Externship

It's been a while since my last update, for which I apologize. It's apparent that the CIA is obviously hard to infiltrate!

Currently I am on my externship at Solbar in Calistoga, just 10 minutes north of the CIA in St. Helena, but before I dig to deep into that, let me sum up the final months of my first year at school.

The last update was right after Skills 3, which marked the beginning of my second semester at the CIA. After Skills 3 I had Cuisines of the Americas where we learned about how cuisine here in America has evolved and also cuisines of South America. It was great because we got to work in pairs rather than teams and concentrate on one dish for two days. The disappointing part of the Cuisines classes was that each person did not get to make every dish, but saw everyone's dish and tasted it. I had two chefs for that class because another class was taking it with us and Chef Tucker was one of those chefs. It was a great class and I have a bunch of recipes and techniques that I learned from it.

Possibly my favorite class thus far was Cuisines of Asia, the class after Cuisines of the Americas. We worked in teams again, but it was the first time we were given a menu and told to get it done before a specific time. It was great to work on something without having Chef peer over your shoulder every couple of minutes, but he was there if we needed help. This class' final was also my favorite part of the course. We did not take a written exam, but only an identification test and we had to lead cooking demos. It was great to lead a quick 15 minute demo for my classmates because it is definitely something I would consider doing in the future. Chef said I did an amazing job, "the best presentation he has seen in a very long time."

After Cuisines of Asia, I took Breakfast and Lunch cookery, both of which we amazing. Breakfast was hard to get up so early from, but it was extremely rewarding to work action stations and cook breakfast for all the other students in the school. Lunch was the same way and since everything was made to order, it gave us plenty of practice to showcase our serving and cooking abilities.

The last class of the year was Garde Manger. This class was all about sausage making, smoking, cold foods and appetizers. It was a fun class and a good way to end of the school year because it was slower paced. In the middle of this class I had my second term practical. This required test had to be passed in order to go on externship so the tension was high throughout the class. Students were very nervous about passing or not and I had a little case of the jitters as well. After everything was out of my system, I just relaxed and had a great time during my practical. I made beef stew, mashed potatoes, chicken consomme and vegetables for my test and passed with flying colors. After my practical and Garde Manger were over, I finally started my externship.

Solbar, Calistoga's premiere California cuisine restaurant, is a Michelin Star rated restaurant and serves amazing local, fresh California cuisine. Chef Brandon Sharp is a great chef that calls it California Soul Food. It has been a great experiencing, tough, but finally rewarding. I had to do prep and some banquets work for the first couple of weeks, which was difficult because I wanted to cook more, but now I am on the lunch line. This week I will be working the grand opening of our pool bar and am very excited about that. I have been there one month now and have two more to go, so things are going in full swing right now. I will update more as time goes on, I promise I will be better at it.

I have no special culinary ideas for you this time, except a quote from one of my favorite chefs, Julia Child.

"If you're afraid of butter, use cream!"

Until next time, happy eating.