Monday, May 7, 2012

It was a busy weekend! On Saturday Jordan and I drove down to the Culinary Institute of America in St Helena, California. For my birthday, Jordan paid for me to take their class called "Chocolate at Home". The class was from 9:30am to 2:30pm and took place in the professional pastry kitchen at the CIA school. The kitchen was HUGE, big enough for all their students, both pastry and culinary arts students. We started out in the classroom for a lecture on the history of chocolate. Our instructor was Chef Steve Isaac, who has been a pastry chef for a great many years. What a fun man! And so obviously passionate about pastry.

Once he finished the lecture, we moved on to the kitchen to learn how to make ganache. I was taught to make chocolate ganache with just chocolate and heavy cream (you could put any additional flavorings in after you finish making the ganache). At the CIA, they use heavy cream, corn syrup, chocolate, butter and flavoring. Chef Isaac even told us we could make ganache with water!!! He said that was helpful to know if you were making ganache for someone who was lactose intolerant. A little water in chocolate will cause the chocolate to "seize up" and become gritty but a good amount of water gives you ganache. Amazing! We were broken up into five teams, with two teams making a lime coconut ganache with white chocolate, two teams made dark chocolate ganache with bourbon and one team (the one I was on) made milk chocolate ganache. Chef Isaac made the other half of our ganache (we made double portions so everyone would be able to take some home). Chef Isaac did a demo for peanut brittle, pecan toffee and almond dragees. The almond dragees are whole almonds with a candy coating, then enrobed in dark chocolate and rolled in cocoa powder. Yum! We finished all the truffles then watched Chef Isaac make a serving sculpture out of chocolate. That part was also amazing....the things you can do with chocolate! I did take some pictures of Chef Isaac, the sculpture, my partners in crime (team five) and of course, our candy. After we were done, they fed us lunch, in part made by the students taking the other two classes being offered there the same day, same time.

After class I went down to the CIA store, Spice Island, and looked around, bought a couple of things and found this sculture of a chick in an egg that was done entirely out of chocolate! Chef Isaac had made it for Easter.

We drove back to Reno about 5pm. What a gorgeous day it was! Sunny, warm, so many things blooming (it is California after all..). What a nice mini-vacation it was! Jordan still had some work to do because this week is going to be crazy busy with one of his jobs, but at least he got away for a while.

Sunday was a quiet day. I helped Jordan as best I could, then worked on recipes, worked up a shopping list for Tuesday and painted the two-seater glider in the back yard. The glider has been sitting outside for a couple of winters now and was looking very worn. Now it looks better! I've finished planting all the flowers I am going to put in this year, now I just need to finish adding more mulch.

Today Jordan left very early to fly down to Vegas for the "naming" committee he is on. People submit applications to name certain areas (all in Nevada), bodies of water, etc, and this committee decides if it is appropriate or not. Kind of interesting. I went grocery shopping for my personal chef job tomorrow, then had lunch with my sister. I had small brownies to make for my client, (I tried out a brownie pan I bought last year and have yet to try, lol) and also made Rhubarb-Raspberry-Strawberry Crisps. Yum!

The rest of the day is free, so I guess I'll do some cleaning......