Goodbye, Garde!

I am relieved to say that I survived Garde Manger, but the last few days of class were a bit of a whirlwind.  A large portion of the class was focused on platter presentation and buffets.  During the 9 days, our class put on two buffets, the first of which our chef was in charge and the second was entirely up to us.  And by entirely up to us I mean that he flat out refused to answer any questions during the second buffet.  He wanted us to rely on each other for help, rather than use him as a crutch.  When we tried to ask him a question, he responded, " I don't know.  Ask someone else."  It was a little frustrating, but I did understand his point.

As I mentioned before, the menus for the class are broken into clusters of recipes that relate to each other.  I was assigned the turkey platter for our first buffet, but for the second buffet I was assigned my favorite platter of  the entire garde manger menu: the lobster platter.  Why do I like it so much?  1) It has aspic-free lobster medallions.  2) There is only 1 pate. 3)The salad is a bowtie pasta salad with crab and lobster meat.  4) It only has 5 recipes as opposed to 6 or 7 so it's more manageable for a group of 2 people.  Yes, I think I'll have one of those please.  The only problem?  We had to kill lobsters which I had never done before.  I had to bind their tails with skewers (to keep the tails from curling up during the cooking process) and say goodbye before shoving them in the steamer.  As you can see, this was not my favorite part of class.

Preparing for the buffet was a two day process just like before, and on the day of the buffet, my teammate and I were running a bit behind.  I think we got a little over-confident in our ability to complete it on time so we were quick to help other groups before helping ourselves.  Before we knew it, we only had 45 minutes left and a lot left to do.  Our platter was somewhat thrown together when it was all said and done, and as you can see it was a little off-center.  Overall though, my chef said he was proud of the work our class had done, and I was just happy to be done.

I tried to get a picture of our entire buffet but this was the best I could do.  It's neat to think that our class this together all by ourselves!

The Garde Manger Brigade

Garde Manger is nearly half over, and I now feel like I can refer to my classmates collectively as a brigade rather than individually as classmates.  My chef works us, and he works us hard.  He's not afraid to yell at us which is a change from previous classes.  Production is I-N-T-E-N-S-E.  I fall asleep at night with, "Come on people!  Let's move!" ringing in my ears.  We work furiously for 7 hours (that's 6:10 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.) to put together pates, terrines, smoked meats, canapes, salads, sauces, and aspic-covered trays.  And my group (if you can even call it that) consists of me and one other person.  That's right.  2 people. Most groups have 3 so we have been at a disadvantage since the first day of production.  My class is encouraged to work collectively as a unit rather than as individuals which is unique.  We are constantly asking others for a an extra hand or for instruction on how to do something.

Our assignments for the class are focused on clusters or recipes rather than individual recipe assignments that we've received in previous classes.  For 2 days, each group works on one platter.  Day one: cook the proteins.  Day two: sauce, salad, garnish and platter decoration.  My group's first assignment was the turkey platter: smoked breast of turkey, stuffed breast of turkey, sun-dried tomato, turkey pate, strawberry waldorf salad, stuffed cherry tomatoes, and a pear and cranberry chutney.  Keep in mind that all of this is served cold, even the smoked turkey and stuffed turkey.  Oh, and they're brushed with aspic, the savory jelly that I mentioned in a previous post.  If I were to eat from a buffet, the aspic-covered items still would not be my first choice, but I have developed more of an appreciation for them through this class.  I won't lie though.  Even while eating from my class' buffet today I still scraped the aspic off of the slices of pate before I tasted them.

Culinary Escapades on the Cape

If you had asked me a year ago what I thought my first year of culinary school would be like, I never would have said, "It'll be full of opportunities to meet and work with celebrity chefs."  Let's recap the last 5 months: prep work with Chef Marcus Samuelsson, assisting Chef Ben Ford at Mohegan Sun Winefest, meeting Robert Irvine, seeing Bobby Flay, and the newest: Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio.  Yes, thanks to Johnson & Wales, I was able to volunteer at the Annual Great Chefs of America Dinner at the Chatham Bars Inn.  The event benefited the March of Dimes and featured a 6 course meal put on by distinguished chefs from varying ends of the country.  Oh yeah, and the resort sat on one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen. 

Most JWU students (including myself) worked the front of the house which I actually enjoyed.  Whereas most of my service experience has been in the classroom, it was nice to practice my wine pours, marking with silverware, napkin folds, etc. without being graded and penalized for every wrong move.  Most people don't realize the time that goes into just the basic dining room set up for an event like this.  We began work around 1:30 and worked until 6:15 setting up a mere 184 place settings.  And that was with a team of around 20 people.  We polished well over 1000 pieces of flatware, around 1200 wine glasses, and 200 water glasses.  We folded and refolded napkins, placed silverware, carefully measuring place settings, arranged wine glasses, and tweaked flower arrangements.  The result?  For a bunch of culmsy, inexperienced students, I was quite impressed with what the staff of the resort was able to get out of us.

Once the event began, I had my first real experience working front of the house for a major event.  We were exposed to the chaos of running in and out of the kitchen, the friendly requests of the amicable guests and the demands of those who were not-so-polite.  Each JWU student was paired with one staff member to take care of 20 guests (2 tables of 10) each of whom had 6 wine glasses, 1 water glass, and multiple sets of silverware which had to be cleared and reset.  And did I mention the 6 courses?  Granted it was a set menu, but that was still a lot of running back and forth to the kitchen since the entire menu was hand-served (as opposed to trays.)  And seeing as we had access to the kitchen, we also had access to the leftovers.  For pictures, check out my newest photo album, "Adventures on the Cape".  All of the food is there as well as additional photos.  Skate wing, nettles, truffles, cheddar grit cakes, squab lollipops, and pineapple carpaccio.  Yes, yes yes!  Now that's a way to spend a weekend.

Oh and I mentioned Michael Voltaggio.  Sadly, he had a bit of an ego but was gracious enough to take pictures with almost all of us, so I'm not complaining.