Culinary Institute of America

Unfortunately for me, at the first opportunity I got to eat fancy gourmet food, I was sick. I started with a mild headache and sleep deprivation on Monday afternoon, which morphed into a fever, sore throat and pulsing headache throughout Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I had absolutely no appetite and everything tasted bland. This did not mesh well with the trip to the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), Kraft, Pepsi, and 2 fancy dinners. I feel as though I just shuffled through the food, systematically spooning it into my mouth. I didn't get to enjoy the food as much as I should've :(.



We went on this trip as part of our internship program. Along with lunch at Bocuse, we also received signed menus and a tour and Q&A of the CIA. Bocuse is apparently the inspiration for a chef in the film Ratatoullie.

Although I didn't get to taste every little flavor in the food, it was still fun and enriching. I did consider going to culinary school 4 years ago, but it didn't seem so viable. In addition, I don't think I'd want to pay for cooking skills, which I believe can be learned from the internet and lots of trial and error. Sure, CS and Bio can be learned from the internet too but in those cases, I'm paying for the piece of paper that says that I'm qualified. And opportunities and networking, I guess.

So, Bocuse!
As we walked in, many wines and champagnes were displayed horizontally behind glass cases. We entered a well-lit, bright restaurant with sofa seating and plump cushions. The celing was shiny and the walls were adorned with chef hat shaped lighting fixtures (on to of which stood a miniature chef model).


There were red half-moon placemats and mustard yellow cloth napkins (with patterns on them). We drank water out of glass goblets. In the center of the table were a box of conversation cards and a small container of fancy salt.

The waiters and waitresses were extremely polite. I actually felt kind of awkward (especially when it got to eating the lamb with bone) because the place was so elegant. Bread was offered about once every 10 minutes, and although it was extremely crusty and delicious, I felt impolite accepting bread more than twice. Oh, social customs. I hope to one day be able to achieve such light, crusty, and chewy-crumbed bread. Although my baguettes are crusty, they're kind of dense.

Usually I don't order appetizers, but as everyone at my table did, I figured I would too. As we waited for them, we each received half a grape tomato with balsamic dressing, mint foam, and a leaf thing that I think tasted a bit like chard. It was an interesting mix of flavors.

The neatest thing was that everyone's appetizers or entrees would arrive at the exact same time, with each student chef holding exactly 1 dish. Then the dish would be presented in front of the customer, and the lid would be lifted off, IN UNISON! Then, the chef would explain what the dish was.
It was like a performance.

This is a smoked salmon thing. I'm not sure how one would eat the cracker without using one's hands.

Truffle soup with a big poof of pastry. The soup was a bit thin and bland (or I just couldn't taste anything because I was sick). The truffle flavor was there though.

Pistachio pate (a bit salty, so I ended up eating it with bread). It tasted bloodier(? More raw?) than I remember pate being (at least 10 years ago, in a mass produced canned version).

Part pate, part snail, mashed potato, and potato chip. I wonder if they made the potato chips on-site. The lattice structure must be difficult to make and fry. The snail was chewy. I'm used to eating snails coated in  cheese, so having it this way was less salty and fatty than expected.

Someone else ordered the fried frog, which came with a watercress sauce. The frog tasted just as I remembered (when we used to eat them in HK some 10 years ago). The batter was really light. Think tempura coating.

I picked lamb as the main dish, and it was probably the most difficult to eat in a civil manner because of the bones. The lamb came in 3 forms: a chunk of lamb (which tasted a bit overcooked), a croquette with lamb shreds (really good and tender), and a chunk of lamb with bone and a mouthful of fat (extremely difficult to eat politely, but delicious).

And here I am, being messy with the food on my plate. I ended up not following etiquette and just using my hands to hold onto the bone while I ate the lamb. Oh well.



Here is a chunk of steak from KV, sitting diagonally from me, and a chunk of chicken from HB, sitting next to me. The steak was really tender (but I haven't had real "steak" before - i.e. one from a steakhouse), and the chicken tasted very plain.

Then dessert! Among many classic desserts (chocolate mousse thing, madeline, marshmallow) were nitrogen ice cream, which they made in a KitchenAid mixer right in front of you, and a pineapple upside down cake with coconut icing and dry ice. A red (not for eating) liquid was poured onto the dry ice, resulting in a fragrant smoke that reminded me of hibiscus, even though I couldn't really smell it since I was sick.

The ice cream wasn't really cold and the stick thing was edible but I'm not sure what it was. Some sort of not-too-sweet cookie? Overall, I felt that the cake was kind of stale.

