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!