After wanting this dessert from the Apple Pie bakery cafe for a while now, I finally decided to get it yesterday and it was amazing! You must be wondering, what on Earth is this? Well....It is a Acacia honey panacotta, with raw molasses jelly topped with whipped cream and a sugar flower. Cute isn't it? And it's very small, but requires a lot of work because you have to lean the glass jar in order to get the layers like that. It was soooo good, I guess it's because I love honey, and the whole combination works perfectly.
Since I'm working in the photo studio now I get a chance to play around and learn very much every day, and this was my practice object ;)

On this lovely Sunday morning Stacey and I met with our friend Kate and her husband to visit the Rhinebeck's Farmer's market. The weather was so nice that everything seemed magical; Rhinebeck is a beautiful little town, very green and full of gorgeous houses, just 20 mins away from our school. I have to be honest, but it's a place I could live in. The Farmer's market is something we were looking foward to for a while now and it was a great experience. It is not like being home in Split where you can go to the market every day and get fresh produce. Here it's usually twice a week and it's not something you want to miss out! Even though it was a small market, we found some amazing food to cook today. Except fresh mozzarella, and some other raw milk cheese, we got amazing young swiss chard and fresh trout! I am so excited for the trout, because it's a whole fish, not just a filet as we get it here at school, so it's something I am really excited about. I will probably steam it and serve it with a little bit of Ronnybrook butter, salt and pepper. Heaven! :)

On Saturday evening I got a chance to dine at ''Mercato'', a little authentic Italian restaurant serving simple, fresh food in a warm comfortable atmosphere. Dinner brings a new menu each night based on what chef Francesco finds fresh that day in the market and on the farm. I absolutely fell in love with it, and it was a true experience. The food was absolutely stunning, everything was fresh and local. Their pasta is a must, because they make it themselves, and most importantly it is cooked right, which especially applies to the ravioli that are usually tougher on the sides where they overlap.
If you ever find yourself in the Hudson valley area, this is a place to eat and truly enjoy. Dessert was of course my favorite part and it was actually the first time that I had affogato which literally in Italian means ''drowned'', and it's an act of topping a drink or dessert with espresso. In my case, it was a vanilla gelato with a shot of espresso and 2 biscotti on the side. All of the menu titles were written in Italian except the descriptions, and the desserts were just if I had created them :)
I would have never thought Hudson Valley had a place like this.



Mercato
61 E. Market St.
Red Hook, NY
(845) 758-5879

Breads are amazing and I get fascinated by them every single day. From the lectures about the wheat kernel through the whole procces, to the dough itself, it is just amazing. The book that we have for class is the one I would strongly recommend, from Jefrey Hamelman simply called ''Bread'' . Recipes are more for a proffesional baker, but the readings are fantastic and he explains everything alongside his life stories and interesting facts.

The picture of the bread that is in the oven is one of the most unusual breads I have seen. Once you have your rounded piece of dough, you make like a little whole in the middle and fill it with an olive oil-rosemary mixture. Then you pinch the sides so you have a little bag, making sure it's well sealed. After that, turn it upside down and round it gently so you can see the marinade underneath the surface of the dough. Once proofed, it gets scored like shown on the photo. It is very delicate to make, but the results are amazing!

The bottom photo was our today's evaluation, just like what we do every day. We had regular and extremly long baguettes, semolina bread, challah, then special challah with raisins and cinnamon, chocolate-cherry Panettone, multi-grain rye, sourdough, brioche, focaccia with onions and rosemary and this one with spinach and feta..Oh, I am so lost now, there is probably something I missed, but I think you enoyed these I mentioned quite a bit :)


Well, off to bed now, because I need to be up in a few hours!
OH, and the grape shaped one, is just regular lean or baguette dough! ;)

As you may notice, the weather is getting better each day and so does our little garden at the CIA! It is truly a pleasure to be a part of the garden society and do something that is a part of my everyday life back in Split (well, my dad is more in charge of it, but I enjoy it myself as well!). The president of the society is an extremly nice and friendy girl Kate, who showed me around this Sunday and it is amazing how much we already have in that amount of space. There are all kinds of herbs (but really all you can think of!), green beans, peas, turnips, whole onion family, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, broccoli, strawberries, cucumbers........
I am really looking foward to the summer time when we get things going on for real! :))
Also, Hudson Valley is know for it's wild life which momentarily includes ramps, morels, and even wild strawberries which are on the way!


And I am already half way through breads, and it's going very well. We change stations every 2 days, so it's never boring, there is always so much to do! Today we made 100 ponds of sourdough, challah, and cheddar-onion rolls. Tomorrow my team is at the station where we have to set up the breakfast bar, which means lots of smoothies!!

Here is a little preview of the green side of the CIA!

BREAD - The most simple and staple food, but yet again, so complex in preparation and definitely something that needs skills to make properly. I was in breads class in my first year, but this is Specialy breads now. It's such an amazing class, so interesting, and surely hard work. Depending on what station you're at, there are different hours when you need to start. Most of us start at 6am, but there are two teams that begin production at 5am. That will be my job a week from now....
Believe it or not, but it doesn't even bother me to wake up at 5 each morning! I really have fun in class; I learn so much every day, I have a great chef, very good teammates (there are 3 of us, of course Stacey is one of them), and we have a breakfast bar each morning! :)) There is a team responsible for that, and we always have different kinds of breads, fruit, cheese, and anything that team is inspired to do!

Today I finally brought my camera with me, and took this photo of Pain Tricorne or ''three corner bread'', a French regional shaped bread. At the end class, after lecture, we evaluate our products. Chef cuts them all and we taste and discuss them, and it's always different, because each team changes the station every 2 days, so the products are different. I was really impressed with this French shaped bread, which is a regular sourdough (not a big fan of it, probably the only one that I'm not fond of), but it definitely looks great.
Oh boy, I never ate this much bread before, that's basically what I've been eating for the past week! mmmmmmmmmm

Hey, it's Friday already!! More on bread next week! ;)

What a lovely view, huh? This was our chocolate presentation at the Grand Buffet this Thursday.
The top picture is all chocolate, and the construction was made from the scraps of Chef Grewling's huge chocolate sculpture. The whole design was Stacey's idea, including the ''Oh my ganache'' sign that she said one time in class and we all loved it :))
As you can see, there was a big asortiment of different chocolates, as well as sugar candies and marshmallows as shown on the bottom photo. Chocolate is an amazing topic, and possibilities are endless. It is hard, time consuming and more complex then what we've done before, but very interesting and challenging.
I am ready to proceed to the next block, which is Breads class (meaning getting up bright and early), but I'm looking foward to it.
I need a break from chocolate, so kneading dough for three weeks is definitely a nice change!