Saturday, May 29, 2010

The End

Today I made some lemon coconut bars and blondies. Both required sugar and eggs. If you mix sugar and eggs together for too long, the sugar burns the eggs and then you get lumps of egg in the batter (which is not good), so you try not to mix it too much. You mix it until everything is mixed together. I also boxed four types of brownies: plain, ganache-covered, raspberry jam-covered, and mocha buttercream-covered. I was able to taste some, and they were pretty good.


This is a picture of the kitchen at Jorg's. There's two fridges, but only one is on at the moment to conserve energy. There's a freezer in the back of the picture (which is actually the front of the store since I took it as I was leaving out the back). There are two little sections of the kitchen, the cake section and pastry section. The sections are just areas where most of the cakes or pastries are done. There's a store room in the back as well as Jorg's office. Out front, there's the retail portion of the store. There's also a room full of pictures of cakes and desserts and giant checks Jorg has won doing Food Network Challenges.

I am officially done with all of my internships. I still have to do the final reflection and presentation, but that shouldn't take too long. Everything went by so quickly and I'll miss it all since I had so much fun this month.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Final Day at BU; 1 More Day


My grandmother wants me to post some pictures of the places I'm working at so people can get a better image of what i'm describing and stuff like that. These three pictures are of the kitchen at BU. This first one is of the store-room where they keep all of the utensils, knifes, spices, pots, and anything else you might need (that's not refrigerated).


These next pictures are of 2 of the 3 bays in the kitchen. There is a lot of counter space. There are counters, sinks, fridges, and stoves in each bay. The dishwashing station is along the side of the whole kitchen. You can see it along the edge (under the window) in the last picture. Everything is very shiny and it's usually nicely air conditioned.

Today was my last day at BU for my project. I'm planning on going back for during the summer a bit. Rebecca was extremely nice and let me take home a couple of cookbooks, which I'm very excited about using and reading. I took home a book about baking, a book about dumplings (seasonal ones), and Jacques Pepin's autobiography which contains some recipes as well. But today was a Cooking Up Cultures: Spain class. They made this really good tortilla which wasn't really a tortilla (at least not the kind I usually think of). It was made out of potatoes and egg. It was really good, especially with this Asian hot sauce. I cut those into 8ths and plated them. There was also some paella which I did not have made with sea food (mussels and something else I believe). For dessert there was flan which I tasted for the first time today. It's a yummy food. First I took the flans out of the pans and strained some of the extra caramel sauce into a pitcher. I cut the flan into 12ths and plated those. I poured the strained sauce over the plated flan.

Tomorrow is my last day at Jorg's. The month has gone by so quickly it seems. I've had a lot of fun, and I'm glad that I was invited back to BU since it's a really nice place with really friendly people.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Almost Over

Today was my penultimate day at Jorg's. It didn't seem totally busy. When I arrived, Jorg and Jess were making a delivery (so they were not around) at Harvard since they got to make desserts for Harvard graduation. As for what I did once I arrived, I got to help make cake batter and sugar dough and some savory tart shells. They keep most of their recipes in a book called the "Bible". They keep other recipes on index cards. Because they usually make large quantities of product, the recipes usually call for something like, 5+ lbs butter or some large amount like that.

When making the cake batter, they add the wet ingredients bit by bit so that the dough/batter whips up more and becomes fluffier and lighter. Unlike the cake batter, sugar dough should not be fluffy, so you try not to over mix it.

Another intern made lunch today. It was alfredo pasta with shrimp and bruchetta. It was very tasty. I even tried a shrimp, and I realized I still don't really like shrimp that much. Usually everybody eats lunch around noon. If there's a phone call or somebody enters the store, somebody will leave the lunch table (we usually all eat around one table) and deal with the call or customer.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Strawberries and Carbonara

One of the little things Jorg makes the interns do is make lunch. I decided to make pasta carbonara since it's easy and fast to make and one of the few things I can make without much assistance/without a recipe. I was satisfied with the results because people ate it and didn't complain.

Besides making and eating lunch, I got to help sort and dip strawberries for an order of 100 dozen (1200) chocolate dipped strawberries. You don't want the strawberries that are too small because people get sad when they get small strawberries (who wants small chocolate dipped strawberries?) and you don't want rotten or weird or unripe strawberries either. I started dipping strawberries in white chocolate and one of the other interns dipped strawberries into dark chocolate. I got to taste one, and it was really good.

