Hazelnut Macarons

Just a quick one, Thought it would be good to share the photo of what I have done a few days ago. My Hazelnut macarons with Espresso buttercream filling.

Macarons

I have just finished piping a batch of hazelnut macarons. While waiting for it to crust, I thought it would be best to keep myself busy and to type up some random thoughts just to keep my impatient mind off it. I am nervous. Will I be able to fill it tomorrow? Or will this batch end up in the bin tonight. Its my first time to try using another nut instead of the traditional almond meal used. I am unsure, but hopeful.

So what is a macaron? Is it a cookie? To some perhaps. Is it a confection? Yes, it satisfies a sweet tooth craving although it has unique characteristics of its own. Is it a meringue? Yes, it is made with beaten whites and sugar then almond powder folded in(traditionally), but it is not quite just a meringue. It is hard to describe a macaron with words alone. It is just like describing the color red to a blind person. The only way to actually get to know these little gems is to have a bite of a really good macaron. A really good macaron will have a smooth and thin egg-shell like crust that will give in to a moist and soft interior. It will have a foot, which is a lace or bubble like ribbon around the shell and it will have a generous amount of filling enough to give a burst of flavour in ones mouth.

The first time I was introduced to macarons was when I was a pastry student in school. It was a brief introduction about its popularity in France and its difficulty to make. Consistency was the worst part of it. It's such a wonder how beating a meringue and folding in almond meal can actually be so difficult. We had varied recipes from italian based to french based meringue. Different instructors would show different folding methods, yet consistency has always been a problem. I have also tried a few of these macarons in some of the pastry shops in Asia. However, most of the time, it was not quite how good it was described in books. So it was for me quite a bit over rated for a time. My obsession with macarons has never actually fully set in until I went to Paris and actually had a taste of what everybody has been raving about. I stood obligingly in the long que with my sister both at Laduree and Pierre Herme's. Excitement was just building up as we waited for our turn to choose what we would bring home. With our bags of goodies, we went back to our hotel and sampled these gems. It was indeed a taste like no other. From then on, I became determined to actually learn it and be able to make little mounds of yumminess. At home I tried more conservative flavours for the first few times. So far I have made Passionfruit and milk chocolate, morello cherry, green tea, and now getting my hands on hazelnut. Also thinking of experimenting on flavors that play with herbs and flowers. Orange and basil perhaps or lavender and chocolate? The options are just endless!

Just pulled out my hazelnut macarons from the oven. They smell divine. The first tray look good, except for 2 pieces, which are a bit wonky. The 2nd batch looked the same. Although the foot on a few of them spread out a bit more compared to how my macarons normally looks like. They have a thin crust as well but the interior crumb seems to be a little bit more chewy then the almond macarons I normally make. Perhaps lesser hazelnut to almond ratio next time? Hmmm... I will fill them with espresso french buttercream once they are cooled. :) I'm happy today. I'm actually off work today, should be resting and doing other activities away from the kitchen. I just can't help it.

My Swedish escapades...

In food, the Swedish will veer from the extremely simple, and comforting meatballs, to their steak tartare comprised of minced or finely chopped raw beef. If you think that was originally French, think again. Classically steak tartare is served together with a raw egg yolk as well. 

I won't be eating it like it was my usual steak, but like the the exotic spiders from Cambodia, and the Philippines' Balut, this is obviously the European's entry to weird food category. My friend Ulrika says it's very fresh. She prepared a fork just enough for one bite. And I am really surprised. The beef melted in my mouth, there was no foul taste. the capers - yes, they were there and you could taste it. It was good. I'd say it's edible. And I'm glad I've tried it.  So just to be clear - i didn't have the Steak Tartare as a first course. No... I had instead, Ox Marrow with stuffed Snails. 

The taste was surely familiar... as the separate elements were something I recognize and have had before. It was definitely rich and quite appropriate for below zero temperatures in Stockholm. The best part was when you take the bread and you dip it into the marrow! YUM! Reminds me of my childhood!


For my main course, I had something called an isterband. This is suppose to be the representation of what is considered "poor man's food" in Sweden. While we have the garlic rice, tomato and dried fish - they have this sausage. At the restaurant, it was served with creamy dill potatoes and pickled beet root. I quite like the potatoes and beet root... although I wasn't much a fan of the sausage. I suppose, after a little research I might have had the syrliga isterband which is defined by its slightly sour taste. 

For sure, I don't think I'll try the isterband again. 


