Strawberry Almond Cream Pie

I'm 100% convinced that pies are the next big thing. Seriously, I am sure they're going to be the new cupcake. That coupled with the fantastic looking strawberries at my grocery store this weekend led me to make this recipe for Strawberry Almond Cream pie for the baked good of the week.

This pie was easy to make and came together pretty quickly. I substituted cinnamon graham crackers in the crust...do I even have to explain why?! While I baked the crust, I made the strawberry puree (I made the puree before the cream cheese mixture so it would have more time to cool down before I put the pie together). The recipe makes more puree then needed for the pie. So, I've been eating it with my yogurt this week.

Strawberry puree sauce

The almond cream cheese mixture was a piece of cake (okay a slice of pie) to mix together. I loved the combination of the cinnamon graham crackers, strawberries, and almond cream cheese. This pie made for a really nice summery dessert. The only thing I will say is that the crust gets a little soggy after a few days. So, its best to eat the pie within a few days. I know, I know...that's so tough.

Yum...Summer

See for yourself if I'm right...I promise you you'll be proclaiming pie the new cupcake after trying this Strawberry Almond Cream Pie.

Leave with a big grin after dining at the Breslin...

Summer in New York City is almost too hot...especially this year. Hence the massive exodus each weekend to beaches and anywhere that provides an escape from the heat. But, there is absolutely something to be said about staying put a few weekends in the summer. Chief among them is the fact that you can walk into almost any restaurant without a reservation and get yourself a table. My sister and I found ourselves in just this lucky spot on Saturday. We walked into the Breslin, April Bloomfield's new spot in the Ace Hotel. The lines for a table at The Breslin have been talked about almost as much as the food. So when we walked in there this past Saturday, it was a pleasant surprise that we found no line.

A hot summer day calls for a nice cold cocktail. I chose the Lust for Life that was gin with lavender syrup, mint, lemon juice and soda water. It did indeed make you love life but the mint was the strongest flavor and I wanted a little more lavender to shine through. My sister's favorite drink from childhood was Ribena (a blackcurrant syrup that you mix with water) that we used to have our grandparents smuggle over everytime they visited from London. Since one of her favorite adult drinks is prosecco, it was no small wonder that she choose the London Calling, which is vodka, ribena, lemon juice and prosecco. Both cocktails were excellent and made us conclude that we'd definitely come back for cocktails another night, lines be damned.

After reviewing the menu, we decided that given our heat-reduced appetites our best course of action was to split lots of smaller plates. We began with the salt & vinegar potato chips that arrived in a plastic bag. A bit of a waste of a plastic bag in our mind...why not just serve them in a bowl? But forget about presentation, these were amazing. They had the perfect balance of salt & vinegar flavor, they were crisp and slightly warm, and the flavoring on them had somehow clung itself to each and every chip in an almost powdery-like way. In other words, I'd have a hard time eating at the Breslin without ordering them.

Our next dish was the Shibumi oysters with dill pickle juice. The briny pickles and dill coupled with the oysters was something that just made so much sense that I couldn't believe I'd never thought of them as something to pair before. Now, I'll think about oysters with dill pickles just as much as I imagine them with black pepper mignonette. The pickles chopped into small dice with dill strewn throughout on top of the ridiculously fresh oysters melt in your mouth with briny deliciousness. Trust me and order these.

As a side dish, we got the pole beans with a basil pesto. I love when a simple sounding vegetable side dish blows everything else out of the water. The pesto on the beans was basil and olive oil love that I wanted to bottle up and put on everything. The beans themselves were cooked to the perfect crunchy texture. We finished our veggies mom!

Next up was the seafood sausage with buerre blanc. I love the buttery richness of beurre blanc and this was one of the best beurre blancs I've had. If you think I'm kidding about how good the sauce was, you'd have been amazed to see the vigor with which Karen and I were dipping our puff pastry from our final dish into it not wanting to waste a single drop of heaven. The seafood sausage had a lovely shellfish flavor, as if it had been poached in a shellfish broth before it was grilled. The texture was also smooth and not at all chewy, which is often the problem with a seafood sausage. I personally liked the sauce more than the sausage and could have sacrificed the sausage for just a side of the sauce, but Karen loved the seafood sausage and said if we returned she'd want it again.

