Week #6 nice pics at the end (sorry so long)

This week was much better in many ways. People may say anger and frustration are negative emotions...but I tell you it is a great motivator sometimes.

For Basic, I went into class OVER prepared so that way our team could compensate for any changes/delays/misdirection/etc. that may arise. It paid off! In fact, I think a few of the other teams were just as determined to not get screwed this week. Our instructor lost track of time again this week, and almost sent us into the kitchen without showing us a demo video. I spoke up, and so she played it for us. Then she almost sent us off to the kitchen again. But a bunch of us raised our hands with questions (the book recipe and the chef's changes had not been fully explained). In our team, we also made sure to completely divide the dishes among ourselves. That is, instead of all three of us working on all three of the dishes simultaneously (as was encouraged these past weeks), we each worked on an individual dish assignment. MUCH more efficient if you ask me.

We made three soups this week in basic: a clam chowder; a french onion; and my long awaited CONSOMME! I have been wanting to do a consomme since reading Mark Ruhlman's "The Making of a Chef." I couldn't fathom how a raft of gunk floating in stock could possibly make the stock crystal clear--but it works! (as I am sure you all already know). I volunteered to make the consomme and when we got to the kitchen, our team was off to the races.

Our team's division of the work did not negatively impact our learning. We are working in such close proximity, and talking to each other the whole time (asking for certain ingredients, verifying that we did our cuts correctly, or even just chit-chatting) that we knew what the other person was doing. In otherwords, we did not miss out on anything by dividing the recipes.

Because so many of the teams had come in overly prepared this week, I think our chef had a hard time with it--in a humorous way though. It seemed like each station was trucking right along at a good pace. In fact, we were moving so well that teams would complete certain steps of the recipes before chef could walk by and offer suggestions and/or change the recipe. This meant that chef had more free time to walk up and down the row to each station and check on each teams' progress. But this also meant that she had "more time" to check on things. Example, I had just finished stirring my pot and turned to my table to chop something. Chef walks by and asks if I have been stirring the consomme--before I could answer, she gives a quick lecture on the importance of stirring. When I explained I just stirred it less than 10 seconds ago, she says, "OK." and moves to the next station. Less than 5 minutes later, I am standing next to my pot, the ingredients are still swimming in circles from having just been stirred when chef walks by again. She again reminds me to stir and almost starts her mini lecture on stirring. I interrupted her and forcing a little chuckle to lighten the mood I explain "Chef, I just stirred this. Its still moving." So chef laughs and comments, "Oh you're right. Its just hard to let go." After her experience in running 5 or 6 restaurants, I can see why her A-game is so focused. She must have been a sharp chef to work for.

For Garde Manger, it was a little difficult this week. I think we had an ambitious menu for today, and the class ran out of time. I think maybe only one or two of the 5 stations actually finished every recipe. Fortunately, the others teams all focused on the main recipes and only omitted cracker recipes (which our GM chef described later as being somewhat inaccurate and waste of time/food). Admittedly, our team did not get to the crackers. But no worries.

I felt bad for one of our teammates. He is Korean and doesn't speak english too well. And he is taking GM before (or maybe simultaneously with) taking Basic Cookery. If you are familiar with techniques, then GM is fairly manageable even without Basic. But with this teammate, he ends up needing directions about even somewhat basic ingredients/recipe directions/etc. So today, our GM chef laid into him a little bit about it. Chef made some comment about "See! This is why you shouldn't take this advanced class before basic. You think you can come in without basic skills, but then you can't perform the recipes." From there, chef kept an eye on him through the rest of class and started pointing out mistakes--not to harass him, but to make sure the recipe was done right. But I could tell our mate felt bad. He only got through his one main recipe and was apologizing to me and my other teammate about not getting to the crackers. But he didn't understand that hardly anyone got to the crackers. Then he started talking about dropping the class and going to basic. Things got really rushed toward the end, so I didn't even get a chance to talk with him. Today was just a bad day timing-wise all around for the entire class, but he didn't understand that fact.

And yet, we have gels, pates, sausages, terrines, sushi, curing and even more complex stuff (than what we have already been doing) coming up pretty quickly. Basic skills are a NECESSITY, but I don't want to see someone drop the class just off of a bad day, you know? But then again...his first words to me this morning, "I didn't read the recipes for today." I mean you gotta at least prepare, right?

Moving right along...Below are pics from GM. I did the crab salad, and my other teammate did the buffalo salad. The wings were good, but they would have been PERFECT if we remembered to take the Roquefort dressing with us to dip them in. The dressing was amazing. Sorry, no pic of consomme. We don't plate in Basic...just put it in a SS bowl on a table. Not picture worthy.