Sushi 5 - Some Kinds of Rolls

Today I'm going to talk about a few kinds of rolls made in the sushi bar. I unfortunately never had the chance to make any of these nor do I have photos of them. These special rolls required a higher skill level than I possessed to make them.

First, I want to mention the spider roll which is very interesting because it has a whole, deep-fried crab inside of it. It also has tobiko (flying fish roe), cucumber sticks, and avocado inside.
Another special roll is the crazy tuna roll. I like this one, though it's quite a spicy one. It's a shrimp tempura roll with spicy tuna on top, at which point a piece of plastic is laid on top, rerolled, and then cut into five pieces. Then, tempura flakes are liberally sprinkled on top along with more spicy and chilli sauce. After this, it's arranged on the serving platter in somewhat of a 'U' shape which is a very elegant presentation as well as providing a perfect place to put the greens, ginger, and wasabi.
The next roll I will mention is called the volcano roll. It has tuna, fluke, and salmon on the inside. What makes it interesting is that unlike every other roll we make, the volcano roll is shaped into a triangle. This is a bit reminiscent of what my partner and I did for our Garde Manger final. Ours did not come out as well, however. Oh, and the other reason this roll is called a volcano roll is due to the drop of chilli sauce poured onto each of this eight piece roll.
The last roll I'm going to talk about is the ninja roll. It's a rather special roll as well. First, the nori is put lengthwise. Tuna, avocado, and crab meat sticks are placed at the bottom. A piece of rice is smeared on at the top to act as something of a glue. Then it's rolled and has two broccoli crowns stuck into both ends before being sent downstairs to be deep-fried. This roll also has scallions and smelt roe. Once it's deep-fried, it's cut into nine pieces. Also, tempura flakes and chilli sauce are added. Normally, it's then garnished with daikon radish shreds, red cabbage, seaweed salad, and ginger, wasabi, and greens, of course.

This is only a short list of all of the rolls that were done on a somewhat daily basis. I think it's just amazing the ability to remember all of the different items, what's in them, and how to plate them. That must come with practice, I imagine.

Pastry 5

So today I'm going to share a few photos of some of the items I've been making at the bakery, followed by some thoughts I've had about my performance.

 The items are, in order: Lemon Blueberry Muffins, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Macademia Cookies, Chocolate Chocolate Cookies, Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Almond-Anise Biscotti.

As for my thoughts, I just can't help feeling concerned about my organization. That was a goal of mine over my internships but I honestly don't feel like I've improved much in that area at all.
I'm having serious trouble remembering what I've done and how I did it. It seems like I can't even remember enough of it to write notes, or I feel like I'll remember what I've done and then don't. This applies no matter how many times I do something. Which is manageable when a plan is in place and there's someone there to help me. However, if I'm to excel and not merely output some product, I need to figure a way around my blocks. I imagine that my first step is to just force myself to write down the procedures I take and how recipes look at different stages so that I can refer to them later.
Also, I need to keep track of what is needed in the shop's case so that when orders come in I can judge how much of what we need to make to meet quota.
Finally, I should keep track of all of our products' decorations so that I can do that too. Maybe drawing sketches or at least taking photos would be a good idea for the future.

Pastry 4

Today at the bakery it was still a lot of the same old stuff.

I baked a lot of cupcakes, some muffins, and cookies today. Unfortunately, I had a bit of trouble with baking off some of the items. The lemon-blueberry muffins, for example, were put in the oven a total of three times before they were finally deemed complete. As I seem to recall, this happened last time too. They wound up tasting delicious and baked through in the end, at least.
The gluten-free banana cupcakes also seemed off today, and were in the oven twice, but eventually their quality was satisfactory for sale, but I want to make them better the next time I make them.

I just seem to have this weird issue with determining when baked goods are thoroughly baked.

Due to various circumstances, the bakery was short some workers today though, which made things difficult and more hectic than normal. Even the cashier of the shop was helping out. Hopefully things will improve in the future. This makes it all the more surprisingly that we all finished earlier than usual today.

Tomorrow I'm off from the bakery and intend to make cocoa apple cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and a chocolate drizzle at home. I had been thinking about how it's always been popular to eat apple slices with peanut butter even though the peanut butter never seems to stick to the apple. Seems like a good, sweet solution to me! Also I have around five pounds of apples for some reason and need to do something with them...