I am finally back in Sydney and getting settled back into my "normal" life.
The flight back to Sydney was uneventful, preceded by the usual countdown of "last"s whenever I am getting ready to leave for somewhere (last brunch, last sunset, last dinner, last night in front of the TV with my sister)...she records The Game of Thrones when I'm home and we watch it together later at night, when she has time for herself. Of course, there's no way she's going to wait for me to come back to watch the rest of the series so hopefully they won't get erased off the recorder when she's finished.
My flat is a bit of a shambles - half unpacked suitcases in the hallway by the front room, paperwork in piles on my dining table and a complete lack of enthusiasm to put anything away with the spectre of another 11 boxes to arrive from London with the remaining bits and pieces for the kitchen.
Chatting to friends has revealed that quite a few of us are returning to our jobs and hoping to balance that with opportunities to keep up with what we've learned. Perfecting anything will be difficult when we don't do it every day but hopefully my notes will be good enough to get me through it. Or else there will be lots of awful experiments which I can't inflict on my beloved family and friends.
It turns out that quite a few people have been practicing various things. I had another run at my dessert from my final, taking into account the chefs' comments but without the sauces and glaze or tempered chocolate. I used the reduced syrup from poached pears in the salad above (poached pear in Lambrusco - an Italian sparkling red dessert wine, infused with cloves, cinnamon - with beets, goat cheese and mixed baby greens in a vinaigrette) because I didn't have a sauce but my parents seemed to like it. All I could thing was "coulda, woulda, shoulda" and how things might have been different if this is what I had done during the Patisserie finals. However - as a good friend says, a pass is a pass and at least I managed to get this done at home which is nice.
As I said to one of the chefs - I don't have what it takes to work in a restaurant kitchen, but I'll be an acceptable home cook. Well - maybe occasionally able to make something a little bit more fancy than a muffin or cupcake should the occasion demand. Generally home cooking still stays in the realms of comfort food but at least I have the recipes, notes and pictures if I want something a little more complicated.
So until next time - happy eating.
After we all received our pass confirmations, it was time for a few well deserved drinks. It was a warm March day so we all gathered in the courtyard outside the LCB Cafe. There's a pub there so they provided us with drinks (and me with food) - there's a student discount, which was a bit of a bonus for our very last day as students.
We gathered for the last time - the others would see each other at graduation but I was due to get on a plane the following morning so this was our last chance to say hello. Several of us also had quite a bit of packing up to do and limited luggage space in which to do it. One of the things about missing graduation is that I wouldn't get to wear the chef's hat or get the medals from the chefs. CB, one of the very nice people in LCB administration went upstairs to get my medals because they weren't going to be included with my diplomas which would arrive by post. I carefully wrapped up the hard-won pieces of metal and packed them in my bag. Then I had several rounds of repacking, with the result that it took me a couple of days and virtually unpacking everything when I got home to find them again (carefully tucked away in a plastic container). My sister and my parents requested that I wear them while cooking - all I could think of was the universal horrified look which would cross one of the chef's face at such a suggestion...
Life after LCB...
The last couple of weeks since I got home have been pretty busy. I'm not sure how, since I'm theoretically on vacation...some of it, of course, has been spent cooking for family and friends. There's a certain expectation when you come home and you (theoretically) have been trained how to cook, that you will cook for people.
The difficulty is learning to differentiate between cooking / playing time and a cooking / time sensitive time. That is to say, teaching that difference to well meaning friends and family. It's sweet people want to participate but as one of my brothers told me, they don't (so he claims) know what they're doing and it's all about fun. Which is fine, as long as their fun time isn't my time sensitive time because then it just stops being fun for everyone. (Let's just say that trying to grill stuff on a grill which needs to be fired up and trying to make a theatre time is not the stuff of relaxing and fun dinner preparation. Neither is fancy plating.)
A simple lunch turned out to be quite a large one. What was meant to be lunch for 4 somehow rapidly expanded to 6, then 9...an example below of our simple lunch - grilled fresh mahimahi, grilled lemongrass/keffir lime/ garlic shrimp, salad with vinaigrette and grilled veggies. My brother had been dying for fresh fish and as we had a pescatarian, this was friendly for all. I still have dreams about cooking, but I'm hoping those dreams will get fewer and further in between. It's no fun when the dishes are imperfect even in dreams - surely that must say something?
You say potato, I say potahto...
There's a place called Diamond Head Market and Grill here. Several people are completely in love with their blueberry scones. I have a slightly difficult time with this because the scones I'm used to (Australian/English influence) have always been circular ones which slightly resemble the biscuits of the American Southern cooking: slightly crisp-ish on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside. The scones I've had in the US usually resemble...triangular heavy dough things which could take out an eye, so I was doubtful about the blueberry scones.
