Don't forget the vegetable!

Hey everyone :)

Today was a really good day - I feel like I've been in a particularly happy mood the past few days which is enjoyable lol and kinda unexpected because I've been waking up at 7am for the past few days and the weather has been a rainy/snowy mess and the Congolese Embassy near my house had a HUGE riot the other day - people were shooting rifles, throwing rocks at the police officers...it was pretty intense. The riots were apparently about the election that just occurred in the Congo in which the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, won what many are claiming to be a "stolen election." If you want to read about it (from an Ottawan perspective), here is the link to the article I was reading: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2011/12/06/ottawa-congo-demonstration.html

Anyway, it feels like a lot has been going on here lately, and I've been keeping pretty busy with class, grad school applications, etc., so I'm figuring that all that has a lot to do with my good mood - I always seem to feel better when I'm keeping busy, you know?

Ok, well moving onto class today, we made Pear Charlottes which are basically frozen desserts with lady-fingers around the sides and pear-flavored Bavarian cream in the middle. They are served with raspberry coulis (or a fruit reduction sauce) and Chantilly cream on the side. They are impressive to look at and taste pretty good. Personally, my favorite dish still remains to be the croissants lol But this wasn't bad ;) Pear Charlotte is a very light dessert - no butter - so that might be a :) or a :( depending on who is reading this lol

Chef piping the lady fingers

After you pipe lady fingers, you have to dust them with powdered sugar (or, as they say in Canada, icing sugar)

Chef using my new favorite kitchen appliance (the blow torch) on another cake he made today in class (that we didn't make in Practical) called Entrements aux poires (or Geneose sponge cake with pears). And don't worry - he is not torching the icing on the cake in this picture, he is torching the almond paste masque he put over the buttercream icing.

This is what the Entrements aux poires looks like when it is done :) Beautiful! That is mint in the center (for the vegetable component of the dish ;) ) and chocolate "cigarette" sticks.

Here is Chef's Pear Charlotte or Charlotte aux poires - apparently, it is traditionally served with a bow tied around the middle lol So the part that you see are the lady fingers, but if you cut into the Charlotte, you would see the Bavarian cream filling.

These are some frozen souffles Chef just "threw together" at the end of class ;)


And here is my Pear Charlotte with my raspberry coulis and whipped cream on the side :) (apparently, this dessert can also be called a Charlotte Russe! Like the clothing store lol) Ps. I *did* have a mint leaf on my Charlotte when I presented it to the Chef, but I didn't have it when I took the picture because there was a limited amount of mint leaves in class, so my friend Erin and I shared, and she was presenting her dish when I took this picture, so the mint leaf was on her Charlotte. I tell you this just so you know I didn't skip the vegetable component ;)

Here is a picture of a few of my friends and I from class: from left to right it's Erin, me, Rafi, and Beth is in the middle :)