I had no doubt it would be good. However, some people are squeamish about meatloaf, so I ran the idea by Andrea—she was all for it. At home, Zack was a little bit more skeptical—not so much about the meatloaf idea but about the use of turkey meat in it. He's still getting used to the lack of ground beef in my cooking repertoire. Still, he was up for giving it a shot.

For sides, I determined that meatloaf just naturally goes with potatoes, which are another thing I don't cook that often. I bought some really nice fingerlings at the Manhattan Fruit Exchange (my favorite spot, as you've probably noticed!) and simply roasted them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and Tony Chachere's seasoning. This is Zack's favorite—he puts it on sandwiches, salads, you name it—and it was excellent on the potatoes. We'll be bringing back a jar of it for Andrea and Justin when we go to New Orleans over Thanksgiving—it's hard to find up here.

Brussels sprouts were my green vegetable of choice. This meal—well, the meatloaf and brussels sprouts—could be themed "things kids hate." I decided to stray from my usual route of roasting the brussels sprouts, mostly because my oven was occupied with the meatloaf and potatoes. So instead I boiled the sprouts until they were pretty tender, then sliced them and sauteed them in olive oil and garlic to make a sort-of brussels sprout hash. It was nice to switch it up a bit and I really loved this preparation.


The meatloaf turned out very tasty—the onion, stock, Worcestershire, tomato paste mixture kept it extremely moist. It was probably not the best choice for a busy weeknight, though...it took about an hour and a half to cook through. (I should have read the recipe more carefully and I would have known!) We caught up and had salad, and then when we did sit down to eat our main course around 9 pm, all of the meatloaf skeptics were converted. It isn't a very attractive dish, but very flavorful and comforting. I never doubted you, Ina.


And then, as if it were fate, INA GARTEN herself walked into the office today. Everyone at FN was just as excited as I was to see her, because apparently she barely ever comes into the city. Would you, if you lived in her amazing house in East Hampton? I think not. She gave me a warm, friendly handshake and introduced herself to ME, as if I didn't know who she was...come on now! We chatted for a couple of minutes—I told her I was a big fan and made one of her recipes just last night. It was a highlight of my Food Network experience thus far.

Channeling Paula Deen

My Southern-inspired meal

Last night, I hosted my fabulous book club at our apartment. We started it shortly after I moved to New York, and at first I'd assumed we'd serve chips and dip at book club meetings, maybe hummus and pita or even a cheese platter if we were feeling fancy. But my friend Lindsay set the bar high at the first meeting at her place. She cooked a full dinner for us, complete with a delectable from-scratch chocolate cake for dessert. For my turn to have the six girls over, hummus definitely wasn't going to cut it.

This month we read a great book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. I decided to go all theme-y and make something Southern-inspired. I ran with the very first thought that came into my head: shrimp and grits. It's one of my favorite Southern staples and I haven't had a single grit since I left Atlanta, where they were on the menu at just about every restaurant we entered, from dives to temples of haute cuisine. I'd never made grits myself before, so I wanted to try my hand at it.

Alright, so it wasn't a Paula Deen recipe--I wouldn't feel right doing that to everyone's arteries. Browsing the bank of recipes at Food Network, I settled on one from Tyler Florence, perhaps because I met him a couple of weeks ago and helped prep pumpkin-banana pies for a special he was doing. Tyler's "Ultimate Shrimp & Grits" seemed relatively straightforward.

I wondered at first if I could even find grits in New York, but my friend Abby (a big grits fan from Florida) informed me that they were prevalent. Sure enough, there were several different kinds on the shelves of Gristedes at 21st and 8th, and I settled on the "old-fashioned" variety. I bought a pound and a half of fresh shrimp from the Lobster Place in Chelsea Market, and was pretty much good to go. Most of the other ingredients were already in my fridge or pantry.

Shrimp and chicken sausage simmering with chicken stock, onions, garlic

Even when it's not Paula's, shrimp and grits is not a very low-cal dish. I wanted to lighten Tyler's recipe up a bit, so I used andouille chicken sausage with the shrimp and only a touch of cream in the grits. I also made braised collard greens--another item I found easily in New York, at the Manhattan Fruit Market--without any ham hocks or bacon, which some Southerners would consider a travesty. I bought some turkey stock and simmered the greens in it for about an hour, until they were tender and most of the stock had been absorbed. Then I added a little apple cider vinegar to the greens. They were so flavorful! Abby, who was opposed to collard greens at first, told me that I changed her mind about them.

The secret society i.e. book club enjoying dinner

Since I'm not much of a baker, I decided to forgo an attempt at a Southern dessert. Still on a ice cream sandwich kick (see previous post), I decided to make a riff on them instead. They are well-loved in all parts of the country, after all. As a throwback to college, I bought a box of No Pudge brownies at Whole Foods. You just add non-fat yogurt to the mix, stir, and bake--we made them weekly back at Penn. We were perfectly willing to ignore the fact that No Pudge is not quite guilt-free if you split the entire pan among 3-4 people, but I digress.

Abby's excited about the return of PB chip No Pudge

One of our favorite No Pudge additions back then was peanut butter chips, so I bought those too. I used a large baking pan to make a thin sheet of peanut butter chip brownies, let them cool, and then cut small brownie circles with a thin-rimmed glass (a cookie cutter would've worked better but I don't have any). I placed the brownie circles into the freezer for a few minutes and let the ice cream (Ciao Bella vanilla gelato again) soften a bit; then I made the sandwiches the same way as last time and left them in the freezer overnight. I'm not sure if I like the cookie or brownie ones better, but they are both definitely staying in my "easy dessert" repertoire.

I got one of the highest compliments I think I've ever received for my food when my friend Rebecca said it was "the best meal I've ever had." Exaggeration or not, totally made my day and I love you Rebecca!

Great expectations

Since I've been through culinary school, cooking for people comes with high expectations. Which stresses me out. Twice in the past week, I've been invited over for wonderful meals where the cook has expressed intimidation about cooking for me, because, in their words, I'm a chef. As any self-respecting cook will tell you, graduating from culinary school does not make one a chef—especially not me, who had no intention of becoming one to begin with! I still cook simple, unfussy, relatively homey food...I just have a few techniques under my belt now, so I have more confidence (and consistency) when preparing it.