I think I've had enough weird food for one night... so tomorrow, it's back to Swedish Meatballs! 

Flour and Water

I am fascinated with bread and the wonders of how flour and water combined together can give different flavors and textures.

Just recently, I was very fortunate to have been given the chance to have a day of bread baking training with La Madre Bakery’s Owners. One of our Artisinal bread suppliers in the hotel. Working with starters would be one of the things that is taught in pastry school of course but spending a day with them actually polished off a lot of my bread baking techniques. Even gave us a couple of hundred grams of their 40 year old rye starter. I of course am still attempting to keep it alive up to this point feeding it every other day with “organic” rye flour ( a very expensive feed... costs me $6 for 750g of it!).

Since then, I have tried to make a few loaves of bread from it. I made a sourdough loaf of which I shaped into a tapered batard and proofed it in a banneton. Bannetons are bentwood willow baskets that are used to shape breads.




Like making 8 kilos of puff pastry at work is not enough to satiate my baking craving, I have also decided to make croissants at home. Devoid of the comforts of a commercial pastry kitchen of course where I have a whole room of refrigerator space and a sheeter to roll my dough with a push of a button and a turn of a lever. I almost regretted the moment I even thought of making these breakfast pastries as I was doing my second turn using my small wooden rolling pin on my small kitchen countertop. Flour all over the floor and a few on the carpet as well. I used the recipe on a book a got a long time ago from an American baker. A very popular one in Los Angeles called the La Brea Bakery and one I truly admire. It says the recipe make large croissants. Indeed it was big, very big! I used my starter as part of my detrempe ( the dough in making the pastry). I was happy with the flavor, texture, crust and shape of the croissant I made. Soft crumb inside, flakey layers of pastry and blistered crust! I will however next time definitely make it twice smaller. These ones are huge really huge!

The Bagel. Of all the breads that I made, this one actually got stuck on me. Every time i feed my starter I would actually use half of it to make a small batch of bagel. It took me three tries to make the perfect bagel that well... can make me happy. I would mix the dough on day one, retard it overnight then cook it and bake it the next day. The first few tries, I followed the recipe which instructed to cook the bagel right after it has been retarded. It came out to be a very heavy bagel. The second time around, I proofed it at room temperature. Did not make that much of a difference. Winter is not a very ideal temperature to make breads I realized, not like in Asia where my bread just naturally grows just putting it on a counter top. So I made a makeshift proof box by putting a pot of boiled hot water on the oven floor, my tray of bagels on the second level then closing the door tight. That kept the environment warm and moist activating the yeast quicker than it would be on normal room temperature. The result is an evenly spaced crumb. Boiling the bagel in water gave the crust a chewy texture. Shaping is equally important as well. Too big a hole will give you donut looking bagels, to small and it will look like a navel of a baby’s tummy.



This is so far as my baking adventure has gone. Perhaps on another day, I’ll mix flour and water again.

The champagne that I like

It's funny, but since my initiation to the wonderful world of spirits, liquors, wine and the bubblies, I have not ben exactly a fan of Champagne. You see, my preference is vodka and red wine. But that's not to say I don't dabble in having a pint then and again.

I wonder if it was the reputation of Champagne... for the rich and famous, expensive (usually not within my budget range), and snobbish. It's not me at all. But there is indeed much to learn about Champagne, especially after I've read a few articles about it. The quality of the Champagne compared to artificially carbonating a wine is definitely obvious, since we are comparing the opposite ends of the scale. After a tour in a winery in France (not in Champagne though) I learned a lot about how Champagne, and similar bubblies are produced painstakingly using the traditional method. I was impressed!

Sadly, I am probably not just built to prefer champagne over a nice bottle of red. I have tasted some, like Veuve & Clicquot's Brut Yellow Label; Moet Chandon's Brut Rose, maybe the Brut NV too (but i don't pay attention much, in my earlier days and with my interest not as developed as now), and there are those that have been poured out for me and I don't know what it was - although it was a bubbly. They were ok. While typically, Champagne excites, I learned that the bubbles just get to my head faster than I could say hello and goodbye.

But that was until last week. A friend's birthday eventually introduced me to a bottle that has probably put Champagne on my preferred list of drinks too. Although more expensive than my wines, beers, or cocktails, this one was a keeper. My first sip of that Champagne awakened my senses. And I just want to keep tasting it again and again, and for every sip, seems like there's something new to discover about the drink.

