Inspiration

Paulina Abascal is a Mexican patisserie Chef who is recognise worldwide and since I've started my course I've looked at her work as a source of inspiration.
I love the way she combines the techniques she learned in France and the amazing flavours from Mexico, it's the perfect combination. Her book "Larousse de Los Postres" is amazing and really helps me see different things in patisserie.
Here's a passage from the book that I really liked and inspires me even more to do what I love the most.

Desserts are a gift, hapiness that can be shared, full of imagination and charm for all sences.
Through desserts emerge emotions, tastes, smells forgotten or new. Worlds are dicovered through their textures. Desserts truely reflect our history and escence; and with the person that cooks, he/she doesnt do it alone: he/she is surrounded by past generation, with all its knowledge and its advice, the knowledge aquired with exprience and the spirit that leads to experiment and create.

Food and TV

It seems to me that recently British TV has been hit by this sudden cooking craze...

All i saw during christmas time was food programmes and today turning on the TV first thing I see is a new TV programme called 'cookery school'.

Cooking has now been turned into reality TV and I can assure it has a big hit, ever since Jamie's school dinners the food has been a major issue in Britain and mostly on TV especially on CH4.

CH4 has 4 chef's programme, Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Heston Blumenthal. Each cook has a different approach to cooking.

Gordon Ramsay is a more harsh kind of chef always swearing but it gives you the idea that it's like that in well known restaurants.Jamie Oliver is more of a home and simple food made easy type of chef.Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall part from his long and unpronounsable surname is all about using local food and making the most of what's in season, and finally Heston Blumenthal is the experimental chef, he fall in the kind of molecular cuisine that we can see from Adria in Barcelona.

I hope that those show help people realise that making your own food and knowing how to choose proper ingredients is much better and fun than ready meals and take aways, even on a low budget and no time.

However I have to say that maybe a patisserie show should be made as most people love dessert and as I like to say life is too short to leave the dessert until the end!

Love

As you can read from this blog i LOVE patisserie but today isn't about "I love patisserie day"...

Today is about the people you love, even if you should tell them everyday today is a special date to make more of an effort than normal and show the people around you you love them.

It's really weird how when u least expect it love comes and find you, i've learnt you don't have to search for it or look for signs it'll suddently appear when and where you least expect it. Everyone's stroy is different...

I won't tell mine but I can tell you i've never been happier with someone, he's the person I can talk to about anything, he might be far away but i knowhe'll always be there for me when i'm feeling low. I don't see myslef with someone else than him because i know he loves me as much as i love him. Yes, sometimes it's hard to have a long distance relationship but the best is the time we spend together, enjoy every second of it.

Being in love and getting love in returned is one of the most beautiful thing there is.

I hope that at one point you too will find the right person for you...

To the person I love, you're the most imporanta person in my life and you make me the happiest girl on earth!

M♥L

New Year...

I've been meaning to write this post since the beginning of January but always ended up forgetting about it, so here it is...

My reflections of 2010...

Good and busy year, half of it in England doing a course i wasnt seeing myself doing it in the future and the other half in Chile doing something I love.

My mind was very confused with what I actually wanted to do in the future, I first chnaged the course I was doing in Leeds to just Languages ( Portuguese and Spanish). I love languagues and I love learning about new cultures and it also gave me the opportunity to travel and stay in each of the countries, this got me really excited until i saw the modules for the second year. Then resurged the idea of studying cooking or as I like to call it Culinary Arts. I decided in one week, just like that to change course.
My last week of holiday in Mexico was just spending time looking for courses and schools and checking emails for replys, answering phone calls from my concerned parents but they were really supportive and so was the rest of my family.

Came the day I started in Ecole, got so nervous for the first day of class but was really excited at the same time. I don't regret my change, and i'm loving the new experience and discovering a new culture and country. I've met amazing people that I know will make an impact in my life and I really enjoy the little community that we have at school, you can't really find that everywhere. My first practical at the school restaurant for a week really gave me new skills and it made me love what I do even more.

2010 went to fast that when I least expected it was the end of my first semester and coming back to the UK for christmas which I really enjoyed being back with my family (united). Cooked most days tradicional christmas food but was mostly getting ready for my 2011 January exam.

My exam didn't go well as I expected, I actually ended up crying. I wasn't happy with myslef, I didnt focus enough and all the negative things about my dish I could have easily made them better but that's what pressure does to you.

So this new year I want to focus more on what I'm doing, concentrate and just be better in general. I hope that the rest of 2011 is going to be better than this first month. I can't wait to start school again to get the enjoyment back of cooking because I think the exam kind of put me down and took away from me the joys of cooking. I'm also excited to start learning Japanese in march so we'll see how it goes!



Memories of 2010...

Anyway I wish everyone  Happy New Year (a month late...)