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e
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On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
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Well, Friday was "Restaurant Day." Yep, on Halloween, the school turned us loose in the kitchen. We could prepare anything we wanted, though prior approval was necessary. We were split into groups and each group had to choose a theme for it's "restaurant." We had to prepare and serve seven meals, each a minimum of four courses. We had all week to plan it out. My group chose the theme of a New England Country Inn. We prepared five courses. The appetizer was to have been Welsh Rabbit with an oyster but unfortunately didn't go quite as planned. We were running behind schedule and I got really busy and ended up burning the toast. Our cheese sauce didn't work either as the cheese didn't melt properly (it wasn't a good melting cheese). But one of my partners managed to save enough of the sauce to serve with the oysters and our appetizer simply became an oyster on the half shell with cheese sauce. Very tasty. The schedule got messed up because at the last minute they told us that we couldn't serve our meals in courses, we had to present every course at the same time and I was preparing parts of three different courses and had planned on doing them one at a time. The salad was a cold beet salad with red and gold beets and a honey-orange vinegrette served over baby greens. Very nice. The highlight of the evening (IMHO) was the pumpkin soup. It was my recipe, but was prepared by one of the other guys in the group. He did an excellent job, especially since he had never fixed it before. The entree was cornish game hen with cornbread stuffing. I roasted the game hens (which were perfectly done) and one of the others fixed the stuffing. It was funny to see the moist, but crumbly outcome of the stuffing. The guy who made it turned the cornbread into crumbs and didn't use much liquid. He also didn't put any eggs in it to hold it together so it was more like a pile of cornbread crumbs on a plate. He also forgot to put the smoked oysters in it. But it was quite tasty. The real problem was more cultural that anything else. The guy was Mexican and he had never even eaten stuffing before, let alone ever prepared it. He had no idea what it was supposed to be. Dessert was a warmed pear cake with a muscat wine sauce served with hot spiced apple cider. I made that one entirely. While I liked the pumpkin soup, both of our chef instructors thought the dessert was the best course so it kind of made up for my burning the toast for the appetizer. Overall, we were judged mostly on our teamwork, professionalism, and presentations since most of the stuff we were doing had not been taught in class. The chefs loved our menu (we stuck to our theme and presented a very seasonal cuisine) and they liked way we overcame our various problems by working together. They have a bad habit of never telling us what our grades are, but based on the comments we received, we got high marks. One chef said that she thought that we could have charges anywhere from $30-$50 per person for the meal and would have had some very happy customers.
The whole evening was quite fun for everyone and provided a nice break just before our final exams which are coming this week. Ugh!
Think good thoughts,
e
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Cooking School Story
By: e on Sun, 02 November 2003 15:59 |
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Re: Cooking School Story
By: kevin on Sun, 02 November 2003 16:48 |
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WHEEE! Cooking school report!
By: lenny on Sun, 02 November 2003 16:52 |
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Hi Kevin and Lenny
By: e on Sun, 02 November 2003 17:55 |
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Cooool!
By: lenny on Sun, 02 November 2003 22:31 |
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I fixed that once!
By: e on Mon, 03 November 2003 00:41 |
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Re: Cooking School Story
By: Guest on Sun, 02 November 2003 16:59 |
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Recipes
By: e on Sun, 02 November 2003 18:07 |
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Oh yeah
By: e on Sun, 02 November 2003 18:12 |
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Re: Oh yeah
By: Guest on Sun, 02 November 2003 19:29 |
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Sounds delicious!
By: nick on Sun, 02 November 2003 17:23 |
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Re: Sounds delicious!
By: e on Mon, 03 November 2003 00:43 |
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