Sunday, October 10, 2010
Week of 9/27 - 10/1
Again, time just flies when you’re having fun. I literally didn’t know what day it was this entire week. Everyday seem to blend due to the amount of stress and adrenaline that’s going through your body. It was scary yet kind of fun. I think this is because I thrive on the stress and I love any chance to get my adrenaline going. Since we had a good idea what hot food competition was basically about we needed to turn up the heat. So this week regardless of what day it was everyone was working in turbo charged mode.
Monday was our prep day once again; so we had the whole entire day to get our mise en place and equipment ready for the upcoming team skills relay and the cooking phase. Boy are there a lot of equipment that we need to just do a hot food run-though. By the end of the day we were pretty much prepped for the week but we heeded to go over our equipment list once more. We ended the day by huddling together and talked about going home and really thinking over our station’s dishes.
Tuesday was skills day and I was shaking both with excitement and fear. I was excited because it would be my first time in a team relay to do pastry and I was shaking in fear because I also had vegetable cuts, which aren’t one of my stronger skills, the second run through. For pastry I started off with a bang; once we were given the go ahead I quickly carried my sheet try loaded with my mass amount of ingredients and equipment to the table and set up. I was so pumped with adrenaline and excitement that my hands were shaking as I separated eggs. I blasted through pastry cream quickly and that’s where I lost my momentum. I think because my orange was on the softer side it was a little harder to zest and my paring knife wasn’t sharp enough so it tore through the segments while I was cutting them. Although I lost my momentum in segmenting an orange I quickly got it back with my pie dough which got us a slight lead. Overall I did good, two points away from a perfect score but I defiantly need to work on knife skills, which brings me to the second team skills run through and my turn at vegetable cuts.
I didn’t do that bad but there is a lot of room for improvement, especially with my tourneed carrots. In the beginning my knife skills were really close but I think because we were thrown a lot of different things like cold platter, the hot food dishes, and fabrication for both fish and chicken I put it off and because of that it suffered a bit. This run through just gave me a wakeup call. It tells me that I need to be rounded with skills and that I I really need to focus on cuts as much as I do the other things.
Wednesday was our third run through. Oh my goodness was this day a horrible day or what. We still had a small bit of organizing of our prep to do in the morning and we had our mixer locked up. Oh and we were the first team to hit the kitchens. Great. Thankfully we got the mixer back and everything seemed to be in order so we got into the kitchen, set up, and just went to work. I had salads so I went to work and tried to bang out my dishes as fast as I could so I could help others. My cuts for the beets were uneven and I took a while to do it so that just reinforces my need to practice my knife skills. Half way into the run through the gas goes out. We were all freaking. Good thing I put in my crisps and beets in the oven prior to this happening. So I wasn’t hugely affected by it. But entrée suffered because the ovens shut off when the gas stopped flowing so chicken was still raw and needed a few more minutes. With everything coing at us we adapted and everyone just moved around as needed. We ended up quickly deep frying the chicken to cook it thoroughly and I helped anyone that needed help. Although we had a rocky start we actually came in two minutes ahead of our previous time, which is awesome. I think our group has this kind of energy and communication that we power through things and we call out for help to anyone that can lend a hand. We also push one another which is great. All this paid off and we’re improving.
Thursday was our last run-through before final exam. Things went by really smoothly today. Everyone had timelines stating where they needed to be at a certain time in the competition and it actually helped a lot. We could tell where we were and if we needed help with anything. For the most part I was on schedule for everything but I didn’t get to fry my chicken till later because I was fussing around with the potatoes. Those potatoes for the croquettes just didn’t seem to want to go through the china cap. One of the reasons why I think it didn’t go through was it didn’t boil long enough so it was harder to push through. This took a bulk of my time and made me have to push back sautéing my chicken till about 55 minutes into competition. Other than that everything seemed to go well I got my vegetables done, chestnuts were cooked through, and sausages were stuffed. So today I was ahead sometimes then I fell back. Overall we improved by a leap and bound. We improved our time by fifteen minutes. Holy man that is just awesome. Granted certain things didn’t make it to the plate we overall did well today, well to me I think we did.
Week 10/4- 10/8
Since Monday was our day off Tuesday we began prepping for everything. We divided up which hor d'oeuvres each group would do and had to get rolling on our proteins, salads, sauces, and garnishes and our canapés. The hor d'oeuvres that we selected was a Kauai shrimp with two toned tomato soup and summer roll with hoisin peanut sauce. Our canapés we had a clam shell profiterole filed with a goat cheese mousse and garnished with a port wine pearl. Monday night I made a sample batch using a pate choux recipe I learned in fundamentals but it came out more like tear drops than clam shells. So I just used them to gauge the size we needed and made another batch using a recipe I learned in patisserie. This recipe came out great. You could actually see the ridges and almost identify it as a clam shell. So Tuesday we didn’t have much prep to do because it was too early to do certain things so we once we finished everything that needed to be taken care of that day we went through each list and decided if it would keep until Friday. Then from there we kept ourselves busy.
Wednesday was just another day of prep. We had everything we needed done and only had items that needed to be done the day prior to do. So we were in pretty good shape. The only major setback was our terrine. We had our mousseline for both inlay and outer later done so that was good but we were just waiting on the cow tongue to come in. Then from there we still had to cook it and then make the inlay cook that, then cook the entire terrine. A lot of work. The tongue eventually came in late and we had to scramble to get everything prepared and ready for cooking. At the end of the day we got the inlay cooked and got it set inside of the outer layer and it was ready to go but since everyone needed to leave we decided to hold off on cooking the terrine until Thursday that way we wouldn’t be rushing to cook it. The one thing that we forgot to do was to put a little aspic inside of the terrine to hold it all together. But other than that the day was good.
Thursday was the last day of prep and we were slightly behind schedule a bit. Things that needed to be done the day prior weren’t done so we needed to get those things done. One item in particular our terrine. Although busy as it was, I was overwhelmed mentally with the sphereifications I needed to get done. My goodness the entire day I was playing scientist. Sodium Alginate, Calcium chloride, and sodium Citrate all chemicals that I don’t wanna hear anymore about right now. Let’s just say that I was mentally exhausted from trying to get port wine and maple syrup to sphereify the entire day. In the end I got the port wine to sphere up but the maple syrup I had trouble with. Eventually I just gave up and needed something else to do. So I cleaned up quickly and picked up some of the other things on our prep list. The good thing was that we got caught up and finished everything so that was good. The bad thing was that I still had to come up with some way to make the maple spheres.
