Puff Pastry Practice

This morning I got up and headed down to Union Square to the big market. Half of the sidewalks have art vendors. Some of it's better than others, and some of it is just terrible. Just north of Union Square is the Flatiron District, named for the Flatiron building. I think it's pretty cool looking.

I am not really sure what this is. I didn't try it.

When I left the market, I headed north and took a break in Madison Square Park. It was really hot today.

From 6:00 until 10:30 this evening, I had a baking class at the Institute of Culinary Education on 23rd Street. My class was "Great Hors d'Ouevres and Desserts with the Quickest Puff Pastry." The chef went through the recipes first and then we divided into pairs and made a recipe of the puff pastry. It has to stay in the fridge for about an hour, so we were given commercial puff pastry sheets to make the recipes. Then we got to take home our original recipe of the pastry.

This is my puff pastry before I wrapped it up to be refrigerated. It's supposed to have those chunks of butter.

My partner and I had to make Parmesan Disks. Here they are right before they go into the oven.

Here they are right out of the oven. They were pretty good, not great, but pretty good.

Our second recipe was for Mozzarella and Prosciutto Turnovers.

These look terrible. They really weren't bad but my partner and I would never win any contest.

This is our chef cutting the tomato tart that someone made. It was really good, probably my favorite thing of the night. Just getting to take the class and work in the big teaching kitchen was lots of fun. After all the food had been prepared, we cleaned off one of the big stainless working tables and spread out all the food. We got to taste it and take lots home.