My adventure at culinary school.
Another summary of the week, because not much interesting has happened. The Breakfast and Meat Fabrication units are over. Last Thursday was our last buffet, and I was in the front of the house instead of in the kitchen. I had 3 tables of 8, which kept me pretty busy. Friday, Monday, and Tuesday were…
I’ve now been through all the stations, and today was in a "swing" role, which is assigned to fill in where needed. One of the bakers was absent, so I went to the bakery. The primary task I wound up with was to make cinnamon rolls from soft-roll dough started yesterday. This soft-roll dough is…
Last week trailed off uneventfully. I was dining room host on Thursday, then spent Friday as the dishwasher. Friday happened to be our most successful buffet so far, 97 guests and a lot of dirty dishes and pots and pans, but I managed to keep up pretty well. Today’s Special Herbed Lamb Hash…
Monday was my turn to be chef of the day, responsible for prepping hollandaise and bèarnaise sauces, and running the pass: calling orders and finishing plates. It turned out to be the busiest day we’ve had so far– and most of the orders were for omelets. At one point there were 6 omelet orders on…
Last week I worked my way up the range stations, from Ranger 4 to Ranger 1: poached eggs and pasta carbonara; omelets; fried eggs and warm spinach salad; meats and potatoes. The first day, when I was Ranger 4, Ranger 3 was absent so I was assigned double duty. Normally (i.e., for a person with line experience)…
On Fridays instead of a la carte ordering off the menu, we present a buffet. This was also my first day as one of the "rangers," one of the five people stationed on the fryer or range who are responsible for cooking the bulk of the food. For the buffet, which had a Minnesota theme,…
Yesterday I was on the griddle station, where I was responsible for cooking cornmeal pancakes, French toast, and croque madams to order. I had a little trouble with the griddles– they tended to be either too hot or too cool– but once they were the proper temperature everything went well. I also suspect that the…
After the first stock was off the bones, I started a remouillage with new mirepoix and sachet. I let it simmer for about 6 hours while I reduced the first stock by about half and then cooled it for temporary storage– I wanted to see how the second stock would come out before deciding what…
A couple of days ago I used one of the small sauces from class (a Hungarian sauce, made from Suprême sauce) to make a very simple dinner dish. From the glace de viande project last week I had some pork rib meat that needed to be used. So I cut it to bite size and…