Our final dish was the Speck and crescenza tart with spring onions. The puff pastry was buttery and warm and the melted cheese and speck were very delicious. A nice, simple dish that was executed perfectly.

Well since we only had small plates, we most certainly had room for dessert! A fruit dessert is a really nice way to finish an evening out in the summer, so we ordered the trifle with peaches, raspberries, and ginger bread pudding. This is not your mother's trifle. The gingerbread cake is not soaked in pudding for hours, so it's solid cake with custard and fresh fruit layered with it and a sorbet on top. I really liked this take on trifle, because I'm not a fan of soggy cake and the combination of textures was far more satisfying and interesting.

As Karen and I left the Breslin, we heard London calling and had a new lust for life. If only we could walk in there any night and get a table!

Soups and the Top Chef-like practical exam...

Our final chapter of Module 1 was soups. One thing that I never really thought about before starting culinary school is that all hot foods need to be served on hot plates (150 or so degrees) and cold foods need to be served on cold plates. Obviously, this means that we had to heat our bowls before serving our soups. There are a lot of different types of soups, but most start with sweating some vegetables for the base. I've made a lot of soups that started with sweating an onion, etc but I realized after this class that I didn't sweat them for long enough or on low enough heat. The key here is you don't want to brown the veggies because that caramelizes them and tends to overwhelm the other flavors in the soup (although there are exceptions to this like some onion soups).

The most important soup we made was the Cream of Broccoli soup. I know it sounds weird that this would be the case...what's so gosh darn important about broccoli?! Well, it's the soup we had to make for our final practical exam for Module 1 of culinary school. The first time we'd be graded on what we cooked. So rest assured we all paid really close attention to this one. The soup began with sweating diced onions, celery, leeks, and broccoli stems in butter (remember broc stems have an enormous amount of flavor so they're perfect for a soup base). While these sweat, we made a veloute by making a roux and then adding in chicken stock and a good amount of salt and a pinch of nutmeg and cayenne. Once this was done, we added the veggies to the veloute along with some chicken stock and cooked this until the veggies were tender. At that time, we pureed the soup and returned it to the pot to heat it to a serving temperature. Then we served it with some broccoli florets.

Beautiful Broccoli Soup - I'm ready for the Test!

That same class we also made a puree of carrot soup that I really, really liked. We began the soup by sauteing ground ginger, cumin, and fennel in some clarified butter than caramelizing some onions in this. After the onions were caramelized, we added some celery and carrots and sweated all the veggies. Next up was the liquid - some white wine and vegetable stock, which we simmered with the veggies until they were tender. Then, we pureed the soup and garnished it with some toasted pine nuts and fennel fronds. You know a soup is good when you don't mind eating it on an 80 degree day and I finished my bowl!

Puree on a hot day!

The final soup of the night was a consomme, which is a clarified stock. It's pretty gross to make because you mix together egg whites, a lean ground meat, veggies, and tomato and put this in a broth. You then bring this to barely a simmer and wait until all this floats to the top and forms what is called a raft. Then you make a whole in the raft and cook this at a simmer until the broth is clear. I'm not going to lie, its pretty wild to see how clear the broth becomes. See for yourself...

Let me clarify something - making consomme is a pretty gross process!

Our next soup class was hearty soups, bisques, and cold soups. There is something about cold soup that creeps me out...it just seems so wrong. I mean its not as low on my list as processed food but I'm about as likely to eat both. So, I'll write about the gazpacho we made first and get it over with. It was pretty easy to make - blanch, peel, seed, and chop some tomato. Then, add pepper, cucumber, onion, jalapeno, garlic, and some white bread and pureed this. Put in some tomato juice to thin it and some chopped cilantro, salt and pepper for seasoning. It just doesn't seem right to me to eat this with a spoon...I feel like it should be on a tortilla chip!

