Center of the Plate- Thursday 9/3/09

Hey ya'll! Why didn't I blog on Thursday? I really don't know. My bad. Anyway, so class was good. And I actually got to work with people that were willing to work, and i got to do something other than make sauce! We worked with beef. I THINK it was beef tenderloin. I think. My group made steak fajitas! It was DELICIOUS! If we had enough time, it would have been even MORE delicious. I had to take off the silver skin and cut up the steak, then make the rub. The rub had garlic that I chopped up, salt, pepper, cumin, and onion powder i believe. I rubbed it all on the meat, and put it in the fridge to marinade for about 20 mins. The recipe in my book said 1 hour, but we didn't have time. So, then while that was marinading, I put some water to boil for rice. Put the rice in with a bit of salt, and then about 10 mins before the rice was all done, we put in some fresh cilantro that my classmate chopped. For those of you who know what Chipotle is (the best burrito place EVER) that is what is in their rice... cilantro. So when the meat was done marinading, I put it on the griddle with sliced onions and red bell pepper. It didn't take long, maybe about 10 mins. We only had 2 tortilla's though, so my classmate cut them into 6 beautiful small tortillas. My other classmate that I was working with made pico de gallo. So yes, we had a good night! 

Well folks, I'm off. We are going up to Cripple Creek in a little while and staying the night. I'm excited! Wish me luck that I win big! Or at least win SOMETHING lol!

Center of the Plate- Tuesday 9/1/2009

Hey ya'll. Sorry I didn't blog about my class last night. I was so dead tired! Class was kind of disappointing because we were doing pasta. The groups made homemade pasta. My group made mushroom ravioli. I love mushroom ravioli. But I can't tell ya'll how to make it because I had nothing to do with it! I spent the entire class making a basic cream sauce. I started out making a small batch for my group. Then my chef asked me to make a batch for the whole class. That was not quite as easy. Instead of making it with 4 TBSP of butter, 4 TBSP of flour, and 2 cups of milk, I used 16 TBSP of butter and flour, and 8 cups of milk. That much has to cook a lot longer in order to get the floury taste out. It was very close to being a success by the end of the class. So since I had to stay and stir the sauce almost constantly, I didn't get to be involved in making the pasta. So that was a disappointment. And in the end, the rest of the class didn't use my sauce because it took the entire class period to cook it! So now it's just sitting there, in the reach in fridge, all lonesome and unused. Hopefully tomorrow I will get to do something productive. I will hopefully blog about class tomorrow. But if I am too tired (cooking wears a person out!) I will blog Friday.