Chocolat...

We make chocolate truffles and pralines at work. It's a labour of love! What with the tempering of it so it's shiny when it sets to making of the delicious filling like strawberry, mango, caramel with sea salt, crunchy hazelnut, almond gianduja. To the careful molding and dipping of the individual pieces. Our handcrafted chocolates are delicious tempting and oh so sinful! We even wrap it in gold foil for that touch of extravagance. Hmm... I think i will help myself to another milk chocolate coated almond strips rocher! Yummo!

To Terrengganu and back!

First it was 480 pax, then 560pax then 650pax.... lucky we prepared for 700pax.

This was the Western set dinner for the Majlis Raja-Raja held in Kuala Terengganu.

Space was tight and hot what with chefs shouting around us, and service staff bumping into us...ishhh...

but I had some time to have a walkabout the town which was quaint and quiet and by the sea.
So here are some pics.

Pasar Warisan

the mounds of kerpok at Pasar Payang

What a cute camp PINK trishaw!

Main Entrance of Istana Maziah

Royal Table at Wisma Darul Naim

View from my hotel window

Dataran Shahbandar by the Sea

Istana Maziah, Kuala Terengganu

Litghthouse by Istana Maziah

GOLD GOLD GOLD!! (part finale)

OK now this is the part where I can expound on instead of just showing pictures! My desserts and cakes for Culinaire 2007's gold medal winning buffet setup!


2 Cakes (Freestyle)

Cake 1 : Chocolat
White Chocolate Bavaroise
Milk Chocolate and Macadamia Pate
Dark Chocolate Flourless Cake

Royaltine Butter

Cake 2 : Honey
Traditional Sarawak Bee Hive Cake
Honey Cinnamon Mousse
Honeycomb Crunch

3 Desserts (freestyle)
Apple : Apple Peppermint Jelly
Apple Chutney poached in wine and lemons
Yoghurt Chantily
Apple Paper Slivers

Berries : Blackberry Yoghurt Creme
Strawberry Streusel
Raspberry Oil
Blueberry Chip

Coffee: Coffee Panna Cotta
White Coffee Mousse
Espresso Biscotti
Khalua Brown Sugar Jelly

GOLD GOLD GOLD (part 2)

Tapas and Meat and Poultry Platters

Pepper Bavaroise @ Anglaise Dressing

Scallop and Avocado Mousse

Black (Truffle) @ White (lobster) + Green (Spinach)

Mushroom Gateaux

Wagyu Beef Cheek and Bearnaise Sauce Terrine

Gorgonzola Panna Cotta

GOLD GOLD GOLD!! (part 1)

After two months of tireless preparations, two major changes to our setup and countless of hours changing and refining our menu, Shangrila Kuala Lumpur's entry for Class 23 : International Gourmet Team Challenge for Culinaire Malaysia 2007 won the Gold Medal! We beat out 8 other hotel entries to be the best. We had reservations, we had our doubts, but we stayed true to our standards of taste and straight forward menu. So it all paid off! We're gold masters! Twice for me now. I shall not bore you with more words, let the pictures speak for themselves.

Appetisers
Waffle Caviar

Seafood Terrine

Trio of Seafood

Riceless Sushi Terrine

Funky Sushi

Mini Baguettes and Garlic Bread

Individually Portioned Truffle Butter

Tomato Bubble Water (Soup)

R.a.i.n Forrest Salad

Flora... the Flower Salad

Cherry Tomato Tree

CAKESPECIALST.BLOGSPOT.COM

Ta Daaaahh!!

Okay people, I mean business. I'm setting up this new blog so you may see my work.

My cakeworks.

If you know of a friend of a friend, or a neighbour or a boyfriend or a girlfriend who needs a cake.



Be it a just a delicious cake to eat, or a feast for the eyes, mind and even naughty thoughts. I'm your man!










We can do almost anything, and I do mean anything, it's up to your imagination, I'm your man!










Be it a formal wedding hantaran or just a cake to say I love you and I'll always be there.

Check us out at :

http://cakespecialist.blogspot.com






Oh, we also plan private parties for you so you won't have to worry about the finer details of your little soirée.

POTD - Picture of the day

So here I was thinking why I don't update my blog every-so-often. There's nothing to say. Duh. I always have something to talk about. It's just that it seeps into my lucid dreams and somehow gets diluted in the daily toils of the day. Pastry production, watching tv, rushing to and from work....

Why only today I.... hmm .... you know when you think about it, it becomes insignificant... so gotta get it when it's fresh, which is why I'm going to start this thing * crossing fingers it lasts longer than a week*

Picture of the Day!... to which I'll take with my trusty Motorola L7 so please don't belittle the lack of megapixels. ~grin~ HINT HINT... see previous blog post.