My Dad was our new apartment's inaugural dinner guest. He and my Mom were both in town the weekend prior and took us to a memorable meal at Gramercy Tavern—my Mom and I had the outstanding vegetarian tasting menu, which I heartily recommend to carnivores and vegetarians alike. After that great (and large) meal, I wasn't looking to try anything fancy at home a few days later. But naturally, I still wanted to impress—at least a little. After all, my Dad was the benefactor who put me through culinary school.

I made my pretty-much-signature creole-spiced chicken with lemon-caper sauce, which I've written about here before. I had a box of really good Italian polenta from work (great perk: lots of freebies to take home!) which I know my Dad loves, so I cooked it with some chicken stock, a little pecorino cheese, and thyme. Then I made the Ina Garten broccoli that Zack and I love so much. We started with a big salad of romaine, hearts of palm, red peppers, grape tomatoes, delicious sugar snap peas from the Manhattan Fruit Market, and some toasted slivered almonds for crunch. Zack dressed it with his own "signature" balsamic vinaigrette.

Except for the fire alarm going off yet again, the dinner went off wonderfully, with both guys (Zack and my Dad) going for seconds. Don't get mad at him, Mom—this was a pretty healthy meal. However, I'll admit that the awesome dessert I made (above) wasn't particularly low-cal. This was inspired by my friend Andrea, who had us over for dinner a couple of weeks ago and ended the meal with homemade ice cream sandwiches that I was still thinking about the next day.

Though I love trying interesting ice cream (and fro yo) flavors, Andrea used simple vanilla and the results were so outstanding that I decided to do the same. When's the last time you had a classic ice cream sandwich between two chocolate chip cookies? It brought me back to visits from the Good Humor man during childhood summers at the pool—but these were so, so much better than the good ol' chipwich. See, look how happy they are! I think (hope!) that the meal met our dinner guest's expectations.


The night before our dinner, I made a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe and flattened the dough out on the pan so the cookies would be a little thinner than usual. For the filling, I bought Ciao Bella vanilla bean gelato at Whole Foods. Wish I could say these were totally homemade, but let's be real—I don't have room for an ice cream machine even if I had one. I let the gelato soften up, spread it on the cookies, made sandwiches, then wrapped each one individually in foil and popped them in the freezer. We've been treating ourselves to bites of the leftovers all week now.

The future of Mise En Place?

I pulled up my blog today and sadly confirmed that its lapse in posts is pushing the three-month mark. I won't make excuses for my temporary abandonment of Mise en Place—or maybe I must, just to fill my loyal readers in on what I've been up to these past two and a half months.

You see, the day after my last day of culinary school on August 14, Zack and I hopped a plane to NYC where we had four days to find an apartment, otherwise we'd be homeless come September. We made our deadline: we arrived in New York on a Saturday and signed a lease on Tuesday morning. That night, we packed up our backpacks and flew nearly 24 hours from New York to Bangkok, kicking off a three-week trip through Southeast Asia.

Our travels through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia were incredible, so vastly different from any trip either of us had ever taken. We packed a lot into three weeks, visiting major cities and smaller ones, staying in a range of backpacker guesthouses and boutique hotels. After exhausting ourselves on this whirlwind tour, we spent the last few days relaxing on Koh Samui, an island off the east coast of Thailand.

But of course, the question you all want to ask: What did we eat???

Pad Thai on the street in Bangkok

I discovered pad thai back in high school at a now-defunct restaurant that my friends and I loved, called Oodles Noodles. I'm into spicier food now, but I still love the dish. There was pad thai to be found on every street corner in Thailand. Some of it looked kind of shady, with raw pieces chicken sitting out all day in the hot sun and all. We enjoyed several commendable versions during our time in Thailand, but I must modestly say that the best one was that which we made ourselves in a fabulous cooking class we took in Chiang Mai:

Our Pad Thai in Chiang Mai

It was so fresh and had the optimal combination of Thai flavors: sweet, salty, tangy, bright. It wasn't gummy or too sweet, perhaps because our cooking teacher's recipe didn't include any tamarind paste. I definitely preferred the dish without it.

Chiang Mai, a city in the north of Thailand, was one of our favorite food stops on the trip. The Northern cuisine is different from most of the Thai food we see here in the US. Their signature dish is a chicken curry with noodles called Khao Soi. I've yet to spot it anywhere here, so if you know of a Thai restaurant in America that serves it, please share! This dish is ultimate comfort food. Zack doesn't like curry and he slurped this up happily—it's a curry in a class of its own. We ate this at a well-regarded restaurant that was not much more than an open-air garage, where we met a very nice ex-pat couple (originally from New Orleans!) who steered us towards the best dishes on the menu.

Khao Soi in Chiang Mai

In Laos, we stayed in a picturesque town called Luang Prabang, a former French colony. The town had a European feel to it, and the restaurants all served a combination of French food and Lao food. We wanted to sample the authentic Lao flavors, but in the end we weren't all that moved by the cuisine. One signature dish involved dried Mekong weed (seaweed from the Mekong river, which borders Luang Prabang) topped with sesame seeds and spread with spicy jam. Though a bit funky in taste and texture, it was kind of addictive and ended up being one of the few Lao dishes we liked.

Mekong weed in Luang Prabang

We did have a wonderful French meal in Luang Prabang, at a restaurant recommended by the New Orleans couple we met in Chiang Mai. It was called L'Elephant and served classic French food—we ordered both escargot and frogs legs. Everything was excellent and could have come from a first-rate French bistro. Because of the French influence, Laos also offered bread with meals...something we had been missing in this world of rice and noodles. The baguettes served for breakfast at our lovely hotel, the Apsara, were warm, crusty and wonderful.