We were surprised with mini cakes and truffles before we left! The truffles were made on-site (we could see them make them through the window to the kitchen).

At the end, we filled out a survey on their iPad regarding service and menu. We requested additional outlandish desserts (e.g. fire). Although the portions aren't as big as those in some chain restaurant, I was extremely full for the next 7+ hours. This was definitely a great, calm, friendly dining experience.

Five Guys Burgers & Fries (Finally?!)

Hey! I did what all the popular people are doing!
Did that sound wrong to you?

Since 2010, I've had this modicum of desire to buy a cow burger. However, I was vegetarian and was perfectly happy eating non-animals.
So time went by.
The puny desire for a burger grew a little.
The town next to mine got a Smashburger.
Still vegetarian.
Our town got a Five Guys.
Last year, I stopped being vegetarian by getting a burger at Shake Shack. It was good.
And this year, I finally got to try a burger from Five Guys in Ithaca!
I think I prefer this over Shake Shack because I don't like buttered buns and I like having lots of vegetable items and pickles in my burger.

Another time, we also went to get burgers at Jack's in Collegetown and I got the Bo Burger. I did not really like the buns because they were too airy and the overall burger was just ok.

Life's So Sweet Chocolate Place

Maybe I'm dabbled enough in Food Science, but a tour of a chocolate shop would've excited me to no end a few years ago. Now, it doesn't faze me. Perhaps I already have a working knowledge about chocolate. Anyway, as I'm now doing a Food Science summer program at Cornell University, my fellow interns and I decided to go to Trumansburg NY and take a grand ol' "tour" of the Life's So Sweet Chocolate Place.

We arrived at about 2:30, which was half an hour early, and the storekeeper told us to leave and walk around for half an hour. I guess the astounding ten of us overwhelmed the tiny storefront, whose floorspace could barely fit two Smart Cars. And so, we trudged through the only street in Trumansburg that had shops, and dilly-dallied until 2:55, when we re-entered the store.

There, we were now welcome with open arms.

We started with an introduction of the shop. This is where the original Life's So Sweet Chocolate Place stood, some (at most 85) number of years ago. Here is a painting in the shop, reminiscent of the Taughannnock Waterfall some 10 minutes away.

We were then led into the back room, where we all sat down and listened to a lecture. First, we learned that we had just passed the chocolate storage area that was "between 60 and 70 degrees, with no humidity and no funny smells. We know that the chocolate there is kept well or else you would've encountered some funny smells when you walked past". Well, cool.
The person leading the tour was very nice, but honestly didn't offer much information that I wouldn't be able to find on Wikipedia. Apparently, we were supposed to be awed by the fact that chocolate comes from a plant. How astonishing. This tour was not geared towards anyone with basic science knowledge, and much less to (food) science majors. Therefore, I was slightly disappointed. However, I did get 3 pieces of chocolate out of the $5 for the tour.

We learned very generically about how chocolate is made. According to the lecture, cacao trees are about 5 ft tall, and are planted +/- 20 degrees from the equator, which includes Hawaii, Madagascar, Ecuador and some other places. Life's So Sweet obtains its chocolate from a company that makes a "perfect blend" (quoting lecturer) of cacao from all these places. However, they also sell chocolate with cacao from only one region, and the taste of this possibly varies by season. Unpopular chocolate truffle flavours have included "double cherry" and pie.




I touched a frozen cacao pod from Cornell, and checked out a jar of unroasted cacao beans. I learned that they had two tempering machines, and tempering chocolate takes about an hour and a half (with white chocolate taking less time and dark chocolate taking more).

They use bunny shaped moulds and hedgehog shaped ones. The metal moulds are 85 years old and are used out of tradition and durability, while it is easier to observe the chocolate spreading and hardening process in the plastic ones. Apparently, in the plastic moulds, when the chocolate has hardened, it unsticks itself from the mould. One of us (incidentally a Chemical Engineer) asked why that is, and the person giving the lecture gave an explanation that kind of sounded like this:

Well, it's because of chemistry. Let me try explain it in the easiest way possible. Well, if the chocolate isn't tempered well enough, it doesn't stick to itself. When it's tempered, it sticks together and, if you look here [shows chocolate in mould], the sides have already begun to unstick from the plastic, so later, the rest of the chocolate will unstick."

So, we still don't know. However, I do know that anything that is not chocolate is not made by the store, but by some other family owned business. For example, the jelly beans come from Jelly Belly (apparently 6 generations old), while the sponge candy comes from Rochester NY. There is also sugar-free chocolate, which comes from some other supplier.

