And my chef exclaimed, "What the hell?!"

I was paralyzed when those words escaped from my chef's mouth as he passed my group's table today.  We were just finishing up the plating of our dishes so I rapidly went through a mental plating checklist.  Table?  Sanitized and clear of any evidence of food prep.  Hands?  Gloved because we were handling ready to eat food.  Uniforms?  Each of us had our hats and aprons on.  I glanced up, and each of my group members' expressions mirrored my bewilderment.  What on earth were we doing wrong?  Before I had a chance to ask, he gave the second half of his comment: "Those plates look fantastic!"  Each of our heart rates returned to normal, and smiles spread across each of our faces, especially given how the last two days have gone...

This class is unlike any class that I've had at Johnson and Wales so far.  Whereas most of my kitchen-based classes have been very structured, this one is almost entirely free-form.  We develop the recipes and we design the plates.  Each day we are given a broad framework, i.e.  "Today your group will be making stewed pork tenderloin and vegetable tamales with pico de gallo and an orange jicama salad."  Then we are on our own.  Of course the chef is available for questions and guidance, but aside from that we roam freely. 

Now back to why the last two days have not been so great:  On Monday, we were assigned poached pork and were asked to prepare broccoli and beets in a healthy way for side dishes.  Our chef prepared the starch.  While that doesn't sound difficult, our group was somewhat disorganized and lacked communication.  We all attempted to work on all of the dishes at the same time, but no one was accountable for each element.  Therefore, our broccoli was left in the combi oven to steam for over 10 minutes.  Anyone who knows anything about broccoli cookery knows that 12+ minutes of steam time yields olive-colored mush.  Wonderful.  So we had to redo that.  Our poaching liquid was incredibly bland which yielded bland pork.    And to top it off, with 5 minutes to spare before our plates were due, I realized that when the chef said, "I'll provide the starch," it meant that we would have to flavor it.  I quickly grabbed some dried cranberries and an orange.  I juiced the orange over our cous cous, zested some pretty orange zest curls into it, and tossed in some dried cranberries.  We only had one food processor for the whole class, and it was not working properly so all of our sauces had the consistency of chunky salsa which looked horrible plopped on top of our plates.  I quickly threw this together for my plate, but I knew it wasn't the quality that he wanted.

Today was worlds better.  We were assigned the dish I mentioned above: pork tamales with pico and the orange jicama salad.  My group stewed the pork in an orange-cumin broth until fork tender.  We shredded it, blended it with adobe peppers, and topped it with a reduction of our orange stewing liquid before stuffing it into the corn husks with our masa harina tamale dough.  We worked hard on our orange salad to make sure we had different textures of ingredients as well as contrasting shapes and colors.  We did the same for our pico de gallo, and worked dilligently to finish on time.  It's only day 3 of plating, and everyone in our class has improved tremendously.  Though it could still use some work, I was very happy with the way my plate turned out.

We ended up using my group member Ana's plate for our show plate (the plate we show to the class for critique) because she was the only one who thought to unwrap the tamale before plating.  It looked awesome!  Take a look:

I would be more than satisfied if this was put in front of me at a restaurant.  And to top it off, the chef said it tasted great. It was well-seasoned and the flavors mixed well.  The sweetness of the orange-jicama salad.  The spiciness of the tamale.  The tangy acidity of the pico.  Wonderful!  My chef keeps saying we will only get better from here, and I hope he's right.