Recipe #1 - Creamy Cheese Polenta

I've decided that I should expand the scope of this blog and not just bitch about things. So here is recipe #1, a fantastic side dish to make instead of mashed potatoes. I'm too tired right now to convert metric to Imperial so you'll have to do it yourself or wait a bit.

Creamy Cheese Polenta
60 ml / 4 T whole butter
30 ml / 2 T minced shallots
30 ml / 2 T minced garlic
750 ml / 3 cups water
750 ml / 3 cups whipping cream
225 gr cornmeal
125 gr chevre (goat cheese)
5 ml / 1 t pepper
10 ml / 2 t salt

In a large sauce pan or dutch oven, melt butter, sweat shallots and garlic (cook until translucent).
Add water and whipping cream, bring to a boil.
Add cornmeal, stir often until thickens.
Add chevre, stir until well blended.
Add salt and pepper, stir, taste, add more if neccessary.
Stir until polenta reaches porridge like consistency.
Remove from heat.
Serve as is.

Or spread onto baking sheet about 2 cm or 1/2 inch thick and allow to cool.
Once cooled, use a cookie cutter to cut shapes out.
Put shapes on well oiled grill to heat through.

I made this today and it is very yummy! Edited to add : this recipe serves 15 - 20 people depending on serving size, so you probably want to cut it in half for the average family.

What else? Words . . .

I guess this is my pet peeve of the month or I just have to stop reading the order board at school. Today's specials are buger buns, cuccumbers, and from the reference menu, slouvaki. I thought at first the "slouvaki" was a mere typo but it appears in at least 3 different places spelled that way. Maybe I am just confused and there is another Greek lamb dish that starts with "s" and ends in "aki"?

Next Blog?

Have you ever clicked on the "next blog" icon at the top of the page? Where did you end up? I've tried it a few times with interesting results. There seem to be very few active blogs out there, in English anyway. I've come across a lot of dead blogs, people start them and maybe have a few posts, then that's it, or no posts at all. Some of these look like they could have been interesting if they were kept up. There are a lot done by teens that contain very little or at least not anything adults can read (slang, gratuitous use of the caps key, etc). Then there are the advertising blogs with post after post of keywords or the same blurb over and over. And how could I forget, the porn blogs. Sigh. Well, they call them "erotic art photos". Uh huh.

Heard Around the Kitchen

Rigorous What?

Chef is explaining why meat is hung and aged. Because when something dies rigorous mortis sets in and if the meat is hung, after rigorous mortis the enzymes move around again and tenderize the meat. He said it like 3 times and I didn't have the heart to put up my hand and say "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

A Slur or Not?

Someone asks how to spell zucchini, someone else says "just write zukes, likes cukes with a z." Matt says "zukes and cukes, sounds like a racial slur." Funny how some things just sound wrong.

A Hot Pot?

Sarah is carrying a hot pot to her station. We're supposed to warn people by loudly saying "hot pot" or something like that. Sarah comes around the corner and yells out "hot and heavy!" Maybe it's the cold but it struck me as really funny, I started laughing, and Sarah almost dropped her pot.

Of coughs and cuts and chickens

Coughs

I have had a bit of a cough since early December. This past Sunday is got worse, then Monday it got even worse. Finally, Tuesday I went to the clinic. Yep, it's bronchitis. I was given a prescription for 2 different inhalers and a cough medicine that apparently contains gold ($26 a bottle!!). After taking the day off Thursday I am starting to feel better.

Cuts

Tuesday the coughing was so bad I ran out at break to buy some cough medicine. A nice extra strength one. It didn't work very well, so I took more at lunch. Bad plan. After lunch I nearly cut the end off my thumb ["do not operate dangerous equipment"]. It's not really that bad, I cut through the nail and a bit into the flesh at the end. I wish I'd cut it all the way off because now I have to be careful not to snag it or it will rip off. Ouch!

Chickens

Last week I volunteered to help at a Saturday luncheon that the school was catering. I learned how to make 7 chicken feed 70 people. You debone them, butterfly them, pound them flat, put some filling down the middle and roll them up. They cook tightly rolled in cling film and foil, then are sliced very thinly, with 3 pieces fanned out for each portion. It was a fun day, we learned all about the ins and outs of banquet serving, and we got some of the left overs (no chicken though).

The latest cooking school doings

So since my last post I finished my dining room stint with a rotation through the entremetier (veg and starch cook) station. I made risotto, cous cous, polenta, mashed potatoes & yam, vegetable custard, braised root veggies, and sauteed mushrooms, spinach & swiss chard. It was a very busy week.
Our team had now switched over to the cafeteria again. My first rotation was pasta. That was fun! I got to use the pasta machine to make fresh pasta. Holy cow! It tastes SO good fresh. I did 2 different pastas (fettucine and rigatoni), then a fantastic chicken curry with basmati rice (Must make this one at home! I will invite Niko and Rowena, the curry connoisseurs.). I was away for the vegetable strudel so someone else made it, and Friday is leftover day. Friday is also breakfast day, so our team went in early for breakfast service. I made omelets. Took a bit of getting used to doing it the right way (ie Chef's way), but it was fun.