I couldn't stay as long as I wanted to today because of the CBI races (not that much wind = not that much fun in Mercs). Though if I stayed, I would have probably just done more strawberries.

Monday, May 24, 2010

MISSING

Today was a BU day. Another Cooking Up Cultures (I might have said "With" before, but the abbreviation is CUC so "Up" makes more sense than "With"), this time Peru. The desired menu: Ceviche on a salad with potatoes, hard boiled eggs and a sauce, and rice pudding for dessert. The actual menu: A salad with potatoes, hard boiled egg and a sauce, and rice pudding for dessert. Where is the ceviche?! There was a problem with the vendor, so the fish never came... Of course, the everybody was extremely upset since they had called on Friday confirming a delivery of fish on Monday morning at 9am and then at 9am when the fish had not been delivered they had been told that it was coming, and it didn't (at least not until after 12pm once the class was basically over).

Ceviche is basically pickled fish. Normally, the fish sits in the sauce (like lime juice) for an hour, but if you cut up the pieces small enough, they only have to sit for 15 minutes. So, instead of making ceviche today, I peeled a lot of hard boiled eggs and cut them into quarters for the salad. I then cut the potatoes into disks. Since we were making food for 50 people, there were a lot of eggs (I didn't count) and lots of potatoes.


For any of you who are wondering what BU looks like, the above picture shows the room in which most of the classes are held (where the kids and chef doing the demo are). There is a kitchen in the back of the room (usually where I am). This is also the room which the noodle class was in. As you can see, there is a mirror above the counter on which the chef works. The mirror is so that everybody can see what the chef is doing without crowding around the counter. It's a very cool setup.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

My Grandfather's Birthday

May 22 is my grandfather's birthday (I call him Baba). Jorg was, once again, a very nice man, and let me make a cake for the small gathering consisting of me, Grandma, and Baba to celebrate the special occasion. I chose a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling.

The first picture is of the cake in its unaltered state, after it's come out of the oven and cooled a bit. The top of the cake is cut off so we get a flat surface to decorate. Because there are so many cakes at Jorg's, the tops are usually thrown away. They do save some of the tops in the freezer and restock that supply when it's low. I don't quite remember what they use them for. The second picture shows a buttercream border with some chocolate ganache filling the inside. The cake is cut in half and buttercream is piped onto the sides of the bottom half to create a border. The ganache is poured into the center. The buttercream border is so the ganache filling doesn't leak out, since the ganache has to be melted to pour.

The top is then put back on the cake, as seen in the picture on the left. Then the cake is covered in buttercream, as seen in the picture on the right.

Next we rolled out some fondant and placed it over the cake, smoothing it out so that the cake was nicely covered in pretty white fondant (left). We also made some stones out of fondant. They were basically balls of dough flattened with some paper so that they had creases in them and looked more realistic. Because I wanted the cake to have a sailboat on it, we decided to decorate the cake like an ocean. We headed over to the spray station and Jorg air-brushed the cake blue so that it looked like an ocean. He also made the rocks more rock-colored (right).

And now you see the final product! I made a white chocolate sailboat using moulds earlier today. That was air-brushed and placed on the cake. We also took some of the seashells made out of fondant from the other day and sprayed them and placed them around the bottom of the cake. Jorg wrote "Happy Birthday Baba" on the cake, and I put barnacles or lots of bird poop on the rocks (my grandparents thought they were barnacles, Jorg thought it should be bird poop). My grandparents loved the cake and were very pleased. My grandmother got a big kick out of it and ate some of the shells and rocks because she likes fondant. I thought the cake was delicious, especially the middle with the ganache. We ate it with some vanilla ice cream from Gifford's.


My grandfather wasn't the only one getting a birthday cake. Kristen was as well. I got to air brush and glitterize the little silver projections that come out of the cake. I also got to put them on the cake. They're supposed to be like water spouts or something like that. This cake is such a busy cake. Lots of pretty sparkles on it.

This cake has Bono on it and it's for Jess's cousin's party. Sean painted the picture of Bono onto some fondant, and I think he did an amazing job on it. It looks really great.


