After four months of being very busy at both work and school, I finally found time to make a new post! Yes, I have been very busy.

I haven’t updated this journal for quite some time and now I am currently in week 58 of ISCAHM, not to mention that I have also finished my OJT.

Actually, I wasn’t thinking of updating my journal anymore but reading other food blogs motivated me to start writing again. More than that, I feel as if I am immortalizing a part of myself through this journal. It’s as if I am charting my own course in culinary history which I consider to be a significant part of my life. Lastly, a good friend sent me a message in Facebook saying I should update my journal so here I am, writing about another week in ISCAHM.

This week was about meat which is actually my favorite subject. I have already been in the meat industry for a year now so I would consider meat my specialization. Not only do I enjoy eating meat, I also earn a living selling meat. You might say that I have grown to love and respect it.

Basically, they taught us the different parts of meat and how to cook them. What I liked about this subject is that they showed us a meat buyers guide. It showed us standard meat cuts from different countries. It was actually very useful because it gave me ideas about what kinds of meat cuts I might be able to import here in the future.

And what’s a theory session without Good Eats? Love the information Alton Brown feeds us! Yum!

During the week, the lower batch has just started with the knife cuts. On the other hand, they will also start to commence their OJT! This blog is starting to become a time machine!

As I mentioned from the previous post, we had another kitchen week in ISCAHM! This is actually our first time having 2 consecutive kitchen weeks.

Making mise-en-place, practicing knife skills, and making stocks has become a routine for most of us by now. However, there was something different that made this week quite interesting though…

We made consomme!

I was very excited seeing this made from scratch. I always used to hear horror stories about making consomme especially from Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook! He really emphasizes the point that making this soup is pretty damn hard such that it is almost impossible to get it right the first time you do it!

Good consomme is clear and has a strong flavor! The picture above does not seem clear because of the steam. But yes, it was really clear. You can even place a coin at the bottom of the pot and still manage to see it!

And lastly, our pastry batch also made wedding cakes!

The finished products are shown in the picture. So there really was nothing new this week except for the consomme. It’s too bad I wasn’t able to get pictures of a step-by-step procedure in making it! Well, maybe I’ll make one at home next time and write about it.

So here’s the thing, I’m starting to write less and less. It’s the first time I skipped two weeks without writing anything! Moreover, I know that each entry has started lacking structure. It really shows that I just write for the sake of making a post! So, from now on, I’m going to write if I have the time to polish and publish it once I consider it satisfactory. Please bear with me for the moment because I am really trying to find time to post something on a weekly basis but I’m just to darn tired for the moment!

After our midterms, we are now back in the kitchen! We’re going to be in the kitchen for 3 weeks to be exact. That’s definitely going to be pretty tiring! You see, the usual schedule in ISCAHM is a week of theory followed by a week of kitchen. This time it’s different since batch 13 is going to have a month-long lecture so we are forced to have 3 weeks in the kitchen!

What I liked during this weeks session was that Chef Gerd taught us an extra pasta dish! It was a garlic and chili infused olive oil pasta! It was like aglio olio peperocino? Any Italians out there? Anyway, it was really simple and I liked it! This is what I like about ISCAHM. It is all about cooking. There’s no fancy stuff. Simply put, it’s all about good food and good cooking!

Oh, and this is my favorite in our Asian Kitchen so far!

We had Hainanese Chicken! Yum! This was such an MSG laden dish! Chef Manoj threw tons of it and he said that it was the essential ingredient of Hainanese Chicken!

Most students like Asian Kitchen because they like the food. It could also be cultural. After all, we like rice and strong flavors! However, what I like best about Asian Kitchen is that food doesn’t only taste good, it also looks pleasing to the eyes! I like the way chef Manoj plates his food. His presentation is pretty modern for a traditional dish.

The surprising part was that we ended the week with a surprise hands-on practicals! But unlike before, we had it as a class. This time, we had it with other sections! They mixed us up with other people so we were working with unfamiliar teammates!

To end the week with a bigger bang, we attended a food event in NBC tent.

It was an event created by Asian Food Channel. ISCAHM was asked to participate by presenting our Asian Kitchen.

There were a lot of food institutions present there. They actually had free food samples from the institutions. Here is the ticket stub for the food sampling.

There were also different schools such as CCA that presented there.

This was ISCAHM’s booth!

Most of my classmates actually volunteered to help in the event. Really sweet of them to do so.

And lastly, there were live cooking demos! Chef Manoj actually held a cooking demo but I wasn’t there to see it! Oh well. Maybe next time chef!

I missed a post last Sunday! Sorry about that but I’ve been pretty busy nowadays. The good thing is that we are now more than halfway through ISCAHM!

We have just finished exams (pictured above) and like most exams/presentations, people go down for what I’d like to call an oxygen break.

Right after the exam, we had another kitchen week! It’s about time we had another good ol’ kitchen week! If I am not mistaken, we will be having 3 consecutive kitchen weeks this time.

Oh, we had a new faculty assistant! Here’s Fara. He was in batch 10 I think and is now spending time inside the ISCAHM kitchen.

It has been a while since we last cooked together as a class so we had a lot of laughs inside the kitchen!