Baguette with jams and butter in Luang Prabang

Onto Vietnam. Our first meal involved learning to roll our own fresh (not fried) spring rolls, and I subsequently wanted to order fresh spring rolls for every meal thereafter. Zack got really sick of them after a while. In addition to numerous fresh spring rolls (often called "summer rolls" at restaurants here at home), we sampled lots of pho, the fragrant noodle soup that's often referred to as Vietnamese penicillin.

A waitress demos how to roll in rice paper in Hanoi

At a famous Hanoi restaurant called Cha Ca La Vong, we thoroughly enjoyed the only dish on the menu: fish sauteed in a hot pan with greens right at your table. You eat it over vermicelli noodles and add any condiments you like—chilies, scallions, fish sauce—much like with pho.

Fish over noodles in Hanoi

On an overnight boat trip to Halong Bay—one of the most beautiful places I've ever been—we stopped en route to a fish market along the bay to pick up dinner. It was a seafood feast: fresh crab, shrimp, squid, whole fish, all simply prepared.

Fresh seafood on our boat in Halong Bay

One of our favorite meals of the entire trip was in Ho Chi Minh City (still called Saigon by most Vietnamese). Every article or book we read and every person we knew who had been to Vietnam told us we had to eat at the Temple Club—and you don't get that kind of reputation for no reason. It was what I'd call refined Vietnamese food, in a white-tablecloth setting that feels like a private club, but the flavors weren't dumbed down at all. We, of course, ordered way too much food in an effort to sample a range of the menu. And the whole bill, with wine, was about what we'd spend to go out for (designer) pizza at home. I must have been too engrossed in the meal, because the only picture I got was of this spring roll sampling platter—four different kinds, both fresh and fried—easily the best spring rolls of our entire trek through Southeast Asia.


Our next stop was Cambodia, where we explored the local Khmer food—pretty close to Thai but a bit less spicy, with some unique dishes like Amok Fish (in a light curry) and this salad below. We also had a ridiculously overpriced French meal at our hotel in Phnom Penh—by ridiculous, I mean that it was pretty much American-priced. The highlight of Cambodia was touring the ancient temples of Angkor near Siem Reap—we arrived at 5 a.m. to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat and toured with a guide for 12 hours. Honestly, what kept me going through the whole day of walking was an awesome bowl of oatmeal—my first in three weeks, probably a record—that I had for breakfast at a touristy place outside the temple gates.

Banana flower salad in Siem Reap

Now that I've filled you in with a long tangent on the culinary highlights of Sara and Zack's 2009 Southeast Asia Adventure, we'll move on to the intended topic of this post: the future of Mise en Place. Zack and I got back to the States about a month ago and made it through the exhausting process of moving out of our Atlanta apartment, driving up to D.C., waiting for our movers to arrive in New York with all of our belongings—for two weeks (!), but that's another tangent that I won't bore you with—and finally, moving into our new place in Manhattan.

The day after our stuff finally arrived, I started work in the culinary department at Food Network. I wish I could blog here about it, because I'm getting to see so much cool stuff, but I help with shows that have obviously not aired yet and thus giving away any details whatsoever might put me in big trouble with the higher-ups. I can tell you, though, that I've already met Bobby (seems like a real nice guy) and Giada (sooooo freakin' thin!).

So, we finally come to the future of this blog. I've loved writing it for the past year and being my own editor for the first time...and I've especially appreciated all of your feedback and comments. I'm determined to keep it going even though my culinary school days are over, so my proposed plan is to try to transform it into a bit of a catch-all about eating and cooking my way through NYC. I'll write about great food finds in the city, meals cooked in my "cozy" kitchen (it does have a dishwasher, though!), and anything Food Network-related that's kosher to broadcast to the world. Or, um, to all 12 of you.

I've had plenty of foodie adventures here so far. Like the other night, when my use of the stove repeatedly set off the fire alarm in our apartment, but I refused to throw in the towel and continued to saute my chicken. Zack: "Turn off the stove!" Me: "But this chicken is only half cooked! Let me just finish it and then we'll figure out how to shut off the alarm." Later, our doorman reassured me that everyone has this problem when they first move in. Now I have the vent on full blast for any cooking whatsoever.

I'm adapting to the city's lack of good supermarkets by ordering groceries through Fresh Direct, then hitting up the awesome Manhattan Fruit Exchange near Food Network in the Chelsea Market building for produce (I'm not down with letting a delivery service pick out my fruits and veggies, thanks). I've already found two great sushi spots (an imperative!), and Lindsay introduced me to an adorable breakfast place, also in Chelsea Market, where she works too. Eating egg white wraps before work with her is a major perk.

Up next: we're having our first guest over for dinner, despite the lack of a table or chairs in our apartment (we're getting bar stools soon, and maybe even a small foldable table!). Fortunately, our dinner guest is my dad, who will be in town next week, and he's already confirmed that he will be fine with eating on the couch, as we've been doing for the past three weeks. I'll fill you in on the menu, complete with recipes if I like how it turns out.

Sound good? If you have suggestions as to what you'd like to see written about here, please comment away! It's good to be back.

On the line

Fried chicken with mashed potatoes, sautéed green beans, pan gravy

I've finally reached the the back-of-the-house, Lumiere's kitchen. When Chef T. assigned us to stations this morning—the positions we'll be working during lunch service for the next three weeks—I don't know what he was thinking. For whatever reason he must have thought I looked somewhat capable, because he put me on the hot line.

Others will be making salads, assembling sandwiches, and ladling out soups they've prepared in advance—all things I feel confident that I know how to do. But I'll be firing entrees on the hot line, the most skilled job in the kitchen (behind the chef and sous chef, of course). Fortunately, some of my station-mates are experienced restaurant cooks who currently work in Atlanta's best kitchens, so they've promised to help me along.

The restaurant is closed to diners on the first two days of each rotation, so we had some time to practice and get slightly comfortable before our first customers arrive tomorrow. Having served in the front-of-the-house prior to entering the kitchen is definitely an advantage, because we're already familiar with the lunch menu and have seen how the food is plated dozens of times.