That same day I worked at my job and had literally no time to experiment with it like I would’ve done so I decided to just make faux caviar. Faux caviar is just tapioca cooked three-fourths of the way through then marinated in the desired liquid. The slightly under cooked tapioca will absorb most of liquid and well marinate and absorb the flavors. I bought some tapioca on the way home and just whipped it out according to a recipe I had. This was my first time making anything like this so I was sort of winging it, hoping in the back of my mind that it would work out in the end.
Friday is the day we’ve been prepping and waiting for this entire week. Hookipa, KCC’s annual fundraising event. We got to school at about 10 and only had about three hours to do some last minute prep and pack everything that we needed. Oh my god the faux caviar was partially a success but not really. The liquid didn’t absorb as much as I wanted it to so I had to rush in class and boil them thoroughly then marinate them as much as I could. The ones I marinated in port wine turned out well they just needed to cook a little longer. The maple syrup ones were horrible I needed to rinse off the excess sugar and cook them thoroughly and try to marinate them in maple syrup long enough to get some flavor in them. After this I just hoped for the best and if anything I was going to leave it off. Then we were transported to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel arrived at about 3:45pm from there we had until 5:15 to get our platters, canapés, and hor d'oeuvres out. Our group decided to just split up and take care of each section. So I took care of the platter and our canapés, Melanie helped me get the first platter out and started on our soups, and Trevor and Charles did the summer rolls. We were crunched on time a little but we divided it all up and in the end it turned out well. I think the plating up the platter through me off because it wasn’t as organized as when we did it in class. But I eventually got into the hand of things and just platted it up as close as possible and things went relatively smoothly.
Holy man it was nerve racking when we plated everything up. All the other students came in and just stared at us, whispering, and taking picture of us. It was stressful. After the first wave of things we had some time to grab a drink of water and reset. But after 5:30pm everyone started to eat our starters and we became busy. All our platters were running out and people were just tearing through our hor d'oeuvres and canapés, so we were busy nonstop till about 6:30pm. Overall this was great the amount of stress and worry fueled me to work harder. I mean as chef we put ourselves into stressful situations and thrive on it. The rush of adrenaline just gives us this sort of high. It’s great. So I really loved it.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Competition Week 2
The second week of competition class and I’m still here. This week was a whirl wind of stress as our group prepared for the run-through we were doing of our Escoffier’s classical dish on-top of practicing pastry and nailing down the dessert that we’d be doing for competition. It was a busy week I’m not going to lie. We had to finalize our plating designs, our recipe conversions and delegate what needed to be done and who was going to do it. Again I say stressful. Although this week made me anxious and nervous to the point I wanted to pull out my own hair I have to admit that I was actually enjoyed every minute of it. The rush of adrenaline rushing through your body as the time ticks down and the sense of urgency pushing and motivating you forwards. It was great.
Monday we had practiced for our individual pastry skill which was actually fun and exciting granted I still need to practice more even if everything seemed okay. During the pastry skills portion I actually found a faster way of leveling out your pastry cream. All you need to do is tap the pan that it’s in and it’ll all fall evenly. That way you don’t need to fiddle around with a rubber spatula and the sides are clean. The next time I make pastry cream I need to make sure that I regulate the heat on my pastry cream or else it’ll over cook and have an almost curdled texture and that I have enough ice on the bottom so it’ll cool it down faster. For my segmented orange I need to practice more because my orange segments looked squared almost and fell apart somewhat. I also need to practice rolling out my pie dough evenly.
Tuesday we were suppose to have Chef Brown come in and demonstrate the dessert we’d be doing for competition but due to scheduling conflicts it was moved to Wednesday instead so went spent most of the day preparing our brown stock and white bullion for the run-through on Thursday. Then we practiced the deconstruction of the chicken. It took us almost a good three hours and almost 25 chickens till we finally came up with how to take the tendons out from the chicken. The best way to do it was to French the drumstick then sever the tendons connected to the end of the drumstick. From there you expose the tendons in one general area and pull them out with either your fish tweezers or pliers. We found that pliers actually worked better because of the teeth gripped better.
Wednesday was all about the dessert so it was one of my favorite days of class. Chef Brown came down and demonstrated how to prepare the Lilikoi parfait garnished with a hippenmasse palm tree, spice marinated orange segments, and a fried ginger stuffed lychee. Everything seemed easy enough because it was similar to something that we did in Pâtissière class. So I wasn’t too worried about it. The only thing that bothered me was make the hippenmasse palm trees because hippenmasse can be a very versatile medium but when it spread that thin it can be very difficult to handle because it’s so thin and fragile. I thought the concept and design was interesting and after looking at the finished product it looked very similar to the Consolidated Theater logo, which was funny because I work for them.
Thursday held the most stress because we literally jam packed the day with two intense cooking sessions. The first half of class we went over and practice make the plated dessert which wasn’t too bad the most humbling moment was whipping the cream. I accidently over whipped it and was so embarrassed so it wasn’t a good way to start off. But after that everything went well the only problem that every group had was that the parfait wasn’t freezing completely so it made an almost mess while plating the dessert. The good thing about today was that chef created a plum sauce that went perfect with the entire dessert. There a just need to be a few adjustments and the dessert is pretty much set.
The second half of the Thursday cooking session was our run-through of our classical dish. This was a pain butt as we everyone was scrambling around trying to figure out how they’d cook their dishes with only a limited about of stove space. Literally only four stove burners and only three table top burners. I was in charge of making the sausage and sautéing the chicken. The sausage wasn’t a difficult task just a time consuming one because it took me a while to figure out the cookie press that I brought in. Eventually I got it and was ready to move on to the chicken. Cooking the chicken was a challenge everyone was crowding around the stove that it made it difficult to cook on it. So I sautéed only half the chicken thinking we were only portioning out two plate, once again another of my mistakes. So thanks to my group I was able to get the second half of the chicken on and finish that. As we were plating there was a little structural problem as we plated but we adapted the plating and made it as close as possible to the draw. In the end we finished out dish and it looked amazing. After we tried and critiqued each other dishes we decided that the sweet potato croquette would be our starch and the Brussels sprouts and glazed tourneed carrots would be out two vegetables. After finishing this dish and the critiques were in I literally felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. Again this whole week was stressful but the good kind of stress and I really enjoyed it.