It was crisp, and refreshingly light in the palate. No strong musky scent here, or the weight of the sweet that I sometimes taste in other bubblies. And surprisingly, this one was creamy. Something i wouldn't have expected in a Champagne. Flavors, of honey yes, but vanilla ice cream?  This is Ruinart Blanc de Blanc.

Yes, maybe now I can choose to drink champagne, sometimes.

Fast Food Folly

Another example of the fast food prevalence principle: I’ve been craving a Jolly Hotdog since Friday. And I would’ve gotten one, too, if it hadn’t been for the long line.

Finally, on Monday (and despite trying my best to resist the temptation) I stood in front of the Jollibee counter and ordered myself a Classic Jolly Hotdog.

When you look at the picture above, which is from the Jollibee website and has been food-styled into oblivion, it doesn’t specifically call out to you. It’s certainly no gourmet wiener. But the power of Comfort Food is strong. And the relief you feel upon consuming it is enough to inspire an ode to the Jolly Hotdog.

I am one of the many fools who has tasted the proverbial food rainbow, and yet is still a captive to the trap that is fast food. Perhaps the chefs who have been spearheading the good food revolution are weeping right now. But then they might, one day, find themselves stressed out and starved... How about a quick, greasy meal? (I hear it even serves as a good hangover cure.)

Speaking of chefs, please watch this funny McDonald's commercial.

I have to admit that I've seen a lot of McDo delivery bikes come up to our school. And even the students can be found frequenting McDonald's on their lunch breaks. Guilty pleasure. -You'll probably see that phrase a lot in this blog. I suppose I'm a bit of a hedonist. But I like to think that I enjoy an eclectic variety of food.


Until Later,


P.S. I won't be writing about fast food next time!

it takes två...

So I am lucky enough to be in one of the northernmost city in the world for a few days in the height of summer. Where the sun rises at 2am and does not set until after 11pm. There is no darkness for days/nights on end, and there would be a slight dimness to the sky, where in a few hours, the sun will rise again.

This is stockholm, sweden. I work for a Swedish company, and it does have its perks. The swedes are a cool, intelligent and good looking bunch of people. they love the sun (they don't have so much of it, 2/3 of the time, it's dark and wintry they say), and they love their boats...

On my first night, i was taken to a bar called två (read as t-voh) which means two. I have been here 

before and we always enjoy the cocktails here... http://www.två.se/

The place is quite simple, elegant, but the bar is loaded! The people are well-dressed and prim without being too snobbish. I order, for my first drink on a bright and sunny evening - yes, you read it right - bright and sunny at 7pm... a drink called solero. On the menu, it says:

Absolut vanilj björnbär björnbärslikör citron 7up

and this is what i get:

crushed blackberries, in a tall glass filled with blackberry liquor, absolut vanilla vodka and topped with 7up. Complete with a cute orange twist for style. I loved the blackberries... it was the best part of the drink. Especially drinking it in the summer -- which is not sweltering, but just bright and warm enough that it's not freezing.

When I get the chance, tomorrow i will show you what a swedish zabaione is like...

Saucy Sauces

There might be something wrong with my palate. Lately, I’ve noticed that I’ve taken a liking to sauce. Yes, sauce. I will gladly admit that the extra “X” lbs. that I have gained in the course of a year is due to something that I would consider a sauce addiction.

Of course, I’d primarily place the blame on myself. My obvious lack of self control when it comes to food intake is the main culprit for my falling off the “healthier” wagon. Making Hollandaise has its pitfalls, when you are the type to find amazement in its rich flavour way too much!

I have quite a few cringing witnesses who’ve informed me that French fries swimming in a bucket of ketchup --yes, it’s a condiment. I know.-- hardly constitutes a tasty, if not healthy meal.

But here’s the thing, I realize that there is a huge sauce culture out there. I learned in school, as well as in some culinary books that sauces are the shizz, for lack of a better term. Sauciers were held in high esteem, especially in the olden days, for their ability to make the ordinary extraordinary, in addition to masking the taste and smell of slightly past-its-prime food (due to the lack of preservation know-how). And it became a routine: When you requested for a dish, you expected a corresponding sauce.

This sort of mentality has endured so well in the modern world. It’s come to a point where the idea of eating a certain food item without a sauce (say, grilled chicken breast) starts to feel like it’s only meant for hard-core dieters. It’s as though the food is sure to be bland.

