Externship week two

The reality to be at a busy place.
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Second week at the same cafe. On Monday I attended orientation for all new employees of Bone Appetite. It was from 9 to 3. We were told how great is the company, what are the core values of the company, what we suppose to do and not to do, and so on. It was really interesting to know about some issues and the best part that it was 'on clock', which means paid time.

Tuesday was back to the kitchen. The whole day was devoted to the prep work. Morning started from broccoli. There were about five cases to cut florets off the stems. Then there were five boxes of corn to clean, break in half, and roast. A team leader prepared chipotle butter to serve with the corn. She started to beat butter with wire whisk attachment. Very politely I asked if there is a paddle attachment in the house. She said they are the same. Less then two minutes later there was a huge piece of butter inside whisk attachment (to my deep satisfaction). I did not asked any more questions on that. About 15 minutes before service I was told that due to miscommunication the compound butter was not mixed with corn prepared for the service, so I had to

Externship week one

My knife after six boxes of eggplants

Externship - welcome to a real world of cooking.
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The first year at the school is over and now it's time for the externship. Last Tuesday I started my externship at the Bon Appetite @ Google. Bon Appetite is a large company providing catering service for corporations, colleges, and another big organizations. That kind of service is beneficial for the business, as you do need to take care for many aspects related to the food production, starting from kitchen organization, purchasing, hiring qualified people, and so on. Yes this convenience comes at a cost, however for the big business is easier to absorb the cost.

My externship at the Google will be during the next five months. It will be a bi-weekly rotation between different cafes located on the main campus at Mountain View. For the first week I was placed to the one of the most busiest cafe Yoshka.

On Tuesday I spent about

Day one hundred thirty two

Our pulled pork burger and
coleslaw

The burger day!

It was a Friday and it was the last day of classes in 2013! Officially I have finished my first year at the Culinary Institute of America. On Tuesday I am going to start my externship at Google and will be back to the school in January next year.

On Friday we supposed to cook pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and potato salad. We discussed and decided to drop off potato salad and instead to make fried pickles. The chef gave us another dish (as we were not busy), which was salmon sandwich on a flat bread with iceberg lettuce salad.

Pork sandwich was good, as we dry rubbed pork butt with salt, sugar, and spices and smoked it overnight. On Friday we check it and

Day one hundred thirty one

Pasta with a lobster, asparagus, and
shiitake mushrooms

Pasta with a lobster, what can be better for a lunch.

This short course is going to the end. We have one more day left to cook lunch. After that we are going for the externship.

In the morning our chef was in a really bad mood. That was related to the fact that yesterday a few people did not do exactly what he was asking for and somebody even tried to argue with the chef. In the class we found quotation on the board 'I have never learned a single thing while I was talking'.

The production for our group was quite easy. We suppose to make spaghetti and meatballs, however the class doing fish sent us lobster meat and our dish was changed to a lobster pasta with shiitake mushrooms and asparagus.

The most time consuming task was to make a sauce. We used

Day one hundred thirty

Chicken Pot Pie with Buttermilk Biscuits

Secrets to make great biscuits.

Two days left before the externship. Today was the last day I worked at the school this year (I will return in January after the externship). There is a strange feeling, it seems I am going to miss the school unless during the externship will be extremely busy. Will see.

Today our team made a chicken pot pie with buttermilk biscuits. The idea of the dish is strange for me. A chicken pot pie is a soup, yes it is a thick soup, what's  the point to put biscuits in that soup? This I can't understand. I would rather keep them on

Day one hundred twenty nine

Guess what was the dish of the day?

We have today the dish of the day and it was a ramen noodle soup. As our chef said, this is the first time as he remembers that the Reuben sandwich was oversold. Usually the Reuben sandwich is the most popular dish of the day. Obviously that was not the case for today.

Preparation for our ramen we started yesterday - the chicken and pork stock was made during the class. During my work I took care to strain the stock and chill it and place into a refrigerator. Today we used a guidance from the book Momofuku by D. Chan.

A pork belly was prepared (also was cured yesterday). Regrettably we

Day one hundred twenty eight

Calzone with salad and tomato sauce

What is Calzone?

Today was an interesting experience for me. It was the first time since I have started the school, that I came to class having no idea what we are cooking. There was a discrepancy between a production grid and recipes package. The dish we had on the grid was not in our package and vise versa. My sous chef was not able to get in touch with the chef and clarify this.

What we found is that production grid was right and our dish is calzone with mushrooms, spinach, two types of cheeses, green salad on the side and tomato sauce. That was a relief at least to know what we are cooking, but what the heck is calzone?

I found out that a calzone is an Italian dish,

Day one hundred twenty seven

Our Sandwich

TGFI - sometimes it should be TGFiO (thanks God Friday is over).

Somehow it slipped from my memory and only today I realized that there was no post for Friday.

