Diary: August 7, 2002

[Malawry]

Monday, August 5

Today was the Duck Press Golf Classic. Instead of going to school, sitting through a demo, and preparing lunch, we went to a golf club, catered lunch, and then packed up. I was on the largest team, reporting to the school at 8am to pack up remaining items and bring them to the club. I arrived close to 7:30am. We dickered around for about 45 minutes and then we loaded up our cars with the lunch food and drove over to the club in caravan fashion.

Once we got to the club, we unloaded into the kitchen from the loading dock. The kitchen at the club is much larger and dirtier than the one at L’academie (which is small and sparkles from a daily scrubbing). They have a serious dishwashing machine and other cool equipment that the school lacks. We wandered around a little and checked out the large ballrooms and the generous balcony overlooking the golf course.

The balcony had been used for breakfast service, which the pastry students plus a team of four members of my class had served to golf classic participants. We were invited to pick over whatever was left of the breakfast pastries before the pastry students packed them up, so I went to investigate. As I was selecting a cream cheese and apricot pinwheel, one of the pastry students asked me if that was my picture in this morning’s Washington Post. I mentally reviewed why I might have appeared in the paper (I haven’t committed any crimes, and last I checked, I wasn’t dead or injured due to newsworthy circumstances) and came up blank. “There was a picture of the chefs at the Julia Child dinner.” Oh, right! I immediately asked if she had the paper with her, but of course she didn’t. Then I asked the club’s manager, fellow students, and the people at the club’s front office if they had the paper. Nobody had it.

After my search for the paper, students started drifting back into the kitchen and getting started on lunch food. Chin and Drew got busy with the flank steaks and several pans of coq au vin, a few people were sent to work on assembling the vegetable salads, and I was teamed with Jessie to work on the fruit salad.

Jessie is Panamanian, and is one of two people in my class who is fluent in Spanish. She’s got a ready smile and an acerbic wit, and she’s got an independent streak deeper than the Grand Canyon. I like Jessie quite a lot; she’s a strong personality, but she doesn’t steamroller people. It’s fun to talk to an opinionated person who actually likes hearing other opinions. We got cracking on some pineapples, cantaloupe and honeydew melons. The salad took us about 40 minutes to assemble; it also included blueberries, watermelon, mangoes, raspberries, and a orange simple syrup which I think was leftover from our tests. I had a nice time getting to know Jessie better. I was supposed to go to Equinox restaurant last week for Restaurant Week, but I ended up having to change plans and so I gave my reservation to Jessie (who had been dismayed at how early Equinox booked up given the special promotions). She gave me a rundown of the meal she had, which included a barbequed salmon entrée.

Once the fruit salad was together we split off and I helped assemble cheese plates. Then we started getting closer to service, so Jessie and I went into the ballroom and helped the lone waitress load ice and water into the glasses. I discovered that I am terrible at this job, and I dribbled water and dropped ice all over the place. I got better after a few tables, but I’ve never worked as a waitress and so I’ve never had to develop the skills it requires.

Eventually, people started trickling in from the golf course, and I took out trays of freshly fried handmade egg rolls with a sweet chile dipping sauce. People were very happy to see me after being on the golf course all morning, and I was called “beautiful” and “amazingly talented” even though I didn’t make the egg rolls myself. They were pretty good, and we all snarfed many in the kitchen before circulating them to our guests. (The things you don’t see behind the scenes at a catering gig!)

Things moved rather rapidly from there. I helped serve the salads, and then tried to pitch in with busing tables and breaking down the buffet. There were stupid quantities of leftover food. Many students were able to take home whole flank steaks. I scammed about a pound of smoked salmon, plus a big box of grilled vegetables for my household. We also left a lot of food at the club for their staff to enjoy.

I’ve thought about today a lot, and come to the conclusion that I don’t much care for catering. I didn’t feel as energized as I’ve felt in restaurant kitchens, and I think the pressure of placing so many dishes on a buffet at once in large qualities is far more annoying than several hours of steadily streaming orders in a restaurant. Even more obnoxious is plating a catered meal, which requires huge numbers of absolutely identical plates such as those we produced at the Julia Child dinner. I hadn’t really considered catering as a possible career path, and from what little I’ve seen I was right not to do so.

I stopped by a convenience store on the way home and picked up today’s Post. There I am, on page C3. Classmate Melanie surmises that I’ve used up my 15 minutes of culinary fame right there, but I hope not. I was listed simply as “staff,” after all.

Tuesday, August 6

Back to the regular grind today. We sat through a demo and then got to work on a primarily vegetarian menu: vegetables a la greque, Greek salad, quiche du jour, and pecan pie with maple ice cream. (Chin’s comment: (insert grimace) “This is right up your alley, isn’t it?”) I took charge of the quiches and made a batch of pate brisee. I decided to do individual quiches instead of two large ones like most teams produced, since there’s something special about being served an individual tart. Everybody wanted bacon in theirs, but without the bacon the whole meal would have been meat-free.