I was immediately suspicious when I saw these large things because they were so shiny - yup, coated with some sort of sugary thing. But actually quite delicious. They put cream cheese in the batter so that gives it extra moisture and it's nice and kind of oozy and gooey when fresh out of the oven (first thing in the morning will do that). I'm not a huge lover of sweets but I have to say that the next time I have a sweet craving, I might just head over and get one of these. Perhaps tomorrow morning, if I get up early enough to eat one before ballet class - have to have enough time to digest it so that turning doesn't make you want to hurl. That's not so elegant - not to mention it's a dead giveaway to the teacher that you haven't been spotting. For more on spotting, I suggest you watch an episode of Gilmore Girls (the one where Rory is getting ready for her debut with the Daughters of the American Revolution).
Several evenings...with Schroeder and friends
It has been a music filled week leading up to Easter. There was a wonderful concert last week - the soloist was Something Wolfram or Wolfram Something (from NY? I don't have the program anymore or I would be able to tell you) and he played Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto. He was this tall, imposing fellow who was so tall they had to lower his piano bench so that he could fit his legs under the piano. It reminded me of Schroeder from the Peanuts comics - Wolfram's knees weren't quite up to his ears, but they weren't far off.
The newly reconstituted Hawaii Symphony Orchestra then played Dvorak's New World Symphony. One of the oboists (coincidentally she's also the English horn) is staying with us so we got a little preview while she practiced - anyway, wow! I asked later - she and the bassoon had discussed the blend of their sound and it sounded wonderful at the concert.
Later on in the week, we went back for another concert: Russian Easter Overture (Rimsky Korsakov), the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Tchaikowsky's 5th Symphony. I forgot how long the symphony was and I kept nodding off in the last movement. Oh, the whiplash! Still, an enjoyable night and sweet lullabies...
Easter
The end of this trip is drawing to a close, marked by my first Easter at home in over 10 years. It was a beautifully (mostly) sunny Sunday. We started with Easter breakfast by the water. It was supposed to be brunch but they did a couple of seatings and we left the arrangements sufficiently late that the only table we could get was at 9am. Slight rate of attrition due to the early hour, but I like to think we acquitted ourselves well. After the first couple of rounds to warm up (coffee, water, coffee, omelette, bacon, fried rice, coffee, some kind of BBQ chicken) the non-vegetarians went for the meats. I headed for the prime rib (how could you not? It's not something you would be cooking at home for breakfast - or at least, not something I would cook at home because you'd have to be up at the crack of dawn to do it), more rice and more bacon. Bacon makes everything better...
Eventually defeated by the limited capacity of our bodies (stretched to their absolute limits) we headed for the water after applying copious amounts of sunscreen. Yes, you can get into a swimsuit and get in the water, but to describe what we did as "swimming" would be like saying...actually, I'm in too much of a food coma to come up with a suitable simile. More accurately, I think you could say we dipped ourselves - just enough to cool off. I was going to do some reading this afternoon but fell asleep instead - and woke up just in time to make it to Easter dinner (another buffet! Thank goodness I'm going back to Sydney and cooking for one) where I'm sure I stretched my capacity for food intake once again. I don't really cook when it's just me so I took the opportunity of having quite a large supply of guinea pigs at home.
Now it's time for a second attempt to read about transferring proceedings from one court to another and the biggest challenge of all: staying awake long enough to process it so that I can remember it tomorrow. Finding the time to get caught up on readings has proved to be quite a challenge between all the things I have to do (unpack, repack, etc. etc.), the cooking and the resting. I've been sleeping a lot since I got back - I think the stress of finals still hasn't fully worn off - I seem to remember not sleeping more than 6 hours or so on a given night during March and there's still a little bit of jetlag although that finally seems to be abating.
So until next time, happy Easter/Pesach and happy eating!
It turns out that quite a few people have been practicing various things. I had another run at my dessert from my final, taking into account the chefs' comments but without the sauces and glaze or tempered chocolate. I used the reduced syrup from poached pears in the salad above (poached pear in Lambrusco - an Italian sparkling red dessert wine, infused with cloves, cinnamon - with beets, goat cheese and mixed baby greens in a vinaigrette) because I didn't have a sauce but my parents seemed to like it. All I could thing was "coulda, woulda, shoulda" and how things might have been different if this is what I had done during the Patisserie finals. However - as a good friend says, a pass is a pass and at least I managed to get this done at home which is nice.
