parole again....

well time to leave camp. Gonna be out for 3 weeks this time, which is both a good and a bad thing. Good thing cause I get to spend 3 weeks with the Mrs relaxing and all...bad thing cause that is 3 weeks with no money coming in. So, definitly gonna be spending quality time hanging out at home with the Mrs, trying to have fun on a tight budget.

Time in camp this time around has been interesting. Honestly, there hasn't been that many stories to tell, or the stories are basically the same thing over again just different characters but the plot stays the same. Though I asked if my rotation could be changed so that I am not in for 2 weeks with Tony 2 but instead move it so that my entire time in camp matches Curtis'. Why? well, when Tony 2 is in camp the menu looks like 'deep fried sole, roasted chicken breasts, pot roast', very normal, dependable...dare we say 'boring' food. Then Curtis comes in and all of a sudden we have 'lobster stuffed sole, veal Parmesan cutlets, rack of lamb and spatzel'. Even when Curtis does chicken breasts he goes more than just take the breast, sprinkle seasoning on it and bake it...he makes a rub, marinates it for a day, throws it in a hot pan for a second and then bakes it. Ginger beef for Chinese food is more than just cut up beef with flour (AAHHHHH, my deepest apologies for the previous spelling boondoggle) deep fried with plum sauce mixed with some ginger. He actually makes a ginger sauce using nearly 1lbs of ginger.

Yesterday we made spatzel. Normally it is a german dumpling like noodle that is pushed through a noodle press, but due to lack of equipment we had to improvise. Instead of long noodles we ended up with little small niblet noodles. When I say 'we' it is not the royal we of him doing all the work and I take credit, we did it together. He got the recipe, I assembled the items, I mixed the eggs while he added the flour to get the right consistency, he did one batch quickly to show me how it is done and then walked away while I finished off the rest of the batches. They turned out really good. The noodles are going to be cooked with the veal cutlets on Thursday on the grill with garlic butter and then tossed with the gravy and served. I got a little bowl, as well as a minor cooking lesson, and they tasted great. However, due to the guys not liking to eat anything out here out of the ordinary, they probably wont touch it.

Oh, another thing that he did was made salmon wellington. I have always wanted to try beef wellington but can never find a place in Edmonton that serves it. I have always heard Ramsay screaming how the beef wellington is over cooked/under cooked/raw or just plain 'crap' on Hell's Kitchen and have always wondered what it would be like. For the salmon wellington he made a duck-cell (that is how it sounds, but no idea how it is spelt. Chopped up mushrooms with diced onion and garlic, cooked till almost dry, thickened with cream and cooled), seared the salmon steaks, stacked spinach/salmon/duck-cell and then wrapped it in a puff pastry like a pizza pocket and baked golden brown. Served with a nice butter sauce, the dish was amazing. However, he made 7 of them for 60 men and only two of them went. Guess if fish is not baked in butter and served plain they don't want to eat it.

So, yeah, now I leave camp and head home to spend time with the Mrs. Try my hand at cooking a bit more. Have been told by my parents that I have to practice the salmon wellington myself cause they want to try it. I think I can pull of the wellington whereas the butter sauce a different story. So off I go to rest and recoup. Write more again in three weeks, or possibly sooner if something interesting happens out of camp.