I am the worst at blogging. I have A LOT of catching up to do! I’ve made so many pies, so many pretty phos and ramen dishes, and I’m prepping to open my home-bakery in 2021 in my brand new kitchen (we don’t have it yet, but we’re closing in our settlement!) It was such a busy 2020 between moving out of state and Covid and our whole lives going from first shift to third shift schedules. Now in 2021, we’re moving again, taking on new business ventures (both in the bakery and others) and I have new culinary goals.
First, let’s look back on 2020’s goals. When I made this list, I didn’t know we were moving that year so most of my goals were interrupted pretty severely by that.
- Seafood – my biggest weak point due to availability and price. Shrimp, mussels, clams? I can do just fine. Give me large or whole fish or lobsters? Very little experience outside of small fish we’ve gotten from the lake. It’s at the top of my list and I’m creating a budget to make room for the expense as well.
Seafood quickly became impossible. Two months after writing this list, we found out we were moving which put a big freeze on any purchases that were costly and unnecessary. Now that we’ve moved away from the ocean and into the middle of the country…well, seafood opportunities are much harder. I no longer live close to a seafood market so I’m not sure when this will be happening.
- Cakes. I have loved the idea of being a baker – of everything but cake. I hate making cake. I’ve had so much success with every other dessert. Pies are effortless. But cakes? Ugh. I stopped bothering years ago. Now it’s time to pick back up on it. Every Masterchef heavily features cakes as challenge rounds. I need to learn to make a few kinds and get really good at it.
I did practice a bit with cake decorating. I also practiced icing techniques with Fake Bakes as well. Not enough, I wanted more, but that’s on this year’s goals too. Funny I mentioned pies because I decorated those to completely new heights. I did sculpted pies and hand painted pies a lot and loved it.
- Plating. I still struggle with the artistic part of food – which is ridiculous, because I was crafty and artistic all my life and now I can cook without being able to make a plate pretty. I always clean the plates before they get served and I can make it look appetizing…just not beautiful. I want beautiful, professional plating next year.
I did make strides with this. A few of my photos looked professional, which I was thrilled about. I can make a beautiful bowl of pho and very pretty pies. I made strides with this last year and want to continue with it this year.
- Pasta. I’ve actually had quite a bit of experience with this already. I made my own spaghetti, ravioli, and lasagna noodles plenty of times. But I want to get rid of any boxed, premade pasta and start making my own every month, as well as making harder pasta dishes.
Yeah, that move I talked about? Those pasta rollers and dryers got packed up pretty quickly after writing this list. Guess where they went when we moved into our 1000 sqft apartment with a tiny kitchen? That’s right, in the storage unit a few blocks away…and in an unmarked box. I had times I really wanted to make pasta but it just wasn’t able to happen. 2021, I’ll have all the cabinet space to keep my pasta gear close.
- Bread. Again, this is one of those that I have a fair bit of experience with. For about half a year in 2016 (I think it was) my husband and I made all of our own bread for everything. We never bought any at the store – and we made a lot of sandwiches. I would love to start experimenting with more than just plain loaves of bread. I want to try different flavors as well as plaiting and sculpting bread in different ways. I was really inspired by the GBBO last year but never got around to it. This year I’d like to.
I didn’t do this. Yikes, it seemed like a great cooking year but I barely touched on these goals. My kitchen is so small right now, with hardly any cooking space so I stuck with what felt possible. Baking bread…not so much. I did do my standards like pizza dough through the year but that was it.
Finishing up 2020, here are some of my favorite dishes (I plan to catch the blog up on some of these in detail later:)
Okay, so moving onto 2021:
- I own 4 Thomas Keller cookbooks – I want to work my way through them this year. Try out different recipes of his that aren’t on MasterClass. I’m not sure yet if I’ll work my way through just one cookbook or skip around between the four.
- Practice own cake recipes, buttercream, and cake decorating.
- Set up home-bakery and begin selling
- Set up baking website
- Make baking logo
- trials in macarons and truffles
- create individual family member’s recipes – here I’d like to take everyone in my family’s favorite thing to eat and make and perfect the recipe, name it for them, and put it into a family cookbook.
- Bake own pasta – enough to make large batches of ravioli and freeze for fast dinners and also have dry pasta in my pantry.
Best of luck, me. It’s gonna be a busy year!
Mastering Cooking With MasterClass 