The Culinary Tales Week 25: The Road to Hell Starts Here

August 4, 2014

 

 

Don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to be grown up. Now that I’m grown up, I wish that childhood didn’t go so fast.

 

It was the same thing with baking… towards the end there, we were actually begging to start the next track: Garde Manger, the class that, according to Chef Bad Cop, brought “A” students to their knees.

 

He wasn’t kidding.

 

Garde Manger (which literally translates to “keep to eat”) is the kitchen discipline responsible for cold prep – salads, sandwiches, pates, among other things. Garde Manger chefs also oversee mass quantity prep, as in buffets and catering. It was so much work that we were going to do everything in teams. However, we would be on our own during finals – for which we have to produce a whole buffet individually. We were told that half the class does not finish the final. I was truly scared.

 

As if the class itself wasn’t tough enough already what with the tight deadlines and the impossibly large quantities of food to produce and information to process:

 

(a) We were cursed with a thinks-she’s-such-a-bad-ass chef whom I annointed Chef Nazi. (It’s a Grey’s Anatomy reference.) Don’t let the diminutive frame mislead you; her stare alone made one’s butt cheeks quiver and her voice could blow the pilot lights out on our ovens.

 

(b) We had class over at “West Campus,” a small outpost two miles away from the main campus surrounded by bars and where parking was a bitch. A few of us decided to carpool from East Campus and split the parking costs, but that meant having to get to school earlier than normal.

 

(c) Rather than weekly quizzes on Mondays, as all other classes had done, we got to have them on Fridays. And tell me, brother, just when in God’s name could I find time to study?

 

(d) There was homework every day: production schedule due daily and a requisition form due once a week. A production schedule is just what it sounds like; in addition to assigning times/ranges for our tasks, we had to list out individual ingredients and equipment needed for each task. A requisition form is an order form for all the ingredients needed that week. For the sake of getting used to doing it because it’s the industry standard, well, I thought it was a waste of time.

 

For once, my prayers were answered and I was assigned to the easier chef. This term, I had to answer mainly to Chef Frenchie. Chef Frenchie, by all accounts, was a nice, easy-going guy and I needed the bit of slack. I didn’t think I would survive the term if I had been on the Nazi’s roster.

 

Unfortunately, my little clique got separated; Advertising Buddy and I were assigned to Frenchie, Sweet Momma and Class Buddy, Nazi. Actually quite surprised that it took that long, not that it mattered. The teams were going to be mixed every week anyway.

 

Our first lesson was Buffet Feng Shui as we learned about lines and flow (as it pertained to buffet and platter organization). We had to turn in illustrations of how our platters would look like.

 

Oh, oh, oh and oh. We had a pop quiz (which many people failed) midway through our first week.

 

And that was before we even got to food prep and cooking.

 

For our first week, we had to put together an Asian-style buffet (on Thursday) and a sushi buffet on Friday. In addition to that, we spent the first day prepping items that we would need throughout the term: smoked salmon, sauerkraut (which we didn’t need until week three but required time to ferment), and cured bacon.

 

Smoking and curing meats fall under the garde manger chef’s discipline.

 

My team had to take care of curing the bacon (which was simple enough: assembled the curing mix, lathered on the slabs of meat and stuck in the fridge. Turned the meat over every day for ten days and that was it.) However, we were also saddled with having to prep the chefs’ demo for the remainder of the week.

 

The thing about teamwork that worried me was that you’re only as good as the team as a whole, so if the team sucks, your individual contribution of greatness could be marginalized.

 

I was hoping we would get to pick our teams, because I trusted my friends to do good work on time. But no, our teams were assigned by the chefs though I lucked out because my first team was pretty good. I got put on the team with Class Valedictorian, Stoner Guy, Dancing Queen and Annoying Junior.

 

Class Valedictorian was good; she was already operating her own catering business. But it killed me that so far she had been assigned the easy teachers. Meanwhile, I got stuck with the hardasses.

 

Stoner Guy was a smart, extremely likeable fellow who could do so much better if he just laid off the pipe.

 

Dancing Queen joined us in Baking I; he was a really sweet guy who was always practicing his ballet pirouettes, hence the name. His Baking 2 fondant cake was white and pink and had a ballerina on top.

 

Annoying Junior. Ahhhhh… the question was begged, who couldn’t we stand more: Annoying Girl or Annoying Junior? We actually found a contender for the title of Girl-Who’s-Itching-to-get-Slapped when we thought AG had the crown from Day One. AJ was a younger, spunkier version of AG. She was fast (which was great for my team) but she had a habit of constantly telling people what to do and yelling at people to keep up with the dishes. People from across the lab wanted to slap her; imagine having to be on her team.

 

(I grew up with a mother who nagged like there was no tomorrow. If there is anything I know how to do, it’s to tune things out.)

