i was assigned to work on garde manger station 1 with my second-year commis erik. he gave me the recipes and petit sheets the day before so i could prepare a bit. we were making ricotta fritters, minestrone soup, and caponata. as soon as i got there, i started peeling and dicing eggplant. the chefs were just walking around the kitchen checking on everyone, so i got a few critiques pretty early on: "This dice is too large" "Your station looks sloppy" etc. but nothing too crucial.
erik and i were both skeptical of the caponata recipe as neither of us had made the dish before. it instructed to deep fry the diced, salted eggplant and the 1-inch chunks of celery. deep fried celery? huh? actually it wasn't half-bad, but we both agreed that, given the chance, we'd omit the hunks of celery altogether. the celery and eggplant was tossed with a reduction of concasse tomatoes, sliced onions, sugar and red wine vinegar. add to that capers and sliced manzanilla olives and voila. we also agreed that it would be far superior with some kalamata olives or perhaps nicoise, and i thought a generous addition of lemon zest would really make it great, but alas we only had so much time. and erik only requisitioned the items in the recipes. he thought the chefs were letting people crash and burn a bit with the requisition sheets to teach them a lesson in advance preparation.
our minestrone was irreparably mediocre. we followed the recipe, we weren't able to add pork which would have pumped it up, so it was just sort of bland in a way that couldn't be helped. but it sufficed.
the ricotta fritters were just weird. also very bland. some lemon zest and garlic salt would have helped. again, requisition was a problem because converting cups to oz does not always yield correct results, so we were short on ricotta and the dough came out rather stiff. we thought to resolve this by concocting a sauce of tomato and red wine vinegar. after pureeing and straining, it was sort of like tomato water, so we tried to thicken it with a roux, and thus discovered the recipe for spaghettio sauce. oh well.
all in all, though, everything went smoothly and we didn't have to work in a mad rush. the food-running was another story, however. entirely disorganized and frustrating. the best thing was, though, that my friend greg was assigned chef de cuisine that day, and being in cahoots with the boss always helps. it's been GREAT having him at school.
i don't get to cook again on production day for another month. this afternoon i have a lab on stocks. not so exciting. i'll let you know how my fish fumet turns out!
No comments:
Post a Comment