Monday we had practiced for our individual pastry skill which was actually fun and exciting granted I still need to practice more even if everything seemed okay. During the pastry skills portion I actually found a faster way of leveling out your pastry cream. All you need to do is tap the pan that it’s in and it’ll all fall evenly. That way you don’t need to fiddle around with a rubber spatula and the sides are clean. The next time I make pastry cream I need to make sure that I regulate the heat on my pastry cream or else it’ll over cook and have an almost curdled texture and that I have enough ice on the bottom so it’ll cool it down faster. For my segmented orange I need to practice more because my orange segments looked squared almost and fell apart somewhat. I also need to practice rolling out my pie dough evenly.
Tuesday we were suppose to have Chef Brown come in and demonstrate the dessert we’d be doing for competition but due to scheduling conflicts it was moved to Wednesday instead so went spent most of the day preparing our brown stock and white bullion for the run-through on Thursday. Then we practiced the deconstruction of the chicken. It took us almost a good three hours and almost 25 chickens till we finally came up with how to take the tendons out from the chicken. The best way to do it was to French the drumstick then sever the tendons connected to the end of the drumstick. From there you expose the tendons in one general area and pull them out with either your fish tweezers or pliers. We found that pliers actually worked better because of the teeth gripped better.
Wednesday was all about the dessert so it was one of my favorite days of class. Chef Brown came down and demonstrated how to prepare the Lilikoi parfait garnished with a hippenmasse palm tree, spice marinated orange segments, and a fried ginger stuffed lychee. Everything seemed easy enough because it was similar to something that we did in Pâtissière class. So I wasn’t too worried about it. The only thing that bothered me was make the hippenmasse palm trees because hippenmasse can be a very versatile medium but when it spread that thin it can be very difficult to handle because it’s so thin and fragile. I thought the concept and design was interesting and after looking at the finished product it looked very similar to the Consolidated Theater logo, which was funny because I work for them.
Thursday held the most stress because we literally jam packed the day with two intense cooking sessions. The first half of class we went over and practice make the plated dessert which wasn’t too bad the most humbling moment was whipping the cream. I accidently over whipped it and was so embarrassed so it wasn’t a good way to start off. But after that everything went well the only problem that every group had was that the parfait wasn’t freezing completely so it made an almost mess while plating the dessert. The good thing about today was that chef created a plum sauce that went perfect with the entire dessert. There a just need to be a few adjustments and the dessert is pretty much set.
The second half of the Thursday cooking session was our run-through of our classical dish. This was a pain butt as we everyone was scrambling around trying to figure out how they’d cook their dishes with only a limited about of stove space. Literally only four stove burners and only three table top burners. I was in charge of making the sausage and sautéing the chicken. The sausage wasn’t a difficult task just a time consuming one because it took me a while to figure out the cookie press that I brought in. Eventually I got it and was ready to move on to the chicken. Cooking the chicken was a challenge everyone was crowding around the stove that it made it difficult to cook on it. So I sautéed only half the chicken thinking we were only portioning out two plate, once again another of my mistakes. So thanks to my group I was able to get the second half of the chicken on and finish that. As we were plating there was a little structural problem as we plated but we adapted the plating and made it as close as possible to the draw. In the end we finished out dish and it looked amazing. After we tried and critiqued each other dishes we decided that the sweet potato croquette would be our starch and the Brussels sprouts and glazed tourneed carrots would be out two vegetables. After finishing this dish and the critiques were in I literally felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. Again this whole week was stressful but the good kind of stress and I really enjoyed it.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Competition Class Week One
This was our first week of competition class and I’m glad, but not surprised, that I survived it. The first day was nerve racking but as the week progressed it got easier as I got back into the groove of being back in school and as my nerves eased up. On Monday I was both nervous and excited on the first day. I was nervous for two reasons: one being my skills were out of practice since I wasn’t using them that often during the summer; and two, I was psyching myself out and over thinking what this class would be like. Even though I was nervous to the core at the same time was literally shaking with excitement. Since I didn’t use my culinary skills during the summer my hands were just eager and itching to handle food again. That morning I woke up at 4 in the morning, even though my class didn’t start till another four hours later, pumped and ready to go. I arrived at school two hours later and waited in my car silently freaking out by myself for about an hour and eventually I had to go to class. I went to class 15 minutes early as I wanted to soak in the kitchen that I would be working in for the next seven hours. As I waited for class to start I thought to myself “Oh man what have I gotten myself into?”
When class started things weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. We went over the usual syllabus and paper work and then did an icebreaker which helped relax a little more hearing the nervousness in other people’s voices. It made me feel like I wasn’t the only one and that we shared a common feeling. As the day progressed we went over went to the culinary forum and after that we dove right into the vegetable cuts we’d be going over. 4 ounce of julienned vegetable, 8 tourneed carrots, 1 onion small diced, and a 2 tomato concasse. I did pretty well given this was our first run though but I knew not everything was perfect. My juliennes were off and my tournees looked like misshapen footballs. It was horrible. As we cleaned up and got ready to go home I was more determined to practice my cuts so I’d be better and faster than today.
Tuesday was similar to Monday I was still nervous but not as much. On this day we actually got to watch the previous team do a trial run of the each section of skills. It was exciting to see them demo. After the video we went through about two runs of the vegetable cuts. Since we didn’t have enough products for everyone we needed to reduce or exclude certain skills in the second run through. Overall I think I performed the same as the day before and when chef came through to critique my cuts were somewhat close but I defiantly needed work on my tournees and my julienne. I still needed to find the motion of cutting the tournee and I needed to focus on the consistency of my julienne. Other than that the others were good but still weren’t perfect.
Wednesday, we did two run-throughs. The first time for practice, which we’d look at our time and the second time timed and scored according to how our cuts were. I didn’t do too badly on my cuts but since I was always off like an eighth of an inch from perfect during the first run-through. So I decided to take my time on the second run-through and focus more on the cuts. To me it seemed like it was working but in the end the scores didn’t really do as well as I thought they would. By now my tounrees have progressed from misshapen footballs to semi-looking footballs but the dimensions are still off. So I need to work on the motion and trying to get them all the same. As we cleaned up I was talking to Alana about it and she just told me that I was thinking about it too much and I should just trust myself and relax. Tomorrow would be our last run-though of vegetable cuts so decided I would just trust my instincts and cut.
Afterwards we were split into the groups that we’d be with the rest of the class. Then we were given time to go over this year’s required classical Escoffier dish. Poulet Sauté a la Catalane. We researched the dish and it seems to be quite simple but it has a lot of other recipes behind it. We also have to come up with a starch and vegetable so it’s kind of exciting being able to recreate something that someone did over a hundred years ago.