Even though making my grandfather's birthday cake was a highlight of my day, I spent most of it making mini balls of cookie dough. The order was for 1000 mini cookies, and the dough they had was in balls that were too big. So one of the other interns and I had to use a smaller ice cream scoop and make 1000 mini cookie dough balls, which took such a long time. On the left side of the picture, you can see the bigger balls, and on the right side you can see the smaller balls. I also piped frosting onto some cupcakes (not pictured) for the first time today. People make it look so easy, and then you try it and it's hard. The first couple of times i tried it, there were weird spaces in the frosting and sometimes the frosting wouldn't come out of the bag. Jess gave me the tip to stay really close to the frosting you've already put down, which was a good tip because then I didn't get the weird spaces.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Under Pressure

For the first time in awhile, I went to BU today. There was another Cooking With Cultures class going on and today the focus was Argentina. In preparation for the class, we have to get together ingredients that the chef will use for the demo and then we have to multiply the recipe and make the dishes to serve to the hungry children once they watch the demo. You see some ingredients to make the dough for the empanadas set up for the demo in the picture. There are usually 50 or so people at the class. The dishes planned for the meal were empanadas with a kind of sauce and some cookies with creme de leche for dessert. The dough used for the empanadas was made from scratch in the demo, but since it would be a lot to make 100 doughs (everybody got 2 empanadas) we just used some from a package.

We were very time pressured during the preparation for this meal. First, Kevin left his keys at home, so he couldn't get into his office. He had to go home and get those. Then the cookie dough was way too dry, and we spent awhile trying to make it more moist so that we could work with it. It also took some time preparing the empanadas since we had to make 100 of those. We also had to cook everything around the same time in one oven. I'm not quite sure why, but they said the other oven smelled like goat (they had to cook a whole goat the other week for some other class). At one point, and only for a moment, Kevin and Robyn (another chef who was there to help prepare) were afraid that we would not finish on time.

Fortunately, we managed to finish everything on time and everything turned out well.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Buttercream Frosting and S'mores

Jorg would like me to blog about how he had his first s'more today, and because he's such a nice guy, I'll fulfill his request. The interns are supposed to make lunch one day, so one of the interns from Marblehead made lunch. She made a really yummy lasagna and garlic bread. She also brought s'more ingredients for dessert because she knew that Jorg had never eaten a real s'more before (we learned this fact when we were making the s'more pastries). We roasted the marshmallows over the stove. They burned quite easily since the stove was so hot.


Along with eating s'mores, I ate a lot of buttercream frosting today. Just little tastes here and there, but enough to get me full of frosting. The first encounter with buttercream frosting today was making some mocha flavored frosting for some mocha tart mini-pastries. Basically I just took plain buttercream frosting and mixed it with some instant coffee mixture. The frosting was piped into the tart shells and some plain buttercream frosting was piped on top of that (the little swirl on top). I put a coffee bean on the very top and sprinkled it with some cocoa powder.

The second encounter was choosing a color to frost some mini cupcakes. I chose purple, though the stuff in the picture has a blue tint. To make it purple, I added a whole bunch of air brush dye, and, of course, got dye on my hand in the process. The cupcakes were frosted and I put little white sprinkles on top. I was offered a cupcake to eat, but I couldn't handle anymore buttercream frosting, so I had to turn it down. I'm sure it would have been good since they were strawberry cupcakes.


Now if you subtract the "cream" from "buttercream", you get "butter" which is what you use to make croissants. Jorg makes his own croissants. I came in this morning and watched him preparing some croissant dough (he had just mixed it and was taking it out of the mixing bowl). Croissants are made from laminated dough. Basically, they are lots of layers of dough and butter, and that's what makes them rise when you cook them. Once the dough had risen a bit, we rolled them out on the rolling machine and then put butter on one side and folded the other side over to enclose the butter. Then we rolled it out again and folded it into thirds, which is what you see in the picture. You roll and fold it into thirds three times.