Since it was Tuesday, the second session students were around for their weekly class and a demo. Today’s visiting chef was Todd Gray of Equinox, where I sent Jessie last week. I was helping Melanie prep some of her vegetables for the greque when I asked Chef Peter if he could show me how to tournee a mushroom. (A tourneed mushroom looks fluted.) Chef Todd walked through the main kitchen as Chef Peter was showing me the knife cuts, and he got all excited and said, “I love fluting mushrooms!” He came over and took my paring knife from me (Chef Peter had my tournee knife) and immediately produced a beautiful, evenly tourneed cap. After he and Chef Peter finished having fun with our mushrooms, I tried my hand at it. I’m embarrassingly bad, which sucks since I’m finally getting decent at tourneeing things like potatoes. I wonder if I will make mushroom tournees a point of pride like I did with the potato tournees; if I have time I may practice on a small basket this weekend.

As we were finishing our quiches during lunch service, I asked Chef Peter when the task list for post-lunch cleanup would rotate. “Right now, and you’re doing it.” I stared at him for a moment and then went to retrieve the list from the last two 2-week periods. I redistributed names across the tasks, trying to be as fair as possible. Nobody complained seriously when they looked up to see what their jobs would be. I moved myself to floors from my last job of cleaning the main kitchen. Floors seems pretty easy, but you get less of a break because you can’t really mop until everybody on kitchen and dish duty finishes up and gets out of the way.

After break, Chef Somchet did a demo on tomorrow’s dessert, and then she let us go 15 minutes early to thank us for our work at the golf classic. We trundled out of the classroom, too exhausted to celebrate.

Wednesday, August 7

There wasn’t much to report from today. We alternated between demo and tending the blanquette de veau we prepared for lunch early in the morning, and once the demos wrapped up we went into the kitchen and got to work. I took charge of our starter, moules marineres…mussels in a white wine broth with a touch of cream. I’d never handled mussels before, although I’ve eaten them in restaurants. My team was serving Chef Francois and his three guests, who I believe were a French couple and their son who looked to be around 20 years old. Chef Francois quizzed me about the mussels after they ate them, and seemed pleased with my execution of the dish. It included a splash of Pernod and a BG with some fennel seeds, but it wasn’t deeply anise-y.

After lunch, cleanup and break, we had our third visit from Chris the sanitation instructor. He showed us a British video about exactly what happens when somebody ingests salmonella. It was a bit hokey, but I appreciated the detailed explanation of why those with salmonella food poisoning get sick and feel sore and achy. Chris spared us his video on hand washing, thankfully, and he even let us go a little early.

[Damian]

Thanks yet again. Sounds like things are going swimmingly for you, I'm glad.

[Jinmyo]

Rochelle, catering is okay for some. But much of the fun of professional cooking is knowing your space and its shifting volumes as bodies move back and forth. Knowing where everything is. Knowing how many steps it takes to pick this up, turn and put it there, swing a hand up for that, put it here, reach over and flip that. Micoseconds in which events explode, align, shift, reintegrate, complete, drop away, renew.

[Fat Guy]

Chris the sanitation instructor

This might be a good character for a sitcom.

[Malawry]

If Chris was a character on a sitcom, I wouldn't believe such a guy could actually exist.

[sandra]

Great reports Malawry!

Tomorrow I am graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in London and I have been re-living all the classes through your posts - I loved every minute of school and I'm sure you will also.

Some differences: we bring our food home instead of eating it there (my poor husband is sick of French food!), we don't have any written work, other than our notes, and no written tests, certainly not math I would have failed with flying colours! The chefs do the demos and clean up after themselves...and they also bring up ingredient trolleys for our practicals.

Yesterday we had our final exam, and today we were critiqued by the chefs and then shown our grades - it's very nerve wracking when it's the final! Something for you to look forward to!

Oh, and I know what you mean about the turned mushrooms, it's one of my personal favourites....

[Malawry]

Hi Sandra, thanks for posting. Congrats on finishing at Le Cordon Bleu!

What was on your final exam?

[sandra]

Malawry,

The final exam was as follows - we got a list of 20 ingredients, including lamb, artichokes, phyllo, peas, potatoes, chilli, etc... we had to devise a summer modern European dish to cook and present within 2.5 hours using all the ingredients and nothing else - also included in the exam was an imposed dish that we all had to make the same, this was a pate brisee tartlet filled with spinach, a poached egg and then hollandaise sauce.

Then all the chefs in school try it and grade it - the next day you go sit in a room with them for 10 minutes and they tell you their comments...

[Jason Perlow]

Christ, that sounds like Iron Chef Commando school.

[ShawtyCat]

Naw...that sounds like how Michael Ruhlman described one phase of the Certified Master Chef Exam at the CIA.

[Malawry]

Doesn't sound too far off from the exams I'll face later in the year. I know "market baskets" figure into evaluations closer to November and December, when classes are winding down.