Formal Restaurant Cooking week two

Our small pot with onions
to caramelize (4.5 gallons of onions)

How long does it take to caramelize this pot of onion?

Second to the last week of Formal Restaurant cooking. It was short week, we had only four days because of Labour day weekend. The filling was that the program at the school was almost over, just a few days left. It did not mean that we were regret about our time here, but more anxiety to finish this big project.

During the week the appetizer station  was constantly the best:-) We worked very well together with John, also we had a great team in the morning shift. These guys usually done a huge chunk of prep work, and that helped a lot, we were more focused on the small details. We did our portion of prep work as well, don't get me wrong. The biggest advantage was that we worked as the team with morning guys, we all did not think only about our own shift and that's why
we were able to have full breaks and be ahead of game.

Tuesday was a dead day. We had about 38 guests for the whole evening. The night was boring, indeed. We did a couple big projects during service. One of them was caramelized onion broth. It started with raw onions which was cut already and we caramelized it. To achieve the proper caramelization it took as about four and a half hours! This is not a time where you can forget about onions, you have to steer them from time to time. Can you do it in the oven? Not really, the result will be different in terms of depth of color and the taste. When onions are nicely caramelized we added brown poultry stock, brought to the simmer and simmered about 20 minutes. Then chilled and bagged the final product.

Wednesday and Thursday were quiet days. We had average number of guests (about 75) and the service was good. Nothing crazy, but calm and effective.

Friday was busy. We did almost 100 covers. For us it was not so bad, as we began the service and it's always easier. We did not have to coordinate with the main line the preparation of food. We had only two tables where we had to coordinate our time and no surprise, that was a challenge. The hotline asked for six minutes, but actually it took them about 11 minutes. Fortunately for us we were able to use our mussels for another table and prepare a new portion for the table.

Weekend which supposed to be long, was actually short for me. I had two stages in restaurants in San Francisco. One on Saturday and another on Sunday. Saturday's stage was for three hours only, but Sunday's was a full shift (except for cleaning and breaking down station) from 2 p.m. till 10 p.m. After stage for a full shift they offered me to choose a dish from the menu I would like to try. So, now I can say I was eating in Michelin starred restaurant!