Today's picture is


That my friends is a dessert done for the a charity rugby dinner held at work. It's a Chocolate hazelnut royaltine (for those of you in the know say "aaaaaahhh!") sprayed green and piped with white chocolate to resemble a rugby field embellished with white chocolate goal posts and a quenelle of raspberry sorbet in the shape of a rugby ball. Cute huh? Well we did like 500 of those rugby fields. Them poor service staff had to carry them two by two so they had a lot of running to do to get them to the positively liquor libated guests at the charity auction.

Timeline to get them done :

To make 40 trays of hazelnut royaltine = 5 days
To cut and spray 40 trays of hazelnut royaltine = 7 hours
To pipe white chocolate field lines = 6.5 hours
To churn and quenelle 500 pcs of raspberry sorbet = 9 hours
To pipe 600 * cause they kept on breaking* white chocolate goal posts = 4.5 hours

That makes a grand total of 147 hours for one dessert. Could you imagine our work load? That's juggling our daily production, our other banqueting functions, Inter Kitchen Transfer requests, last minute requests from the royal palace, last minute setup changes and the like.

At the end of the night, it all ran smoothly, we had a good time, adrenaline pumped, my executive chef was chasing my sous chef around playing tag like little kiddies.

So in conclusion, the POTD is a way for me to highlight my day and so i'll have something to blog about. More to come...

p/s I agree with banning underweight models. Plus sizes! plus sizes!! I prefer my men meaty anyways ~grin~

Adios!

Organizational Chaos

What is important in running a pastry production kitchen effectively?

a) working tirelessly day and night to make sure everything is not only in good quantity but also of excellent quality.
b) managing manpower effectively so as not to tire out existing staff members
c) making above mentioned staff feel appreciated at the enormous load of work they need to deal with it daily.
d) giving support to your staff in the form of encouragement and backing them up when shit hits the fan because you KNOW they've poured all their energy to making beautiful desserts.

What creates respect for staff for their pastry chef?
1) Refined pastry skills in chocolate or sugar work
2) The ability to make staff feel appreciated, feel like family
3) Time management and people management skills

Now what happens if the above mentioned pastry chef fails in all three endeavors?


Pastry Kitchen Weekly Briefing

Scene 1

Chef : So, are you happy working here?
Commis 2 : Not really
Chef : Why?
Commis 2 : Because we have so much work to do and not one chef is helping us out, and when something goes wrong, we get all the shit.
Chef : Well if you can't take the work load, just quit, when can i get your letter?


Scene 2

Chef: I have never seen so many people taking medical leave in one year.
Commis 2 : We are all tired chef, some of us work 20 hours a day. so we get sick lo..
Chef: You'll NEVER see me taking a medical leave.

And lo and behold, two days later, our chef was down with food poisoning.... had to take MC..

We call it KETULAHAN...


Scene 3

Staff on MC and called in sick because of high fever

Chef (in an SMS): MC? What sick? and for how long? Or do you just want to spend time with your boyfriend?

****************************************

And so, people quit en masse... our pastry kitchen was once 22 people strong, and within a span of 6 months we've dwindled down to 9 fulltime staff and 4 part timers..

So we pull together, work hard, cover our own assess because goodness knows they won't come through for us.

We've got great cooperation, great teamwork, too bad it's all done against them, if only they knew how much easier it could've been to win us over instead of being all Nazi on us.

We're not cows to be traded like livestock...

We're skilled professionals

We're not uneducated impressionable children...

We're smart cookies

We're not robots, even robots need to get recharged when batteries are low...

We're people with emotions and feelings

***********************************

Enter The Dragon

With one month to prepare and of it two weeks to conceptualise, a week and a half to do all the icing sugar filigree piping, cutting out of pastillage and three intense days(of absolutely no more than 1/2 hours sleep in 60 hours) to bring the cake together. It all was worth it. Here is the Gold Medal Winner Entry for Class 4: Wedding Cakes, for the MIBC Challenge 2006. (A pastry competition held here in KL). Bagged by shangri-la Hotel's Pastry 2nd Commis, Me!

Now I can sleep, now I can celebrate.

I won I won I WON! YES!!!

Gold Medal for me. ~sighs happily~

I'm so happy I could cry...

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

A big thank you to all peoples who've come together to bring this victory to our turf. The Shangri-la KL pastry team, you guys are worth your weight in Gold. To my fantastic housemates (Colin, Derek and Steve) who've been there supporting me and telling me when to give it a rest so i don't fall from exhaustion.I loves you guys! To my family who've rooted for me from afar. To my sister Marilyn who've supplied me with help to stay awake! To a certain man who's been sending prayers from Bangkok, we'll see stars tonight baby *L* Gee this sounds like an oscar speech and I already hear the band playing me off stage...