Fried shrimp with creamed-corn risotto, tomato salsa, parsley beurre blanc

Today we mise en placed—set up, remember?—our stations, which for us meant portioning out proteins, cutting vegetables, making risotto, mashed potatoes and other sides that could be finished before service. Then Chef I., our other instructor, demonstrated what we needed to cook a la minute for service and how to plate each dish. He demoed how to grill the flatiron steak, how to quickly sauté the vegetables we'd already blanched, how to fry several menu items—this is the South, after all. We've got fried chicken, fried shrimp, fish and chips, and pan-fried trout coming off of our station. Not to mention sides of onion rings and shoestring fries, plus fried oysters and fried green tomatoes that we have to fire for the appetizer station. Whoever mans the deep-fryer tomorrow will undoubtedly be busy—or in restaurant-speak, in the weeds.

Fish and chips with cucumber-tomato salad

Our plates looked restaurant-quality, and this is the one day when we were allowed to eat what we'd prepared. However, we only made one plate of each dish and there are 30 people in my class. I didn't even feel like getting involved in the vulture-like free-for-all that commenced once the chefs finished inspecting our plating.

I plan to go back to Lumiere in the evening to sample more of the menu with my sweet discount, now that I can bring Zack, who will soon finish the NY bar exam and come out of hiding! He's a tough judge of fried chicken, so he'll surely be able to tell me if this one—served (see photo above) with mashed potatoes and green beans, just like at Watershed—passes muster. Actually, perhaps he should come on his own for lunch while I'm cooking on the line—his chicken might be personally fried by yours truly.

And for something not fried: Lumiere's burger, albeit with onion rings (I'm told they're excellent!)

Lumiere: A Student's Review

I had to miss a few days of class this rotation, so my instructor Chef F. told me she'd come up with a way for me to make up the work. I gave her an idea: I already had plans to eat at our school's restaurant last Friday night for dinner, when the PM class would be cooking and serving (our AM class, obviously, handles lunch). What if I wrote up a review of my experience as my make-up project? Chef F. was sold. Here's the review I submitted to her. It's not just kissing up—Sheri was my date and we truly had a lovely evening. I was really impressed by the food and service and only hope that we come off as well at lunch.

* * *

Lumière, Le Cordon Bleu Atlanta’s in-house restaurant, is transformed in the evenings. We step inside and forget that we’re in an office park complex; I temporarily forget that this is where I attended class and served customers just this morning. This restaurant is a classroom—the last course before culinary students head into the real world of restaurants, hotels and catering—but tonight it doesn’t feel like one. The lights are low and the mood is romantic yet relaxed, with couples and eager families filling the tables surrounding an impressive open kitchen.

For the past eleven months, I’ve driven to this building every morning for school. My car is on autopilot as my dinner date and I turn onto Lakeside Parkway. But it’s seven-thirty in the evening, and I’m not wearing my familiar chef’s whites and houndstooth-checked pants. Instead, I’m in a summer dress, my hair is done and makeup is on. Tonight, I’m a diner, a guest.

My friend and I are led to a comfortable four-top right in the middle of the dining room and I snag a kitchen-view seat. I’m used to working lunch, and they’ve appropriately stepped up the fanciness a bit for dinner—menus are in hard-cover jackets; candles are on the tables; a lovely tasting glass of house-made lemonade arrives as a “gift from the bartender”.

A former classmate from my morning class, Ms. Henry, greets us and will be taking care of our table this evening. It’s fun to see a familiar face, and I’m quickly amazed at how she transforms into a warm, hospitable server instead of a classmate. After we place our order, she presents us each with an amuse bouche, a tiny ramekin of sweet corn custard. It’s rich and eggy yet light on the tongue, like a savory creme brulée. This elegant little bite does its job of whetting our appetites.

The summer vegetable and white bean soup that I selected for my first course is heartier than I had expected—there are far more beans than vegetables—but it has great flavor and I find myself scraping every last bit from the bowl. My companion went for the soup of the day, a very seasonally-appropriate chilled cucumber and yogurt.

Eager to sample the goods from the kitchen’s pizza oven, we order a pie to split as a mid-course. The many flavors—roasted chicken, fresh mozzarella, onion confit, spinach and a garlic cream sauce—meld well together, the slight sweetness of the onions and garlic cream balancing the nice saltiness of the crust. The kitchen split the pizza in half for us, so we were each presented with our own pretty plate. Ms. Henry is also on top of it when we ask to box up some unfinished slices to take home. She brings our leftovers back to the kitchen and in an instant, returns with a doggy bag, then sets it on the side of the table just to make sure we don’t forget it. I appreciate that thoughtful gesture, since I always forget my doggy bags under the table.

Two more courses are still to come. The scallop entree that neither of us could resist ordering offers no less than nine medium-sized scallops, beautifully pan-seared. My favorite part about the dish, however, may be the saute of leeks and thinly-sliced fennel on top. I could eat a plate of that and call it a day. The scallops rest on a bed of creamy white-cheddar grits, and a pool of intensely-flavored shellfish sauce finishes off the plate.

We each only manage to finish about half of this extremely generous portion of scallops, but naturally, we still have room for a little dessert. The sorbets that evening were enticing—honeydew, apple-cinnamon, and blueberry. Each tasted of pure, fresh fruit. Served atop a tuile cookie with some fresh berries, it’s a refreshing and light summer dessert. The more decadent sweets arriving on other tables look wonderful as well—I’ll be back to try the warm berry cobbler that I enviously served to a table the other day at lunch.

Two-and-a-half hours have gone by since we sat down, but we never once look at our watches during this leisurely dinner. The pacing of courses was pretty close to perfect, so we were never looking around for our food to arrive. The meal ends with scrumptious mignardises, another extra perk at dinner. These are like a dessert amuse bouche, a tiny bite of sweetness to conclude the meal. Ours is an elegant take on a s’more, with a crunchy cookie base, a layer of chocolate, and finally, a swirl of marshmallowy meringue piped on top and torched golden brown. It’s a lovely send-off—and so is the check. I’m willing to bet that there’s nowhere else in the city where three-plus courses and this kind of pampering cost less than $25.

