sunday dinner.

this is what i had for dinner on sunday.

top sirloin steak simply flavored with a dry rub consisting of various herbs and spices. 

italian salad. this was amazzzinnnggg. it had salami, red pepper, tomato and spinach flavored tortellinis, olives and grape tomatoes with a simple light italian vinegarette. 

yukon potatoes. boiled in chicken stock until it was reduced, flavored with salt and pepp and butter. YUM. 

snack time.

i have a new favorite snack. 

(this changes so often it's nuts.)

but it's multi grain chips with jalapeño yogurt!

don't puke at the name. this is real time goodness!

when my mom first told me about it i was freaked out. then i tried it and thought i didn't like, but that was a lie. 

I LOVE IT. i took it to work yesterday, ate it for dinner tonight, and have already planned on eating for a quick lunch tomorrow! 

the yogurt is not spicy, but it does have a kick to it. it's also filled with great things like garlic, tomatoes, and green peppers. 

give it a try-- i believe you can get both items at costco!

popeye pasta.

a little bit over a week ago i had to make a quick dinner.

i remembered seeing a recipe for a pasta with popeye in the name. i couldn't really remember what exactly was in it.. so i just winged it. 

1 TB. olive oil

3 cloves minced garlic

1/2 pound of chopped spinach. (i am really not sure on this... all i know is that you need  A LOT of  it because spinach shrinks down a bunch.)

sliced mushrooms

1 lb. ziti 

1 cup heavy whipping cream.

salt & pepp

grated parmesan cheese

1) get a pot of boiling water for the pasta. 

2) add the olive oil to a large pot on medium heat. once it's piping hot saute the mushrooms garlic. don't burn the garlic though--garlic burns easily. 

3)add the spinach cooking for 2 minutes or until it's just barely cooked. 

4) add the whipping cream. this will create a sauce after it's cooked for a bit. season with salt and pepper and taste. 

5)once your pasta is close to being done, drain it and add to the sauce. cook on high until the pasta is completely done.top with the cheese, and your done!

 you can adjust any of these ingredients in order to get the taste you really want. i just kind of made this up in my head. 

pretty freaking easy... AND SO GOOD.

ripoff tagalong cookies.

thanks to this recipe right hereee.

i was able to make these little beauties!

they are kind of like the girl scout tagalong cookies. i made a shortbread cookie, then put on a dome of whipped powdered sugar and peanut butter, then dipped in chocolate.

they were SO GREAT. they are especially good if you refrigerate them. 

and they really weren't too hard to make. 

thanks to these ladies for helping me!

pineapple

pine·ap·ple
–noun

1.

the edible, juicy, collective fruit of a tropical, bromeliaceousplant, Ananas comosus,  that develops from a spike or headof flowers and is surmounted by a crown of leaves. 

for my ward activity we had an iron chef competition. 

the secret ingrediant was pineapple.

i made:

pineapple salsa.

 raw pineapple and almond dessert. 

and THIS pineapple upside down cake. 

and homemade pina colada ice cream!

it was a lot of fun.. except for all the sores i have in my mouth from the pineapple acid eating away my mouth. i ate wayyy too much! 

poncho.

i say this allll the time. 

but culinary school is the most fun.

(that is lemon ice cream. and no. i didn't eat it all. i shared it with morgy and darc bomb. who took the picture.)

ball.

tonight was our scholarship ball at school. 
so much hard work. but SO worth it. everything was so beautiful..
especially the food!

heirloom tomato soup. with pesto and micro greens.

watermelon, goat cheese and watercress salad.

scallops wrapped in procioutto on celery root, with a sabanyon sauce.

Wasabi and Green Apple Sorbet.

and for the entree we had Lamb with sweet potato and carrots. YUM.

and dessert? walnut and habanero (hot hot hot pepper) cake. YUMMMMMMMMMMM.

it was a really great night-- even though i was there for over 8 hours.

i love school!

(some photo credit given to tracy.)

cupcake fail.

inable to make cupcakes: 

on tuesday night morgan and i attempted to make some harmless cupcakes for her humanities class.

let's just say.. i have no idea went wrong. we thought it was an over heated oven, and we even made a different batch of batter. same thing went wrong. and we quadruple checked we had everything right! it happened 3 DIFFERENT TIMES. if you can't tell, they are 100% concave.

go ahead... judge for yourself. 

oh, and even worse? they tatsted like eggs and oil. 

morgan was FURIOUS. 

i'll let you know when we have redeemed ourselves.

tony danza.

school is almost done for the semester. 

i need this. 

i can't spend 40 hours a week at school. it's making it hard to keep up with blogging! but here is what i have done as my first semester of culinary school approaches it's end.

morgan and i named a bunch of chickens. i believe these two were reba and clarence. we had others like- kj, chef al, and tony danza. :)

 went slightly nutso with the deep fryer. french fries and fried zucchini, carrots, onions, and chicken. all in the same day. whoops.

morgan helped me fulfill one of my dreams. trying fried pickles. and they were AMAZING. recipe you ask?

kosher pickles. coat them in flour, buttermilk (or milk), and cornmeal (or bread crumbs.) coat in that order and fry 'em up!

working many night's at the student ran, fine dining restaurant- Restaurant Forte. I was the Maitre 'd. and thee BEST part of working there is family meal at the end. 

this is quality food. 6 courses, 20 bucks a plate? it's good i promise.

this was just on american regional night. Gumbo, Scallops, Oyster's, and something else i don't know is featured here. 

and for dessert? classic raspberry cheesecake, 3 different flavored fruit tarts, and chocolate cake. (best i've ever had.)

and all i have left is a couple of catering events and then my two, 10 hour long practicals! i'm totes excited.

