i look good in a chefs toque.

May 14th, 2009Tags: , ,
| big news, good stuff, life, school | chris | 1 comment



it’s official. i’ve graduated from culinary school at le cordon bleu, portland. now what?

lovely hula hands

October 21st, 2008 | food, good stuff, school | chris | 2 comments

i finally have an externship lined up. lovely hula hands is a delicious local restaurant that serves up a variety of enjoyable dishes. here are a few articles that help describe their cuisine.
portlandfoodanddrink.com
willamette week
a few others

i’m really excited to get started there in three weeks. until then i’ll be cooking in restaurant bleu during dinner from 2:30pm to 10:00 with service starting at 6:00.

baking is fun?

June 11th, 2008 | baking, food, fun, school | chris | 0 comments


i’ve been quite hesitant to post about my last cycle. intro to baking finished up last week and i found something out about myself. i like baking. if you would have asked me 3 weeks ago what i enjoyed more, baking or cooking, i would have laughed and said cooking, hands down. if you were to ask me that now, i’m not sure what i would say.

throughout the cycle we learned how to do simple things like kneading dough and being patient with the process. we made breads, pies, tarts, ginache, laminated doughs like croissants and pastries, puff pastries, muffins, biscuits, . . .the list goes on. i really enjoyed learning the process of having patience with the process and staying disciplined. i learned a lot about myself throughout this process.

check out this photostream on my flickr account and look at the delicious goodness we made.

intro to garde manger

May 21st, 2008Tags: , ,
| good food, just stuff, school | chris | 0 comments

as i said before, garde manger is mainly just a fancy word for the cold kitchen, however that is not how it is literally translated. that said, intro to garde manger was a great class. we learned the basic components of salads, appetizers, and hors d’oeuvre.

overall it was a fun class with a lot of opportunity for creativity and experimenting. i’m really looking forward to the challenge of advanced garde manger. that will come around next cycle after i finish this current one. for this cycle we are in our first baking course. everything i see and hear in this class is new to me. i don’t know much of anything about baking, so i really look forward to getting my hands dirty and taking it out on some dough. this first week we’ve been strictly working with bread dough and in the coming two weeks we’ll be doing some pastries, cookies, and all other sorts of baked goodness.

stay tuned.

bottling some beer

May 3rd, 2008Tags: ,
| beer, good stuff, school | chris | 2 comments

i have finally come around. it’s something i’ve wanted to do for awhile and being in a city where it’s hard to find anything but a local brew, i gave in to the itch to make my own beer. i can’t remember if i posted about the batch i started and don’t really want to go looking for it. sorry. either way, there was no better opportunity than to join the brew club at school and start learning. thankfully, a guy in my class, neil, is crazy beer smart and really knows his stuff.

we started this batch in mid-march and finally bottled it a few days ago. so now the beer is undergoing the bottle fermentation stage where for the next 3 weeks the residual sugars ferment, generating CO2 which is trapped in the bottle and allows for a natural carbonation.

i now have around 4 gallons of beer in my apartment that i can’t drink. in the meantime, i’ll be handing bottles out to my friends. beer makes a great gift. :)

[school pictures]

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