The three pieces of chocolate included:

White chocolate half-coated dried apricot
Half-baked attempt to please apricot and white chocolate lovers. Why not cover the entire apricot?Sweet. Not waxy (more creamy). Miniscule grit, which I liked.


Milk chocolate
Plain milk chocolate with a "snap" sound when bitten. Creamy and typical, but not waxy at all. Miniscule grit.


Dark chocolate "Aztec" truffle
Simple dark chocolate ganache with 3 types of cayenne pepper with spicy chocolate coating and sprinkled with red pepper flakes. Not too spicy.



I didn't fancy any of the chocolates for sale, since they all seemed kind of normal, though there was a balsamic vinegar truffle which someone said didn't particularly taste like balsamic vinegar. I think I read somewhere online that balsamic vinegar actually brings out the chocolate flavour more, though.

They also had some novel idea where you put a box of 5 chocolates where the shoe goes.

Sushi!

We bought a pound of sushi-grade salmon from Wholefoods because I don't think there are other places to get sushi-grade salmon in the suburbs. It was $20, which is ok, I suppose. It's something like $14 in Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia.
I used a bread knife to cut the salmon and I ended up making a bunch of nigiri and some salmon and cucumber maki. The  maki near the top of the plate are the ones with too much rice (where I covered the entire nori with rice), while the ones near the bottom are made with a thin layer of rice on only 2/3 of the nori. Also, it was surprisingly more difficult than I expected to cut the maki to the same height.

In the background, you can see my sister's cheese and cucumber sushi. She only eats salmon in sashimi form.

Coconut Bread!

One year later. 
I am now very confident when baking with yeast. It's simple! Fun! I haven't bought bread in a year. This is weird because I used to go through a loaf of sliced bread a week.
Today I made coconut buns without following a specific recpie. It just looked right. I wish Algorithms were this easy. I've read that baking bread has to be very exact, but I think I use more intuition than measurement when I make successful bread. Perhaps I'm just not very particular about my bread?



The recipe goes something like this:

Ingredients
750 g flour (I used 650 g white flour, 100 g whole wheat flour)
20 g active dry yeast
100-150 ml whipping cream (can possibly substitute with cow or coconut milk)
100-150 ml water (not really sure)
Unsweetened shreds of 1 actual coconut (see note below)
100 g white sugar (make it 200 g if you like sweet buns)

Note: My mum bought a coconut and my sister and I drank the coconut juice. After throwing the coconut (in a plastic bag) onto a brick repeatedly until it cracked, we cut up the flesh into bite-sized chunks, and blended it with 2 cups of warm water (60 degrees C?). After straining the slurry, we ended up with some delicious fatty coconut milk and a lot of shredded coconut. The coconut milk separated in the fridge, and it seems sensible to make coconut buns with the coconut milk, but I had to use up the whipping cream that had been in the freezer for a while. The coconut milk will probably be used for curry tomorrow.

Method

1. Microwave water for 15-30 seconds, or until it feels a bit warmer than finger temperature.
2. Mix everything except coconut shreds together in an enormous bowl.
3. Knead for some 10 minutes. At first, your situation will seem hopeless as there does not seem to be enough liquid, and flour will start sticking to the side of your bowl. After a few minutes of vigorous kneading, however, you will realize that the dough ball has actually become sticky! Now, it will suck up all that flour!
4. Throw in coconut shreds. They add a bit of moisture so you might want to throw in some more flour too.
5. Leave to rest (in a plastic bag if you want) for 2 hours. If it's a bit chilly indoors, you can leave it in your car. If you do not have a car, leaving it out for 2-3 hours is fine.
6. Scoop out lumps of dough, roll (without squeezing too hard), and put onto a foil-lined baking sheet. The bread I make apparently never sticks to foil after it's done baking, which is pretty neat. You can keep the balls of dough about 1 cm apart from each other if you want the buns to touch. If you don't want them to touch, keep them 5 cm apart.
7. Let rise for 1 hour.
8. Paint on some coconut milk and sprinkle more coconut/sugar/sesame/whatever on top.
9. Stick a small container of water (50 ml) on the bottom rack of oven. This makes steam.
10. Bake at 350 F for 25 minutes in an unpreheated oven, middle rack.

Results

SO FLUFFY!! Look at the wonderful crumb!



My mum said it rivals the buns sold at the Asian supermarket nearby. Or, you know, in those Chinese bakeries in Chinatown.



Here is a bun. It is beautiful.



Had a cookie butter (from Trader Joe's) sandwich. You can taste a hint of coconut texture in every bite. The bun is not very sweet, which is fine.