And surprisingly, buttercream frosting (going back to it), is made out of lots of egg whites, sugar, and butter. This is a picture of the mixer with a bowl full of egg whites and sugar (for the frosting). It's a huge bowl and a huge mixer. Some of the mixer things (a whisk thing is shown in the picture) are quite scary looking. The machine can go very fast, and sometimes it looks like the contents of the bowl will spill out onto the floor, which, I've been told, has happened in the past and it quite a big mess.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Blogs

I showed Jorg my blog today during lunch. He then decided he wanted to start a blog as well, to which I'll provide a link, if he actually starts one. I'm not sure what the best free blogging site is (something that Jorg wanted to know). I'm using Blogspot/Blogger because it was the only one I knew of when I started. My school uses Wordpress, and I'm supposed to post on their blog every once in awhile. Jorg also thinks that I write a lot, so I'm going to keep it short this time.

As for the food I dealt with today, I melted and poured some chocolate into some moulds. Then I worked in what some people termed "The Fondant Factory" with one of the other interns. I got to make fondant sea-shells and sea creatures. Basically anything ocean themed. The fondant didn't really like to come out of the moulds (even though everything was floured and everything). I think that I've been spelling "mould" like "mold" in previous posts, but I'm not sure which on is correct.

The people at Jorg's are nice but somewhat crazy (in a good way). Sean told me today that you have to be somewhat crazy to work in a pastry shop. Luckily I like somewhat crazy people (they're more interesting than non-crazy people), so I like working in a pastry shop.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

More Airbrushing and Fondant

Went to Jorg's again today. I'm not going to be at BU until Friday this week. The first thing I did when I got there was to air-brush some chocolate buttons a sparkly gold color. After I air-brushed those, I airbrushed some 125 medallions for the center-piece that BC wants. There were 2 medallions that had 125 written on them, not 125 separate medallions. They were also painted gold. I also air-brushed some treble clefs gold as well. Finally, I air-brushed some f-holes black. And that concludes my air-brushing experience today.

The other thing I did today was make fondant seals and squares for diplomas. The seals were circular and had a fancy floral design on it (leaf-like branches, swirls, etc). It was a square mold, but we wanted circular seals, so we had to use a circular cookie cutter to cut it. Basically, I just took a ball of fondant, and pressed it into the mold. For the squares, there was just a square piece of cardboard that I placed on top of some rolled out fondant. I used a pizza cutter to cut out the square.

I wasn't there that long today, so I didn't do much else. Maybe just some small things, like wrapping the base for the center piece in black decorative foil (it's just like wrapping a present). Today Jorg went to BC (Boston College) to present his idea for the center piece, so he brought along some samples. I did not go with him, so I'm not sure how it went.

There are 3 other interns working at Jorg's. 2 of them are also in high school and one of them is in culinary school, so I'm not the only intern there. Then there's Sean, who is in charge of all the cakes. I think I've mentioned him before. Finally there is Jess, who is the pastry chef. You can see Jorg, Sean, and Jess on the Food Network Challenge. They've been in a lot of episodes, but I know that they've all been in the city one (they make Boston). You could probably find a clip or the full episode somewhere online if you ever wanted a visual representation of them.

I'm not quite sure what else to talk about... I feel like one day I'm going to type "desert" instead of "desserts" without catching myself (I make this mistake quite frequently, but I usually fix it).

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Like I Said, Not Just Desserts

I went to Jorg's today. As I mentioned before, he does some catering, but not a lot. So today, I made and wrapped 4 types of sandwiches: ham and cheese, ham and turkey, cucumber and cream cheese, and chicken salad.

We did prepare some dessert-like items today as well. There were chocolate disks with walnuts, almonds, pistachios, dried pineapple, dried cherry, and raisins on it. Today was also a major pick up day for cakes (since Jorgs is closed on Sunday and Monday). There were some extremely cool cakes going out today, such as the circus cake and the basketball cake. I don't have pictures for either of them sadly.

Truthfully, today I did not take any pictures, so I'll use some of the ones I took on other days.


To continue on with the cake theme, during the week before all the cakes are decorated and after they are cooked, they are put out on this table. Usually the cakes are baked, and then put in the fridge or freezer until they are decorated so that they are easier to decorate and frost and everything else like that. As you can see, there are many different sizes and kinds of cake. All of them look really yummy.


I've also mentioned that Jorg has a retail portion of the shop. He has a display case that contains so many different kinds of goodies. Some of them are extras from special orders, but others are made for the shop. To the right are novelty cookies, shaped like different animals and then air-brushed. There are lobsters, dolphins, crabs, fish, flamingos, and probably some others that I'm forgetting about.