And now for the good stuff from this class...Lobster bisque and onion soup. In traditional bisques, the shells are actually cooked and pureed with the soup, but because shells are tough on blenders/processors we didn't puree these with the soup (I'm pretty glad about this because the idea of eating pureed shells is a bit disturbing). For the lobster bisque, I took on the lobster cooking...I am terrified of cooking lobsters because of the whole its still alive when you toss it in boiling stock to kill it thing and I want to overcome this fear because I really enjoy lobster. I killed 5 lobsters this class and now I feel a lot better about being responsible for murdering lobsters. While we removed the meat from the shells, we sweated some mirepoix in a pot. We put the lobster shells into the fish stock we were going to use and simmered this to add more flavor. When the mirepoix had sweated sufficiently, we added tomato paste and strained the shells from the fish stock and added this to the pot. We simmered this mixture with some rice and pureed it when everything was softened. Separately, we sauted the lobster meat in some butter and then flambed it with brandy (yes...yum!). We added some cream to the soup base and some seasonings (our group opted for some tarragon) and then ladled some soup over lobster meat in a bowl with some croutons. This bisque was every bit as delicious as it looks...

Lobster Bisque with lobster meat slaughtered by yours truly!

The onion soup we made was pretty sweet (in a sugar content way not in the slang for excellent way). I love onion soup, but this one was not rich enough for me. Although, we served it with a toast with melted cheese on top, which just brings a big goofy grin to my face regardless. We caramelized the onion until it was an amber brown, then we deglazed the pan with some apple brandy (which was a bit over-powering) and added veal stock. This was simmered for about 40 minutes. We seasoned it with salt and pepper and then ladled it into gratin bowls which we topped with toasts and cheese. This went under the broiler to melt.

Onion Soup that'll bring a smile to your face

The next night was our practical exam for all of module 1. We had to medium dice a potato, cook a cream of broccoli soup, and make a mayonaisse. To ensure that we would all finish in a staggered time line, we each picked a number from a hat to decide when we would start cooking. The first person began immediately and then each subsequent person started 5 minutes apart. I picked number three, which I thought was ideal. I have to admit I was very nervous. So when I got into the kitchen and began to chop veggies for my cream of broccoli soup, I decided that I should maybe do something else first, because my hands were shaking enough to make any activities with knives an ill-advised idea. Once I calmed down, I was able to finish my soup, make my mayo, and dice my potatoes without too many problems. When I was within 5 minutes of finishing, I had to announce that I was ready to the chef. Then, I had to present each of the three items to him for my grade. The soup portion included requiring that the bowl was heated. The only part that I didn't do very well was the dicing of the potato. Everything else was A-okay! When I finished this exam, I couldn't believe that I was already done with a fifth of culinary school. I feel like I have so much more to learn and I really can't wait to learn it!

One Module down, four more plus an externship to go!

Scotcheroo...Woohoo...

I've been making these scotcheroos since last year when I first saw them...I'm sorry, there's no excuse for my not telling you about them before. They are possibly one of the most delightful, sweet snacks I make. Let's call a spade a spade...these are basically grown up rice crispie treats. They make a fabulous summer snack that I love to make and bring to my shore house (it sort of makes us all act even more like we're kids...as if we need any help). Everyone loves them...even my friends that are not huge sweets people delve into them.

Bar #1

These are a very easy treat to make (N.B. I go the light corn syrup route) and don't require any oven time, which is a huge relief in the hot summer months. Plus, who doesn't love nutella, cocoa crispies, peanut butter, chocolate and butterscotch chips? I usually mix up a quick batch put them in the pan and let them cool in the fridge for an hour before I cut them into bars. Honest to goodness, make these...you will be hopscotching all over the place.

OMG Omakase at SUteiShi

One of my favorite things about eating out in NYC are those random nights when you go out without a game plan and end up having one of your all-time favorite meals. Last night, I had one of those delightful evenings.