The Rundown:

Lumière
1927 Lakeside Parkway
(770)723-3507

Open Tuesday through Friday for lunch and dinner
Reservations accepted

Dinner entrees: $9.95-$13.95
Lunch entrees: $4.95-$8.50
* my check reflects the 20% discount for Le Cordon Bleu students and their families

Front of the house

Plated dishes ready to hit the tables

Again, a long absence from the blog—I apologize. We had summer break from culinary school, albeit a very abbreviated version of the summer vacations I used to know. However, I got to spend my week off in Lyon, France with my family, so I have little to complain about. We spent a wonderful week eating and drinking our way through Southeast France. You can view my photo gallery of the trip here. Warning: my photos are relatively light on the people and scenery and heavy on the food shots!

Now I have entered the final phase of culinary school: The Restaurant. This is what we've been hearing about and working our way towards since we entered Skills 1 with our shiny new knife kits almost a year ago. First, we spend three weeks in the front-of-the-house as servers, hosts, managers, and bartenders. Then, we move into the open kitchen in back to cook for real live paying customers.

I've never been a server before, or worked in a restaurant at all, for that matter. In high school, most of my friends had part-time jobs either in restaurants or retail stores around our suburb. I wasn't really a foodie yet at that time, but I played tennis, so I worked in a shop called Racquet and Jog. Incidentally, what I remember most from that job is the really good bakery next door—our manager would buy us these delicious oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies when we reached a certain sales total for the day.

But I digress. Last week at Lumiere—the name of Le Cordon Bleu's in-house restaurant—I served my very first table. Our school is in a big office-park complex, so many of our lunch customers are employees from the various businesses, but the rest are retirees. I presume these older folks love it because since we are a student-run restaurant, the prices are dirt-cheap. I'm talking nothing over $8, and the menu includes pretty tasty stuff like crab cakes, flat-iron steak, shrimp and white-cheddar grits, fried oysters. Before service, our counterparts in the kitchen plated up most of the menu items for us to see and taste.

Pan-seared crab cake with corn-and-pepper succotash at Lumiere

Mixed green salad, fresh mozzarella salad, fried oysters with remoulade

My very first customers were an adorable older couple and the wife was celebrating her birthday. They loved the she-crab soup, fried chicken, and the chocolate dome I brought over as their free birthday dessert. They asked me questions about the food and the program, and I managed to answer charmingly without spilling coffee on either of them.

A New Favorite

Now that I feel pretty comfortable in the kitchen, I am starting to come up with some specialties at home. One meal that Zack and I love is this chicken with lemon-caper sauce. I switch up the sides that I make with it, but there's always a green vegetable and right now I'm on a cous cous kick—try the Whole Foods brand whole wheat cous cous, it is awesome.

This meal couldn't be simpler to make, but it is definitely better due to the skills and techniques I have taken from culinary school. Fortunately, I can easily impart this wisdom onto you!

For the chicken, buy some boneless skinless breasts and butterfly each one into two halves (one will usually be bigger than the other, but that's fine). Then pound them to an even thickness using a meat mallet. This makes the chicken cook evenly and quickly, and pounding meat also tenderizes it. I almost always make chicken this way now rather than cooking whole breasts. Another plus: two of the pounded cutlets seems like a very generous serving, but it's really just one breast. You feel like you're eating more!

I originally improvised this dish off of a recipe from epicurious.com. In a shallow dish, mix some flour with spicy Creole seasoning—like Tony Chachere's. You're just using this flour for dredging, so about 1/2 cup flour plus 1 tbsp seasoning should work. Season the chicken breasts on both sides with salt and pepper while you get a saute pan very hot on the stove with a little oil. Right before placing each piece of chicken in the saute pan, dredge it quickly in the flour mixture, shaking off the excess flour. Cook each piece until golden brown on both sides and put aside on a plate, covered with foil.

Once the chicken is cooked, add about 1/2 cup of chicken stock, the juice of 1/2 a lemon, and a tablespoon of capers to the pan (add more capers if you love them). Buy chicken stock, not broth, if you can—it creates a thicker, more flavorful sauce. If you're ambitious and make your own chicken stock, even better! I buy a carton of it and then freeze the rest in an ice cube tray for later use. I think I got this idea from a Food Network show, and it is a great one for keeping chicken stock—a kitchen staple—on hand at all times.

Stir the sauce ingredients in the pan, scraping up the tasty browned bits from cooking the chicken. Let it reduce for a few minutes, until it coats the back of a spoon. If the sauce isn't thickening enough, you can always throw in a pinch of flour, just make sure to stir so there are no starchy lumps.

See how easy and healthy this is? The sauce and the chicken are an awesome flavor combination. In the picture above, I made the broccoli using ideas from this recipe from the Amateur Gourmet, one of my favorite food bloggers, who got it from Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa). He calls it the best broccoli of your life—how could I resist trying it? The lemony, crisp-tender broccoli did not disappoint.

For the cous cous, I always like to add a little something to make it more interesting. I had some corn and tomatoes on hand, so I decided to make a summery cous cous "salad" by adding the corn, halved grape tomatoes, and thinly-sliced scallions to my pot. When making cous cous, add extra ingredients after it has steeped and you've fluffed it with a fork.

So there you have my online cooking class. As you can see, I still use recipes, but now they're just starting points. For example, I didn't print out the "best broccoli" recipe, just read the Amateur Gourmet's blog entry about it and got the general idea.

If you are inspired enough to make this easy meal at home, let me know how it turns out!

So Not Artistic

My sister—a studio art major in college—got the artistic genes. I am definitely lacking in that department. I've always been much better with words...I've loved writing ever since I was in kindergarten, and back then, the illustrations that went along with my stories were always pretty crappy. Now I just take pictures!

