Posts Tagged ‘Class’

SF Touchdown

Friday, April 29th, 2011

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Good morning / afternoon wherever you are.

We touched down in San Francisco on Monday afternoon, think we’re still a bit jet lagged, but we’re getting there.

We’ve only been in San Fran for a few days, but we’ve already been reminded about how much this city loves food. Every day we’re being treated to amazing grub, from stellar sandwiches, to the freshest seafood and everything in between. We’ve also paid our first, of what surely will become regular, pilgrimages to the Tartine bakery, and it didn’t disappoint.

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I went to my induction morning at the SFBI on Wednesday, which was pretty awesome. Its a bit of a dog to get to, but once you’re through the doors, the atmosphere is great. It’s basically a fully functioning bakery, with a college attached. I met about half of my classmates, and there’s a really good mix of people of all ages, from all over the world. There are peeps like me who are thinking about a career change, bakers who want to hone their craft, and chefs who want to broaden their skill set. We also briefly met the don of the institute, Michel Suas. He didn’t say too much, but had a really warm and inspiring vibe about him. It’s going to be hard work, but very rewarding.

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We think we’ve found a small but very nice apartment in Mission / Noe Valley to move into in a couple of weeks, which is exactly where we wanted to live, and should take some of the pain out of my commute. In the mean time, posts are probably going to be a bit sporadic, but fear not, we’ll be collecting and compiling plenty of stuff to share once we get properly settled.

Se you soon.

Hand To Mouth Meets The Ginger Pig

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

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To take some of the strain off last year’s Christmas shopping, my brother and I both decided that we’d buy each other an evening butchery class at the Ginger Pig in Marylebone as our Christmas presents. I’d been looking forward to it since we made the booking in November, and Last Friday was the day of reckoning. They do four different classes at the shop, pork, lamb, sausage making, and our class of choice, beef.

On arriving at the shop we were cheerily welcomed by Borut and Perry who were to be our guides on planet beef for the evening. After they’d kitted us all out in butchers whites, our hosts started off by explaining about the type of cattle that they rear on their farm in North Yorkshire (Longhorns), the difference between free range and organic, and how they actually go about preparing the beef for consumption once it’s slaughtered.

It was good to learn a bit more about the ageing process, and the rather underhand tactics that supermarkets employ when talking about their aged beef. The Ginger Pig, and most other quality butchers, dry age their beef. This means hanging the carcasses in cool ventilated rooms so that blood and moisture can leave the meat, thereby intensifying the flavour (the meat can be hung for up to 100 days, but the guys at the shop reckoned around the 35-40 day mark was perfect).

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