Day one hundred five

Arugula and watermelon salad

Presentation is a key.

TGFI! And finally it's the end of the block, the last day of Banquet. Unfortunately it was not the best and easiest block, however it's over and I look forward to studying A la cart.

Today it was our menu. We prepared salad with arugula, watermelon, feta cheese, pine nuts, and balsamic dressing with a drizzle of faux balsamico on top. For the main course we made grilled lamb chops, with cous cous, grilled asparagus, orange bell pepper, and arugula-mint pesto. For the vegetarian option we had grilled portobello mushroom filled with sun-dried tomato and peas risotto on the bed of lentil puree (to have a complete protein).

In general our menu was good and well thought. The food was tasty and we were able to present them on time. What can be improved? A little bit less dressing on the salad arugula did not take much dressing. The lamb was grilled as
an individual chops and it seems that was kind of strategic mistake. As it was lamb and the grill was not too hot, we did not get noticeable grill marks (that was the reason we grilled chops individually). While we were holding them for service the carry over cooking brought meat to the temperature medium-well done, so the chops were a bit dry.

Lamb chops

The Dean of the school gave us a feedback and that was really valuable. Hi gave us a few suggestion what we could have done in terms of plating and presentation, as that was not our strong point. It might be beneficial to have a special course how to do presentation, how to plate food, as we are all straggle in this in some ways. Presentation is extremely important: you may have a great food, but if you can't present them well nobody will eat it.

Grilled Portobello with Risotto

 The course is over. I have a strong feeling that it could have been better learning experience, however not everything is perfect, sometimes things are less than perfect. For sure we made a progress in this class, we started to cook food for customers (in our case for another students). It means that we moved from preparing two or five plates to 50. Next class we are going to have even bigger production. The dishes will be mainly from Fundamentals course. At the beginning of July we will have the Second Term Practical and the next course is in some sense is a review for the practical.