The Culinary Tales Week 27: Another One Bites the Dust

August 11, 2014

 

Week 3 Garde Manger was a bit of a slow week, as we only had to present sandwich and Italian buffets and make salads.

 

We were treated to an ice-carving demonstration by an award-winning, world-renown garde manger chef at a famous hotel who buzzsawed a pretty nifty sculpture.

 

 

HOW TO MAKE FRESH MOZZARELLA

Pour hot salted water over fresh curd, mix with a spatula and when the curd comes together into a homogenous mass, squeeze the mousture out and shape it. EASY PEASY!

 In addition to our salad and sandwich menus, we also learned to make fresh mozzarella.

 

Then we assembled Chinese chicken salad complete with oriental dressing made from scratch (ALL the dressings are made from scratch by the way), warm spinach and warm frisee salads, salad nicoise, caesar and the classic cobb. But with that fine dining twist of portion control, fitting salad greens into a four-inch round mold to limit what is put on the plate.

 

Warm salads, however, are tricky to master, because you don’t want to wilt the greens at the same time serve the damn plate before it cools.

 

We were individually tested on our salad-making ability as we had to prepare three salads, bringing them up at specified times. Unlike previous windows, when we had upwards of 15 minutes to bring in our dishes, we had to bring up our plates within two minutes and not a second earlier.

 

When you have to make three salads, it’s a tough ride. Especially when making the warm frisee salad, which included a warm red wine vinaigrette, poached egg, and elements like apple, blue cheese and nuts.

 

We also had a quick-fire test on sandwiches, once again each of us having to make three: reuben, grilled vegetable panini, and club – with side sauces and bound salads (which we had to come up with ourselves). The “bound” salad category includes pasta salads, tuna/chicken salads, fruit salads… basically any food “bound” by cream- or mayo-based dressings.

 

Our first team effort this week was in the form of a tea sandwich buffet. Think English high tea, with tiered trays of finger sandwiches and, um, tea. Each of us picked a tea sandwich from a list plus our own signature tea sandwich (completely out of innovative ideas, I went with a caprese sandwich of diced tomatoes, basil, mozarella and balsamic dressing. If I had to do it all over again, I would have served up a little chicken adobo and given props to my Filipino heritage. I just didn’t know if chicken was available that day.)

 

 

 

My Week One team was reunited for this assignment, with Pothead in place of Dancing Queen. Once again, we had to create chaud froid platters and our signature sandwiches had to be presented on these.

 

I thought I had the chaud froid mastered at this point, but it turned out that I overcooked the mixture. Annoying Junior and I agreed to split duties on prep: I would handle the chaud froid for both of us (she’ll do her own designing) while she took on buffet-related duties. I ended up screwing it up. Later in the week, I had just enough time to redo mine but AJ never re-did hers. Of course, this was the one time that the platters were actually graded – and she got dinged on hers. She didn’t think it was that big of a deal but from then on, I decided I wasn’t going to do anyone else’s chaud froid platters but my own.

 

Our second buffet was freestyle Italian, and the chefs left it up to us to figure out our dishes as long as we made a mushroom terrine, sauce tyroliene and an antipasto platter. Even with my speed handicap, I took on the task of the antipasti, not trusting the younguns to put an aesthetically pleasing one together. This was an even uglier task because the veggies had to be grilled, and I still hadn’t mastered the art of grilling nor gotten used to the hell-grade hot temperatures. At one point I had a couple dozen pieces on the grill, and they were either falling into the fire or burning because it took forever to flip or remove the ones that were done.

 

The end-product buffet was ok, if a little spare. I felt we kinda dropped the bomb on this (check the photos.) Our terrine was a disaster. A terrine, by the way, is a kind of meatloaf or forcemeat, and is named after the vessel in which it is cooked. The terrine (vessel) is a long, rectangular stone baking ‘dish’.

 

The class claimed another casualty when Sweet Momma dropped out too.

 

I couldn’t blame her one bit. She was pregnant, and being on your feet with so much to do was just too much to ask. And wine class was almost useless because she couldn’t drink. (Well, she could always spit, but sometimes, sometimes… you just want to swallow. Seriously.) And she had decided that what she really wanted to do was bake. You’ve seen her Ratatouille cake, the woman was born to do pastry. So she decided to drop out of the culinary program and transfer to the patisserie and baking program.

 

It was no coincidence that both dropouts were on Chef Nazi’s roster. Sure, she had a soft side but her credibility and respect forever damaged by the p***y comment. I couldn’t blame either of my friends for wanting to jump ship.

 

The class felt a little hollow and empty with our two buddies gone. I was disappointed Class Buddy for leaving, mostly because I thought when you put in a lot of effort and you make it to this point, you go all the way. We were almost done, after all, and I worried that he might regret the decision someday, of having the chance to finish something and quitting too early.

 

Regret, my friends, is the fifth “taste.” It’s a lot worse than bitter and there isn’t enough water to make it go away.

 

I try to live my life so that I’d have none. I don’t believe you can regret the things you do, even if they’re mistakes because there are learnings to be had. But nothing burns me more than thinking what could have/would have/should have beens. I would rather know than wonder.

 

The decision to go to culinary school was years in the making, mostly talking myself out of it for various reasons (too expensive, did I really want to work in the restaurant industry, and so on.) But despite the challenges, I was having a grand time. I felt alive, even.

 

So if there’s one important lesson I learned from this whole experience, it’s to just do it.

 

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