That is why all these fried chicken places, --especially the ones I see here in the Philippines, are so protective of their gravy recipes. Personally, I can’t imagine eating my *Jollibee Chicken Joy without its gravy. Neither can I fathom eating McDonald’s fries without a serious helping of ketchup. Also, I know a lot of people who like their viands in lots of sauce because they are able to flavour their rice with spoonfuls of yummy sauce. I’m even guilty of that.

I was quite relieved to hear about the rise of Nouvelle Cuisine in one of our culinary history lectures. The new top chefs are going for concepts like fresh, lean, healthy, organic, natural, simplistic,… etc. You get the picture.

The trend in sauces has shifted towards light dressings, vinaigrette, salsas, and olive-oil concoctions. And they are actually a formidable force in terms of flavor, texture, appearance, and nutrition.

Perhaps it’s a marketing tactic: Keep customers healthy, so they can patronize your establishment longer. Clever, isn’t it?

*Watch the Jollibee Chicken Joy ad here, and see how they’ve made gravy as much a part of the fried chicken as anything else.

Until Later,

Starfruit & Apple Juice

While i am refreshing myself with a glass of freshly juiced starfruit and apple, I wondered what nutritional values this drink has. When I was growing up, the starfruit i knew were usually small, the size of a five year-old's fist, and always sour. It was fun to eat because you cringe and you get tingles all over... a sprinkling of salt helps to neutralize the sharp sourness of the fruit.

Coming to Singapore, I found bigger star fruits - they were as big as my hand now -- about 4-5 inches long and quite large, compared to the ones I know from the Philippines. They were crisp to the bite, but surprisingly lacking of any dominant flavors. It has a slight tartness in the end, but one would neither say it's sweet or sour... it's just slightly flavored water...

What a very pleasant surprise to find out that the starfruit is also very high in vitamin C, full of anti-oxidants and flavanoids too! Good for dieters, a website said... 

Even when I've mixed the apple and starfuit juices together, the unique scent of the starfruit and its tartness came out rounding off the sweetness that the apples usually punches out to you. It becomes a wonderful, after gym drink... really really delicious! 

barbera - the graceful one.

I don't recall if Barbera was indeed the first Italian wine I've ever tasted, but it doesn't matter. I found it easy to drink and pleasant for asia's harsh warm weather.  Only lately did i find out that this is a wine that does not have a great reputation among those who pride themselves of knowing wine, or make a living out of it, or find that it's a redeeming quality in supposedly being an expert in drinking wine. More on that later... but now I want to talk about this badly misplaced wine.

Barbera is an italian red, of which most recommend to drink while young. the bouquet explodes with floral scents, and the taste is refreshing with a hint of over ripe cherries. I love this particular bottle (pictured above) -- there's no earthliness to this wine, no heavy, thick tar, or spice or wood in it... which makes this a lovely red for me. This glass has a beautiful deep red violet tint to match its gentle flavors.

One website says:

"While Barbera has been sneered at, spat upon and spurned, bottles of it are commonly found as the table wine in Italian restaurants. What do they know that the snooty critics don't? Barbera may be underrated, but it's the everyday underrated drinking wine." 

It gets me thinking... what makes wine a good wine? Does it have to do with price? with the color? with its characteristics????  Eventually, after all the hustle and bustle, it boils down to one's preference. Whether you prefer a lighter, fruitier red than a punchy pinot noir, is not to be criticized upon. It's all a matter of appreciation and respect for the wine, the vine and the winemaker.

more on Barbera here: http://www.winecountrygetaways.com/barbera.html

"kalabasa-q"

Pumpkin - simmered in butter and sugar, on slow fire - with some spices (yes, cinammon and a dash of nutmeg)... Yummy...

Inspired from the local street food kamote-q (sweet potato bar-b-que)...  I just had a sampling of mine and i'm a convert -- i'm now a kalabasa-que fan...

chicken lettuce wraps

Never underestimate what a little ingenuity can do to a bag of lettuce, chicken breast, celery, carrots and some left over tomatoes!

My lunch consists of stir fried chicken cut into small pieces (seasoned a bit with salt and pepper). I chopped the tomatoes up and poured a generous amount of olive oil - found out along the way, that chopped tomatoes, low fire and a full teaspoon or two of olive oil, get the tomatoes really saucy. A splash of balsamic vinegar, and chili powder --

viola - lunch in 10 minutes! Eating it now, and the vinegar was the star. I think i put too much chili in the sauce, but the chicken, tender, sweet and moist. Really delicious!

