The George Foreman grill is the ultimate cooking companion for those protein packed meals needed by all athletes, including skiers. The meat cooks quickly and remains juicy in addition to having fantastic grilled flavour and those pleasing grill marks we all love. Following are three fantastic recipes to try on the George Foreman grills that can be adjusted in many ways. Simply follow the basics and adjust to taste.

The key to grilling any meat is to prepare it well. Though the grill cooks quickly because it cooks from the top and the bottom at once, preparing the meat for the grill could take a little longer. This is especially true if the recipe requires a marinade, which these definitely do. To speed it up at cooking time, prepare several batches of each recipe and freeze the meat in the marinade. When you pull the meat out the thaw the night before you wish to cook it, it will marinate as it thaws.

Tangy Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
¼ cup lemon juice
¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
½ cup water
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped

Lightly pound chicken breasts to desired thickness but to at least ¾ inch.

Marinate in mixture four hours or more.

Grill at 375 degrees on the George Foreman grill for 10 minutes or until no longer pink and juices run clear.

Indoor Steak

2 strip steaks
¼ cup favourite steak sauce
1/8 cup favourite barbeque sauce
1/8 cup ketchup
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. garlic salt
2 tbsp. onion powder
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 cup water

Marinate strip steaks 4 hours or more and cook at 400 degrees on George Foreman until desired doneness is achieved. About 7 minutes for medium rare.

Ranch Burgers

1 lb. hamburger meat
4 tbsp. real bacon bits
2 tablespoons ranch dressing
½ cup shredded cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Make 4 thin hamburger patties and salt and pepper to taste. Mix cheese, dressing, and bacon bits and place half of the mixture in the centre of two patties. Place the other two patties on top and press the edges to seal. Grill at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. Place patties on buns and top with favourite hamburger toppings.

These can each be adjusted with different seasonings and fillings to create hundreds of yummy and easy recipes for the George Foreman grill. Get creative and get cooking. Remember that the longer meats marinate the tenderer and flavourful they will be

After writing about our top five favourite puddings the temptation to revisit them was too much, so today we made Emma’s Classic Plum Humble Crumble.

Here is Emma’s recipe:

Ingredients

A bunch of fresh plums

A splosh of sherry

175 grams of plain flour

50 grams rolled oats

110 grams butter

110 grams soft brown sugar

Loads of thick double cream

Preheat your oven to 180˚C. Wash and stone the plums then cut into halves and place in an oven proof dish and splosh over with the splosh of sherry. For the crumble topping mix the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, then gently rub in the butter until you have a crumbly dry mix. Spread the crumble over the plums. Pop in the oven for 40 minutes or till golden brown, leave to cool for 20 minutes then serve with a healthy helping of the double cream.

As you can see from our picture it was yummy and now in our tummies.

If you want to master your way to pudding heaven then maybe book one of the last remaining places on the next Alpine Cookery Course.

One of our favourite topics, if not our all time favourite topic, is puddings. Recently we have been pondering about what are our all time favourite desserts and whether the old classics really are the best?

The question we asked ourselves is: What are our top five favourite desserts?

As you can imagine this is a tricky question to answer so we decided to write a dream menu of our top five. This is how it looks:

At number 5 is the humble Crumble spiced up with some fresh plums, clotted cream and lots of crispy crumble topping.

At number 4 it’s vanilla Panna Cotta with a perfect soft creamy wobble, lovely.

At number 3 it’s the Crème Brulee with a top that has a satisfying crack when whacked with a spoon followed by yummy vanilla cream underneath.

At number 2 it’s a Chocolate Mousse, light fluffy and dark with lots of alcohol to give it an unctuous kick.

NUMBER 1 is a split choice for the top between a classic Chocolate Soufflé and a Banoffee pie. And just to make everyone drool here is a picture of our very own Alpine Cookery Course Banoffee pie…..enjoy.

Christmas day has passed and Boxing Day is upon us with the eating of the leftovers from the Christmas lunch.  For all our graduates from the cookery course this autumn, they will have survived their first and possibly last Christmas dinner in their chalets. 

