Day 6 at The Culinary: The Dawn of Pictures

Hello everyone, today is a special day.

This post is important because it starts the days of posts with lots of pictures. On this day, I decided to start taking pictures of everything, not just some things. Keep in mind I decided this after lunch. It was mostly because I was afraid I'd look like a fool taking pictures of my meals in front of all of the other students. Also, the teacher who runs the Banquet dining room looks old and angry, and I thought he might yell at me for having a phone out. The camera I use is also my phone.

Like most days, I woke up and got ready to eat. I went to Banquet and here's what happened:

-- Sausage and Mushroom Risotto
-- Baked Salmon, Spinach with Bacon, and Horseradish Pommes Purée
-- New York Style Lemon Cheesecake with Strawberries
-- Brown Cow

Pommes Purée: French version of mashed potatoes

Risotto: An Italian rice specialty made with arborio rice which is made by stirring hot stock into a mixture of rice and sometimes onions, adding more stock only when the original has been completely absorbed, creating a rich and creamy product

Mixed feelings about today's lunch. It all sounds excellent, if you ask me, but the food was sub-par. When I say sub-par, I don't mean in comparison to other meals this time; I mean in general.

I'm used to risotto being in ball shape, or in some form that provides a crunch. This plate had the risotto in a thick liquidy pool with small pieces of sausage and mushroom in it. It was too much flavor, and I just ate the sausage and mushrooms. The main dish was the worst part. The salmon was as it should be and I ate it all. Same with the spinach and bacon. It was very good and I ate it all. The problem was that for some reason, there were more mashed potatoes than anything else. There was a lot of it. That's fine if it was tasty, but I decided I don't like horseradish in my mashed potatoes. I love horseradish too, and I eat it with lots of things, but this just didn't work. The cheesecake was the best part. Fabulous flavor in the cheesecake. There was only one problem with it: I wanted a lot more. I don't mean this as a critique, I'm just saying I loved it. Very rich and just the right amount of lemon flavor. The brown cow was the specialty drink during it all, and was pretty much a coke float. Not bad, just didn't make much sense with the menu.


So that was an interesting meal, and I couldn't wait for the next one to see if it would make up for my sadness.


Before the next meal, I had Math. Nothing worth talking about for Math. Here was dinner from K16:

-- Sauteed Duck with White and Wild Rice, Baby Bok Choy and Orange Sauce
-- Hazelnut Chocolate, Napoleon and Apple Tart

Bok Choy: A mild, versatile vegetable with crunchy white stalks and tender dark green leaves

Napoleon: A dessert made with crisp layers of puff pastry spread with créme patissiere and either glazed with thin icing or dusted with powdered sugar

This was a fantastic dinner. Hands down one of the most visually appealing. In fact, I think it might be the most visually appealing plate I've seen so far. But that's just my opinion. The dish didn't taste as good as it looks, but that's purely because it looks so incredibly good. And yes, that's my gum on the far end of the plate. The duck was duck, so that means it was great and I was happy. Orange sauce is usually a wonderful choice and proved true in this case. The rice was a little undercooked, but the bok choy was great. And guess what? I'd never had bok choy consciously before (I know it's hidden in lots of Asian take-out)!

As for the dessert, oh my. These desserts were crazy good. The napoleon was possibly the best I've ever eaten. Every description you can associate with a good napoleon was in this one: light and fluffy cream, delicate and crisp pastry, sweet but not too sweet icing. The apple tart was superb as well. The pastry on the bottom was puffy and perfect, and the apples were sliced super-thin and baked just to the right consistency. I don't remember exactly how the hazelnut thing was because I just ate it in one bite and didn't stop to think about it.

It looks like today we have one new addition: Bok Choy. And the list of foods I've never tried before coming to the CIA grows even larger! 

Product Knowledge was great as always. If I remember correctly, we tasted pineapple, mango, sun gold tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. It was very good pineapple, but not the best mango. It was a little under-ripe to my liking, and I like it soft and juicy. Then we tried the two tomatoes. I'm not a huge fan of eating tomatoes by themselves, but I ate them anyway. The cherry tomatoes were as I expected, and I didn't enjoy eating the whole thing by itself. It was a little over-ripe and so it was a little too tart. However, the sun gold was the best tomato I've ever tried. I didn't know tomatoes could taste that sweet, it was like any other kind of fruit. They were tiny, orange-yellow, and were just really pleasant.

Until the next post,
Eat well, then eat more