 

This class was going to cost me more than sleep hours. Although chef had a cart full of tablecloths and tableware, the buffets were going to require us to dig into our attics and garages, not to mention our wallets. Each buffet had a theme and the decor and serving pieces should match that theme.

 

Thank goodness for my time as a part-time Pampered Chef sales consultant. I signed up to sell the goodies because it sounded like fun, but then ended up spending more than what I made on kitchen gadgets. It was like asking an alcoholic to be a bartender. I had to quit. I amassed half a garage of shit I wasn’t sales-y enough to sell.

 

But they were about to get some use, at least!

 

Our first buffet, I thought, looked nice. But then again, what do I know? We got fairly good reviews though there were lots of criticisms. We still hadn’t wrapped our heads around the idea of “flow,” that the buffet be arranged in a way that flowed logically and cleanly.

 

There must be balance across the table (one end should “weigh” the same as the other end), height (height is good and essential), and a focal point (something to grab the guest’s attention).

 

Attention to detail was important because the presentations weren’t just about the food anymore. We even had to provide a menu with each buffet assembled.

 

And let me fill you in on a little secret, in case you don’t already know. The cheap stuff is always at the start of the buffet. So, the next time you find yourself at one, do not fill your plate on front-end items. Save some space for the end, where the good stuff is.

 

Not that this would be a problem with my family. They just drop one plate at the table and go back to reload. Filipinos, you see, are three-/four-/five-plate buffet addicts. I don’t know why.

 

 

 

 

 

But we weren’t challenged enough. We had to present a sushi buffet the next day. Sushi isn’t difficult to make and it can be fun. But what really got me was that The Nazi couldn’t even figure out how to do a hand roll. We wasted a lot of time on demo when we could have been using that extra time to prep for our buffet. In the end, she had to YouTube it.

 

There were many times throughout the week when I thought the class was a joke. Chef Nazi imposed a load of expectations and tasks on us but her competency was questionable. Class Buddy and I could only shake our heads.

 

Our second attempt at buffeting was a vast improvement over the first, an achievement alone considering we learned about sushi-making and put it together all in one night.

 

Of course, this is sushi-making American-style. True sushi masters in Japan learn the craft for ten years before they can be called sushi master. They spend the first two years ONLY making rice and perfecting it. (Anyone who tells you they’re a sushi master after six months of sushi school is a poser.)

 

 

 

 

And no, that wasn’t just “it” for week one.

 

For the final buffet, we actually had to make a salt dough sculpture. Salt dough is a mixture of popcorn salt and corn starch, mixed with a little water to produce a plaster-of-paris-like “edible” clay. We were told to get started on this right away because it could take two to three weeks to dry. We had to decide on a theme and draw a design for the centerpiece before the end of the week.

 

We were also given some homework: melon carving! Yet one more proficiency the garde manger chef needs to master.

 

 

And then there was Wine Class on Saturday. And if there was a class we were all looking forward to, it was wine. Not so much for the drinking , but I was really looking forward to the learning because wine perplexes me. I love wine, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a lot about it I don’t get. Like, spending upwards of $25,000 for a 1948 vintage 750-mL bottle of wine that could very well turn out bad? I don’t get it. It’s JUST grape juice with yeast!

 

So I embarked on this wine journey with eager ears and an open mind and the first class packed a wallop. There was so much information to process that my head spun. And no, it wasn’t from the wine. The nerd in me, however, was eating it up, or rather, drinking it up.

 

Did you know that American vines are resistant to an aphid called phylloxera? And that during the 18th century, aphid-carrying American vines were planted in Europe that nearly wiped out all of Europe’s wines? (Go figure.)

 

My first lesson in wine: When a wine smells of cinnamon, or vanilla, or berries, it isn’t because those flavors are added to the wines. It’s because of various influences such as the oak barrels they are kept in – and these suggestions of odor and flavor, called esters, are a by-product of the chemical reactions going on when grape juice meets yeast in a container.

 

American barrels impart dill and toasted coconut odors, while French barrels impart baking spice flavors (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg.) Wine will pick up caramel and vanilla flavors from newer wood. And many times, how the wine actually tastes will differ greatly from what its fragrance suggests.

 

Our wine teacher was the sommelier at one of the pricier, old-guard restaurants in town. He was about to take his master sommelier exam (there are only a handful in the world.) He was a talker, but there was no denying he knew his shit.

 

Between both classes, I never felt so much physical wear and data overload. I got home around 3 p.m. that Saturday and was hoping to sneak in a quick nap before doing errands and chores. I didn’t wake up until noon on Sunday.

 

And that didn’t leave much time to do laundry, catch up on work, copy my recipes onto index cards, shop for my salt dough centerpiece, and do the next week’s reading. I knew this class was going to be trouble, but I didn’t imagine it would get *this* tough. In the end, I couldn’t say we weren’t warned.

 

Our previous chefs were prone to exaggerating and blowing steam up our collective asses. But for once, they were actually telling the truth.

 

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