You know, sometimes there is a feeling in the morning that the day is going to be bad. That was Friday. I had to wait shuttle to get to school for 15 minutes (suppose to be 10 max, usually less). Then I had issues to print timeline for the day. Then during breakfast (second day in a row) there were no smoothies (I know sounds horrible, but here is breakfast class, so it should be some and I like them).
The rest part of the day at the school was like this, we were late with our food for lunch. We had issues in the team.

Our dish was pretty easy - grilled chicken sandwich with jalapeño cheese and cabbage coleslaw.  My timeline was not right, simply because the fact that chicken breasts for the sandwich we had to fabricate from the whole chickens. So at the beginning of class we all jumped to

Day one hundred twenty six

Conchiglie with pesto sauce
and pan fried scallops

Compare the lunch cookery with the breakfast.

Today we have switched from the breakfast cookery to lunch. After the first day, it seems I like it more. I still like the food we prepared for breakfast, however there are a few good points about lunch. The first one is that I returned to the 'normal' schedule, or better to say to the schedule of the last seven months (for me normal one is to wake up at 8 or 9 am). Second point is that the service for lunch is very intense but much shorter. We serve lunch for 45 minutes only, after that time we plate the balance of the food to the buffet. A not so good point is that we have lunch from 10:30 till 11:00. I'm not hungry at that time, so may be this is opportunity to loose some weight.

We have a new teams for the lunch cookery. Today our team cooked pasta (conchiglie) with pesto cream sauce, assorted tomatoes and pan seared scallops. The recipe for 60 people called for tomato concase or halved cherry tomatoes. Yesterday we did not

Day one hundred twenty five

Egg in a whole

The end of breakfast class!

Yes, today we have finished our short breakfast class. Tomorrow we are going to start lunch class. Breakfast cookery was really interesting, we made a lot of new and interesting dishes. The only negative (or inconvenient to be precise) point is the necessity to wake up before 4 am in the morning. The class started at 4:30 am and breakfast starts at 6:30 am. Tomorrow I can sleep till 6 am and I do believe it will be like weekend.

Today was a special project day for us. Each team had to come up with a menu for today. We planned the menu according to the stations assignment. It was our responsibility to request all necessary ingredients and to cook our menu for the customers (students and staff). At the end of the class we had a practical for breakfast class - everyone suppose to prepare

Day one hundred twenty four

A recipe to make perfect waffles.

We had second to the last day for the breakfast cookery. Our team made country style fried chicken and waffles. For me it was a strange way to serve it together, however it seems to be a classical American dish. The majority of people specifically asked for chicken and waffles on the same plate, some even asked to pour maple syrup onto chicken as well. I would prefer my waffles with whipped cream and berry coulis (and I had it for the breakfast).

Other teams made also interesting dishes: eggs benedict on polenta cake; corned beef hash; house cured picnic ham; crepes.

As per feedback we received the best dish for the breakfast was ours - chicken and waffles.

Chicken was marinated overnight in

Day one hundred twenty three

Our fruit platter

The secret of making smoothie. 

It was easy day, except for the fact that I did sleep very bad and in the morning had a real problem to open my eyes. Right after the class I rushed to the dorm to have some sleep. 40 minutes made a huge difference, the rest of the day was not so harsh.

Today our team were responsible for fruit platters, juices, smoothies, and muesli with cured pineapple. Among the interesting dishes cooked by other teams are: crab cake with egg benedict, spinach and parmesan cheese souffle, and cinnamon rolls.

We were taught how to cut fruits and how to handle them, so the fruit plate will look great. When you cut fruits (pineapples, melons, watermelon...) it's better to use slicing knife, as it is thinner and easier to skin fruits. Also when

Day one hundred twenty two

Finished doughnut

Do you know how to make doughnuts?

Apologies for writing this post with delay again. Somehow it slid out of my mind. I mean completely (probably I have MDD).

I did not know about it before last Friday. Our team made doughnuts and funnel cake. Other teams made pork belly, chiliquiles and some other standard dishes for breakfast.

Doughnuts and funnel cake we made from scratch. We started dough on Thursday and finished product on Friday. Making dough was not difficult at all. For baking you should be precise in you measurements and everything will be fine.

I expected that we will be

Day one hundred twenty one

Weird thing on a buffet today

Everything on a buffet table is edible, check it...

Another day of breakfast class. Today was not remarkable. Our team cooked potato (hash brown and Macaire potato) and meat (maple bacon, chicken-apple sausages, Burgundy sausage patties).

There were some interesting dishes cooked by other teams. Crab and avocado omelet, French toast, and creamy risotto with orange segments. Crab and avocado omelet was delicious.

Our team production indeed was not remarkable. Chicken sausages were already made, we had to blanch them in water and then fry to get some colour. Burgundy sausage patties also  were super easy. We made meat mixture