Culinary School Confidential: Level 4 - World Street Food Buffet

 

My group's second buffet was really a labor of love. We were allowed some creativity on this one. As a group we had to come up with a theme, then each person contributed a few dishes. We were a very international group, so we decided on 'Street Foods from
Around the World.'

My teammates made so many delicious treats, and I really can't pick between them to display here, so you'll just have to check out the slideshow. It is 100% foodie porn:

For my own part, I contributed three dishes: my family's beef kibbeh (Lebanese bulgar wheat and meat balls) with hummus, fried arepas with cheese and guasacaca (Venezuelan avocado salsa), and tres leches cake. Sadly, I have been forbidden from sharing the kibbeh recipe, but you can see my arepa tutorial here, and the tres leches cake is below.

I had a lot fun with this buffet, and once again I was really proud of my group. We are now in Level 5, cooking in the restaurant, L'ecole, and broken up into smaller station groups, and I'm really missing the camaraderie of our crew.

It was a pleasure cooking with you guys!

*****

Individual Tres Leches Cakes

Tres Leches is actually easier than it seems to prepare.

I like Alton Brown's recipe, which  you can find here, but I like to add a small amount of coffee and often liquor to the soaking glaze to offset the sweetness. On this occasion we added Irish Cream, which worked really well, but many liquors work with this dessert.

To create the individual portions, I cut the cake with a ring mold and put the cake rounds in small shot glasses. I then spooned the soaking glaze over the cakes in the cups, and topped it all off with whipped cream. I was really happy with how this turned out and think I might have to repeat this again for a party in the future. 

I'll be sharing another version of tres leches very soon, so stay tuned.

 

Cut and Burn Count: 1 cut, 1 burn this section.

Total = 12 cuts, 18 burns