Day one hundred six

Our tasting plate, chicken is somewhere on a plate

 Plating - can you lose your main component?

Today we have started a new block A'la cart cooking (Skills III). This block is a preparation for our practical, which is about two weeks away. The dishes we are going to cook is basically what we did in Fundamentals, but in a larger scale. We have the same menu (actually four of them) for the next four days and four teams are going to rotate around this menu. Then we will have another menu for the next four days and so on.

Also today reminds me good days back to the Fundamentals, when I was a team sous chef. This is not because the 'power' I have, but because we have the same class sous chef we had then and one more team sous chef, so it's really looks like old team working together. And yes, we have
the same chef we have had in Fundamentals, so the picture is complete:-)

Our team was responsible for the roasted chicken with pan gravy, steamed broccoli, glazed beets, pureed potatoes. The soups of the day was French onion soup, which I still can't eat (when we made it in Fundamentals I got food poisoning and in my mind it is associated with onion soup, I know there is no relation, but). The salad of the day was mixed greens with Lemon Garlic vinaigrette. My dish was Pome Puree (remember, I don't like the name 'mash potato':-).

Dish plated correctly

Everything went more or less well. Chicken was good, potato really good, broccoli just slightly overcooked, beets was good slightly salty (people still trying to predict the salt level in a liquid before reduction, as glaze was reduced noticeably it became too salty).

What was good is the chef's feedback just before service regarding plating. Our tasting plate was not featured chicken, which was the main component.

We were able to produce a good salad and one portion of onion soup, as we plated it and the pot with the balance kind of slipped off the mind, so we burnt it.

That was a day one in this block. It really a big difference who is your chef-instructor. I do believe that we will be able to improve with every day going by. Will see...