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Private Chef Chronicles: Summering in the Hamptons (Part 2!)

Well, today is Monday here in the Hamptons. All day. Just wanted to keep you guys in the loop. You know, the super exclusive, utterly fabulous loop of summertime in the Hamptons. I ran into Gwyneth Paltrow the other day at yogalates, and we chatted about the benefits of getting weekly facials and the state of our hydrangeas over nonfat soy lattes.

Nope. That didn’t happen.

What did happen is that I cooked things. I went ahead and cheffed. Privately. I’ve officially been a private chef for 4 weeks now, and this is all I have to show for it:

banana cream tart

butter & jam thumbprint cookies

goat cheese & zucchini tartlettes with green salad

almond & apricot biscotti

hors d’oeuvres – tortilla chicken cups with tomato, corn and edamame

rustic peach cake. Ingredients? Rustic and peaches.

chocolate chip cookies, naturally.

and the ever-present oatmeal raisins. I make a lot of cookies.

toasted coconut cake

strawberry shortcakes

The good news is that I’m still alive, am still getting paid to cook, and have decidedly mastered the art of the grilled vegetable.

Also, I get to spend my days off sleeping late, doing — or, um, trying my really, really hardest to do — crossword puzzles (Thursdays are hard, yo), and drinking chocolate milkshakes with my gorgeous Grandma.

All at my favorite sunny house at the end of the island. The one with the big yellow door, the closets that smell like mothballs and the old raccoon prints in the garage.

There’s no yogalates or soymilk, and I don’t cook anything.

But it’s really pretty wonderful.

Private Chef Chronicles: Summering in the Hamptons (Part 1)

So, did you all have a nice, relaxing long weekend to celebrate the 4th of July? Sunbathing, barbecuing, boozing it up with your friends and family? Yeah?

Eff you.

…Just kidding. Though I got to participate in approximately none of the above because I was busy cooking myself into the ground and then not getting to eat anything because apparently that’s what you sign up for when you decide to become a private chef, I don’t begrudge you your fun-filled holiday weekend. Much.

No, actually, the fact of the matter is, multiple private dinner-parties during fun summer holidays aside, I’m getting paid to cook, and that’s pretty damn awesome.

Want to see some of the things I’ve been making for my very special Bridgehampton family? (I’d tell you more about them, but for now I’d like to actually keep my job. Maybe later I’ll tell you that they’re a family of four – a mother, a father, and two teenage daughters – and that they like to have a plate of crudité before and a platter of oatmeal raisin cookies after every evening meal. But for now you know nothing.).

Here, the savories:

And here, the sweets!

Chocolate Whoopie Pies

4th of July cupcakes

4th of July chocolate-dipped pretzel rods

So um, yeah. I’ve been busy. Tomorrow, I’m cooking for a party of twelve. The menu is ambitious, but I’m excited about it. It has potential. If it’s successful, I’ll tell you about it in my next post. If it fails… I’ll probably still tell you about it. For now, have some crudité. …It’s mandatory.

(doo doo dee dee dah dah) ahh honey honey.

Just wanted to post a few pictures of what my classmates and I have been doing at school these days – mostly playing with sugar. Poured sugar, blown sugar, pulled sugar, rock sugar… it’s uh, pretty sweet. (heyo!)

Lollipop anyone?

Candy cane!

Ribbon candy

Poured sugar pets.

Jessica’s blown sugar fruit basket. She’s kind of awesome.

Kristyn’s blown sugar giraffe. Also awesome.

Hungry hungry caterpillar
Chipmunks in love in sugar

Sugar Scrabble board

You sunk my sugar battleship

Operation!

The most delicious board game of all
Pretty sweet, huh?

Chocolate, duh. Or, more specifically, death of mini chocolate “cupcakes” by ferocious, mean-faced chocolate cupcake monster.

Don’t follow? It’s okay. Look:

This is my latest FCI-assigned chocolate project. The assignment was to design a chocolate showpiece that embodies this theme: if you were a creature or monster, what would you be?

This is me.

I’m calling it (me?) a “quarter-life cupcake crisis monster.” What do you think? Can you see the resemblance? Notice the swirly chocolate “frosting” – maybe brunette curls?

And these are my poor, delicious little chocolate victims:

It’s too bad they’re so adorable and delicious. Maybe if they weren’t made out of pure chocolate, I wouldn’t want to eat them.

…Yeah who am I kidding? Of course I would. I’m a pastry school student, for pete’s sake. Eating cupcakes is like, homework.

Life is really hard sometimes.

No one’s hangin’ stockin’s up,
No one’s bakin’ pie,
No one’s lookin’ up to see
A new star in the sky.
No one’s talkin’ brotherhood,
No one’s givin’ gifts,
And no one loves a Christmas tree
On March the twenty-fifth.

– Shel Silverstein

Pastillage Cake Stand by Sarah K.

“I like Rabbit,” said Pooh.

“…Because he uses short, easy words, like ‘how bout lunch?’ And ‘help yourself, Pooh.'”

I’ve always been a big fan of A. A. Milne and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood. Eeyore, Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, Tigger, Kanga and Roo – and of course, the rumbly-tumbled Pooh Bear himself. And here he is! Isn’t he cute? So cute you could just eat him, I think.