I met Karen for a leisurely outdoor happy hour cocktail down by the seaport. We quickly decided that sushi was the only option either of us wanted to entertain for dinner. Karen, having been to SUteiShi previously, insisted that we dine there. I will forever be glad we did.

We were seated just by the open windows with a scenic view of the brooklyn bridge. I wasn't feeling much like choosing my own adventure and I was elated to find that Karen was equally into ordering the omakase. The very reasonably priced ($85 for two people) omakase is generous - 1 appetizer, 20 pieces of 10 different sushis, and 2 different rolls. It's so generous in fact that our waiter expressed his amazement that we were able to finish the entire thing and order a dessert to top it all off.

I personally think that beer is the best pairing for sushi and opted for one of my favorites - Hitachino, which is an excellent japanese white beer. Our adventure began with a grilled calamari and seaweed salad over glass noodles with a ginger citrus dressing. The squid was the perfect texture and had a really nice flavor, but the rest of the salad was a bit too seaweedy for me...Karen disagreed completely and finished the plate.

But enough about all that, what I really want to talk to you all about is the sushi at SUteiShi. Our plate of 10 different sushi pieces for each of us arrived and our waiter enthusiastically walked us through each piece. He was genuinely excited about each one and clearly has had and loved each (seriously, I almost thought he might pull up a chair and join us). We ate them in the order he presented, which proved to be the right decision. Each and every piece of sushi was the most tender melt in your mouth sushi that I think I've ever had. My favorite pieces from the dish were salmon with a onion sauce, tuna with garlic chips, red snapper with a vinegar jelly, and the super white tuna with a thin slice of ripe mango. The salmon with the onion sauce sort of rocked my world a bit. I want that onion sauce on all my sandwiches from now on and was amazed how well it went on a piece of sushi. The super white tuna with mango was a nice, sweet buttery bite that I wish I had had two of. I have listed my favorites, but there wasn't one sushi on my plate that I didn't love. After we finished the sushi, we moved on to the rolls. They gave us two of their most popular - Spicy tuna with tuna and spicy mayo on top and spicy salmon with salmon and spicy mayo on top. These were excellent...the fish on top of both rolls was equally as good as each piece of sushi we had on our other plate.

To finish our meal, we ordered a scoop of the green tea ice cream. A great sweet way to finish one of the sweetest meals I've had in a while.

I can't wait to go back to this spot. I have to say that we spyed some people at other tables doing the hot stone grill dishes in which you get a hot stone and grill your own meal and I was a bit jealous. I just don't know if I can go back and not order the omakase.

Even if you're not down by the seaport, find yourself there. It's more than worth a trip to have this sushi.

Feeling Saucy...

After our butchering lessons, we moved on to sauces. But before sauce, we had a random class in which we learned how to clarify butter, roast peppers, make croutons, and prepare tomatoes. It was a very random mish-mash. My favorite part was roasting the peppers!

Hot Pepper!

In our first sauce class (of 4), we made three of the classic French "mother" sauces. They're called mother sauces because they're used to make a multitude of other derivative sauces. We made bechamel, veloute, and sauce espangole. To make each of these sauces we had to make rouxs by cooking equal parts flour and butter. The rouxs are used to bind and thicken each of the sauces and are added in the beginning of the sauce making process. There are three types of roux, each of which is described by the color: white, blond, and brown. The brown one was my favorite by a long shot because it has a nutty, bready smell and flavor. The longer a roux cooks, the less binding power it has (so much for my lovely brown roux!). The type of roux used depends on the color and depth of your sauce. So, for the bechamel we used a white roux, for the veloute we used a blond, and for the sauce espangole we used a brown.

For the bechamel we scalded some milk with nutmeg, cayenne, salt & white pepper and an onion. Then we strained the milk into the white roux pot and cooked it until thickened. Bechamel is the base for all sorts of great sauces including the base for mac & cheese! The Sauce Espagnole is a rich sauce with caramelized vegetables, tomato paste, veal stock and brown roux. Veloute is rather plain sounding but somehow delicious with chicken stock, blond roux, and salt & pepper.


