Externship week twelve

Mint-chocolate macarons

How to make French macarons?

My apologies for finishing this post so late. Last Wednesday I left for Toronto and there was no access to the internet for me. The next post will be at the end of the week as I will be back to work on Friday.

The second week at the Big Table and it's going to be a short one. I am working three days only and then go to Toronto for a week. This week there is a new shuttle driver in the morning and second day in a row I want to kill him. It seems he was enjoying morning ride in the traffic, no sense of urgency. Instead one hour drive he did it in an hour and twenty-twenty five minutes. Yes, the traffic is bad in the morning, however the other drivers somehow were able to make it in an hour.

What was going on at work? Again, out of three days I was able to choose the stations for two. And guess what I choose?
Right, I choose the pastry station:-)

Monday
For Monday it was not my choice for an Indian station. I worked with an Indian team. What should I say? After two weeks at the Indian cafe with an Indian chef I did not feel that the Indian food at the Big Table is outstanding. For me personally, the food lack the depth of flavor. It's mainly the heat (pepper), salt, and nothing else. Only on the very back of I could taste some spices, but it was so unbalanced. In the morning we made raita with yogurt and tomatoes with spices. Then we finished daal which was cooked for a long time. We finished it with tomato sauce with spices (almost identical with raita).
Then I deep fried papadum. They were quite surprised that I knew how to do it. During the lunch I cooked cabbage dish. First fried spices in the oil adding one by one - asafoetida, dry whole chilies, mustard seeds, kafir leaves, ginger, garlic, chilly, turmeric, dry chilly powder. Then add chopped cabbage, salt, water, and lemon juice. Cook for a little bit, check the seasoning, serve.
After lunch I had to cook chicken meat. Place on sheet pans, in the oven 500 F for 35 minutes, then drain fat and juices, and leave on sheet pans to cool down. After that I chopped 10 pounds of garlic (in a food processor) and quietly moved to a pastry station. My task there was to measure out all ingredients for a vanilla butter cake, including shelling two flats (60 ea) eggs and separating another two flats for whites and yolks. Fun job, I like pastry:-)

Tuesday.

Mini Black forest cakes

It was my choice to finish my short week at the pastry. In the morning we had to place in a small cups sponge cake. Somebody cut it in big pieces and every piece we had to cut off a small portion. Than I moved to French Macarons. The chef was very kind and he changed the menu so I would have an opportunity to work with macarons (one of my favorite dessert). I measured all ingredients for two butches, then sift powdered sugar, then mixed it with almond flour. After that with a lead cook we started to whip egg whites in a huge mixer. When egg whites were at soft pick we added sugar and wiped to a firm pick, after that we folded egg whites into almond flour with sugar.

Baked macarons shells

Also we added a food colouring (green) as we were making mint-chocolate macarons. After that I started a fun job - to pipe them on a parchment paper. That was not easy for me. After may be 500-600 I noticed that they were even worse then at the beginning. At the end they were not so bad. After piping we let then rest for about 20-30 minutes (to from a 'skin') and baked them at 325 F for 9 minutes. Tomorrow we are going to make a feeling and assemble them.
French macarons recipe is here.

Wednesday.

Dessert of the day

Wednesday was a little bit crazy day. My thoughts were more about upcoming trip to Toronto and not so much about the work. It was not that I did a sloppy job. In the morning we started to filling macarons. It was chocolate-mint filling (not my favorite). Then we had to finish another dessert for the day. I was responsible to make nice quenelle of whipped cream and put them on top of sponge in small cup.  It took me quite a long time to understand how to make a nice quenelles. After that I had to scoop snickerdoodles, so they can be frozen and later dredged with cinnamon sugar and baked. After lunch I had an important job - to fill pie shells with pumpkin filling and then to bake them. I had an evaluation discussion with my chef and that was it for this cafe.  
Snickerdoodles recipe is here.