Diet Mode

So yesterday, my skinny jeans told me I'm not skinny anymore. It finally got back to me, because about a year ago, I took it to a seamstress and had some inches cut off (a little less than 2 or thereabouts). Last year, I was eating really well, and was pretty active with lots of exercise and sports activities. There was nothing to worry about... no dieting, no extra weight appearing from nowhere...

But yesterday... what I took for granted eventually sprang back and showed its ugly head. If i don't pay attention to eating, if I don't get enough exercise, I'm gaining weight. And then it's a downhill roll.  So I need to get back into it.

Everyone squirms when the word diet comes up. Either they feel sorry for the person in question or think they eat dry wheat for breakfast lunch and dinner and think that life's not meant to be enjoyed that way. Contrarily, I was excited and went shopping for what is going to be my diet food for the next week.

These were the items that went into the bag:

a pack of celery (from the USA)
a quarter slice of squash (from australia)
frozen berries (strawberries from finland, and currants from siberia, i think)
a pack of bananas  (from the philippines)
non-fat yoghurt
and a pack of carrots
oh, and boneless chicken breasts as well as a small rounded lettuce to go with it.

what I do or how i eat them, I had no idea. I thought that those foods were low fat, healthy and full of natural sugars - fructose, as opposed to glucose that's good for energy.

I settled and started with snapping some celeries into short sticks and peeling carrots. Yep, carrot and celery sticks for dinner. But the deal breaker here is the yoghurt - mixed in with some left over blue cheese i had in the fridge... and boy, was I munching away.

Celery did take a bit of getting used to, especially if compared with the sweetness of the carrots. But its antiseptic and grassy taste was just what i needed to bring out the smooth flavors of the blue cheese and yoghurt dip.

Well, this morning I woke up and had a banana. I still have a small bowl of grapes waiting to be consumed. But after heading to the gym, now it's time for lunch. Wonder what that squash could be good for? I remember an great aunt making some sort of sweet dessert out of it... and I still have some muscovado in the pantry...

see you later! time to eat!

it's a good night for belgian chocolate

Tonight i am splurging on a cup of haagen daz belgian chocolate. Tell me, who doesn't have a weakness for chocolate? And although I can make my own chocolate ice cream, haagen daz has one of the most exceptional version for a chocolate ice cream. smothered with specs of chocolate fudge, rich with the aroma of artisan chocolate, bitter and slightly sweet, rich and creamy, fragrant... hmmm... my only wish is that it doesn't melt in this summer heat.

Chocolate is not a laughing matter. It's an exact science. I'm no expert at this but I definitely appreciate the complexity and the art form of achieving the perfect chocolate.

I guess i just wanted to write this down... and recall how much chocolate makes me feel much better... a good piece of chocolate truffle fixes anything.

My Black Liquid Heaven

In the beginning, it was just hot water from the thermos, and boring brown granules in a jar... stirred together with maybe a teaspoon of sugar to sweeten the bitter-sour concoction and a dash of evaporated milk. It was something i gulped down without tasting it... as a matter of fact, it was unpleasant. But it was the drink of the grown ups. A fragrant aroma rose from the cup, and that was the only thing that was going for that cup. I thought i was not going to have coffee ever again. That was when I was 16.

Having this hot drink was not about pleasure then. It was about getting my body to stay up late, way after bed time so i can finish coding my thesis. Now they came from little packets called 3-in-1. a single measure of freeze-dried instant coffee, non-dairy creamer, and sugar. And maybe i got used to it, or maybe i didn't know better, the 3-in-1 was not as bad. In fact, I had preferred GREAT TASTE than NESCAFE.  On the 3rd year of college, and coffee was more for survival, rather than for enjoyment.

Fast forward to the days when I am a yuppie. Working in SMPC at 5am in the morning. Yes, my call time was at five-freaking am. Definitely need them coffee. I drank them in jugs... 3-5 times a day. It was impossible. And it was bad for me. I eventually collapsed and the doctor said to stop.  After all it was not about the taste - it was about the caffeine fix that eventually didn't have any effect anyway. So quit I did.

At the same time, the social element came to play - Starbucks they called it. Oh you'd have a latte, or a macchiato, in this posh while paper cup with that undeniable green trademark. Starbucks was the coffee for the snobbish. At least in Manila it was.  My then boyfriend had better things in mind other than Starbucks. He just came from Italy and he had for me a gift -- a little metal pot that was suppose to make coffee. It was called a moka. Together with it came a 250g pack of coffee grounds, also from Italy and the brand was Kimbo.

