Where did all the time go?

So its been months...hell the new year passed before I've gotten back to this. A lot has changed. In the time since my last post I turned 21 (which surprisingly the amount I drink has gone down) and moved to a completely new apartment. I got my associates degree in Baking and Pastry Arts. I've done a lot of thinking in the interim.

Life is uniquely different these days. How much of my world has really changed? I've nearly quit smoking (not for my health but for my wallet) and even that in and of itself is so strange. I'll admit I dont condone my bad habits but I never thought I would be villainized for them either. It seems that cigarrettes with the constant price changes on them are gonna go the way of the dodo because people see it so badly. I know what I'm doing to myself thank you very much, now piss off and let me use my stress relieving cancer sticks in peace will ya? In a single year its gone up THREE dollars. I barely afforded the 6 dollars a pack I used to have going for me, and now they're close on nine. That kinda hurts thinking that people distrust others to make their own choices and tax the living crap so its fast becoming something that will no longer be a choice. To my benefit I've started smoking a pipe instead. SO HA SOCIETY!

I'm starting to face the idea that pretty soon I'm not gonna be a college student. I'm not gonna be a student period(though you can argue that in society we are all students because we never stop learning). I'm gonna have to be a real adult! Ironically I take this line from a comic of all things but I think it sums up what I'm feeling right now


"When I was a child. I spoke like a child

Thought like a child

Felt like a child.

Now that I have become a man,
I have put away childish things.

But I unpacked most of them when I got there"

-machall.com

Thank god I'm in pastry. I dont have to stop playing with my food just yet.

Mama Llora's Flan

In the smith house, it was always a big deal when mom made flan. It always seemed like some kind of mystical process that I would never master, and it would take my mom a LONNNNNG (in a kid's eyes) time. Every person who has a mother knows what I'm talking about. That one recipe that no matter how simple it actually is you never think you can make it right. That some kind of mom power is needed to create it perfectly. For me its Flan, the Llora family recipe handed down from my grandmother to my mother and then she gave it to me. (Its not as dramatic as it sounds I called her one day and asked for it.)

Mama Llora's Flan

Evaporated Milk (one can)
Condensed milk (one can)
Whole milk (after emptying the condensed milk can, fill that can to get how much whole milk you need)
Eggs (4)
Vanilla
Lemon Zest (opt)

1. gently break the eggs up with a fork, carefully. Dont incorporate any air into them
2. using a 2-1 ratio of water to sugar make caramel and coat the sides and bottom of the pan you will bake with. Let it cool to a hard crack on the pan
3. mix the milks together, like the eggs dont incorporate any air
4. Incorporate eggs into the milk mix (once again let me repeat. NO AIR)
5. Strain the mixture into the pan
6. put in waterbath and bake at 350 degrees f. for one hour (cover the top of it with tin foil)
7. remove the tin foil and bake for another half hour
8. Cool completely (overnight in the fridge if you can)
9. Put the serving plate over the top and flip it over. Make sure that the serving plate can contain the "juice" from the dissolved caramel. Thats the sauce and its tasty. Dont lose that!

First time I made it....well I didnt make the caramel dark enough, and I didnt make ENOUGH of it. So I'll fix that next time. The custard itself came out fine, but unfortunately didnt have that lovely brown top that I always equate with flan in my head. So...technically....yea, it still needs mystical mom mojo to make it but hopefully you'll have better luck and learn from my mistake. I'll try it again soon enough XD

Cake(?) Pudding

You'd think that making a box cake is simple. I mean they come premixed and with instructions. You add a total of three ingredients. Mix. Put in pan. Bake. Cool. Done? I dont know what happened, but it was my roommates birthday and our mutual friend decided to make him a cake. All three of us are pastry students. and something just went wrong. The cake came out and it was like it was undercooked, but to leave it in any longer would burn the top. So we scrapped it, and got a new box of cake (without telling the birthday boy) and this time I made the cake. That one came out fine, but now we had this giant sheet cake that was edible but not good enough to frost and have as a cake. Ingenuity is a life saving trait sometimes. And sometimes its just a great trait to make something tasty out of a mistake.

Cake Pudding

Milk 2 cups
butter 1/4 cup
Sugar 2/3 cup
Eggs 3 whole
Cinnamon 2 tsp
Nutmeg (opt.) 1/2 tsp
Vanilla 1 tsp
Cake (small cubes) 3 cups
Raisin orBerries (opt) 1/2 cup

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees f.
2. Heat Milk in a saucepan till it films
3. add butter and melt it in
4. let cool to lukewarm
5. combine everything but the cake and the milk mix. and whip it lightly
6. slowly mix in the milk mixture
7. grease pan and fill pan with cake cubes
8. pour batter over the cake
9. bake for 45-50 mins.

Kind of a new spin on an old idea born from a mistake. Man I love when that happens

I never would've thought

Ya know when you're ten and in class they ask you "hey there lil billy what do you want to be when you grow up?" I was utterly convinced that when I was older I'd be a ninja. This of course is not something that a young teacher fresh out of college with her first teaching job would allow so of course my back ups were things like fireman, cop, superhero ya know, the normal ones.

I never would've thought that I'd be the way I am now, a loud, dirty mouthed, chain smoking pastry chef. Well soon to be a pastry chef, with an associates in Baking and Pastry Arts. So here I am...almost twenty-one, and not a ninja. I'm not sure how well that sits with me. Wait what the hell am I talking about, screw ninjas, I love food. I always have.

Food is important, especially when you've grown up with a filipino mother, and a Japanese/Irish world traveling father. In retrospect its almost obvious that food would become my life. I owe a lot to my parents for that one. "Visiting family" when my mom said it meant a veritable filipino feast for a week. Ten pounds gained a day on those and loving every minute of it. My grandma scurrying about like a chicken without its head in her thick accent talking a mile a minute making pancit bihon, lumpia shanghai, adobo, and kare-kare. The smells of a million and one flavors in the air and little me with no idea whats going on at all but thoroughly intrigued. Food was power there and it was Grandma Llora with the scepter (read big wooden spoon).

So from my mom and her family I got a respect for the power of food, but from my dad I learned to respect the food itself. Eating with him is an adventure, if I got anything (other than my mannerisms, personality, sense of humor, etc etc etc) from him its an utter love of ethnic food. Bring on the foods of the world, the creepy, the crawly, the slimy, the oozy, the deep fried, stir fried, pan fried, you name it I'll eat it. If it swims, walks, or flies my dad has probably put it in his stomach at some point and maybe one day I'll actually catch up to his track record. That I think was the only rule with him when we ate, was try everything. It didnt matter if you liked it or not afterward, it was that sense of adventure and willingness to try. He also has a knack for finding the best food in the most hole in the wall places there are. No five star 150 dollars per person places for him, he wants it cheap and he wants it done right. Doesnt matter if it was hot dogs or chinese food he found the right places that everyone else always seems to pass over. Some of my fondest memories are sitting in a dingy little hole in the wall eating the best hot dogs you can find and not paying more than twenty bucks for four starving teenagers and my dad. Its a particular talent I've gotten from him too.

There's nothing that makes me quite as happy as sitting in chinatown in a bustling crowded dim sum restaurant surrounded with friends, and possibly even seated with a whole lieu of chinese immigrants that share the table with us. Fine dining is not exactly what I'd call that, but its where I'm really at peace with life. Bring on the food of the world I'm ready for it.