For all of them it was a white and snowy Christmas, thanks to a large dump of snow on Christmas Eve.  What a treat to have powder skiing on Christmas Day.  For those of us in England, like myself having survived the travel trauma going from Geneva to Gatwick on Thursday, my Christmas has also be white with snow in the garden at home from the “big freeze” although sadly not really skiable its nice all the same.

The winter in the Alps is shaping up nicely with great snow at altitude and much the same on the lower slopes.  The weather has been a little varied with snow to the valley floors, then plummeting temperatures hotly followed by warmer milder air.  Fingers crossed it stays cold and snowy for the rest of the season and we enjoy another excellent winter.

Susie spent a couple of days training the Adventure Base chalet staff the ins and outs of chalet cooking and hosting in early December.  She ran a bespoke 2 day course in their chalet in Chamonix, following their set menus and training programme.  They are now in full swing with guests in their chalets and busy putting all their hard learned skills to the test.

We have got some bookings on our June course already which is a really encouraging start, so don’t wait until the spring to book your place is your planning a ski season next year.  Book our course in June to ensure you get the pick of the jobs and plenty of time to hone your cooking and baking skills.

Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

It’s been a while since I last updated our blog and ohh we have been busy at the Alpine Cookery Course.  We ran a really successful course in late September with 8 eager participants all joining us in Chamonix to get the low-down on chalet cooking and working a ski season.

With a group of 7 girls and just one man, Julian, who fared well under the circumstances!  All got off to a flying start with some great cooking on the first few days.  The evening meal performances by each successive dinner team put the pressure on the next to produce something even better.  No one disappointed and by Friday night we were enjoying another fantastic meal.

Our daytime cookery sessions give each person a chance to practise new recipes and learn new techniques and pass and learn ideas from each other.  For the first time ever we have 4 perfect cakes produced in our baking section on day 1, an amazing feet!  This reflected everyone’s previous experience and attention to detail in following the recipe and producing fine cakes, cookies and muffins.  This also signalled the start of non-stop eating all week!

Everyone that was going on to work in a resort this winter had already secured their dream job and Francesca got a job offer on the penultimate day of the course from Crystal to work in a chalet in La Plagne.  So we have another successful batch of chalet hosts off to live the dream for 5 months of fun and hard work in the Alps this winter.

We have a selection of photo’s from the course on the gallery page on the website showing all the mouth-watering food we cooked on the course, they are also on our Facebook fan page.  Join up if you are not already a fan of ours to make sure you catch the latest news from the Alps this winter and all the hot gossip on jobs, courses and much more.

If you’re thinking of doing a ski season then sign up for one of our courses to make sure you get the head start on the rest.  Our training courses are well established in the industry and chalet companies employ our students as they know they have received some of the best training available.

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Over the last couple of days we have had colder and rainy weather in Chamonix and snow down to around 2500m, with about a meter of fresh fallen on top of some earlier snow from the week before reports were that it might be worth the effort of a ski.

The girls

So the 5 of us headed up Grands Montets on the first cable car much to the amusement of the other occupants of the cable car who clearly thought we had lost the plot with our skis in hand.  We climbed the steps to the top viewing platform and climbed over the railing to head down something called the Bellevedere Cable which is a narrow ridge on the summit of the Grands Montets.  You have a steep first slope to ski which was nerve racking having not made a turn since the end of April and with a little apprehension of how stable the snow might be and how crevassed the glacier is, we set off.

The first pitch of ohh lovely new fresh snow

 The first pitch went without incident, but with 20 beautiful powder turns on a steep 35 degree slope, the legs were burning at the bottom!  We then skied down past the rognan, a large rock in the glacier, to the lower ridge line.  This was about as far as we dared go knowing the snow would give way to rock and an increased walk back to the lift.

We then put on our skins and began the walk back to the top and the lift to the bottom, no easy ski back to the lift at this time of year.  As they say you have to earn your turns!  After just over 1hr we were back standing under the bergschrund and it was skis off and a short climb around the side back to the bottom of the steps.  Climbing the steps back up to the cable car made the legs ache even more but it was great to be back up in the high mountains and well worth the early start for a cheeky August ski.

