Externship week eleven

Stuffed pepper (Serbian menu)

What do I want to do? 

Last week the chef at Root asked me if I want to stay for one extra day and work on Monday there. She had a Serbian menu and she wanted me to work that day. I did. As a result my rotation happened on Tuesday and not on Monday as usual. The new place Big Table is quite busy, there are 600-800 guests on average for breakfast and 1200-1500 for lunch. The chef is a nice guy, very knowledgeable, hope to learn something here.

What was new for me is that I was asked what I want to do. It was great to be able to choose station I would like to work with.


Monday
Serbian menu at Root. As per the chef the menu was written by people working at Google. I did not know they have so many Serbians, or may be they are not as the menu was confusing. Shopska salad is sounds more Bulgarian for me, however the Wiki said it's also Macedonian and Serbian. On the menu was suckling pig, but what we cooked is legs from mature animals. I worked in the cold room in the morning slicing tomatoes for salad, then chopping parsley and chives. During the lunch and after I grilled trout fillets on a grill (not an easy job, it falls apart if slightly overcooked). The last thing I did is to rub duck legs with salt and aromatics to cure. It seems it was not so necessary for me to stay there, but I figure out that the chef liked me and she also asked if I could stay extra day there.

Biscotti dipped in chocolate

Tuesday.
New place and new people again. Here again we have  so many Mexican with almost no English. They tried to explain to me some stuff speaking 120 words a minute in Spanish and all I could do is to ask 'English please'. For the day I worked with the pastry team. I started slicing bananas, spreading them nicely on the hotel pans, and pouring caramel sauce on top. Then helped to assemble dessert - chocolate muss, slices of bananas, caramel sauce, caramelized hazelnuts. After that I made shortbread dough and muffin batter (recipes were given). Shortbread dough was rolled to be baked on Wednesday, the muffin batter was divided in three part and flavoured (chocolate, blueberry, cranberry/pumpkin). Then I worked on biscotti - had to slice then and dip one side into chocolate. Then was trying to find something to do and sliced pork butt (raw) on a slicer. It took me about 10 minutes to slice four butts and about 15 minutes to clean and sanitize slicer (hate to wash that machine - too many surfaces).
This is the link for Shortbread recipe .

Wednesday

Shortbreads made on Tuesday

Cupcakes

Another day with the pastry team. My doubts wake up again, probably I should have learned pastry and not savory side:-) In the morning I finished dipping biscotti in chocolate.
Then helped to assemble dessert for today - pumpkin sponge, butterscotch cream, and cranberry sauce (I put the sauce). In the morning they baked shortbread I prepared yesterday. These lemon and poppy seeds shortbread was awesome, really good. The next task was to make cupcakes. I mixed batter and distributed it into moulds. After  lunch we baked them. Also liked these cupcakes, very moist and tasty. We put a lot of spices: chai, cardamom, ginger, cloves. Then they trust me to make a pastry cream. I made it, again it was a success. After that I worked with the chef and the pastry chef on cronuts dough. They are going to make cronuts this Friday. Cronuts are the new creature: you take dough for croissant, shape it as for donuts, and deep fry it.
Here is the link for the recipe for Vanilla Cupcakes.

Thursday

Sheppard pie

I was moved to a protein station. On the menu we had Shepard pie. Shepard pie is ground meat cooked with vegetables, thickened with sauce, and topped with mashed potato. Classically Shepard pie is cooked with a lamb. We used a beef, therefore we should have called ours pie a cottage pie. The problem here is many people know Shepard pie and they do not know about this small detail. To avoid question 'what is that, a cottage pie' we kept the name on the menu. Our volume was huge, we made the pie using 140 pounds ground beef, 100 pounds potatoes, and a bunch of other ingredients (for example 1 pound of garlic). It was a lot of work and the pie was a big success of the day. In the morning we made mashed potatoes and kept it in a hot box. Then we cooked beef with vegetables, made béchamel sauce to thicken meat mixture. Just before service we started to build these pies. Meat on the bottom of the serving pan, potatoes on top, spread evenly, cover with grated cheese, in the oven until cheese browned. Remove from the oven and move to a hot box, so pie can rest a little bit and potato absorbed the fat came out to the surface.
After lunch we cooked an Indian dessert for tomorrow. We cooked cream of wheat with cardamom and saffron, with addition of brown butter. This was garnished wit roasted nuts and raisins with brown butter. The order was for 60 gallons, so we were pretty busy.

Friday

Chicken enchilada pie

It was a really busy day. I worked on one of the main dishes - chicken enchilada pie. The dish itself was quite simple: enchilada sauce on the bottom, a layer of corn tortillas, chicken thighs marinated and cooked with Mexican spices, cheese, another layer of tortillas, sauce, cheese. In the morning we cooked chicken, we roasted it in the oven and waited for the tilt skillet.
Meantime I cooked the soup. The list of ingredients were limited: leftover chicken, mirepoix, chicken stock, and what I can find in the refrigerator. I decided to go for lemon chicken soup. Sautéed mirepoix, then added chicken and chicken stock. Add thyme. When vegetables were cooked through, I added whole eggs beaten with lemon juice. The soup got milky appearance and lemony taste. Garnished with parsley and it was ready to go.
It was time to finish cooking chicken, we braised it in the tilt skillet until chicken started to fall apart. It was time to start building these enchiladas pies. Build five at a time and go to the oven for 6 minutes. It started at 11:20 and finished at 1:25 pm, when I builded the last pie (run out of enchilada sauce). For these two hours I was worked alone without help. Man, I was tired and wet. It was a time to clean station and took deserved lunch break.
After lunch, there was not much to do. I cleaned tilt skillet, cleaned station, helped the pastry chef with some small stuff. Probably I will be working with pastry team for another couple of days. I like there, they are doing so many interesting things and more exciting than cutting onion:-)