Much of Garde Manger is about presentation—making food look pretty, designing platters, and creating decorative elements that aren't even meant to be eaten. This stuff, like show pieces and aspic platters, is time-intensive and pretty old-school. Few modern chefs do any of it anymore, and I have to say I agree with them—focus on the food, people. Still, I have learned some cool but pretty-much-useless-to-me techniques this week, like how to carve this apple bird:


We made aspic platters before in Garde Manger I, but that time we worked in groups and this time in GMII we each had to present our own individual platter. These things are such a pain to make that one little cafeteria-tray-sized platter took the entire 5-hour morning of class. We each had to print out a picture that we would replicate on our platter. Chef S. advised us to pick a "cartoony" design, because they are simpler to trace and have less intricate details to worry about.

I certainly took his advice and chose a picture of the cutest animated character ever, Nemo. Aspic, if you remember from last time, is just gelatin bloomed in water. You make different colors using natural dyes—for Nemo's orange body, we just pureed a bunch of carrots with water and strained it. I poured a white aspic background (made from gelatin and bechamel sauce), then traced this picture of Nemo onto my platter and then filled in with orange. Each time I used a new color—for the eyes, mouth, etc—the platter had to go back into the walk-in cooler for it to set before I could trace and cut out the next layer. You have to pour the aspic really carefully or it will bleed into the other colors. For the tiny sections, like the eyes and lines on Nemo, I used a squeeze bottle. Patience is definitely required.

Cut-out of the original Nemo photo that I printed out

My finished Nemo aspic platter

Who would ever serve food on this? I have no idea. But Nemo did turn out pretty decent (in this photo you can't even see the parts where the colors kind of bled!). I would love to never make another aspic platter in my life, but alas, we have to do it again next week for part of our practical. Tomorrow, we are doing ice sculptures, and I am legitimately freaked out. Can you imagine me trying to make something pretty out of ice with a chainsaw???

Earlier in the week, before getting into all of this stuff, we did make some great food. I really like Chef S.'s teaching style—he never assigns recipes and gives us free reign to make pretty much anything given his loose parameters. On appetizer day, he gave us an hour to make him one appetizer and one amuse bouche, the one-bite "gift from the chef" that usually starts off an upscale meal. We could use any proteins and ingredients in the kitchen. I made this salmon ceviche with (made-from-scratch!) spicy mayo for my appetizer. Yes, I made dreaded mayo, even though I hate it. Adding a bunch of Sriracha does make it more tolerable, and it goes really well with fish—hence why it's a staple at sushi bars.

I guess I am a tiny bit more artistic when it comes to plating because Chef S. really liked my presentation—the cucumber design was inspired by the tuna tartare that I made on Valentine's Day, and I topped the ceviche with thinly-sliced scallions:


Then, for my amuse bouche, I made a crab salad using a little bit of the mayo and served it over a thin slice of avocado in this pretty Chinese soup spoon.


Once we had presented and discussed our dishes, we thought it was time to start cleaning the kitchen and go home. But Chef S. told us that we now had to clean off our plates and make him a second appetizer. We could use some of the same products, but it had to be an entirely different dish. Fortunately, I had saved my spicy mayo and some of the crab leftover from that tiny crab salad. My first thought: crab cakes!

Being from Maryland, they've always been one of my favorite dishes. My mom also loves them, so I dedicate this appetizer to her. I bound lump crab with just a little bit of the spicy mayo and panko bread crumbs, then added seasonings and finely-chopped scallions (if you can't tell, they're one of my favorite ingredients—I think they improve almost any dish!) Then I formed the mixture into little patties—I wanted these to be appetizer-size mini crabcakes—and pan-seared them until each side was golden-brown. I must say, they were awesome. I finished off the plate with a simple cabbage slaw and dots of spicy sauce.

Mom, these are now my signature crab cakes and I will make them for you soon!

Finger Food

The results of our class's canapé quickfire

Deep down, it's everyone's favorite way to eat. Think about it...what's the best part of any catered event? The little bites that are passed around on trays at the cocktail hour almost always surpass the sit-down meal or buffet line. In fact, last weekend I went to a wedding, and although there was lovely upscale food to be had at the main buffet, most of my table opted to hit up the kids' buffet for chicken tenders and sliders. Finger food is always more fun, whether it's fancy hors d'oeuvres or french fries.

These past two days in Advanced Garde Manger, we've worked on fancified finger food—canapés and hors d'oeuvres. Tomorrow we'll get to the amuse bouche, the one-biter that is supposed to "wake up the palate" and kick off a fine-dining meal. On Day 1, after a longer-than-usual lecture introducing us to the class, Chef S. gave us one hour to make canapés. We could use anything in the kitchen and each had to present three identical canapés to the chefs (see photo above). This little challenge was a lot of fun—like a Top Chef quickfire, but with a much more forgiving time constraint.

Canapés are one-biters described by Chef S. as tiny open-faced sandwiches. They have to have bread or some kind of base, a spread, a filling or "body", and a garnish, all assembled into one compact bite. One of the proteins available was smoked salmon and I knew right off the bat that I wanted to work with it. Kind of safe, since it allowed me not to really cook anything, but I knew that smoked salmon would work well in canapé form, especially when I saw that we also had cream cheese in the reck!

I cut thin slices from a baguette and then cut those into perfect squares and brushed them with olive oil. They went into the oven to toast so that my bases would be crisp and sturdy enough to hold the other components. With bagels and lox as the inspiration in my head, I chopped some chives and capers and added those to plain cream cheese for my spread. I sliced the smoked salmon thinly and made little spirals of it to stick to the spread, then julienned some cucumber for garnish. They turned out so cute! Admittedly these smoked salmon toasts were far from ambitious, but the chefs liked my presentation and the little bites definitely tasted good—it's kind of hard to mess up this classic combo.

"Bagel and Lox" canapés

Today we expanded upon our repertoire of finger food, going beyond canapés and into a variety of hot and cold hors d'oeuvres. I made little spanakopita triangles, the delicious Greek phyllo dough pockets filled with a spinach-and-feta mixture. I added chopped scallions, fresh parsley, a little mint, and marscarpone cheese to the traditional mixture—got some guidance from a Greek classmate. I feel like these are often bought frozen and thus have become a cocktail party staple, but they really are so much better made from scratch and so easy to make...