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Even though it’s high summer, with some colder rainy weather in Chamonix this week I quite fancied a nice roast dinner one night, so here’s my recipe for roast pork and all the trimmings.

Roast Loin of Pork with Roast Potatoes and Apricot and Hazelnut Stuffing.

Stuffing serves 2

• 100g of bread to make into breadcrumbs
• 50g of dried apricots
• 4 to 5 whole hazelnuts
• Sprig of fresh rosemary
• 4 or 5 fresh basil leaves
• 1 clove of garlic
• Salt & pepper
• 1 medium egg beaten

Place all the ingredients except the egg, into a magi mix and blend until everything is made into breadcrumbs.  Don’t mix it so much its really fine. 

Beat the egg in a glass and pour in half of it to the breadcrumb mixture and mix it well.  Add more egg if necessary, you are looking for a slightly sticky consistency but not soggy.  Then shape the mixture into balls around the size of a large golf ball.  Place them on a plate until you are ready to cook them in the oven.

apricot and hazelnut stuffing

I have roasted a piece of pork loin, it’s quite a lean cut of pork and nice and easy to roast.  Place the meat in a roasting tin and grate over some fresh pepper and sprinkle with salt and rub in a little vegetable or sunflower oil into the meat.  Place it into a pre-heated over at 180 C and cook for the right amount of time according to the weight of the meat; this should be 20mins per Lbs and 20 mins extra. 

About halfway through the cooking time I added 3 or 4 whole garlic cloves with their skins on, a sprig of fresh rosemary and half an onion.  All these ingredients help flavour the meat and the onion will make the meat juices taste good for gravy later on. 

Once cooked allow the meat to rest for 10 – 15 mins before carving and serving.

I am serving my roast with roasted potatoes, which I have par-boiled first before adding them to the roasting tin, basting them in some of the meat juices and allowing them to cook for around 1hr.  At the same time as adding the potatoes to the roasting dish you want to add the stuffing balls.

I am also serving fresh peas which I found the in the supermarket the other day, it’s nice to buy them in their pods and shell them yourself, along with carrots and some home grown courgettes.

Fresh peas and homegrown courgettes

        Potatoes and roaster garlic                                                                                                                                                                          

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

A veiw that is hard to beat?

All these great activities are enjoyed by our students on the courses each year, there is enough free time during the week to walk, run, bike and much more while you are on the course.

There are also many great things to do and see around the town of Chamonix, there is the Adventure Film Festival from the 20^th – 22^nd August, that showcases many small but inspirational film makers and  their stories and travels around the globe.

There will be a summer version of the Nissan Outdoor Games from the 14^th July in Chamonix, this is an amazing few days were teams of 5 have one week to shoot, edit and present a 5 minute film showcasing their different sporting disciplines: Mountain Biking, Mountaineering, Kayaking, Paragliding, BASE-jumping and wingsuit flying.  The winning team will be chosen by a panel of judges including the skiing legend Glen Plake.

The outdoor swimming pool has just re-opened at the sports centre after a full refurbishment, you can enjoy a lovely dip in the water of the Olympic sized pool to cool off.

With many more events taking place all the way through the summer and autumn, Chamonix really is a great place for your chalet cookery course.  Not only is it conveniently located just a 1hr drive from Geneva airports, it’s at the foot of Mont Blanc, Western Europe’s highest mountain and enjoys staggering views of the mountains.  It’s a busy vibrant town with lots of great shopping, bars, cafe’s and sports facilities.  Do you need any more good reasons to book your place on our course in October?

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

Recruitment for the 2010/11 winter season has started in ernest now and all our course participants are applying for jobs and asking questions on how to write the best 6 day menu plan to go with their job applications.
 
Anyone applying for a job as a chalet chef, host or assistant will need to supply at least a 6 day menu plan with their application.  It doesn’t need to be a daunting task and by following some basic rules you can have one nailed in no time at all.
 