Thursday we did one run through of vegetable cuts and today I just trusted my instincts and cut. Although my timing was off my cuts were closer than the days prior which was great. Even though my tournees needed more work its progressing gradually. I mean it was only Monday that I learned how to do a tournee and today I’m not perfect or even good at it but I’m getting there. I messed up on my julienne though. I measure the two inches but I cut it the wrong way so it turned out to longer than so that was a mistake on my part. So that’s still another thing I need to practice on. It’s all in the sleeves so I have to practice cutting those sleeves correctly. We watched the movie Miracle today in class. It was an interesting movie to watch and had a lot of good points about team work and competition in general. We then got into our groups and discussed out thoughts and ideas of starches and vegetables. We agreed on a sweet potato croquette for out starch and our vegetables were still up in the air although we have a few ideas floating around.
Overall the first week went by really fast. I got up on Thursday morning thinking that it was still earlier in the week. But when I looked at my phone I freaked out seeing that the week went by so fast. It’s as they say “time flies when you’re having fun”. I can’t wait till next week since we’re going into desserts next. I’m so excited that I’m shaking a little.
When class started things weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. We went over the usual syllabus and paper work and then did an icebreaker which helped relax a little more hearing the nervousness in other people’s voices. It made me feel like I wasn’t the only one and that we shared a common feeling. As the day progressed we went over went to the culinary forum and after that we dove right into the vegetable cuts we’d be going over. 4 ounce of julienned vegetable, 8 tourneed carrots, 1 onion small diced, and a 2 tomato concasse. I did pretty well given this was our first run though but I knew not everything was perfect. My juliennes were off and my tournees looked like misshapen footballs. It was horrible. As we cleaned up and got ready to go home I was more determined to practice my cuts so I’d be better and faster than today.
Tuesday was similar to Monday I was still nervous but not as much. On this day we actually got to watch the previous team do a trial run of the each section of skills. It was exciting to see them demo. After the video we went through about two runs of the vegetable cuts. Since we didn’t have enough products for everyone we needed to reduce or exclude certain skills in the second run through. Overall I think I performed the same as the day before and when chef came through to critique my cuts were somewhat close but I defiantly needed work on my tournees and my julienne. I still needed to find the motion of cutting the tournee and I needed to focus on the consistency of my julienne. Other than that the others were good but still weren’t perfect.
Wednesday, we did two run-throughs. The first time for practice, which we’d look at our time and the second time timed and scored according to how our cuts were. I didn’t do too badly on my cuts but since I was always off like an eighth of an inch from perfect during the first run-through. So I decided to take my time on the second run-through and focus more on the cuts. To me it seemed like it was working but in the end the scores didn’t really do as well as I thought they would. By now my tounrees have progressed from misshapen footballs to semi-looking footballs but the dimensions are still off. So I need to work on the motion and trying to get them all the same. As we cleaned up I was talking to Alana about it and she just told me that I was thinking about it too much and I should just trust myself and relax. Tomorrow would be our last run-though of vegetable cuts so decided I would just trust my instincts and cut.
Afterwards we were split into the groups that we’d be with the rest of the class. Then we were given time to go over this year’s required classical Escoffier dish. Poulet Sauté a la Catalane. We researched the dish and it seems to be quite simple but it has a lot of other recipes behind it. We also have to come up with a starch and vegetable so it’s kind of exciting being able to recreate something that someone did over a hundred years ago.
Thursday we did one run through of vegetable cuts and today I just trusted my instincts and cut. Although my timing was off my cuts were closer than the days prior which was great. Even though my tournees needed more work its progressing gradually. I mean it was only Monday that I learned how to do a tournee and today I’m not perfect or even good at it but I’m getting there. I messed up on my julienne though. I measure the two inches but I cut it the wrong way so it turned out to longer than so that was a mistake on my part. So that’s still another thing I need to practice on. It’s all in the sleeves so I have to practice cutting those sleeves correctly. We watched the movie Miracle today in class. It was an interesting movie to watch and had a lot of good points about team work and competition in general. We then got into our groups and discussed out thoughts and ideas of starches and vegetables. We agreed on a sweet potato croquette for out starch and our vegetables were still up in the air although we have a few ideas floating around.
Overall the first week went by really fast. I got up on Thursday morning thinking that it was still earlier in the week. But when I looked at my phone I freaked out seeing that the week went by so fast. It’s as they say “time flies when you’re having fun”. I can’t wait till next week since we’re going into desserts next. I’m so excited that I’m shaking a little.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Arpil 24- May 12: The Week of Finals and Trying to find a job
April 24- May 12
Oh my goodness these past three weeks have been such a wild ride. All it’s been was study, Intermediate Cookery practical exam, study harder, Class field trip to the Fish auction, study again, Intermediate Cookery written final exam, and stress out and study even harder, Japanese final exam. Not to mention trying to juggle finding a restaurant job and trying to wean myself away from my current job (which is at a movie theater and not really culinary related). Overall that’s all that’s been happening.
For our practical exam we had to come up with three dishes: a salad, an Entrée, and a Cream soup. Salad: “BST” Bacon, Spinach, and tomato salad with tomato caper vinaigrette.
Entrée: Steamed Mahi-mahi with a sweet and spicy shoyu sauce.
Soup: Carrot Red Curry Cream soup.
Each turned out pretty well except for the soup. It turned out that I put a little too much red curry paste that it was a bit too spicy and I guess didn’t have much body to it. I think the thing I’m going to change is instead of using heavy cream I’m going to try adding coconut milk to get it a little sweet. Overall this wasn’t too bad. Our entire class had two weeks to finish up everything. Sounds easy but with everyone trying to make a 10lb entrée or a gallon soup it was hard trying to fit yourself in. Thankfully I fitted everything in the week we got it so I wasn’t stressing as much as everyone else.
The week of the written exam we had a field trip to the local fish auction down by the pier (got a little lost). It was an interesting experience seeing all that fish. There was like a row of 100lb Ahi and a 529lb swordfish. (….I think we’re going to need a bigger boat…) So I wanted to buy a fish so I bought a Monchong and I split it with my classmate Mark. Gutted and filleted the fish at my house (can you say large guts everywhere….it was awesome!!!) I think I’m going to go back sometime and buy a large fish hehehe I can’t wait
Basically after my cooking final I only had my Japanese final exam to do then it was SUMMERTIME!!!! Unfortunately the exam kicked my butt big time….well the oral section did. But it’s okay hehee.