-linds.

homemade pasta.

on thursday we had the executive chef from Sundance come and do some demonstrations on homemade pasta's and sauces. it was amazing! we focused on filled pastas like tortellini and ravioli with a crab filling and a goat cheese with ricotta filling. For sauces he did a mushroom demi and a citrus buerre blanc. equally deeeliiiisssh.

i decided i wanted to do filled pastas for sunday dinner today! i have made pasta before but it was just fettuccine. today i made both ravioli and tortellini filled with chicken, spinich, and cheese. topped with a garlic and cheese bechemel sauce. it was super super tasty!

and super time consuming.

like, you don't even want to know. 

but, thats what you get for it being all homemade!

i started out by rolling the dough through the pasta machine several times to get it super thin. then i cut circles with a cookie cutter. 

 then in filled each of those circles with my chicken and spinich filling.

then i would either make them into ravioli..

 or tortellini.

 even though i spent so much time doing it, i had so much fun.

pasta dough recipe HERE.

filling recipe HERE.

and if you make to borrow my pasta maker any time... i'd be happy to loan it out. or even make pasta with you. i love pasta because it's so verstatile. i learned that you can pretty much put anything you want into a filled pasta. i think i will try a sweet potato filling sometime!

anyways.. now that i am digested-- i'm going to have some fondue. 

i love my life. 

teaching yw.

tonight the laurels in my home ward wanted me to teach them a thing or two about baking. 

so i showed them how to make rolls, and how to make lemon poppyseed mufffins. 

muffin recipe here.

alll went well!

buddah.

fox 13 came to my school at 6 am today. 

big buddah in the house. kitchen.

and it wasn't too pleasant to say the least. 

because we had a practical. 2 mother sauces, dress, french toast, soup, and knife skills. it was slightly stressful when that camera man and a huge hawaiian got alll up in my grill while making hollandaise and such.  

but for fun. if you want to watch. here you go.

http://www.fox13now.com/news/gooddayutah/coolschool/

and for the record-- in the meet the students video. i didn't even know what he said to me. i wasn't being stupid. like some people thought.

mid.

this week at school was SO LONG. like-- so long. 

but of course. i learned lots. 

i did super well on my practical though! 

my biggest problem was that i accidently added to much oil to the pan for my chicken causing a pan fry instead of a saute. 

                           

i also learned how to fillet a round fish, and flat fish. the only gross part about it was ripping out the eyes. it made me sick to my stomach because they would burst. oh eww.

also participated in putting mustard & mayo on 1500 sandwiches. my thumb was seriously cramped.

i learned what a parsnip is. they look like Mandrakes from HP.

and they taste ok when braised in brown sugar.

emily and i made homemade gnocchi! they were pretty good, not to hard to make. and we topped them with a bechemel sauce with parmasan cheese.

i even made myself a stir fry! zuchini, carrots, onions, shrooms, pistashio and chicken! then i made a marinade with soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, grond mustard, seseme oil, ginger puree, garlic. YUM. and so ease to make. 

i also learn what/how to make ratatouille. basically it's just sauteed veggies.

and thats the basics of what i did at school! 

half way.

So, i am already half way through with my Cooking Skills Development class! That is so crazy.

Right now in class we are learning different cooking techniques such as roasting, grilling, sauteing, frying, searing etc etc. 

today in class i made a butternut squash and wild mushroom risotto. it was DELISH. partly because i slightly overdid it on the cheese, and it normally is just fab.

i didn't use a recipe, but if anyone would like it i would be more than happy to give it to them!

in addition to the risotto i roasted a whole chicken. i started out by stuffing the chicken with lots of onions, lemon,  garlic, and rosemary sprigs. i then trussed it to make sure it cooked evenly and to retain moisture. once all that was done, i seared it to give color and extra flavor and stuck it in the oven for about 25-30 minutes. this too was really really tasty! and you can create whatever flavor you like by stuffing it with different things. 

tomorrow i have a practical--again. i am supposed to make a bechemel sauce, saute a protein, grill some vegetables, and make rice pilaf. oh and knife skills. joyyyy. NAHT. 

SKEWL.

breakfast foods. omletes, french toast, pancakes, all styles of eggs. yuuuuumm. (this is morgan making an omelete.)

 soups! here we have cream of mushroom (my favee)

\

 Chicken Curry. deelish.

 the soup i made. Corn Chowder. soooo yumo. we used  corn in 3 different ways. we used the cobs to infuse flavor to the milk and cream, we put whole corn kernals into the soup and for extra flavor and color we sauteed and pureed corn! it was very very tasty.

 we also had a catering event! i was in charge of meat. Pork Tenderloin was made. and it was also so yum.

then while butchering my like 20th chicken of the week-- i STABBED myself. not sliced, stabbed. it killed and i almost cried. but didn't and instead bled through 7 bandaids in a few hours! total i have used 11 bandaids and i think it's now infected :( i also burned myself on the pilot light on the stove, which left a burn mark and singed a lot of arm hair. 

but i am happy to report that these are my first true injuries from school so far! and hopesfully the lasst. 

i have no clue what we are doing in school this week--

but i think Emily and I are going to make so Gnocchi so i will let you know how that goes :)