What else can a pastry cook say?

Here's a good one. The recipe is always in my head. I like making one big cake. Don't worry it will sink in the middle because there's no flour in the recipe but that just means that the cavity can be filled with cream whipped with icing sugar and vanilla beans. It's delicious in it's dark silkiness. Best eaten with yoghurt ice cream and caramel sauce.


Soft Chocolate Cake

450g Cream
580g Dark Chocolate (Preferrably 66% cocoa mass)

9nos. Egg Yolk
6tsp Cornflour

9nos Egg WHite
150g Honey

Bring the Cream to the boil and pour onto dark chocolate stirring til it's all smooth

In another bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and cornflour till it's smooth. Combine the two mixtures

In a clean dry mixing bowl, whisk the egg whites together with the honey until soft peaks form. Fold this meringue into the Chocolatey Yolk mixture

Pour into a buttered and floured tin and bake at 170C for 15 - 20 minutes.

Change is good...?

Whenever it takes his fancy, that is to say, when the hotel isn't busy and there are no functions, my esteemed excutive chef feels the need to change the menu for new more exciting things. It should come as no surprise to me anymore but I still get flustered by the changes.

There was once when he wanted a change in the coffee house pastry buffet menu. One fine day he just decided that he was bored with all the old items. We were given two days to complete this task. A gargantuan one considering that we have almost 40 different items on the menu. We of course had to work day and night to finish up the items which was further delayed by the fact that we did not have many of the raw ingredients. Being as it may we managed to get everything done, bowing and scraping, stealing and pilfering to get enough cartons of cream and enough number of egg yolks. It was a miraculous transformation. The buffet was beautiful again. ~happy smiles and self-congratulatory pats on the back~ We all breathed a sigh of relief.

After three months, the scene was repeated. This time our ever knowing exec chef decided that the customers were too bored with all the (3month old) items. So it was revamped again. What struck me most is that we were required to do it all at the drop of a hat. Moussess done individually in plastic piping molds with layers of vanilla creme brulee in dark chocolate mousse then glazed with caramel galze and topped off with a single almond macaroon . Then there were the mango trifles which had to be done in miniature glassess complete with sponge sandwiched with raspberry jam and topped with a paperthin layer of lemongrass bavarois (I kid you not).

It's no wonder the pastry staff are always on their toes, it's no wonder that even when the hotel isn't making enough business to pay out overtime wages so the staff are encouraged to go home on time that the pastry staff work from morning til night whipping, tempering, creaming, baking, unmoulding, cutting and glazing the darned desserts.

It's no wonder the cost is so high every few months because we have to order new things, new order lists, new garnishings, new everything.

And don't let me get started on the home made ice cream we have there!

It's a good thing that I love my job, otheriwse I'd be so terrorised by it all that I'd be put off baking another cream puff in my whole life.

Currently, we're looking to change the lobby lounge's menu. Twenty new items by the sounds of it.

~phew~sighs~

Time frame: ....And the chef saw all the desserts that needed to be created and said,
" Let it all be done by tommorow night"

Rev up the machines, crack those eggs, whip that cream into shape, roll up those sleves.

Let the game begin!

red tape makes me see red...

New year, time for new rules at work.

1) Everytime you step out of the hotel premises, you need to have a signed letter from your superior.

So, I've got to track down my ever absent Exec Chef to ask him for a signature everytime I need to step of the hotel for a smoke break because they moved the smoking zone outside before because it was disrespecting the non smokers for us to smoke inside the premises of the hotel.


2) Three days prior notice for big cake orders.

Yeah like that's going to change anything. At the hotel where I work it is imperative that we strive to be market leaders and go beyond excellence for the revered guest. This by all means making a 10kg fondant covered cake for the Queen if and when she pleases within half an hour replete with sugar flowers and gold ribbons.


3) Reminder: No handphones to be used while at work

I agree to the rule but then again there is this other rule that you are not allowed to have personal calls whilst on duty at work. I totally understand that rule as well but here's the catch: If you're working in the pastry kitchen or the cold kitchen and need to service ALL the F&B outlets (count em 10: in-house dining, french fine dining, japanese superdining, in-roon dining, poolside, lobby lounge, chinese fine dining, exclusive club floor dining, delicatessen and also the take-away cafe) then 8 hours isn't sufficient to finish up all the required responsibilities of the day let alone running new productions for the coming days ahead. So we work for up to 12 hours a day and sometimes 16 hours. And we're NOT allowed phone calls OR even have our own phones to make calls?

I believe that rules are good for structuring and regulating staff but over excessive red tape is ruinious for people who don't have the constitution for it.

There's always a way for to bend the rules if you're resourceful enough. If you can blitz curdled vanilla sauce in a blender and still make it smooth and velvety and no one notices it then you can bet that I'm going to find a way around the so called "rules".