So finally finishing both the dreaded fundamentals cookery and the hard working intermediate cookery I’ve finally found SOME confidence in myself. So I’ve been applying like crazy to different place. Unfortunately for me they either filled a previously open position or I didn’t have enough industry experience. But today I got a call back from Le Bistro and they wanted me to stage (a sort of work for free for the chef to see how your work). Right now I’m nervous as hell and giddy with excitement. I sort of can’t wait to demonstrate my skills but scared as hell if I screw something up….. Although scared and giddy I’m thankful that they’re giving me an opportunity given that I don’t have any other restaurant experience…. Things are looking up….. Now this summer I have to start thinking about different dishes for competition and trying new things.
Oh my goodness these past three weeks have been such a wild ride. All it’s been was study, Intermediate Cookery practical exam, study harder, Class field trip to the Fish auction, study again, Intermediate Cookery written final exam, and stress out and study even harder, Japanese final exam. Not to mention trying to juggle finding a restaurant job and trying to wean myself away from my current job (which is at a movie theater and not really culinary related). Overall that’s all that’s been happening.
For our practical exam we had to come up with three dishes: a salad, an Entrée, and a Cream soup. Salad: “BST” Bacon, Spinach, and tomato salad with tomato caper vinaigrette.
Entrée: Steamed Mahi-mahi with a sweet and spicy shoyu sauce.
Soup: Carrot Red Curry Cream soup.
Each turned out pretty well except for the soup. It turned out that I put a little too much red curry paste that it was a bit too spicy and I guess didn’t have much body to it. I think the thing I’m going to change is instead of using heavy cream I’m going to try adding coconut milk to get it a little sweet. Overall this wasn’t too bad. Our entire class had two weeks to finish up everything. Sounds easy but with everyone trying to make a 10lb entrée or a gallon soup it was hard trying to fit yourself in. Thankfully I fitted everything in the week we got it so I wasn’t stressing as much as everyone else.
The week of the written exam we had a field trip to the local fish auction down by the pier (got a little lost). It was an interesting experience seeing all that fish. There was like a row of 100lb Ahi and a 529lb swordfish. (….I think we’re going to need a bigger boat…) So I wanted to buy a fish so I bought a Monchong and I split it with my classmate Mark. Gutted and filleted the fish at my house (can you say large guts everywhere….it was awesome!!!) I think I’m going to go back sometime and buy a large fish hehehe I can’t wait
Basically after my cooking final I only had my Japanese final exam to do then it was SUMMERTIME!!!! Unfortunately the exam kicked my butt big time….well the oral section did. But it’s okay hehee.
So finally finishing both the dreaded fundamentals cookery and the hard working intermediate cookery I’ve finally found SOME confidence in myself. So I’ve been applying like crazy to different place. Unfortunately for me they either filled a previously open position or I didn’t have enough industry experience. But today I got a call back from Le Bistro and they wanted me to stage (a sort of work for free for the chef to see how your work). Right now I’m nervous as hell and giddy with excitement. I sort of can’t wait to demonstrate my skills but scared as hell if I screw something up….. Although scared and giddy I’m thankful that they’re giving me an opportunity given that I don’t have any other restaurant experience…. Things are looking up….. Now this summer I have to start thinking about different dishes for competition and trying new things.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
An update and a Rant
April 12- 23, 2010
Okay so I haven’t updated in such a long while (almost 2 weeks) but let’s just say that it’s been really busy past two weeks. I’ve been volunteering almost every Saturday for the past 3 weeks already. Let’s see there was crabfest that I reported on last week, the Wellspring Church Fundraiser Event (which was a success), and this upcoming week is the Hawaii Kai Chilie Cook-off, which will be hosting a lot of different restaurants. So I’m going to be on my best behavior (which I am…mostly). Another thing that has happened in the past week was that registration for the Fall semester at KCC has opened up. So I signed up for CULN 207: Principles of Culinary Competition I (which I’m excited and so nervous for) and CULN 240 Garde Manger (which I’m stoked about because it’s going to be a lot of knife skills and food carving….can you say awesome?).
Competition or competing in culinary competitions in general, has become a goal of mine ever since the KCC competition team won the National Title and I read the book The Knives at Dawn (which was an interesting and worth-while read). It made me want to compete in smaller or closer to home competitions (like the Annual Roy’s Competition or the annual Pamela Young Competition). The only thing that is holding me back, other than my lack of discipline in my skills, is that I’m not too confident in myself. I mean I have the drive and when I get addicted to something I’m almost dedicated to it….but I don’t know. This is when the doubts start to set in. This is when those pesky “what-if” scenarios pop in my head. Taking this class, making the team or not, will benefit me huge. I mean the things that I’ll take from this will be way more. I think I just need to concentrate and focus all my energy in bettering my skills and attitude towards my craft.
Okay so on Saturday April 17, 2010 a handful use from the 818 brigade (a name that my classmate Mark likes to call our class section of Fundamentals of Cookery) volunteered to cater Mark and Gina’s church’s fundraiser. The menu was created by Mark and planned on feeding about 300 people. There were 5 different dishes:
Picture are taken by Jordan Chang, Mark Enomoto, and Your's truly
The Menu
Iceberg Wedge with a chunky Blue Cheese Dressing and Parmesan Crisp
Chilled Spring Pea Veloute Soup with a mint whip and carrots Vichy
Ratatouille served on Fried Creamy Polenta
Classic Boeuf Bourguignon with Homemade Mash Potatoes
And
Vanilla Almond Strawberry-Shortcake with Grand Manier Drunken Strawberries garnished with a lemon crumble and piped whipped cream
We started out day out at Radford High School’s kitchen at 7:00AM and just immediately got to work. There was the sounds of vegetables being cut, beef being broken down (150lbs….that’s like almost an entire cow…..can you say Holy “Cow”?...hehe), vegetables being seared, sauces sizzling, blenders blending, a radio loud enough to be heard in the background, and finally the calls of “hot pan” or “Yes chef”. Finally at around 4:30 we were ready to pack it all up and rush on over to the church location to start platting food. Unfortunately for me I took a wrong turn and ended up going all the way up the H3 from Aiea to Kaneohe (for those who don’t live on the island is a hell of a drive….Literally over the mountain and back down) and had to follow it up till I could turn around. Then I’d race it down (almost going 70mph in a 50mph zone… I know but we were so late already).