We saved all the sauces from this class to make derivative sauces in the next class. It was really interesting to see how each of these sauces were used to make other, more flavorful sauces.

The mothers of all sauces (front = Bechamel, back right = veloute, back left = espagnole)

In sauces part 2, we made another mother sauce, tomato and then a bunch of derivative sauces. From the veloute mother sauce, we made a sauce supreme, which is with cream and butter, and allemande sauce, which was my favorite of the night with shallots, mushrooms, and cream. From the espagnole, we made . And from the bechamel we made a mornay, which is with cheese and is used as the base of mac n' cheese, and a tomato soubise sauce. In addition, we made a few sauces from a veal stock reduction.

Our third sauce night was emulsion sauces. This night we made hollandaise, Mayonnaise, beurre blanc, and vinaigrette. Mayo and vinaigrette are simple emulsions, so we began with them. Emulsions are a mixture of 2 or more liquids, one of which is a fat, suspended. The suspension can be temporary, semi-permanent or permanent. In many emulsions, different stabilizers are used to hold the suspension. In the case of mayo, these are the dijon and egg yolk. Mayo is actually really easy to make at home and well worth it because home-made mayo is delicious. All you need is an egg yolk, some dijon, a little lemon juice, and salt, and then slowly whisk in canola oil. Viola...better than Hellmans.

For our vinaigrette, we used canola oil and whisked this slowly into shallots, vinegar, and dijon. Again, this salad dressing is one of those things that people should make at home instead of buying in the grocery store (not that I don't love a good bottle of Newman's own dressing).

The next sauce was heavenly, but very much so in a fallen angel gluttonous side of heaven's gates. Beurre blanc begins with a shallot, white wine, wine vinegar, bay leaf and peppercorn reduction. Then, cubes and cubes of cold butter are whisked in. This is a wonderful sauce for lobster. If you know how I feel about lobster rolls, then you know I was thinking of nixing the mayo lobster roll and going with a warm lobster roll with this sauce!

The remaining emulsions were a bit more challenging - For Hollandaise and Bearnaise, you have to heat egg yolks over a hot water bath constantly whisking to thicken. In the case of bearnaise, thee egg is combined with a shallot, tarragon, vinegar, black peppercorn reduction and tarragon leaves and butter are added...Delicious! For Hollandaise, lemon juice, clarified butter, and seasonings are added.

Our final night of sauces was contemporary sauces. We made coulis, salsa, relish, infused oils, jus de veau lie, and citrus juice sauce. I wasn't a huge fan of this night. It was a very random mix of sauces that I didn't really like. Maybe I'm just more into the classics!

I ended this week of classes with a serious liquid belly having only consumed sauces for three straight nights!

Stock, Beef, Veal, Pork, Lamb, & Rabbit...The end of butchering

Okay...I know I'm a bit behind on updating you all about my various cooking and eating adventures. Rest assured, I am still in culinary school and still cooking at home every chance I get! So, here's the start of my updating you all on what I've been learning in class and cooking at home...

In the next few classes after I last posted, we finished up the butchering portion of our class. Again, I can't stress how much I LOVED butchering. I know it sounds gross, but your hands are as soft as can be afterwards, and there's something really satisfying about breaking down a large cut of meat into the proper portions to cook. You get a whole new appreciation for what you pick up at your grocery's butcher.

In between our various butchering, we made stocks from the different animal bones. We made a white chicken stock, a brown duck stock, and a veal stock. Here's a picture of us straining the huge pot of brown duck stock (theres a quart of it in my freezer that I can't wait to chef up something with):

Brown duck stock...I can't begin to tell you how heavy this pot was (I might need to start lifting weights)

First up for the next chapter of butchering was beef. Before we butchered some beef, we had a brief lecture on the various grades of beef and how it's raised. The bulk of American beef is corn fed, which results in a sweeter flavored beef (I, having a mild sugar addiction, really like this but its probably not the "chef" way to think). If you've never tried it before, grass-fed beef definitely has a much different taste and is worth trying. In class that night, we butchered a flank steak, which is the girdle area that is used for london broil. Next up was butchering a whole tenderloin. This was pretty labor intensive, because we removed a lot of fat and unusable meat to arrive at a tenderloin and two petit filets. If you happen to be cooking tenderloin anytime soon, remember that it should be cooked rare to medium rare otherwise it's texture is stringy and it lacks all flavor.