I was actually surprised at having a Mexican-style dish as our main course this week!

What I liked the most this week was pommes lyonnaise. Yum!

On the pastry side, they were working with sugar.

Since we are halfway done, batch 13 has started to finish their 1st month culinary manual too.

Just like us before, they also toured the kitchen at the end of the week.

And for section C, the last day of the week is, of course, Asian Kitchen.

Expos keep on coming along. This time, one of my clients gave me a complimentary ticket for this year’s franchise expo!

Here in the Philippines, when you talk about franchises, you talk about food!

This is one of the more widely used business models here in the Philippines. You create a good concept and become a franchisor!

The idea is to market a concept as quickly as possible with reasonable capital at hand so most of the time, entrepreneurs create food kiosks and if they work, they franchise it out.

However, the Franchise Show is not only for food!

They have all kinds of franchises available for the public.

Try to attend if you are thinking of franchising something or want to undertake a business venture with less risk.

Another expo has arrived and I really like it this time!

First of all, I think I should have posted this earlier but I’ve been really busy and I only have time to write on Sundays.

Like WoFex, it is a food expo. However, what I like about AFEX better is that there are more equipment here than the other food expos. Equipment meaning machines!

They have machines for food processing and anything else that involves food like packaging and other stuff.

The machine above is what I liked best. It’s a frankamatic! It is used for the production of hotdogs on a massive scale! Cool huh?

The object below is not necessarily related to food but it is however, interesting to look at. It’s a small crane you can use to move your stuff around.

Oh, and thanks to Chun from technolux for giving me the invite!

They had a huge booth during the expo. They are the sole distributor of Fiji water here in the Phillipines and they have tons of food equipment. My favorite one is their ice cream machine! Taylor.

Anyway, that’s all guys. It was a good expo for people who love machines.

See, this person was also happy!

Time flies really fast! Little did we know that it’s already midterms! Half the year has already passed by and it felt like yesterday was just week 1.

I started practicing at home by 7:30 in the morning.

We were given 2 hours to make a soup and a main course for 3 portions. So, I prepared my recipes at home.

And ingredients!

And you know what? 2 hours was too short! I barely managed to finish in 2 hours!

No pictures were taken during the procedure since I needed to be efficient and it was technically practice!

And to be honest, I did worse during the actual hands-on!

Making jam is pretty easy and cheap. The best part is, it lasts for a long time!

This was our fruit presentation in ISCAHM: Making jams and letting the chefs taste them for flavor and consistency.

What I made was apple jam. Since this was also my first time making it, I wanted it to be simple and easy so that I don’t make too many mistakes. Here are my ingredients.

It’s important to use green apples because it has higher pectin content. Unripe fruits tend to have higher pectin and that’s important when making jams. Pectin gives jams their consistency. So I cut the apples and placed them in water.

Not all fruits have enough pectin for making jam. Therefore, you need to add extra pectin by adding pectin powders or some natural pectin.

I added lemon rind (very high pectin content in citrus peels) and some lemon juice to help set the jam. To be honest, I don’t think I needed the rind since green apples already have a high amount of pectin but I just wanted to be sure.

Then, I added some cinnamon to give a good layer of flavor since apples and cinnamon go well together.

Bring everything to a boil.

Make sure everything is cooked through. This only takes a couple of minutes.

When everything is cooked, puree!

Then, add tons of sugar! Ideally, the ratio of fruits to sugar is 1:1 by weight.

Let it boil.

Let it boil until you reach a little bit higher than 100 degree celsius, but not more than 105. You don’t want to have candies!

The reason behind this is that we let everything boil so that the water evaporates. We just want to get rid of the water and if the temperature is higher than 100 degrees, that means there is no more water as water becomes vapor at temperatures higher than 100 degrees!

While waiting for your jam, try sterilizing your bottles.

Boil your mason jars in hot water before using them so that they are fully sterilized.

Fill it up then seal it. Then, place it back in boiling water (the filled jar) to vacuum seal it. I forgot to take pictures of the sealing process but I am pretty sure you can google it.

Like most subjects in ISCAHM, we also had a presentation here. This time, the chef instructors tasted it.

For our fruit presentation, we were asked to bring our own fruit products in the form of either jams, jellies, conserves, preserves or marmalades. And yes, each person’s product was tasted and graded individually.

For my presentation, I wanted it to be safe and simple so I made apple jam as seen in the cover photo. I will be writing about how I made it in my next entry.

We had half the week off to practice for our midterms. I practiced immediately once I got home and prepared my recipes.

The cooking part was actually not that hard, the difficult part was this…

It was timed!

Remember one of my previous entries before? We had carbo loading one time with the pasta made by the upper batch. This time, it was our turn to make the pasta.

The menu for the week was all pasta!

We made tons of fresh pasta and everything was made from scratch.

It was actually quite hard work, especially the raviolis.

Carboload… I know right? They came with tons of parmesan cheese too!

We had to make 4-5 kinds of pasta everyday. We made basic ones of course.

At the end of this week, we were briefed by Chef Norbert about our midterms practicals which will be two weeks from now!

Little did we know that we would already be having random drawings for our menus.

This is what I got!