By the time we got there Mark (who went ahead) was set up and was about to start serving. Once the opening ceremony was done like a cattle call, a hoard of people came up to our elegant station and started scooping up plates of food left and right. But fortunately for us we had helpers to help plate and assist in the flow of food. (YAY!!!) Each of us was stationed at a specific area. Me I was stationed at the end and was in charge of plating the dessert. By the end of the event we ended with a hefty amount of leftovers that the brigade and most of the volunteers could take home. Me I took home some of everything. Overall it was an interesting and exciting experience. I think making massive amounts of food in CULN 130 for the cafeteria paid off. It was interesting because each of us were in part in charge of our own dishes and there wasn’t really a chef de cuisine. In a way we were all in charge. Totally different than what I did for KCC’s Hookipa Event (a fundraiser event for KCC held annually at the Royal Hawaiian where each culinary class makes something different…where we had to make 500 portions of about 5 different petite fours). For the hookipa event we were all under the tutelage and supervision of our chef instructor. Which was why is was a little different. But overall everything went well we all had fun.
As for class nothing has been any different. This week we were on entrée and the week prior we were on salads. While we were on salad station I found that I’m pretty good at making vinaigrettes. I actually enjoyed making salads more than any of the other stations. Let’s see I made a peanut butter sweet chili tofu salad and a hoisin vinaigrette tofu salad, I created my own BSP (bacon, spinach and tomato) salad with a tomato caper vinaigrette, and created both a lime and a lemon citrus vinaigrette. (can you tell that I really liked making vinaigrettes?) For entrée station we were responsible for making the various entrees served in the cafeteria. It’s always a meat, fish, and a vegetarian dish. For my vegetarian dish I made butternut squash gnocchi. It turned out pretty well the only thing I would’ve changed would be to roast the butternut squash whole rasher than cut up so that way it would roast evener. Then Casey did egg plant parmesan for his vegetarian dish. Boy was there a lot of eggplant. Almost 5 full sheet tray. But the week progressed and we had to start finishing up our practical exam items, which was a soup, salad, entrée, and vegetable cuts. I finished my salad and vegetable cuts getting good scores on them granted I thought I could do better. Now I only have my entrée and soup to tackle. Since today was Friday we have a lot of free time and decided to run a sort of iron chef competition among our class. So the rules are simple. We’d get a mystery ingredient and we’d have to make something out of it. Today I participated and our secret ingredient was parsnips. The dreaded vegetable that’s almost like a potato and a carrot, but it’s not, and that has a sweet taste. Gahhh….as I started my plan was to make a puree and lay some asparagus and some kind of protein on top. I succeeded in doing that but it just didn’t come together all too well. I think I assed too much liquid to my boiled parsnips that turned it to an almost applesauce like consistency. One big mistake I made was using beef base rather than beef stock as my liquid to thin out my puree. (HUGE MISTAKE…..IT TURNED IT A DARK SHADE!!!!!) Seeing as I didn’t have time to correct it I went with it and continued on with my initial platting plan. Eventually everything went well and the puree held up until the end where it just collapsed and turned into a kind of puddle. I was so heartbroken and discouraged I was ready to give up already. Knowing I couldn’t do anything to fix it in the time remaining I went with it. After chef judged out dishes I placed 3rd out or 4 (which was better than I anticipated). I totally overcooked the protein, but in my defense I really hate cooking chicken because for me it’s hard to tell when it’s done so I just guessed and went by touch. In the end it was something new and it was exciting. Basically this was a crash course into using a new ingredient, which was interesting because I’ve never done anything like this before. I just wish that KCC had courses like this where you’re given a certain ingredient each day and you had to make a dish out of it. I think that would be an interesting class that everyone wouldn’t mind taking.
Okay so I haven’t updated in such a long while (almost 2 weeks) but let’s just say that it’s been really busy past two weeks. I’ve been volunteering almost every Saturday for the past 3 weeks already. Let’s see there was crabfest that I reported on last week, the Wellspring Church Fundraiser Event (which was a success), and this upcoming week is the Hawaii Kai Chilie Cook-off, which will be hosting a lot of different restaurants. So I’m going to be on my best behavior (which I am…mostly). Another thing that has happened in the past week was that registration for the Fall semester at KCC has opened up. So I signed up for CULN 207: Principles of Culinary Competition I (which I’m excited and so nervous for) and CULN 240 Garde Manger (which I’m stoked about because it’s going to be a lot of knife skills and food carving….can you say awesome?).
Competition or competing in culinary competitions in general, has become a goal of mine ever since the KCC competition team won the National Title and I read the book The Knives at Dawn (which was an interesting and worth-while read). It made me want to compete in smaller or closer to home competitions (like the Annual Roy’s Competition or the annual Pamela Young Competition). The only thing that is holding me back, other than my lack of discipline in my skills, is that I’m not too confident in myself. I mean I have the drive and when I get addicted to something I’m almost dedicated to it….but I don’t know. This is when the doubts start to set in. This is when those pesky “what-if” scenarios pop in my head. Taking this class, making the team or not, will benefit me huge. I mean the things that I’ll take from this will be way more. I think I just need to concentrate and focus all my energy in bettering my skills and attitude towards my craft.
Okay so on Saturday April 17, 2010 a handful use from the 818 brigade (a name that my classmate Mark likes to call our class section of Fundamentals of Cookery) volunteered to cater Mark and Gina’s church’s fundraiser. The menu was created by Mark and planned on feeding about 300 people. There were 5 different dishes:
Picture are taken by Jordan Chang, Mark Enomoto, and Your's truly
The Menu
Iceberg Wedge with a chunky Blue Cheese Dressing and Parmesan Crisp
Chilled Spring Pea Veloute Soup with a mint whip and carrots Vichy
Ratatouille served on Fried Creamy Polenta
Classic Boeuf Bourguignon with Homemade Mash Potatoes
And
Vanilla Almond Strawberry-Shortcake with Grand Manier Drunken Strawberries garnished with a lemon crumble and piped whipped cream
We started out day out at Radford High School’s kitchen at 7:00AM and just immediately got to work. There was the sounds of vegetables being cut, beef being broken down (150lbs….that’s like almost an entire cow…..can you say Holy “Cow”?...hehe), vegetables being seared, sauces sizzling, blenders blending, a radio loud enough to be heard in the background, and finally the calls of “hot pan” or “Yes chef”. Finally at around 4:30 we were ready to pack it all up and rush on over to the church location to start platting food. Unfortunately for me I took a wrong turn and ended up going all the way up the H3 from Aiea to Kaneohe (for those who don’t live on the island is a hell of a drive….Literally over the mountain and back down) and had to follow it up till I could turn around. Then I’d race it down (almost going 70mph in a 50mph zone… I know but we were so late already).