Yep, that’s our friend Winnie the Pooh, in chocolate form. Entirely edible! The base is white chocolate with a flower-patterned transfer sheet print, the hunny pots are molded dark chocolate, filled with white “chocolate plastic” hunny, and Pooh Bear himself is a creamy milk chocolate cutout. His shirt and the bumblebee on top of his head are also modeled from chocolate plastic. …Don’t worry, it’s not actually plastic – it’s made from sugar, water, corn syrup and melted chocolate – more like a very flexible tootsie roll. At any rate, it’s great for small decorations on chocolate showpieces. Like, say, for molding a silly old bear’s t-shirt.

Or a bowtie and apron for the pizza man.

made by Sarah K.

Gahhh – don’t you just love chocolate?

In the comments from my last post, someone asked if I have a recipe for homemade marshmallows. I like to use this one from Alton Brown. It makes a lot of marshmallows though, so you may want to cut it in half. You could flavor them simply with vanilla, as Alton suggests (listen, in my head we are on a first name basis, ok? Shut it.), or you could throw in some cinnamon or use peppermint extract to spice them up a bit. Either way, enjoy these fluffy mallows with some hotta chocolatta!

Well guys, it seems we are smack dab in the middle. In the middle of a slushy, sleety New York City snowstorm, on a day that marked the midway point in my pastry program at FCI. And you know what that means, don’t you?

Midterm!

The midterm for the pastry program at FCI is much different than the midterm for the classic culinary program – mostly because instead of turning out dishes of sautéed skate and roast chicken, pastry students have to make cake. Doesn’t that sound hard? Doesn’t it sound like a test you would just hate to take?

I know.

Actually, to be fair, today’s midterm wasn’t just about cake. It was about whole egg foam cake and separated egg foam cake and chiffon cake. And buttercream and Bavarian cream and fruit mousse and chocolate glaze and fondant and even (in some soon-to-be-revealed cases) rice krispie treats.

The assignment was to create a “celebration cake” and, using the medium assigned (I pulled Genoise cake, buttercream and fondant from the exam designation hat) decorate your cake to fit your theme. My class turned out some absolute stunners – birthday cakes and Mother’s Day cakes, cakes for baby showers and bridal showers and valentines:

Kelsey’s 4th of July cake

Jessica’s Birthday cake

Zoe’s Spring Celebration

Sarah’s Sweet Anniversary Cake

Chelsea’s Birthday cake

Audra’s Baby Girl cake

Mai’s Bridal Shower Beauty

Kristyn’s Mamma’s Day cake

Lawpo’s Sweetheart cake

And me? I chose the Olympics. Specifically, the popular (“popular?”) phenomenon known as curling. You know, curling? The Olympic sport (“sport?”) where the guys (or gals, or 6-month pregnant gals) wear a slippery shoe and throw a teapot down an alley of ice so that the other guys (or gals, etc.) with the Swiffers can yell and try to get the teapot to… to do something, anyway. It’s fascinating. Or, at least, it’s mildly entertaining.

And in some matches (curling matches? games? rounds? I don’t pretend to know), I hear it can sometimes get a bit delicious:

A curling cake! A cake designed to look like a curling stone! Happy Winter Olympics!

View from the top

View from the back

Info: this cake is a vanilla genoise, soaked with amaretto simple syrup, filled with coffee buttercream, and covered in rolled fondant. I molded the curling stone handle out of rice krispie treats and covered it with fondant before affixing it to the cake with toothpicks.

Amaretto-soaked vanilla genoise and coffee buttercream filling

-Shel Silverstein

Look at this. Do you see this?

Spiked Pecan Sticky Buns

Pear, Cherry and Apricot Fruit Cake

This is what they call a nice, big eff you! to any kind of resolutions anyone might have had for a slightly leaner 2010. It’s also what I’ve been making at school this week. Apparently, Viennoiserie doesn’t just mean “yeast leavened baked goods.” It also means “chubby 2010.”

Well, you know what? FINE. As long as I keep getting to learn about yeast and proofing and fermentation and crumb and crust, I’m decidedly ok with that. I mean, just look at these.

See that? I made that!

That, dear friends, is what is called a Sally Lunn Bun. Not only is it buttery and chewy and delicious, it has the best name I’ve ever heard for what is basically a dinner roll. Now I don’t know who Sally Lunn is, but I will say this – I like her buns.

I know it doesn’t look like it now, but I do have recipes for you – they’re coming soon, I promise. For now, check out my brand new, interwebs-savvy twitter page. Olivejuiced Dunk & Crumble tweets!

Wait What? What just happened? I think I blacked out. I remember a lot of cookies, some kind of miracle that took place on 34th Street, some Chinese takeout and something about a ball dropping… at any rate, now it’s bitterly cold outside and the sidewalks are covered in pine needles and confetti.

Any ideas? Hm?

Let’s see… from the look of it:

tiny lederhosen-wearing cookie

Snowmen cookies. And Brett Favre.

It was definitely not my birthday (no cupcakes is clue number one), and I’m pretty sure I’d remember Flag Day.

Anyway, I have this list of “resolutions” I found on my desk the other day, and I thought I’d share:

1. Learn to make croissants.
2. Blog more. More than twice a month. Once a week.
3. Have more fun exercising.
4. Visit Seattle. And Brasil.
5. Read more books.
6. Learn to can things. Canning.
7. Go ice skating.
8. Understand what’s going on on LOST.
9. Spend more time with friends and family.

So, what about you? What are your Flag Day resolutions?