Just buy some packaged phyllo dough (our Baking & Pastry instructors don't even attempt to make this stuff) and layer about four of the paper-thin sheets on top of each other, brushing each layer with melted butter. Then cut the dough into strips, place a spoonful of filling on one end and fold the strip into a triangle like those paper footballs you used to flick at people in school. Once I hit my groove with the filling process, my spanakopita triangles looked better and better. You could really fill these with anything—an all-cheese pocket, a mushroom filling, even something sweet like honey and ricotta for dessert phyllo pockets.

Spinach mixture

Folded triangles ready to bake

Finished product

We also made paté a choux, an easy dough that's basically the only one ever used on the non-pastry side of the kitchen. It's the dough used for all kinds of puffs, gougeres, profiteroles, etc. Pipe this dough out so it looks like Hershey kisses and bake it, and it doubles in size to create little puffs that you can also fill with just about anything—our class did everything from a red pepper-goat cheese mixture to crawfish salad to curried chicken. So easy. Now I'm inspired to throw a dinner party with all one-bite food...how fun would that be?

More hors d'ouvres...paté a choux puffs and Scotch eggs (a pub staple—boiled, breaded and deep-fried)

Double Practical

I think I've turned a corner in my culinary career. We have so many practicals in International Cuisine that I don't even get nervous about them anymore. The class is split into two parts—the first week and a half was European food, and we're now into the second half, Asian cuisine. Each part has two days of practical exams, taken in groups. Chef K. is not as, shall we say, regimented as many of the other chefs at the school, so he basically gave us all an extensive mystery basket of ingredients from which to choose freely.

Last week, our first practical day required that our group of five produce a coherent four course menu: appetizer, soup, salad, and entree. On the second practical day, the chefs threw in a dessert course, bringing the total to five. Still manageable, though I was relieved when one of my group members volunteered to tackle the dessert. There were barely any parameters beyond those menu requirements, so we could be as creative as we wanted in coming up with our dishes.

I'll focus on the courses that I personally contributed to my group each day. We all pitched in with everything, helping each other to prep, taste and adjust each dish, but on both days we had each person take responsibility for one dish (two people on entree). Day one, I knew exactly what I wanted to make when I saw some mussels in the reck (kitchen speak for requisition—the food order that is delivered on a given day). I loved the mussels that I made back in Meat Fab, and although I haven't cooked mussels since, I knew I could create a good variation on that recipe.

With the ingredients provided, we decided to go with a French menu, so I cooked the mussels with shallots, garlic, white wine, parsley, and roasted tomatoes. The roasted tomatoes made the sauce really flavorful—the first thing I did when we got our products was to cut them in half, brush them with olive oil, and put them on a sheet pan to roast slowly in a low-heat oven. They stayed in there for close to an hour and came out bursting with juice and sweetness.

French-inspired moules with toasted baguette (the next best thing to frites)

The rest of our menu that day included a cream of carrot soup with dill cream, seared duck breast with cherry sauce, and a salad of roasted peppers garnished with a sauteed shrimp. We scored a 96. Chef K. claimed the mussels were so bad that he ate all of them :)

Day 2, we went with my go-to cuisine, Italian. I had an idea for the salad course and went with it—an elegant take on panzanella, a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and day-old bread that I've always loved. I saw lobster in the reck and thought that it would pair well with this refreshing, light salad.

Lobster Panzanella

In their critique, the chefs told me that this had great flavor, just too much lobster. I used the full tail for some reason and definitely agreed that this was pretty decadent for a salad in a five-course meal. Other dishes that day included a vegetable soup with lentils (awesome), ricotta-and-mushroom ravioli (not a huge success), chicken cacciatore, and zabaglione over fresh berries for dessert. Since my salad was not very time-consuming to make—mostly just knife cuts for the vegetables and whisking up a dressing—I also cooked the sides for the chicken: sauteed spinach with pine nuts and parmesan risotto.

I guess it's a good thing that I'm finally comfortable with these cooking challenges, because my biggest practical of all came last Friday when I went up to New York for an interview/test day at Food Network studios. Le Cordon Bleu requires that we complete a three-month externship in the culinary field after we finish our 12 months of classes, and while most students seek out top restaurants, I wanted to do something in the realm of food media.

The opportunity to "try out", so to speak, for an extern spot at Food Network was really cool to begin with, but later that same day I found out that I got the position! I won't go into the details of the extremely fun yet exhausting day that I spent at their studios in Chelsea—don't want to give away FN's test day secrets to my vast readership (ha, ha). I had a blast, though, and I'm pretty excited about this next step in my culinary adventure.

Next Rachael Ray? Not so much. I'll be behind the scenes, doing some editorial stuff and some hands-on prep for shows, which is exactly the happy medium I was looking for. But who knows...if you watch enough Food Network, maybe you'll catch a glimpse of me in the background sometime this fall!

I'm Back...In the Kitchen

I know you've missed me, faithful Mise En Place readers. I've suffered through three weeks of Hospitality & Supervision—well, in reality, it wasn't so bad taking it easy, away from the stoves in an air-conditioned classroom.

The highlight of that class was watching episodes of the hilariously disastrous reality show "The Restaurant" and discussing the many ways in which pretty-boy chef Rocco DiSpirito and his bankroller Jeffrey Chodorow failed. They subsequently drove Rocco's (The Restaurant) into the ground, and the show also turned Rocco, actually a talented chef, into a joke in the New York food world (although he does still make lots of money doing commercials for frozen pastas and appears on Top Chef, probably only because the pasta company is a sponsor). Anyway, I digress...there were lots of lessons of the restaurant business to be learned from the show.

Our instructor, Chef R., was not just a lazy teacher who plays videos to pass the time (loved those in high school though!) He's really knowledgeable and shared a lot of insight about the restaurant business, and when it came to the videos, he selected his material carefully. He showed us interviews with successful chefs like Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter in which they shared their philosophies on food and business. I knew a lot about these guys beforehand—they're household names for anyone who reads as many food publications, food sections and food blogs as I do—but many of my classmates learned about them and their high standards of excellence for the first time and came away really inspired. It was cool to see that. We also had to do a presentation on a chef and a restaurant that we admired, and—no surpirse here—I chose Johnny Monis from Komi in Washington, probably my favorite restaurant anywhere.