By the time we got there Mark (who went ahead) was set up and was about to start serving. Once the opening ceremony was done like a cattle call, a hoard of people came up to our elegant station and started scooping up plates of food left and right. But fortunately for us we had helpers to help plate and assist in the flow of food. (YAY!!!) Each of us was stationed at a specific area. Me I was stationed at the end and was in charge of plating the dessert. By the end of the event we ended with a hefty amount of leftovers that the brigade and most of the volunteers could take home. Me I took home some of everything. Overall it was an interesting and exciting experience. I think making massive amounts of food in CULN 130 for the cafeteria paid off. It was interesting because each of us were in part in charge of our own dishes and there wasn’t really a chef de cuisine. In a way we were all in charge. Totally different than what I did for KCC’s Hookipa Event (a fundraiser event for KCC held annually at the Royal Hawaiian where each culinary class makes something different…where we had to make 500 portions of about 5 different petite fours). For the hookipa event we were all under the tutelage and supervision of our chef instructor. Which was why is was a little different. But overall everything went well we all had fun.
As for class nothing has been any different. This week we were on entrée and the week prior we were on salads. While we were on salad station I found that I’m pretty good at making vinaigrettes. I actually enjoyed making salads more than any of the other stations. Let’s see I made a peanut butter sweet chili tofu salad and a hoisin vinaigrette tofu salad, I created my own BSP (bacon, spinach and tomato) salad with a tomato caper vinaigrette, and created both a lime and a lemon citrus vinaigrette. (can you tell that I really liked making vinaigrettes?) For entrée station we were responsible for making the various entrees served in the cafeteria. It’s always a meat, fish, and a vegetarian dish. For my vegetarian dish I made butternut squash gnocchi. It turned out pretty well the only thing I would’ve changed would be to roast the butternut squash whole rasher than cut up so that way it would roast evener. Then Casey did egg plant parmesan for his vegetarian dish. Boy was there a lot of eggplant. Almost 5 full sheet tray. But the week progressed and we had to start finishing up our practical exam items, which was a soup, salad, entrée, and vegetable cuts. I finished my salad and vegetable cuts getting good scores on them granted I thought I could do better. Now I only have my entrée and soup to tackle. Since today was Friday we have a lot of free time and decided to run a sort of iron chef competition among our class. So the rules are simple. We’d get a mystery ingredient and we’d have to make something out of it. Today I participated and our secret ingredient was parsnips. The dreaded vegetable that’s almost like a potato and a carrot, but it’s not, and that has a sweet taste. Gahhh….as I started my plan was to make a puree and lay some asparagus and some kind of protein on top. I succeeded in doing that but it just didn’t come together all too well. I think I assed too much liquid to my boiled parsnips that turned it to an almost applesauce like consistency. One big mistake I made was using beef base rather than beef stock as my liquid to thin out my puree. (HUGE MISTAKE…..IT TURNED IT A DARK SHADE!!!!!) Seeing as I didn’t have time to correct it I went with it and continued on with my initial platting plan. Eventually everything went well and the puree held up until the end where it just collapsed and turned into a kind of puddle. I was so heartbroken and discouraged I was ready to give up already. Knowing I couldn’t do anything to fix it in the time remaining I went with it. After chef judged out dishes I placed 3rd out or 4 (which was better than I anticipated). I totally overcooked the protein, but in my defense I really hate cooking chicken because for me it’s hard to tell when it’s done so I just guessed and went by touch. In the end it was something new and it was exciting. Basically this was a crash course into using a new ingredient, which was interesting because I’ve never done anything like this before. I just wish that KCC had courses like this where you’re given a certain ingredient each day and you had to make a dish out of it. I think that would be an interesting class that everyone wouldn’t mind taking.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
April 5- April 9
This week we were on short order station, an actual station where you can interact with people rather than being stuck “behind the scenes” making soup or something (not saying that it isn’t bad). Over the past week my group and I run different specials that we sell from around 10AM to about 1PM or until we run out of a certain special (which only happened once towards the end of the week…boo). The week of the fifth to the ninth we ran specials like to order sautéed swordfish with a fruit salsa (made by ours truly) or a sweet and sour sauce, Loco Moco’s (A bed of rice topped with a hamburger patty topped with an egg of your choice and “drenched” in gravy… or would “drowned” be a better word?), Open face turkey sandwiches with homemade cranberries, and a ton of Teriyaki chicken plates. As the week progressed and we came along some bumps in the road; like the fish fillets were taking just way too long to cook and running out of the teriyaki chicken for the plates. It was a sort of a scramble but we got through it.
With all the people that have been short order no one has ever made a dessert or a sweet short order dish yet. It has all been just savory items. This week I wanted to try making fried ice cream or crepes to order and with the encouragement from our leading chef, Chef Eric, I was determined to get a least something out. (Which didn’t really happen….stumble and an EPIC FAIL). In the end it was way too late to make anything because the ice cream had to be ordered the week before since frozen items like that only come in on Mondays and if I were to make crepes I’d have to demonstrate how to many I could make in a short amount of time. Plus the idea I had for crepes was pretty out there and had a variety of different components to it. So in the end none of my dessert ideas were used this week.
Not only was this week the week where we could interact with people but it was also a super busy week for me. On top of cooking I had an oral presentation project that I needed to decide on a topic and start studying for an exam that we have next week (which is tomorrow); a volunteer opportunity presented itself. It was the annual crabfest that the Ala Moana Rotary club holds. So Friday (ours slow day) was used as just a day to prep (no real action going on). On that Saturday (the day of the event) we went in guns a blaze and banged everything we need to do that night. At the end of the event we were able to take home a few crabs (which were left over…YAY!!!). The next day I had work at my weekend job so it was a nonstop busy week. Then this upcoming weekend we have another event (granted it’s not a school function) it is a culinary event. We, some of the 818 Brigade, are helping Mark out with the catering for their Churches function. So I’m looking forward to this upcoming week and the experiences that I’m going to take from it. I guess things are looking up. I’m actually cooking more often and reinforcing my confidence in myself and skill set. So it’s time to quit my current job (which is at a movie theater) and find one out in the industry. Wish me Luck.
This week we were on short order station, an actual station where you can interact with people rather than being stuck “behind the scenes” making soup or something (not saying that it isn’t bad). Over the past week my group and I run different specials that we sell from around 10AM to about 1PM or until we run out of a certain special (which only happened once towards the end of the week…boo). The week of the fifth to the ninth we ran specials like to order sautéed swordfish with a fruit salsa (made by ours truly) or a sweet and sour sauce, Loco Moco’s (A bed of rice topped with a hamburger patty topped with an egg of your choice and “drenched” in gravy… or would “drowned” be a better word?), Open face turkey sandwiches with homemade cranberries, and a ton of Teriyaki chicken plates. As the week progressed and we came along some bumps in the road; like the fish fillets were taking just way too long to cook and running out of the teriyaki chicken for the plates. It was a sort of a scramble but we got through it.
