Externship weeks nineteen and twenty

Composed salads on buffet

Is it good idea to make mayonnaise in a blender?
.
Yes, that's right. These two weeks were short for me (three days off for Christmas, and two days off for the New Year), so I decided to combine these weeks in one full working week. Also these two weeks I am working at the same place - Crave. So it will be total four calendar weeks at this place. It feels good. I like the chef, people are nice here. Also because I am here for a long time, finally I got a station to be in charge of. It's the salad bar, which is quite easy and does not involve much cooking. In addition to the salad bar this station
is responsible for two composed salads.

Thursday and Friday

Romaine salad

It was probably the most difficult day. It was not because it was the first day after the Christmas, but because it was first day for me on this station. It was not clear what to do, so I needed some help. I had to prepare fourteen different items suitable to make salad of the choice. The two dressings were already made. Also traditionally there are two cheeses and two different greens available, so the total number of items is twenty.
That day it was also difficult, because it was the first working day after five days break and we had nothing ready, except for the dressings. All vegetable and fruit items would be not fresh after five days in a refrigerator.
Two composed salads (the same for these two days) were the main concern during the service time. My responsibility was to make sure that they are always available on the buffet.
The first salad was simple: romaine hearts, red onion, and parmesan cheese, with garlic dressing.

Spring mix, celery, red onion,
golden raisin and strawberry
salad

For the Thursday the dressing was made, but on Friday I had to make it. It was like mayonnaise - egg yolk, oil, roasted garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Since I needed a small amount of dressing I started to make it in a blender. The emulsion started very nicely and then broke. I was surprised, and started second time with the same result. At this point I realized that blender produced a lot of heat (the mixture was quite warm), and the heat was the cause for the dressing to separate. I switched to the immersion blender and everything was just fine. When I asked the chef about this he said that you have to be very quick if you want to make mayo in a blender, otherwise it does not work.
The second salad was spring mix, celery stalks, red onion, sesame seeds, golden raisin, strawberry with balsamic dressing (oil, balsamic vinegar, paprika, tarragon, salt, and pepper). For the tasting I forgot spring mix and the chef was quite surprised to see a salad with no greens. But this was easy to fix.
Service was slow for the both days.

Monday
Was the beginning of the last week at this cafe.

Spinach with pecans, cranberries,
goat cheese salad 

The same salad bar, this time starting from the beginning by myself (find 14 item and prepare them).
The composed salads were different this week.
The first one was yellow squash, parmesan, and parsley leaves. The dressing was really simple - olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, pepper. The idea with the squash was to have it sliced very thin, so when it was mixed with the dressing in a very short time it was kind of marinated.
The other salad was spinach, dry cranberry, pecans, goat cheese with cranberry vinaigrette (cranberry juice, oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper). I made the dressing and the chef was very pleased with it. The new thing for me was to make dressing with a cranberry juice. I have never thought about this. However, when I started thinking, cranberry juice is quite acidic, so technically there is no big difference with lemon juice (which is classical component for the dressing). The only remark was to add more salt in general, otherwise the flavor was good.

Thursday

Yellow squash with parmesan and
parsley salad

Was almost the same as Monday. There were a couple of different item on the salad bar. Probably the biggest difference was that I came to work at 7:30 (as usual) and started preparation for my station. By 9:30 everything was ready to go and I had already taken my first 10 minutes break.
Composed salads were the same.






Friday
Was my last day at the Crave. I spent half of the day working on a salad station. The other half I spent working with the chef. He showed me menu maker in details, we spoke about budgeting, and some other important duties. We has also a very interesting discussion about different options after my graduation. I really appreciate suggestion and information he kindly shared with me. He gave me a feedback about my work there during the last four weeks. I exceeded expectations for an intern. Good!