The tenderloin mid-fabrication

After the labor intensive tenderloin, we cut a whole strip loin into individual steaks. We took home some strip steaks and made the rest for dinner with some of our now famous medium diced potatoes and "green wind" parsley.

A whole sirloin just begging to be fabricated into steaks

The steaks - 1.5 inch thick marbled, marvels!

Dinner is served...How can you not love Steak & Potatoes (note the labor intensive green wind)?

In our next class we moved on to veal, which is a calf that is under 6 months old. We butchered half of the lower quarter of the loin, which included fabricating the kidneys. We started by removing the kidneys and all the fat surrounding them. Chef informed us that this veal fat is often used to make pastry dough, because it results in some of the flakiest dough (the beef fat is similar to lard but its called suet). When I heard this, I knew I had to take some home and try it out. I ended up making jamaican beef patties that were heavenly!

Chef cooked the kidneys in a mustard sauce for us to try. I didn't mind a bite of kidneys, but they're very rich and the texture isn't something I want to have all the time. I guess the best way to put it is that they're interesting. After we removed some of the excess fat from the loin, we removed the flank steak of veal from the bones. This meat is only suited for stew, because it has so much fat and connective tissue that it needs a long cooking time. I took some home and its taken up residence in my freezer ready to be made into julia child's white veal stew sometime soon! Finally, we removed the tenderloin and cut some loin chops, which we fried up for a lovely little dinner.

The flank separated from the loin

Veal filet and loin

Frying up some veal for dinner

Veal in a deglazed pan sauce

Our next class was rabbit and pork fabrication. If you haven't seen the trend yet, we pretty much fabricated a loin of everything. Pork night was no different. We started by removing the baby back ribs from the loin and then trimming the pork loin from the remaining bones. Most people have been raised to believe that pork shouldn't be served pink, but in truth the pork loin should be served medium otherwise it will be to dry. For part of our dinner that night, we had a generously seasoned roasted pork loin with mashed potatoes.

Our roasted pork loin dinner

Before we had the pork loin though, we went hunting wrabbits. Okay, so they're really little (see how large my fingers looked in this picture in comparison).

Bugs Bunny

Now, I know you might be thinking gross rabbit. But, let me tell you rabbit is ridiculously delicious. Imagine the best chicken you've ever had and thats what it tastes like but better...moist, white meat. Trust me and try it next time you have the chance before it hops away! The fabrication of rabbit is very similar to chicken, but we cut the thigh and leg portion into two separate servings. Chef cooked the rabbit for us in a fabulous white wine sauce.

Our Fabricated Rabbit

See...doesn't it look delicious?!

Okay...I think I've made my hatred of lamb known throughout all the posts I've ever made. So, you can only imagine how disappointed I was that we were having a whole class devoted to lamb butchery. Boooo...I mean baaaaa. Although, as much as I hate lamb, I have to admit that I didn't mind butchering it. I guess that goes to show how much I really like this stuff!

We fabricated a whole leg of lamb and then frenched a rack of lamb. Chef roasted the racks of lamb for the class dinner. To french the rack of lamb we cleaned the meat from between the bones and then tied a knot really tightly around one bone at a time and pulled hard to remove all the extra stuff on the bone. Viola a rack of lamb.

I felt very Flintstone-ish hefting this leg of lamb onto my cutting board

My frenched lamb chops

Our roasted lamb chop dinner

We're now in the midst of the sauce and soup chapter, which hopefully I'll tell you all about by the end of this week! I hope you didn't miss me too much!