"Food Truck Life" and "A Possible End To Radio Silence"

It's been a bumpy year for the blog, and really for the inside of my head. I got into the full swing of culinary school and the planning and execution of a job change and things around this space got sort of put on the back burner.

I'm a planner, and I thought that if I planned out a perfect pathway to my ideal future (school>internship>job) that I'd leave my childhood behind and I'd make the transition to responsible, respectable adult smoothly, but it hasn't really turned out that way. If anything I feel like going back to school and ditching everything to work on a food truck has just launched me into a second adolescence and I'm not too sure if I'm worried about it. I don't really know what I'm doing anymore, other than finishing school, or what I'm aiming for but I'm having an absolutely marvelous time traveling all over Nashville, getting to see places I never would normally even look. I've been able to try all kinds of food on the road as a result of lunch trips between double shifts, left over event food, and food truck to food truck goody trade. But the road is too unpredictable for my nice camera (aka "my infant son") and all this interesting food I eat rarely makes it home, or if it does makes it home in the dark of night, so my ability to blog has been hindered.

So in an attempt to solve my blogging problem and further prove myself to be a teen girl, I've ditched the technological equivalent of a speaking telegraph that I've been carrying around in my purse, finally, finally upgraded to a smartphone to use as an on the road camera situation, and now have both a twitter and instagram account that I intend to fill with the highlights of my travels.

Follow if you feel so inclined, you'll find me both places as madame_magar , and stay tuned to this space for some changes and more frequent updates appearing in the very near future.

-m

She'd Fly Through The Air With The Greatest Of Ease

So, um... I quit my steady job of 5 years to work on my favorite food truck.

I don't really have a good explanation for this, in fact mentioning it to people has earned me plenty of sideways/confused/skeptical looks, but... I had to do it. I had to leave my old life behind and join the circus, there was just no other choice.

Figuratively speaking of course - Image credit

You know that feeling you get when you know you have to jump on an opportunity even if it makes no logical sense? It's a kind of pounding in the heart, a weightless heady spinning sort of inside tingling like a Spider-sense. I try my best never to ignore that feeling, I've had some of my best times in life because of that feeling, and some of my only life regrets so far have been because I've ignored it. I've been to New York, San Francisco, Bonnaroo, Culinary School and run two half marathons because of that feeling, I've met Jack White, Issa Rae, and the most unforgettable (though not always long term) boys because of this feeling (and against my better judgment), so I've learned at this point that while I may be able to make most of my life choices with my Capricorn analytical, calculating, tightass, emotionally removed mind, if I want to have a truly happy life, you know, from my insides, I'd better listen to the Spider-sense.

So I'm being ridiculous, I'm working in a mobile kitchen with no air conditioning sweating through my clothes in the 90+ degree Tennessee heat, I'm driving all over Nashville and Franklin to a different place every night. I'm tethered to my cell phone in case the week's schedule suddenly changes, I'm working under a highly passionate wildly sociable artist who changes the menu week to week, and I'm wearing my chef whites to weddings. It is an illogical, seemingly random choice, it's wildly changeable and it's the most fun I've had since I was 17.

Magic Tricks and Yellow Flowers

Once again I've found myself wrapped up in a project because someone mentioned something to me, I can't even stop myself anymore, it's a sickness I swear. It all started a few weeks ago when I got in my mind the idea for a blog post for the first day of spring. I'd taken some inspiration from the yellow flowers that always bloom around the 21st of March to make something lovely and lemony yellow. But I swear, not a day after I did, and got myself all excited for spring, it started snowing again and it snowed for two more days after that.  Oh well. So I put the blog post on the back burner, and I took these lemon bars over to my mother's house to celebrate the now only symbolic arrival of spring. Upon first bite she proclaimed these lemon bars to be the best she ever had. This of course pleased me to no end, and gave me the big head.

Later that same week I got to talking to my baking teacher and she asked me if maybe I had any gluten-free magic tricks up my sleeve for our cookie class in two weeks. As usual I got sort of flustered, and pink cheeked and made no promises, but on the trip back home I got to thinking about those "best I've ever had" lemon bars and thought that maybe they'd be just the thing to cut to pieces and turn into something new. Back at home I set to work to altering this lemon bar recipe so that it would work gluten-free. It was.... a fairly painful process with many many trips ( 6!) to the garbage can. BUT with a whole lot of patience and a little mad science I  finally managed to produce a miracle just in time for class that was not just good for gluten-free, it was just plain awesome. So here we are, the most amazing lemon butter bars, two ways.

Regardless of the recipe you choose to make here, either gluten-free or the original, the assembly method is the same, and it's pretty simple too. Also, I've listed the recipe in grams because in my experience (which might not be yours) some of the weight amounts for the gluten-free flour blend were so very slight they wouldn't even register on my kitchen scale on the imperial/ U.S. setting, so I've listed the recipe in grams for the sake of accuracy.