Get prepared either with a large piece of paper and pen or you laptop or PC and begin with writing out days 1 – 6, usually its best to start with Saturday as this is generally termed the start of your week or change over day, your week ends on Friday and its only 6 days as you have 1 day off mid week (typically Wednesday) when you do not need to prepare breakfast or dinner.  You will however need to leave breakfast laid out for your guests to help themselves to and a cake for tea.
 
Once you are set with this along with the recipes you intend to use you need to compile them into daily menus. 
Starting with breakfast you need to provide a regular continental breakfast each day along with 1 hot option - begin your meny plan by writing out your breakfast options on all your days, on Wednesday your day off it will be just a continental breakfast. 
 
You should have: tea, coffee, orange juice, fresh bread, croissants, pain au chocolate, jam, butter, sugar, cereal, milk and yoghurt.
 
The hot option you provide each day does not need to be on the scale of a full English breakfast but you can use the components of this dish each day to create smaller hot dishes e.g. scrambled eggs on toast; fried egg and bacon; mushrooms on toast; sausages and tomatoes and eggy bread/French toast.  You may also have to serve porridge each day, it used to be very traditional but it is less so now.  You could also consider adding pancakes to your menu if your a dab hand at making them and a fruit salad or fruit plate is a nice, healthy touch a few times a week. 
 
Now that is breakfast sorted, its time to hit the cakes & biscuits for tea, yum yum!  Some people love chocolate but you can only have 1 or 2 chocolaty things in one week – repetition is an important point overall (or lack of repetition) of the same flavour or type of food whether its chocolate, carrots, chicken or eggs!  So back to cake!  Choose a selection of cakes and biscuits type things with a selection of flavours e.g. chocolate chop cookies, carrot cake, flapjacks, lemon drizzle cake etc.  Its a good idea to serve a biscuit like flapjacks on your day off as they will keep well in an airtight container.
 
On to the main evening meal, we always suggest you start with the main course first and specifically the meat you will serve, this forms the basis of your meal and you build the rest of the dinner around this dish.  So for example you are going to serve a breast of chicken, what are you going to do with it?  Pan fry it, grill it, casserole it, cook it in the oven, stuff it, pour a sauce over it?  If you have a recipe you have cooked lots before and know well then use it; I have a chicken recipe I have cooked for many years where you wrap the breast in a slice of parma ham and fry or seal the meat until it goes a nice golden colour before finishing the cooking in the oven; its served with a tomato and orange sauce. 
 
Once the meat is chosen you can then select your starch (potatoes, rice, pasta etc) and vegetables to compliment the dish.  They should provide an array of colour, texture and flavour; make sure you avoid too much red e.g. tomato and orange sauce with carrots and sweet potatoes or making a meal white.  I always try to imagine what it would look like on the plate when you serve it, this might help you visualise the meal.  I would serve my chicken breast with roasted potato wedges and sauteed mange tout and courgettes. 
 
You can now move either way to the starter or dessert, personally I prefer to get the starter done next.  Make sure your starter compliments the main meal, does not over power it in flavour or use any of the same main ingredients as the main course.  You could choose a pea and mint soup for instance. 
 
Now to the dessert – similar rules apply as for the tea & cakes, not too much chocolate or one type of pudding.  Another important rule is you should not have 3 hot dishes in 1 meal so as I have a soup for the starter I need to have a cold dessert.  I would also choose a pudding based on colour and texture so having had a green, soft soup, a red & green main course, I would go for a dessert with some crunchy texture somewhere and maybe of the chocolate or lemon variety e.g. Chocolate tart with homemade sweet pastry served with passion fruit mascarpone cream.
 
Vegetarian options need to be placed in for all main courses and where necessary for startes too.  Its important to use as many ingredients from your main dish in your veggi option; this prevents you from having to prepare and cook many more things.
 
Its important to make the meal sound appetising as well as describing the main ingredients in it, it will only stand out from the rest if it reads well and makes the meal sound yummy.  If you read this menu what does it make you think?
 