So that's the short gist on the last three weeks. I'm happy to say that I'm back to cooking (and blogging about it), to sweating behind the stoves and rushing to get my plates ready on time for presentation. Although I know that culinary-school production is nothing compared to the frenetic pace of a restaurant kitchen, feeling that stress in the kitchen definitely does give me a rush that makes it clear, for a second at least, why people choose to enter the crazy career of cooking professionally.

Having reached International Cusine, we are truly culinary school Seniors. Only one more rotation after this, and then we go into the school's restaurant. International covers so many cuisines that I really wish it were spread out over six weeks or more. Some days are devoted to one country—this week we hit Italy and Spain—but other days are a hodgepodge, with one group focusing on Greece, another cooking Middle-Eastern, and yet another preparing something from Eastern Europe. That was Friday.

I was very happy to be at the table cooking Greek food—one of my favorite cuisines. Our group of four made spanakopita, moussaka, baklava, and shrimp with feta, each of us taking the lead on one dish. I worked on the shrimp with feta and loved the results. It was a simple, fresh, light entree that I will most definitely be making again. First, I made a fresh tomato sauce with white wine and lots of herbs and spread it on the bottom of a baking dish. Then, after peeling and deveining the shrimp (the only annoying part!), I quickly sauteed them in olive oil and layered them on top of the tomato sauce. Thinly-sliced tomatoes were arranged on top of the shrimp, and then I sprinkled the whole baking dish with a generous amount of feta. It goes into the oven for 10-15 minutes, just until the cheese begins to melt and brown a tiny bit.

Shrimp with feta, just out of the oven

Plated shrimp

Spanakopita, phyllo filled with spinach and feta

Baklava...more phyllo, filled with nuts, cinnamon, honey, lots of butter.

Backtracking to Italian day, I made the classic soup pasta e fagiole. It's a hearty dish made with white beans and macaroni, very comforting. I used to order it at the little restaurant across from my apartment in Rome whenever it got cold outside. Other chefs throughout the school know to come to International on Italian day—other dishes included fresh pasta with pesto, lasagna, veal picatta, eggplant parmesan, panzanella salad, tiramisu. My old chef from Baking & Pastry, who is in fact Italian and said his grandma always made paste e fagiole, polished off a huge bowl of ours. That's the best compliment I could get!

Crappy cell-phone photo of pasta e fagiole, topped with Parmesan. After sitting for a while, the macaroni absorbed much of the broth. It still tasted wonderful!

All U Can Eat

The final Wednesday of the American Regional rotation is always buffet day. The class picks out a theme, selects more than a dozen recipes to go along with it, and decorates the room accordingly. The buffet's "guests" are always the students from Food Science, one of the first classes of the program. Food Science is not a kitchen class, so the newbies get a little preview of what goes on in production classes in addition to an opportunity to eat until they're Thanksgiving-style full.

It honestly seems like forever ago when Mr. W., the Food Science teacher, walked my class down to American Regional for the buffet. At the time, American Regional seemed so far down the road for me, and I was impressed that the students pulled off such an elaborate feast—their theme was New Orleans Thanksgiving, appropriate given that it was November. Culinary school is flying by, and sure enough this Wednesday was my own buffet day. I'd like to think that our feast was just as impressive to the clean-jacketed Food Science students we served.

We decided against a seasonal theme, since the April holidays have already passed, and went with "A Tribute to Hollywood." We picked five movies that are tied to regions in the U.S., and each table prepared a few dishes that represented those regional cuisines. We decorated our tables with movie posters and random props that we all dug out of our closets and basements, and each wrote our name on a construction-paper star to make a "Walk of Fame" on the floor.

My group's movie was Scarface, thus our cuisine was "Floribbean"—the Florida cuisine that encompasses Latin and Caribbean influences. We made Cuban-style yellow rice, a spicy gazpacho (a bit different from the recipe we made last week on Tex-Mex day), and a refreshing shrimp salad. The top photo is a closer shot of these three dish presentations. Funny that this movie was assigned to a group of four girls, none of whom had ever actually seen Scarface all the way through!

Another table took inspiration from a movie that I had suggested when we were throwing out regionally-appropriate titles: Fried Green Tomatoes. It's one of my all-time favorite tear-jerking chick flicks, and couldn't have been a better theme for Southern food. This group, obviously, served a riff on fried green tomatoes stuffed with cheddar cheese; candied sweet potatoes; and a peach and blueberry shortcake.

The Tex-Mex table was represented by Hang 'Em High, a Clint Eastwood movie that I've also never seen. The guys in my class seemed to be collectively obsessed with it, though. This all-guy group made a Mexican chocolate and pecan torte and an enchilada casserole.

The Fargo table showcased Midwestern food, including a beef-and-bacon meatloaf and braised cabbage (also with bacon, naturally!)

The final movie was another that I suggested—this time not a chick flick! There is no better movie for Italian-American cuisine than The Godfather. They made some stuffed shell pasta with meat and ricotta and actually found a recipe for a "Corleone Salad". I couldn't come up with any specific ties to the movie in the recipe, but was a tasty, simple salad with greens, mozzarella, and olives—something you'd be served with your meal at any red-sauce Italian-American restaurant.

The buffet was a hit—our student and chef guests came back through for seconds and thirds. Word gets around the school when it's buffet day in American regional, so people from every class usually mosey in to try the food during their breaks. We still had tons of food left over—the plates you see above were just the presentation plates; we served from huge dishes and platters behind the displays.

Though the kitchen was chaotic at times with so many dishes in the works, it was a really fun day. I loved getting to present and serve our food to people other than just Chef P., and decorating the room with construction paper etc. brought me back to the thrill of class parties in elementary school. And it may not be the most refined dining experience, but who doesn't love a good all-you-can-eat buffet every once in a while?