Newbie Gourmet

This week was very busy, and very exciting, too. On Tuesday, my boss was set to go to the Taste of Abilene event with one of my coworkers. My coworker was "sick" (read: having a panic attack because her boyfriend of three years surprised her with an engagement ring!) so I got to go instead. My boss spent all morning making wonderful sorbetto flavors for the event: pineapple, cantaloupe, lemon, and blood orange. We were one of the last restaurants to show up, but were early enough to set up everything before the event began. Last year, apparently, there was a lot left over, so this year my boss didn't bring as much stuff. We had bags with information about the restaurant, the city, and the Way Out Winery Tour, but most of the people who came weren't interested in any of that, and we had several who were honest and up-front about it, choosing to cut-off our About-the-Restaurant spiel with, "Just tell me what food you got."

We sold out the sorbetto pretty quickly.

I, meanwhile, began working on my super-secret Daring Baker's April Challenge, which would be really fun to tell you about but I can't because...it's a secret. So, that will be discussed in late April, when the challenge ends and I can post pictures and the new recipe I made just for the challenge. Of course, you can certainly come to visit the restaurant, where my challenge recipe outcome was good enough to serve to the masses and currently resides in the gelataria display case.

More exciting, my boss, Mary Stanley, and her husband, David, were honored by the city yesterday evening. They received an award from the Chamber for Business of the Year and were quite pleasantly surprised and flattered. So, we all went out to celebrate and had many drinks between us in their honor. For my part, I may have had too many drinks, as I was giggling a lot during the awards ceremony and for the life of me, cannot remember what on earth was so funny. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one.

Work has been getting a lot easier since now I've gotten the technique down for most of the recipes and my bread, especially, has drastically improved. Here's a picture of my gorgeous focaccia bread:



The recipe I use for home baking is in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which I have read several times over now as part of homework for my job. Mary was telling me how great my bread was lately, and she let me know not to change a thing despite one customer complaining that the bread was "too crunchy for Brownwoodian teeth." There's always going to be that one customer, I suppose. You can't please every one.

Baking is just so much about technique. It's a point Mary keeps drilling into my head. It's not just a bunch of ingredients you smack together and throw in an oven. The more I focus on perfecting technique, the better things taste. Case in point: palmiers.

I hate that I forgot to take a picture of the last batch of palmiers I made. They came out excellently delicious, with a perfectly carmelized exterior and a perfectly flaky interior. I used the same recipe as I did last time (which I will post in my next blog post), but used a different technique. Last time, they did not crisp up, did not carmelize, and as many burned as were undercooked. This time: perfection. I love learning new tricks.