Just don't tell my chef about the vanilla sauce bit.

work. nap. workworkwork.

~~~~~~~~~yawns~~~~~~~~~~~

Been surviving on three hours sleep a day for the past 8 days. Work has been hectic to say the least.
The laundry is piling up, my hair needs a cut but I LOVE the Christmas setting at the Pastry buffet at work!
It looks like we're in the middle of a snow storm... frosty pine branches, gingerbread houses groaning under the weight of royal icing snow and a chocolate santa smiling down on the guests. heheh I'm tired, real tired but sights of Christmas coupled with piped christmas music just makes me wanna say JOY TO THE WORLD!

~chuckles~

I'm off tommorow...

a time to sleep

a time to clean

a time to recharge

a time to finally make some unplanned mischief!

~chuckles~

13 days to Christmas people!

Spread that Good Cheer Around!

Wazza is O.U.T!

Merry Merry Merry

Ginger bread houses, chocolate trains, star shaped cookies, chocolate santas and elves, yule logs, Christmas candle cakes, fruitcake, Christmas pudding.

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttt's beginnin to look a lot like Christmassssssssssssssssss

EEEEEEEEEEEEverywhere you go...

~chuckles~

They're even playing Christmas Songs at the Coffee House at the hotel.

21 days to Christmas and counting.

I don't know why I'm so excited about it this year ~laughs~

Getting nostalgic I think..

~~~~~duhhhhhhh!~~~~~~~

Scene 1

guest : what flavour ice cream do you have?

me: Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, green tea and saffron

guest: You don't have yam?

me : No ma'am we don't. Sorry about that. Would you like to try something else?

guest : What about sweet corn?

me : No ma'am, it's only chocolate, vanilla, srawberry, green tea and saffron

guest : Haaaiyah.... what about durian? don't have also ah? what kind of 5 star hotel is this... etc etc..

**you can lead a horse to water but you can't force him to eat ice-cream**


Scene 2


me (in my chef uniform) : Good evening sir, how may I help you?

guest : I want some coffee..(foot tapping impatiently)

me : You may order coffee from the wait-staff sir. They'll be happy to send it to you at your table.

guest : You mean you're not a waiter ah?

me : No sir, I am part of the kitchen crew (indicating my uniform)

guest : ohhhh like that ah? You have durian ice cream ah?


****

I guess when it comes to guests, even at a 5-star hotel, class isn't a pre-requisite. There are the genuinely nice guests who come up to us and say hello. But they're one in a million. There are some.... ~grunts~ like

a) The dessert destroyer. He comes and mangles all the beautifully garnished petit desserts like a heat seeking missle bound for hell. *smash smash smash* and the cheesecake lies in rubbles as if Iraqi planes had dropped bombs on known American sites.

b) The hound. Sniffs at every dessert and picks it up and scans it with laser accuracy before putting it down again and picking up a brand new untouched one leaving her thumbprints as well as her unhygenic germs on the once immaculate dessert platter.

c) The I'm-on-a-diet. Asks about the desserts that are low fat, low sugar low carb low everything. I restain from pointing out the banana leaves used to underline the malaysian kueh and saying sweetly, "That would suit you fine Miss" Oh ans she also cuts the slices of cake in half (although they are already quite small) because they don't want to eat it all and don't want to waste it.

d) The Chcolate fountain fiend. He comes, he skewers and he messess up the whole fountain dropping blots of melted chocolate everywhere that is clean and on the floor. He double dips his wafer fans! UGH who wants to eat your saliva buddy?

e) The Late Bloomer. They rack up to the dessert line 2 minutes before closing time and ask, are YOU closing ALREADY? **cue the daggers from the eyes** Then proceeds to ask favours like, I want everything that's chocolate or I want fresh crepes and two chocolate mint souffles plus seven ice kacang with assorted ice creams.

f) The Takeaway Towkay. Although they are so well off they still resort to asking for takeaway from the buffet line.I shake my head in disbelief ALL the time when they request for takeaway. Or worse, they wait til you're clearing the desserts and ask for it because "You're gonna throw it away anyway right?"


Okay I've had my rant for today.... talk about kitchen confidentials ~laughs~

Au revoir my lovelies!

Star light star bright

First star I saw last night.

It wasn't a falling star, it wasn't just ashes and stardust.

It was the divine Ms M!

No, no, no hollywood sightings (I doubt Bette Midler would be having buka puasa here) in dear ol KL but Ms. Sheila Majid.

Dainty, beautiful and luminious. I was star struck. She was standing right in front of me. The queen of jazz. The diva of all divas *in the best sense of the word mind you* and she asked for some Creme caramel. Sweet, smooth and filled with complex nuances.

~sigh~ I love her.