With all the people that have been short order no one has ever made a dessert or a sweet short order dish yet. It has all been just savory items. This week I wanted to try making fried ice cream or crepes to order and with the encouragement from our leading chef, Chef Eric, I was determined to get a least something out. (Which didn’t really happen….stumble and an EPIC FAIL). In the end it was way too late to make anything because the ice cream had to be ordered the week before since frozen items like that only come in on Mondays and if I were to make crepes I’d have to demonstrate how to many I could make in a short amount of time. Plus the idea I had for crepes was pretty out there and had a variety of different components to it. So in the end none of my dessert ideas were used this week.
Not only was this week the week where we could interact with people but it was also a super busy week for me. On top of cooking I had an oral presentation project that I needed to decide on a topic and start studying for an exam that we have next week (which is tomorrow); a volunteer opportunity presented itself. It was the annual crabfest that the Ala Moana Rotary club holds. So Friday (ours slow day) was used as just a day to prep (no real action going on). On that Saturday (the day of the event) we went in guns a blaze and banged everything we need to do that night. At the end of the event we were able to take home a few crabs (which were left over…YAY!!!). The next day I had work at my weekend job so it was a nonstop busy week. Then this upcoming weekend we have another event (granted it’s not a school function) it is a culinary event. We, some of the 818 Brigade, are helping Mark out with the catering for their Churches function. So I’m looking forward to this upcoming week and the experiences that I’m going to take from it. I guess things are looking up. I’m actually cooking more often and reinforcing my confidence in myself and skill set. So it’s time to quit my current job (which is at a movie theater) and find one out in the industry. Wish me Luck.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
An Introduction and a Recap
Welcome fellow bloggers! My name is Reid Root. I'm currently a culinary and pastry student at Kapiolani Community College situated on the island of Oahu. Being a culinary student or a student in general there are a ton of things we experience everyday and its all caught up in an emotional whirlwind just waiting to burst. That being said the reason behind creating this blog was sort of a way for me to express those pent- up thoughts and record my journey; whether it is failures, trials, or successes, through culinary school and life. If you’re reading this you’re either bored and are perusing through blogs, hit the next blog button, are interested in my journey through school and life, or are a supportive friends, family or classmates. Either way thank you and hope you enjoy my blog.
Module One: A quick recap of the first part of the semester
The morning session of Fundamentals of Cookery with Chef Frank Leake, the class that I've heard so many horror stories (all over exaggerated) from some of my pastry classmate, wasn’t all that bad in reality. To be honest it was rather exhilarating having to scramble almost every day to finish things ON TIME and it was relieving express my feeling and reflect upon myself in my daily writings. Slicing my thumb on the right hand ( which is my dominant hand) and having to get TEN stitches from a plastic surgeon (whom I thank for saving me from a rather irritated RN) was a bump in the road (or as my friends call it an EPIC FAIL). Like a player who twisted their ankle I was BENCHED for the next week (to my great dismay). Eventually I healed and got back into cooking and got ready to take on the dragon of all practical exams.
I finished almost everything in the practical exam and was very close in bribing someone to sell me their unused egg so I could make up for a broken mayonnaise. Overall my hard work and persistence to never give up got me through with a passing grade and gave me new confidence in both my skills and myself. After this class was done it was time to move onto a different class. Intermediate Cookery.
Module Two: The first four weeks of the second part of the semester
The beginning was a bit intimidating but now it is almost like going to work. We’re basically in the cafeteria working on different stations every week. The different stations are salad, entrée, short- order, deli, and steward. The first week we alternated daily each station just to get use to each. Then the second week we were assigned groups and given a specific rotation cycle. My group consists of Casey, Andrew, and Kanji. The first two weeks went by well but by the third week I was finally feeling the fatigue and illness that I was afraid of catching earlier in the first module and came down with a nasty cold and missed two days of class.
The four week has come, we’re at short-order, and I’m about 95% recovered. So things are looking up. Basically short-order is a lot of cooking that’s short and fast (hence the name). Today I cooked a massive amount of fries (Straight, curly, and onion rings) for the masses. Tomorrow is a longer day where we get to cook for the waiting hungry students (YES human interaction!!!!) Tomorrow special is Chili cheese dog and Teri- Chicken. I’m thinking about throwing together a last minute barbeque burger with onion rings inside. Let’s see if I can do it and how it pans out ( I mean pretty simple right?)
Module One: A quick recap of the first part of the semester
The morning session of Fundamentals of Cookery with Chef Frank Leake, the class that I've heard so many horror stories (all over exaggerated) from some of my pastry classmate, wasn’t all that bad in reality. To be honest it was rather exhilarating having to scramble almost every day to finish things ON TIME and it was relieving express my feeling and reflect upon myself in my daily writings. Slicing my thumb on the right hand ( which is my dominant hand) and having to get TEN stitches from a plastic surgeon (whom I thank for saving me from a rather irritated RN) was a bump in the road (or as my friends call it an EPIC FAIL). Like a player who twisted their ankle I was BENCHED for the next week (to my great dismay). Eventually I healed and got back into cooking and got ready to take on the dragon of all practical exams.
I finished almost everything in the practical exam and was very close in bribing someone to sell me their unused egg so I could make up for a broken mayonnaise. Overall my hard work and persistence to never give up got me through with a passing grade and gave me new confidence in both my skills and myself. After this class was done it was time to move onto a different class. Intermediate Cookery.
Module Two: The first four weeks of the second part of the semester
The beginning was a bit intimidating but now it is almost like going to work. We’re basically in the cafeteria working on different stations every week. The different stations are salad, entrée, short- order, deli, and steward. The first week we alternated daily each station just to get use to each. Then the second week we were assigned groups and given a specific rotation cycle. My group consists of Casey, Andrew, and Kanji. The first two weeks went by well but by the third week I was finally feeling the fatigue and illness that I was afraid of catching earlier in the first module and came down with a nasty cold and missed two days of class.
The four week has come, we’re at short-order, and I’m about 95% recovered. So things are looking up. Basically short-order is a lot of cooking that’s short and fast (hence the name). Today I cooked a massive amount of fries (Straight, curly, and onion rings) for the masses. Tomorrow is a longer day where we get to cook for the waiting hungry students (YES human interaction!!!!) Tomorrow special is Chili cheese dog and Teri- Chicken. I’m thinking about throwing together a last minute barbeque burger with onion rings inside. Let’s see if I can do it and how it pans out ( I mean pretty simple right?)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)