He also does little tarts, cupcakes, and jelly rolls. Sometimes he does pastries. Lots of good stuff that you should all try at some point.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Mini-Pastries!


Jorg does desserts for a lot of fancy events. The next one he's doing/planning is for a donor dinner at BC (people who donate 5 million dollars or more). He gets to do the centerpiece, which is music-themed because the Boston Pops are going to be at the event. I got to cut some shapes out for a model of the showpiece, which you can see in the picture. He's still deciding between two ideas for the piece, but he's going to make models of both and then see which one he likes more.

I also boxed some mini-pastries for some orders. Because there were more mini-pastries than needed, I got to take some home and put some out on display to sell. There were 8 different kinds of mini-pastry, which I will tell you about.

Staring from the back left going clockwise: We have a chocolate cookie with a raspberry filling-ball on top. Raspberry jam decorates the top with an air-brushed chocolate chip.
Next, we have another cookie dipped in chocolate (I believe) with buttercream filling and a lemon flavored candy on top. This cookie is one of my favorite cookies. It's really light, and the buttercream is really yummy.
Then we have a tart filled with chocolate ganache with more chocolate powdered on top. I'm not quite sure what the creme swirl is, but it tastes like buttercream.
After that we have a flour-less chocolate cake on top of a cake or a cookie, not quite sure which.
Next we have a cake with raspberry and buttercream with a raspberry candy on top. This dessert is really good, and if you're ever at Jorg's and they have it for sale, I'd buy a piece, or two.
Continuing on, we have a pistachio cake on top of some chocolate and a cake or cookie, like the flour-less chocolate cake. This cake is also really good.
Then we have a lemon meringue tart (I got to put the ingredients together to make the meringue).
Finally, we have the cupcakes that I air-brushed and decorated yesterday. I can't quite tell what flavor they are, but the cake is pink!

Anyways, Jorg is a nice man for letting me take home some of these mini-pastries.

I watched cakes being decorated. Sean, the guy in charge of doing the cakes, is really good at decorating them. It was really cool to watch him make flowers out of frosting and then put them on the cake. He's really fast at it as well. I got to help him by formatting and printing out a diploma that was going onto a cake.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

My Green Thumb Helps Me Grow My Plants


Except that my thumb is actually red, and it helps me crack 100 eggs (not the red part, just the thumb). I'm still amazed at how many eggs it takes to make large batches of food. Along with the 100 eggs that I got to crack, I got to unwrap 27 pounds of butter for one recipe (a different one from the eggs). That is a crazy amount of butter!

Today, I was able to stay at Jorg's for the whole day because I didn't have sailing practice, so I was able to do a lot of cool things. I used the eggs for a flour-less chocolate cake batter. I'm not quite sure what happened to it after I added all the ingredients into the giant mixer bowl.

I learned a lot today. First, I learned how to use the roller machine. I forget what's it's called already, but it has a simple name. I got to roll out dough for making tart shells.


Second, I learned how to make fondant decorations, such as leaves, baby clothing, and mini-flowers. To make the leaves (pictured left) I rolled a small ball of fondant into a cone shape. I placed it into the mold, and pressed down really hard. Then I took out the leaf-shaped piece of fondant and placed it on the cookie sheet with a little curviness so that it looked more realistic. I got to use the roller machine to roll out some of the fondant for the baby clothing (not pictured). I used cookie cutters to cut out pants, shirts, onesies, bibs, skirts, hats, and buttons. To get a round-ish shape for the button, I placed a piece of plastic wrap over the fondant, and then used to cookie cutter.


Third, I learned how to use the air brush, which is how I got the red thumb. If you get the air brush die on your finger, you're supposed to use Windex to wipe it off because water makes it stain your skin, something I didn't know until after I washed my hands. The air brush is really fun to use, though I think I need some more practice to get better at it. I air brushed the red/pink rim around the frosting on these cupcakes (pictured left, not the finished product). I also air brushed the fondant baby clothes and mini-flowers.

I took more pictures of displays and setup of Jorg's, but I'm going to save them for another day when I don't have as many pictures. There is probably other stuff that I did today that I've forgot about.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Flan Man

No pictures once again. I'll take some pictures of the set up and stuff like that next time I go (my mother's suggestion).

