Day 3

This will just be a short recap as I just finished my homework and am tired and ready for bed!  :)  But today was a pretty fun day of class.  We had our usual lecture, which was actually mainly just going over homework.  The rest of the lecture was utensil identification and so we went into the kitchen and saw all the tools we will get to use and learned where they belong to be put back.  Not much of a lecture this time, but that is okay!  We then got a demo from Chef Wilke who is OCI's Executive Chef and Director of Education.  I think this is Chef Wilke's first or second term not teaching, but he seems like he would've been a fun instructor to have though he was a culinary instructor and admits to not being the best baker.  But Chef Wilke demonstrated proper usage and safety for knife work since we do have three knives in our kit.  He demonstrated how to properly hold food while cutting, which way to cut, how to properly cut an onion (which is NOT the way they tell us in our book, which I find funny!), and how to sharpen the knives.  He even showed us "knife scars" and told us we'd probably each have a few by the end of school, which doesn't make me happy, but we'll see if I can keep mine to a minimum.  

After the knife demo, Chef Hall did his demo and we made 6 things tonight!  We first helped to make tart shells and those became caramel nut tarts (with freshly made caramel!), then we made some brownies, then we started on some pizza dough, but we had to let it sit for a bit before using it.  We then made a huuuge strudel filled with apples, raisins, and spices that smelled really good!  Next was a chocolate flourless cake (I've had this and it is super yummy!) that is a regular staple at the restaurant.  After that we made some ice cream that is vanilla flavored for the moment I believe.  We actually just made the base for the ice cream and we'll churn it in the ice cream machine tomorrow.  The brownies and the ice cream (which is going to be a coffee flavor) will be made into sundaes in tomorrows class.  

The finale tonight was that we got to make our own pizzas with the pizza dough.  Tessa and I decided to share one, though in the end most people were trying each other's pizzas.  We had a bunch of toppings to choose from, but we made a pizza with zucchini, mushrooms, garlic, tomatoes, cheese and a red sauce and it was super yummy!  We took turns stretching our ball of dough into a pizza shape and used more the tossing between your hands method than the in the air one, though I did toss ours into the air a couple of times and did manage to catch it each time, so I was proud of that!  I do admit, I didn't toss it high since we would've been very disappointed to not have a pizza at that point since we were all hungry.  :)  Ours came out less rounded than most others.  We like to say it was either a Christmas tree shape (with the toppings as ornaments) or just a big slice like from Chuck E. Cheese!  No matter what shape it was, we got it in the oven (and got to use one of those big wooden oven paddle type things called an oven peel) without it falling apart and ate half of it but still took big pieces home for lunch tomorrow.  I also got to take home another girl's pizza too since she had made a big one, so I might have lunch to get me through the weekend!  I will try to remember to take a picture of my pizza tomorrow before I eat it, though it might be one of the last few pictures I post up for a bit.  I can't seem to find my camera's power cord, so I must have left it in MT and will have to get another one.  So until then, enjoy the pizza picture tomorrow and I'll try to get another one soon or see how many pictures I can quickly take and quickly download before my battery dies.

This is an oven peel - the paddle thing the pizza is on.