A New Venture

After my recent culinary adventure to Peru, I've been debating my "next step" in the culinary world. After attending the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco I feel, at least a little, more sure. It seems that right now what I ought to be doing is "getting my foot in the door." A seemingly simple task that I've found personally to be exhausting and generally frustrating. Everyone wants experience, no one is hiring. I don't even really know what it is I want to do. I do know however I ought to pick something, and stick with it, at least for now. To establish myself in the industry. Easier said than done of course. I have a few internship opportunities for this summer, and although the idea of only being an intern at 24 is slightly irritating, I suppose I ought to expect it given my career change. Oh well. At least, I love this industry-I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make it-but jeez, this is taking some getting used to. Long gone are the cut and dry paths of the science world! So, for now? Until I land a specific internship in the field, I intend on branching my career from I'm focusing on two things. Working in the industry in some capacity, and recipe/ business development. After all, what I REALLY want to do, and my ultimate ambition, is to own my own place. So, with that I've started venturing into learning how to make fresh pasta-a project I've briefly attempted in the past, with the general outcome of "damn, this is harder than I thought."  But with my pastry degree (pasta is after all, dough) I've found the intricacies to be at least, slightly more familiar. I won't go too much into my plan here, since it is of course "sensitive" material, but I will note on how things are generally going and of course continue to post pictures of my kitchen adventures.

So, my first attempt at pasta.
I've long believed in the theory of "go big, or go home " when it comes to cooking (oddly, not much else...). Which, to be honest, generally gets me in more trouble than I'd like to admit. I'm making pasta (with a roller of course) for essentially the first time. Should I make basic pasta with a tomato sauce? Probably. Do I? No, of course not. I flip open French Laundry and have a go at the Agnolotti, a filled yolk based pasta. After a fair bit of research, I felt confident I could handle this, I mean, why not shoot for the best right away? I want to challenge myself after all!

What I've concluded from this exercise. Food photography is cruel. As I instantly expect my agnolotti to be a picture perfect as the book. Which, after three tries, and a fair bit of frustration, it does begin  to.  Also-bacon does not like pipping bag tips, as Alex discovered as he had the unfortunate task of being my sous-chef and encountering this problem first hand: the pasta is drying out, the pipping tip is stuck because the bacon wasn't chopped small enough, and I've been working with this damned dough for the past two hours and my patients running low. And in the end? We both agreed the bacon was pretty lost anyway...oh well.

But! It was worth it. The finished product was absolutely fantastic, I think. Although I realized, I don't really know what constitutes perfect pasta, clearly a professional course in Italy is in order :)

But here it is, my first attempt at pasta, and despite a bit of anger, worth it completely.

Filled with sweet potato/bacon, with a sage cream sauce, proscuitto, and brow butter.