Cooking With Cultures is a program that the BU Culinary Program runs for kinds in middle or elementary school to come in and watch a demonstration of cooking, usually of a certain culture that they've been studying in school. The kids can learn about native dishes to that culture. After the demonstration, the kids can eat the food they just watched being prepared. Most of the classes are about Spanish culture, since most kids study Spanish in school, but there are some other cultures as well. Today was about Hopi culture and food. Basically the only thing I did to help with that class was to stir a pot of succotash so that it didn't burn.

I did, however, help make some flan for tomorrow's Cooking With Cultures program which is focused on Spain. Flan is usually made the day before the event. We made flan for 100 people, though not that many are coming. I got to crack 50 eggs, 20 of which had to be separated, today. That is a lot of eggs. We also made caramel for the bottom of the cake pans we were going to cook the flan in so that there would be a nice caramel top to the flan. When preparing food in mass quantities, you use so much of each ingredient and huge mixing bowls, which you would expect. Yet, sometimes after you triple a recipe, you look at how much you need, and you're like, "Wow. That's a lot of eggs." Even though you expect it, it can still be surprising.

And now for a little lesson (what I learned) about making caramel. When making caramel, you don't stir the sugar/water mixture because when it get onto the sides of the pan, it might boil down faster than the rest of the mixture so that you get lumps of hard sugar candy. You also don't put the heat up too high (if you're using a gas stove) because then the flames might touch the sides of the pan, causing the mixture on the sides to boil down faster and become hard as well. You take the mixture off of the stove/heat a little before you get the desired color because the sugar is so hot that it continues to cook after you take it off. In a professional kitchen, it's bad to burn your sugar because then you have to start again, which is bad especially if you're time pressured.

After I left BU, I went back to school to work on my DocFilm project which is due this Sunday. I basically finished it, so all I have to do left is write the evaluation.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Sweet Treats

Today I went to Jorg's. There was a lot going on because Gillette Stadium gets some of their food for their fancy seating from Jorg's. Jorg is bringing out some samples for them tomorrow, but today we were all making some of those samples. I don't remember everything that I did because you know you go to a new place and do new things it can be hard to remember every single thing that I did. Also, I might start one project, but somebody else would finish it, or somebody else would start something and I would finish it.

One of the samples was a S'mores tart treat, so I filled some graham cracker-flavored tart crusts with some chocolate ganache. I learned that you could put stainless steel in the microwave as long as it doesn't touch the sides, which is useful to know and the method I used to melt the ganache. Once I put the ganache in the shells, I put them in the freezer. Once they were done freezing, I took them out and put lots of mini marshmallows on them. They went into the oven until the marshmallows browned. This picture is of the S'mores before they were cooked.


I made some biscuits for a strawberry shortcake. After those went into the oven, I cut out some dough for something. I'm not quite sure what they were for though. At some point during the day, I helped grease cake pans and cut out paper circles for the bottom. I learned how to fold the paper and cut it so that you got a nice circle shape. It was really simple and easy, and it fit the pan really well.


I also made some more pecan tart filling, though I didn't fill the tarts this time. To the right, you can see a picture of a finished tart covered with powdered sugar. These were for some sort of special order, I think. Two of the other interns there this month decorated and plated cookies, which tasted really good, since if something breaks or gets messed up, you can eat it. There were also some pistachio chocolate muffin/cupcake goodies that didn't really come out of the pan that well, so we got to eat some of those as well.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Cutting Edge of Fashion

No pictures of my trip to BU today. It was a really low key day. I went in and made a salad with lettuce, cucumbers, and radishes (some leftover ingredients from the noodle night) for a lunch that Rebecca was holding. I learned some trade secrets, which I can't tell you otherwise they wouldn't be secrets anymore. Then I organized some platters of meat for an event this evening (anti-pasta style). I cut some bread with a knife that wasn't that great (they had misplaced their bread knife) so it was kind of hard, and now my pinky hurts a bit, though that could be due to sailing rather than cooking. I stayed and ate some lunch, which consisted of salad, pasta primavera, and beef stew. I thought it was delicious. I talked to Kevin while we ate lunch together. He told me about his thesis, which I'm not allowed to talk about, but it sounded very cool!