And that's how it all began. That's when my coffee turned out to be my black liquid heaven.  It didn't stop there. For the next five years, we kept discovering coffee. We moved to Singapore, and we bought our first espresso machine: a deLonghi. Simple, yet makes amazing cappuccinos and espressos. 

I enjoyed coffee so much, it became an adventure. Buying different beans, mixing my own... I had to try the most expensive coffee in the world - that being, I thought until then was the Blue Mountain from UCC. As well as the civet cat coffee. They were all a matter of experience now. Even the very exotic hainanese style coffee that singapore is so popular for. From a deep dark roast with strong acidity, the the mellow medium, and light roasted coffees that leave a sweet after taste... chocolate, caramel, fruits... they do all come out. But most important of all is the culmination of all of the coffee's flavors.

And even when everything has changed, I've found new appreciation for Starbucks (when you are surrounded by coffee shops that sell you drip coffee, or instant coffee, thank God for Starbucks). After 3 years, and after a broken relationship, after my moka pot and my delonghi, and even my jura subito (it decided that it has served me well and that its day had come), my own liquid heaven still remains... of which i partake of every morning.

What would it be today? A Lavazza qualita oro or a qualita rossa? A Guatamala Antigua from Coffee Bean? Or a Yakun Kaya Toast Kopi? Good coffee is good coffee... and I thank God for that!  And although this blog may sound confused, my next entry will be more focused... whether I talk about my favorite coffee or my first blighted experience of the espresso shot... it's gonna be fun. Now, go and find your own liquid heaven.

Hello There!

Let me tell you a little something about myself…

I have illusions of grandeur, when it comes to food, though I am not from a place where the delicious salmon on my plate was just caught that morning (or the day before and the day before that, for that matter). I don’t have the leisure of visiting chic European-style farmer’s markets (read: Salcedo Market) on the weekends. I get my food from either a chain of grocery stores that attempt to emulate the ones in the USA, or a wet market, complete with a merry band of black flies.

And yet, I remain to have illusions of grandeur. I’d like to explain why:

I’ve lived in the Philippines all my life, so I have witnessed the progression of gastronomy here from the 1990’s to present. That isn’t saying much, as anyone who has been alive and aware from 1990 onwards would also have an idea of the progress of food. But I’d sure like to share what it was like for me.

The 1990’s was my childhood, so I wish to share glimpses of 1990’s food from a simple perspective: I grew up considering McDonald’s and Jollibee Spaghetti pretty much a staple of my diet. The boom of fast food franchises from around the world was looking good, but not as intense as it is now. This is to say that the chains back then actually had more of a staying power. In fact, a lot of them were still open until a decade later, when the industry started to become less and less forgiving. Other than that, I ate mostly a mixture of Chinese food and Americanized food. That being said, I grew up with a palate that was friendlier to foreign foods, rather than the local fare.

Back then, I only knew salty and sweet. I wasn’t much familiar with bitter, tart, etc. And so, quite evidently, my meal preferences were limited. This dismayed my mother, who derisively called me a picky eater. (I totally deserved it!)

There is no glamorous story as to how I started to learn to love the art that is food. It was gradual and caused by my exposure to travel and different cultures. Tasting new foods became a way of escaping the mundane. Sampling each country’s local delicacy became a way of getting a better sense of the culture. It started to feel like if I appreciated the food of a certain place, then I felt like I could really be there. The same goes for Filipino food and how I learned to appreciate it.

The closest I came to a grand slam epiphany was the summer I spent part-time working for my cousin who ran a wedding cake business. The experience was utterly exhausting, but well worth it as I felt that I had done something definitely worthy of the time and effort. To this day, when I have finished making a dish, I still wind up surprised and thinking, “Hey, I actually did that!” And I honestly believe that that sense of wonder keeps me hooked on everything that is food.

As you can see, I tend to romanticize food. I am completely under the notion that all the ingredients, the processes, and the outcomes are, in themselves, points of interest. That is how I've come to have illusions of grandeur.

And so, it is most fortunate that I chose to enter a culinary arts program in college, which immerses me into the world of the food industry. With this blog, I hope to share my insights, what I learn in school, and what I experience firsthand in my journey through life as a foodie. :)

Until Next Time,