So. Much. Ice. Cream. (& Concasse)

Ice cream is just one of those things I can't say no to. I tell myself I'm just going to taste it, then I end up eating half the container. I will definitely ask my loved ones for ice cream when I'm old and on my death bed. I'll probably be diabetic by then, too. So to make a long story short--that was my dinner. My other options weren't lookin' too good so ice cream was the obvious answer to my growling tummy. Now I'm feeling awesome and so so ALIVE!

Chef Leake should share the secrets to making perfect ice cream in the fundamentals of cooking! I'd be set for the rest of my life. I've been considering buying my own ice cream maker. I live in Hawaii, ice cream would be a good thing to have in the freezer. Not to mention the amount of money I would save. Well, the good news is I'll learn how to make AMAZING ice cream next year when I reach the more advanced classes. Hopefully with Chef Brown. He's awesome, just like the desserts he makes. We worked with him in my previous dining room service class because his class provided the desserts for our student-run restaurant. Seriously though, amazing. Just check out these desserts and tell me they don't look delicious.

My classmate here is holding a chocolate dome, a Tahitian vanilla ice cream with fresh fruit and whipped cream, and a lemon cheese cake with berries.  

Mmmm here is an up-close shot of the chocolate dome. Sorry I can't remember the actual name of the dessert but it is basically a decadent, smooth, chocolatey mousse-like dome with a crunch crust, fresh berries, and a crunchy cookie-like garnish. DELICIOUS! Seriously amazing. 

Some lucky people got to experience the dessert buffet.  I have no idea what we have here, but I tasted almost all of them and they were all so good. I could eat a ridiculous amount of those desserts if I had permission to. 

Here is another chocolatey dome. Deliciousness! The garnish is a little different and this one was slightly smaller but just as tasty as the other one. 

Hallelujah! One of the best desserts! BANANA SPLIT. Each ice cream is homemade. There is strawberry (too die for, seriously), classic vanilla, and chocolate. A creme bruleed banana--basically a sugar coated banana that is torched to make crunchy sugary coating. Of course with fresh whipped cream, chocolate garnish and a cherry on top :)

Oh! So I had this random thought. Something cool we learned today! We learned what concasse is. Yes, it is a fancy sounding French word, but it also a method to prepare tomatoes. I don't have pictures but I will give you a step by step instruction kind of thing so you get the idea:

What you need:

• Tomatoes (as many as you want, I'd recommend doing it one at a time though..you'll see)
• Pairing knife 
• Cutting board
• Medium sized pot
• Stainless steel bowl (for ice bath) 
• Slotted spoon 
• Two containers; one for your concassee and one for your edible trim (maybe even a third container if you want to save the skin) 
• Optional: ruler (if you want to make perfect cuts) 

1. Set a pot of water on the stove to boil. You need enough water to completely submerge a tomato. 
2. Prepare an ice bath: fill a bowl with a mixture of ice and water. (More ice than water, this water needs to be really cold)
3. Pull out the green leafy bit off the top of the tomato 
4. On the bottom side of the tomato you want to take your pairing knife to make very very thin slits. Two slits to be exact, in the shape of an "x." The slits should only puncture the skin and not go into the meat of the tomato. 
5. When the water is boiling, place the tomato in the water with a slotted spoon (a wooden spoon worked fine for me).
6. Count to 15 seconds and it should be finished. If it is a little under ripe you might need a few more seconds. The skin should look like its beginning to blister.
7. Take the tomato out with your spoon and immediately dunk into the ice bath. The tomato will continue to cook if you don't dunk it in there, and cooking the tomato is not what we're trying to do. This is called shocking. 
8. You will see that the skin is already starting to come off...so go ahead, peel it all off! (If you don't want to be wasteful you can save the peel and use it in soup!)
9. Now you have a weird slimy skinless tomato, cool! Time to cut it! 

Cutting

1. Cutting the tomato is a whole process in itself. I'm sure no one really wants to go through the trouble to make this perfect, but that is what I have to do. So I'm telling you to do it that way. So first, we cut the top off to make a flat surface on the tomato.
2. Flip it around, now cut the bottom off. 
3. You can see the insides now, from the top (or from the bottom, too, I guess) you want to take your knife and run it around the inside to separate the meat from the seedy inside gut section. You'll end up with a clump of tomato innards and what looks like a hollowed out tomato.
4. Concasse is not supposed to have any seeds whatsoever--none! So remove as much as possible--from the hollowed out bit and the inside clump. Dry paper towels work really well for this. Make sure your cutting board is clean, too! 
5. Is your tomato seed-free now? This is important. You want a perfect evaluation score, don't you? Well if you are...go ahead and cut that hollowed piece. You want to cut one line into it, just to make it into one long strip.
6. Next, you cut that strip into sections. You can cut it into sections by using the tomatoes natural ribs as a guide. 
7. You're going to make a horizontal cut next. Cut off the rib bits that are sticking out. You want a flat piece of tomato, completely even. Your tomatoes should look like around four pieces of flat, skinless, tomato rectangles, a flappy tomato heart, and the top/bottom pieces.
8. Now you can take one of those tomato flaps and cut it into strips. Whatever size you like. We have to do very specific cuts in class (1/2," 1/4," or 3/4") but that doesn't really matter. As long as it looks good enough to eat, right? 
9. Next you want to cut the opposite way of the strips in order to make perfect little tomato squares.
10. Cute! Tomato squares done! So what do you do with the creepy tomato heart? and the top/bottom pieces? Here's the final step:
11. The creepy tomato heart and top/bottom pieces aren't a part of the final cocasse perfect square cut dealio. I just don't want you to be wasteful. So take those pieces (they are edible! just not as beautiful) and cut them up into even pieces--except for the very center, that's not very tasty. This is what we call an edible trim. I'd place them into a separate container. You could use them for salsa, sauces, soups, chili, so many different things!

Viola! Wow that looks like so much work for a stupid tomato, huh? Yeah that's what I thought in class. But really it isn't that hard. It's pretty quick actually. The longest part was probably waiting for the water to boil. So if you're feelin' fancy one day and you're craving some tomatoes...try this out! Or you can just try to impress your friends by adding the fancy word into your vocabulary, whatever floats your boat! 

Woo! I'll try to get some pictures up of this to make it a little easier to follow. I just need to go grocery shopping first! Maybe it's time for a little salsa fiesta again.