Ninja Mouse to the Rescue!

Bizarre thing happened the other night at 0300. I woke up and heard a very loud "squeek, squeeeeek, squee-eeek!" I thought the mice were fighting, so I go to the bathroom (where they are housed temporarily until I build a cat safe shelf) and see the door open. Uh-oh! Look in the door and see the lower door of the cage is open. More uh-oh! Try to focus eyes and count mice. One. Move bog roll tubes. Still one. Move little grass hut. Still one. Dig around in bedding. Still one. Oh shit! Where is mouse #2?
Look on floor, start moving laundry around. Hear really loud "SQUEEE-EEEE-EEEEK!" from kitchen, run in expecting the worst. What do my very tired eyes see? One yellow cat crouched down looking at the wall, kitty corner (pun not intended) from him there is a torti cat crouched down looking at the wall. Up against the wall, one tiny mouse, on her hind legs, little paws extended in karate stance. "Squueeeekkk! Squeeeek!" which I guess is the mouse equivalent of "Hi-ya!" or "Bring it on drool face!"
I grabbed her and put her back in the cage. Luckily she is just missing a tiny patch of fur on the back of her neck and appears to be otherwise uninjured. Of course, I had a really hard time getting back to sleep after that excitement. Last night the instigator torti cat, Allegra, figured out how to open the bathroom door, so I had to move the mice to Ryan's room.

More Word Rants

I can't believe the spelling that goes on at school! All my classmates are high school graduates and half of them can't spell. As seen in the walk in cooler recently: letice, rutabeggar, rutabeggers, leaks (not meaning that the container had a hole in it), and coilflour. On the order board : popperdoms (just read the box for Pete's sake!), mophandel (a distant relative of the composer perhaps?), and cellery. In the freezer : chicken stoc and veal stalk (not sure if it stalks you or vice versa).

Then there is pronounciation (again), excuse my phonetics: guacamole = gwak-a-mo-lay not gwaka-mole (I even heard that on Family Guy recently, Brian the dog corrected the mispronouncer), confit = con-fee not con-fitt. Okay, they are both in other languages but if you're going to work in cooking you should take the time to learn to pronounce the terms.

Last one! Inappropriate word use. Dethaw is not a word, it does not mean defrost. If it was a word, which it is not, it would mean the opposite of thaw, to freeze. Arrgghh!

Darn! Where are my darnes?

I bought a packet of 4 salmon darnes (slices of fillet) and I swear I put it in the freezer. I can't find it anywhere! I've turned out the fridge & freezer and my little 4cu foot freezer. No salmon. Unless it got left out accidently and the dogs ate it, I will have to conclude that aliens took it.

The Mouseketeers

Not the Disney ones. I just remembered the other thing I was going to post! Even though the late Harold E Mouse is still in the freezer awaiting burial, we have refilled the mouse cage. Two little girly mice this time. They are tiny and SO cute and cost a whole $1.70 each (while the cage ran me about $70 with tax, something wrong with that picture). I think they are currently called Kome and Kagome, but Selena keeps changing their names.

Of Hellhounds, Broken Cars, and Food (of course)

Hellbound Hounds

Or one in particular. Daisy, our neighbour's scary bitch, took a chunk out of Darwin as Niko walked by yesterday (See Anagram for Ink). Luckily Mr D is OK, just a 4 inch line of stitches across his flank (Daisy is a big, nasty piece of work, so it could have been a lot worse). We'll be going down to the neighbours to present them with the vet bill tomorrow.

My Car

Went in for work, about $800 worth. //hack, cough, wheeze// Almost the whole cooling system was replaced - radiator, thermostat and water pump - due to leaking. More like hemoraging (sp?). They tried to fix the wipers, but of course they worked when the car was in the shop and it hasn't really rained since so I haven't tested them yet. Also I have a hole in my muffler and will need a new one soon. //sigh// She seems to be running well now though, fingers crossed.

Food

This week in Culinary School . . . Let's see, I was saucier, which means I cooked the meat for the main course. We had pork tenderloin, stuffed salmon in puff pastry, lamb shanks, beef bourginonne, and veal blanquette (the latter 2 are types of stew). It was a lot of fun and I only burned myself once. //grin// Next week I'm on veg and starch, so I get to learn how to make risotto. Mum & John, Gramma, Niko and Ryan came in for lunch on Wednesday. They seemed to enjoy it. We did a takeout box for Selena so she wouldn't be mad that she missed it. Ryan was on exam week, so he was not in school. And the best news of all, the dead weight has been pruned from our team - Casey left or was booted, depending on your interpretation. He was sick again, 2 days this week plus 4 days a week or so ago, and he was told he wouldn't graduate as he'd missed too much time. Ya think? So we are getting Angelina from the other team and will now be even with 5 each team.

There was something else I was going to add but I've forgotten what it was. Apparently it was not that important . . .