What the heck have I been up to?

Oh goodness it has been a long time since my last post. Well I am teaching full-time at Schenectady County Community College and things could not be any better. I seriously can't say I recall any better time in my life. I am the lead instructor for Garde Manger, I personally teach three sections of the class with two other instructors teaching under my curriculum. I also run the restaurant class on Tuesday nights (make reservations in advance, the days fill up quick) and I teach the basic baking class called Elements of Baking.

I have been working in an America Culinary Federation Knowledge Bowl team for the college along with a number of other great things. On the competition note, I haven't done much myself lately because of work. For those who are ACF members, you will see in the next National Culinary Review that I am named one of the newest ACf certified culinary judges, so proud and humble at the same time.

I am judging one of my first competitions this winter in St Augustine, Fl. I won both my first gold in cold food (garde manger) competition along with my first market basket (mystery basket competition) at this show. Again, I am humbled that I get the chance to come full-circle to judge at this competition.

In the next couple weeks I will be competing in a couple competitions. One will be in Pennsylvania, while the other will be in Delhi, NY. I have never competed in the seafood category, so I thought I would come up with a new dish for that category. To be honest the dish came to me by accident. I purchased some salt cod last week and decided to make some traditional New England salt cod cakes.

The dish I came up with is a sous-vide olive oil poached black cod, set upon a truffled smoke black cod potato cake with rainbow chard two ways (julienne stems sauteed in butter, and the leaves wilted with garlic and shallots with a bit of pumpkin oil. The sauce will be a beurre rouge (red wine butter sauce).

I hope you all are well, thanks for reading... I will try to keep you all up on my latest escapades. Be well, and be safe.