On a different note, not ILE related, I went to the senior MassArt fashion show. It was really cool. There was some really cool stuff, some slightly weird stuff, and some not so interesting stuff (at least that's what I thought). If you've watched Project Runway this season, you will know Maya Luz, a graduate of MassArt. She was at the show tonight as well.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

First Day at Jorg's

This morning, I drove out to Truly Jorg's in Saugus. It didn't take too long to get out there. Everybody at Jorg's was extremely nice and fun to be around (just like at BU). Truly Jorg's is not just a cake decorating store, so I'm going to be doing other things than decorate cakes. There's a retail portion, a wholesale portion, and a catering portion to the shop, though the catering portion is not as publicized. Jorg and the other chefs at the store make and sell all sorts of yummy desserts, such as cupcakes, tea cookies, novelty cookies, and pastries (such as eclairs). They make their cakes to order.

I was able to start doing stuff basically right away which was really nice, especially since some places (I believe) make you sit and watch for the first day you're there. To start off, we made a list of things that needed to be made and then we started making the items on the list.

Chocolate Ganache
The first thing was chocolate ganache. Ganache is basically chocolate and cream. It tasted really good. We made a huge bowl of it, so much that it fit into 5 containers. To the right is a picture of 3 of those containers. We also rolled out some sugar dough with this machine which had a conveyor belt and a flattener that could be adjusted depending on how flat/thin you wanted your dough to be. From that dough, we use a cookie cutter to cut out circles that we put into tart shell molds. We made a big tart shell and lots of smaller ones. Some of the tart shells were going to be used for fruit tarts and the others we made into pecan tarts. I mixed up some pecan filling and we poured it into some of the small shells. I had to leave before they came out of the oven.

Decorating Cookies
There was so much other stuff going on at the same time. Some people were working on cakes, another person was working on pastries, and another person was decorating cookies, which is what you see in the picture on the left.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

The Start of My Adventures!

I didn't do anything ILE related yesterday, but today I went to BU! There was an Asian Noodle class going on tonight with which I was able to help out.

When I arrived, there were already people preparing for the class. There were 4 noodle dishes and dessert. I started by getting out all of the dishes for the meal. I'm not quite sure why you'd want to know this, but I took out, in total, 150 small dishes, 50 large dishes, and 50 dessert bowls. I was able to chop some chili peppers for a spicy, sweet, salty, and something else (I forget) sauce. There were about 45 people who went to the noodle class. Once the class had started, I got to help plate, serve, and clear dishes. I had a lot of fun!

I forgot to bring a camera, so I took some pictures with my phone, which does not have the best quality.


This is the first dish that we plated and served. It noodles with a meat (pork) sauce. We used spinach, bean sprouts, radish (I think), and zucchini as garnishes. Plating 50 dishes of food seems like it could be a daunting task, but we split up the work so that some people were putting the noodles on the plate while others were putting the garnishes on.


This is the second dish that we plated and served. It's a shrimp salad type thing with a spicy sauce on top of noodles. Not really my cup of tea since I don't like shrimp and I'm not a big fan of spicy.

I don't have pictures of the rest of the dishes, but there was a fried noodle cake with a chicken-mushroom sauce over it. That was really yummy. There was also soba noodles with a special sauce and some condiments (like wasabi, dikon, etc.). For dessert, we had fruit. It was a mix of pineapple, leche, and loquats. I've never had a loquat before, but it was good.

The people who I met at BU were extremely nice and fun. There was also so much extra food afterwards. I have no idea what they did with it all.

An Introduction

So, as a graduation requirement, I have to do a senior independent learning experience (ILE). For my ILE, I am working at Truly Jorg's, a patisserie in Saugus, and I am helping out with some of the classes at the BU Culinary School/Institute. During the project, I have to keep a record of my activities, so I decided I would make a blog because I know there are multiple people who want to know what I'm up to. I will attempt to post updates whenever I do anything related to my projects.

The name of this blog, Not Just Desserts, refers to the fact that I am not only doing deserts. The URL of this blog lp-ile can refer to multiple things: Lily Pratt - Independent Learning Experience, or the version I like more, Lily Pratt - I Love Eating, which was suggested by my cousin.