Gluten-Free Lemon Butter Bars
Adapted from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Rose's Christmas Cookies 
You can find the original gluten-y recipe here

Shortbread Base - Adapted from Gluten Free On a Shoestring

54 grams Brown Rice Flour
54 grams White Rice Flour
27 grams Tapioca Starch
36 grams Potato Starch
5.4 grams Xanthan Gum
3.6 grams pectin ( I used this kind)

14 grams Powdered Sugar
25 grams granulated Sugar
142 grams Cold Unsalted Butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

Lemon Curd Topping

4 large egg yolks ( 74 grams)

150 grams granulated sugar
94 grams lemon juice, freshly squeezed (about 2 1/2 large lemons)
Pinch of salt
2 teaspoons (4 grams) lemon zest (finely grated) 
57 grams unsalted butter (softened) 

2 tablespoons(14 grams) powdered sugar for dusting 

For the shortbread base
Add the GF flour mix and the sugars to the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine, start adding the butter in small batches to the bowl and pulse until it disappears. Add all the butter and pulse until the dough starts to come together into a ball. Remove the dough from the processor, wrap it in plastic and chill for a few minutes ( 15 in the freezer, 20 ish in the fridge) until it gets firm. While you're waiting, preheat the oven to 325* F.

Line the bottom of a metal 8 x 8 inch baking pan with parchment paper that's just long enough so that a little bit of the paper hangs over the sides ( you can use this as a handle to remove the bars from the pan later. It makes life soooo much easier).

Once the shortbread base is chilled and firm, press it into the bottom of the of the parchment lined baking pan and baking in the oven for 25 -30 minutes and the top is lightly golden brown.

While the base is baking, start making the lemon curd topping.

*For the next step you'll need a double boiler, if you're like me and don't have a double boiler laying around you can ghetto rig one by nesting a sauce pot or a skillet over a simmering pot of water.

In the top bowl of a double boiler, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar, then add the lemon juice ( you have to combine them in this order egg-sugar-lemon juice, because the acid in the lemon will start cooking the egg too soon if you add it first). Cook the lemon curd, whisking constantly until the mixture begins to thicken and starts to resemble the texture of hollandaise. Remove from heat, add the butter, salt and lemon zest and whisk until smooth.

When the shortbread base comes out of the oven, add the lemon curd to the hot base, smoothing it out a little so it's even. Lower the oven temp to 300* and put the lemon bars back in the oven for 10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely, then refrigerate the pan for 30 minutes to set the lemon curd completely before cutting into bars. Dust lightly with powdered sugar before serving. Enjoy!

"Tennessee Flavors"

"Opry Clusters"

A few weeks ago my culinary program had their annual fundraising event called Tennessee Flavors, $50 bought you access to an entire building filled with tasting tables from restaurants, bakeries and breweries all over Nashville.

The culinary students came by before the event to help set up and assist vendors and some of us supernerds showed up early in the morning and stayed all day long helping to prepare desserts for the NSCC tasting table (can you spot my contribution?). I was soooo nervous to work with people I didn't know, baking food for a real event but I got over it pretty quick once I got in the kitchen.

"Mooney Pies"

Flourless Chocolate Brownies

Raspberry Mousse in chocolate cups (left) Chess Squares (right)

At some point during the night all the students got to take a break and sample some of the marvelous food at the tasting tables. I of course couldn't resist and brought my camera.

 

 It was an amazing experience, super fun and we had a great turnout. All the food was heavenly and so diverse. I can't wait to do it again! I ended up staying until late into the night after the event to help clean up too and boy did I sleep like a corpse when I got home!

"The Call of Wild Yeast; A Story In Bread Portraits"

I have never been more in love in my entire life.

Last year when I started culinary school, I didn't really know what I was doing it for, just that I had to do it. There wasn't really a clear objective in my mind when I signed up to go, just a very strong feeling pulling me in that direction. Call it silly and superstitious if you want, but sometimes you just have to do what feels right to you.The problem with going off of a feeling though, is that for a while I just felt like I was bumping around, going through the motions sort of waiting around for that next feeling that would point out what the hell I was supposed to do next. All year long I waited and waited, I went to all my classes, kept my grades up and felt pretty much like a fraud. Whenever classmates would ask me what my plans were after school I wouldn't have an answer.

This semester I started my first baking class, it's a required class and was a royal pain to get into. I had to rearrange my work schedule to be able to get up at 7am and drive across town to go and I still have to work all night long just a few hours after class is over. Despite all of that, I have never been happier than when I am in this class.

I feel absolute bliss every moment of the five hour class period; the science, the history, the smells, (even washing the dishes!)... I love it all. It helps of course that the Chef in charge of our class ( despite the hour) speaks passionately and knowledgeably about chemical composition, wild yeasts, and her own personal world travels in such a way as to make note taking unnecessary. 

When I'm not in class I spent nearly every moment thinking and planning and dreaming about recipes and flavors and alternative flours. Every week we're given homework to practice what we made in class and bring in a sample, and every week I go home and make six or seven batches. I have five different butter slicked notebooks (in the kitchen, the bedroom, next to my purse...) filled with scribbles of dreamed up skeleton recipes. Index cards, junk mail envelopes, and old receipts with gluten free flour combination ideas and ratios scrawled over the backs. I even take my expensive camera with me to class! I've never felt so frustrated and exhilarated and utterly consumed by a thing in all my life. 

That feeling I was waiting for, this is it.

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do after this semester is over, or where I'm going to go but I've got the pulling feeling again. 

You must, you must be a baker.

Stay tuned.