Pea and mint soup
 
Chicken with tomato sauce, chips and courgettes/mange tout
 
Chocolate tart
 
Now read this menu and see what you think:
 
Pea and mint soup served with a fresh bread roll and butter
 
Pan fried breast of chicken wrapped in Parma ham served with a tomato and orange sauce, roasted potato wedges and sautéed courgettes and mange tout
 
Chocolate tart with homemade sweet pastry served with passion fruit mascarpone cream
 
I know which one sounds more appetising, hopefully this makes the point clear on how important it is to write your menu in a descriptive fashion. 
 
Once all your days are filled in check, check and re-check it for spelling and punctuation and ask 1 or 2 people to read it too.  Check you have not repeated anything too often, a good way to do this is to read all the starters, mains and desserts across day by day. 
 
Its critical you know how to cook and have cooked every dish you put on your menu plan before you go for an interview, countless people have been caught out by putting some elaborate dish on the menu because it sounds good but have no idea how its made.  When you are at an interview you will asked questions on your menu plan so its important you know who to cook the dishes, have tasted them and also how you would serve them.
 
On our courses we cover this in more detail and give you a detailed 6 day menu plan to get you started, to book your place on out course just visit our website www.thealpinecookerycourse.com

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com

How many of you have sore feet because of poor fitting ski boots?

I suspect that the answer from many people, holiday makers or seasonaires, is Yes.  The cause of this is generally boots that are too big or too small or the wrong shape for your feet. 

So what do you do?  Well you could just throw them in the bin or keep visiting the ski rental shop until you find a pair that are vaguely comfy and put up with them for the rest of your holiday or season.  In the long term this is not the ideal solution to the problem, investing in your own boots maybe costly but also well worth it and will probably pay itself back within 1 season if you ski 2 or 3 times a year.

If you own a pair of boots but find they give you pain, maybe on the bottom or side of your foot, have become too big so you are cranking up the buckles to keep your foot still and giving yourself cramp or pins and needles.  Then you need to visit a good boot fitting shop to get some help.

Most resorts will have a shop that offers some kind of specialist boot fitting service some are better than others but they can help to relive some of the discomfort and sort out a solution to some of the problems.

A common solution to many boot problems is to have a footbed made for you.  A footbed is a moulded insole that matches the shape of the bottom of your foot, this will prevent your foot slipping around in the bottom of the boot, take up some space if your boot is feeling too big.  It can alleviate pain around your foot by stabilising it in the boots, stopping it moving around.   These usually cost from about 80 Euros for a pair and they are certainly worth the investment as the first step towards boot comfort.

Many people think a precise fit means uncomfortable but that does not have to be the case, you can have a well fitting ski boot that is a pleasure to ski in all day; don’t confuse comfort and fit as they can come hand in hand.

If you are planning on buying new ski boots then find a good boot fitting shop like ‘Sole’ in Chamonix.  Anyone that knows their stuff will do a proper “fitting” that should take at least 1 – 2hrs and they will in effect choose the boot for you.  They look at you foot and lower leg shape as well as asking what kind of skiing you do and select a couple of boots for you to try on to see how they feel.  Once the best boot has been chosen then generally they will heat the liner of the boot and possibly the shell; before putting your feet back into them to mould the liner to your foot and lower leg shape.

The next 15 minutes or so is usually spent pacing the floor of the shop with hot feet until the boot and liner cool down and have settled in shape.  The next step is to ski in the boot and see how it feels.  If you buy boots in resort this is obviously much easier to do unless you have a dry slope close by in the UK!  If you suffer any further pain or discomfort then you need to return to the shop and they should be able to sort this out with some wizzardy and trickery! 

Everything from lumps and bumps, high instep, flat footed, poor alignment and more can be dealt with by a boot fitter.  If you are going to be doing a ski season and want to buy some kit before you go to resort then I recommend buying boots over skis.  A good pair of boots can make the world of difference to your skiing and you will certainly get your money’s worth across the season.

Sole Boot Lab and Pro Shop

The Alpine Cookery Course is the leading chalet host training course for ski season workers.  We teach you everything you need to know to successfully run a ski chalet, cook delicious, nutritious meals with minimum hassle & maximise your time on the slopes.

www.thealpinecookerycourse.com  ‖ info@thealpinecookerycourse.com