So apparently I have a "man" fridge. A friend came over recently and opened it up to put some beer or maybe even a girly rum cooler type drink in and couldn't help but comment on the fact that my fridge seems to be functioning just to keep alcohol and condiments cool. I disagree, it's not a man fridge, it's a restaurant worker's fridge. I mean, I eat at the restaurant, not at home! The food there is free, cooked by pros, and they'll make me anything they have in-house. With that option, I don't think anyone I know would opt for buying food and preparing it themselves in the tiny excuse for a kitchen I have. But, if the concept of having any empty-ish fridge must be deemed "man" fridge, I've got one.
It's better than what's happening at the bakery right now. Apparently the compressor in the walk-in fridge that is basically devoted to me alone is starting to work too hard, causing it to freeze up and you can see the crystallization building up on the outside of it. Eventually if not defrosted or somesuch nonsense, the compressor will actually cover itself in ice, overheat, and start making the box hot. So, the defrosting process must begin. This means taking everything that won't survive, and making room for it in the other, slightly larger walk-in box at the other end of the restaurant. Luckily, the super friendly chef, Joe, was enlisted to help me drag all the 40 quarts of heavy cream, 60 dozen eggs, 10 gallons of milk, apples, oranges, Fatima, butter, cookie dough, and such to their new home. I left some things in there that we would take out for brunch today, but other than that, the box is looking pretty sad. We're gonna be closed for lunch this monday and of course on July 4th, so I'll actually have a real weekend! I'm pretty pumped. It also means that I've slowed down on making things to sell out of the bakery direct as there will be no one there to buy them! It's a nice wind down to the week.
My brunch prep this week went amazingly fast. I was anxious to find a new recipe for danish, as we have all this danish dough, and while I don't think it tastes that great (Pillsbury makes it, you'd think it could be a
little better, based on their magical crescent rolls and biscuits) I've been struggling to figure out how much to use every time I roll it out, and finding some interesting things to flavor it. I finally found a cool thing to do, which is twisting it into all sorts of figure eights and then filling it with pastry cream and a great apricot/orange filling. Yummy. Also stewed some extremely underripe peaches in a little sugar and added those to the mix. I'm not 100% happy with the danish, but they're a lot better than they were in the past, at least in my opinion.
I also want to start making a dish my mom saves for special occasions. She calls it blintzes, but I'm not sure that's really what these are, as they resemble nothing even close to a crepe, and there is no jam, though you could totally use jam where you use her traditional filling. It's really a phyllo pie, wrapped up in triangle fashion, filled with some really simple mix of eggs, ricotta cheese, sugar and something else, maybe melted butter. Mom, you wanna help me out here? Anyway, it occurred to me to make these for brunch, as I just need to make some little pastry type things, no limits or specifics from the higher ups, and you can freeze them to your heart's content. The only thing about these little guys that I don't like is that it means I must work with the dreaded phyllo dough. I used to make little pies filled with meat and/or veggies in the past at my place, and I had the touch then, but in the last year, I've lost it. It means that whenever I work with phyllo, I end up wasting about a quarter of the box on ripped pieces that just won't work for what I'm doing, or it dissolves in my hands! Evil. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it, but man it's frustrating at first.
I'm also getting a peanut butter cake together. I'm still trying to pick a filling, as I've got a great peanut butter frosting for it, and the cake itself has lots of peanuty flavor, I just want to find something complementary. I'm thinking either a jelly type filling, or even banana flavored whipped cream. Chocolate is out, as I've got a couple of great chocolate desserts under my belt already.
Turtle Update: Whatever the chef said to Turtle has apparently worked. The guy only says hi to me now, and the only remotely stupid thing he does is randomly walk into the kitchen and out of it to stare at my ass in passing. That works for me as long as he doesn't come near me or ask for kisses or anything. I did have a very strange interaction with one of the waiters last week though. The waiter had just gotten married, because he had gotten his illegal girlfriend pregnant. Sorry folks, but I just don't jive with marrying someone when this happens just because it's supposedly the "honorable thing to do." If you end up not being happy in the slightest, it's the same as staying together for the kids, it sets up a horrible example to the kids as far as what marriage should be, and the married people in question are miserable. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are people out there who fall deeply in love, or maybe just comfort, and things work out, but it's probably a small percentage. So "Pete", whom I genuinely like as a person, even though he spends the rest of his life not at the restaurant playing golf (what a waste!) got married in the late morning, then had his reception at the restaurant. Now everyone at the place seems to get along with this guy. He's the head waiter, and he's usually pretty jovial and has a very distinctive laugh. He adds an overall good feel to the whole place, and while I couldn't be sadder for him in this instance, I was super jazzed to make his wedding cake. He's allergic to a lot of very common foods, such as apples, pears, nuts, etc. He settled on a fancy, but not wedding-type, cake, with strawberry and lemon flavors. I had just enough lemon curd to do his cake, so I made up some sponge cake, and did layers of that spread with the lemon curd, then a layer of strawberry mousse, real strawberries, and more mousse. Then I took the last of the lemon curd and made up some whipped cream with it, and covered it with that. Wrote "Congratulations Christine & Pete", and did some intersecting lines of strawberry slices on top. Can I just tell you that I HATE writing the word Congratulations? It's just so goddam long! I also got at least two people telling the extremely unoriginal joke, "Wait, isn't her name Claudia?" The first one got me though. It was a very cool cake, and it made it even better for me that I was doing it for someone I knew and liked. After the cake was all done, I saw Pete later. He came up to me and gave me a great tip, $50, and stuffed it in my cleavage and then gave my right boob a quick squeeze! What is it with these guys? I mean, Pete and I have definitely had a few machine gun rate quips about my breasts, but I never thought he'd do something like that, and right after getting married! The weird thing is, even though I know it's completely inappropriate, somehow it was okay. My head is totally up my ass.
Sorry about the lack of photos this week, I just haven't had time to find the darn camera.
Lastly, I finally made this uber-cool looking dessert that I'm calling the "Creamy Mango Mojito." It's a mango puree/lime juice based jello, (really a gelee, but who gives a crap?) , that you pour into glasses and then set them up at a 45 degree angle, and then you put a mint & basil flavored cream on top and let that set up in the glass. In the end, it looks really friggin cool, and all the kitchen has to do at service is take off the plastic wrap and add a mint sprig. I'm thinking about sugaring the mint though. It's a great play on jello, and I think it will be a hit once I make it in smaller glasses. Maybe I should do it in shot glasses, add a bit of rum, and make it the "alcoholic's dessert" that the chef's been asking me to dream up. I'd just need to either make up a variety of flavors to serve together as a flight type dish, or make a little cake or wafer to go with it. Yummy.
That's it for this week. Everybody enjoy your 4th!
