Americas Day 3 and 4

Americas is the next kitchen class we take after skills 3. It is a larger scale kitchen that puts out alot more dishes than skills 3. In skills 3 we did about 40 covers a day. In Americas daily we would do up to 70-80 covers, that is a significant change. Also in skills we would as a class split in half and each group do one full entree so it was a lot easier, where as in Americas we were split into groups of two or three and there would be 5 different entree choices and a soup and salad. Americas seemed overwhelming at first but I liked the adrenaline rush from it all. In Americas we would be learning about all the different cultures in the Americas such as American Midwest, American Southwest, Mexico, South America, and the American South and Louisiana Cuisine. Not only would we cook native dishes to those places but we would also learn all about there culture and how certain ingredients were brought from different countries and the influence that those countries had on the cuisines. So day three and four I was on the soup and salad station. On day three I made the Senate Bean Soup, it was fun to make and it was intersting having to make soup for 70 instead of the usual 40. I was also incharge of making the salads on both days. I made wedges of iceberg lettuce, with Thousand Island dressing. For garnish I had to slice tomatoes in half, make croutons, hard boil eggs, then cut them into tiny pieces and last but not least I had cut radishes very thin for the salad. On day four I switched soups with my partner and he made the Senate Bean soup and I made the Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese and Beer Soup. This soup is delicious, it is nice and creamy and it has beer in it what could be better! I made croutons as a garnish for the soup. This soup is probably one of the most popular ones made in Americas, and we sold out in about 15 minutes of opening, it was pretty cool. In Americas we would do each menu two days in a row so the first day you could work on one part of the dish but then the next day you could do a different part, so by the end of it all you knew how to make the entire dish. Overall day 3 and 4 went well and we survived!

Americas Day 1 and 2

Americas day 1 and 2 were exciting and scary. I was tournant which is like the sous chef, the sous chef and I prepared things for the next day that had to be done ahead of time. We were in a new kitchen with a new chef and apparently this chef did not play around one bit. We were all a little scared but figured we just had to be prepared with our time lines complete and we had to get our mise en place figured out. Mise en place meaning everything is in place. Day 1 the sous chef and I had to do 5 different jobs by the end of class. We had to # 1. simmer the hen for the Amish Corn and Chicken soup, complete step one of the method. Cool and refrigerate. # 2. prepare 2 gallons of Espagnole sauce. # 3. soak salt cod for the salt cod cakes. # 4. cook off clams for the clam chowder, remove the shells, reserve the broth. Cool and refrigerate. # 5. Fabricate and trim excess fat from one fresh beef brisket. It was a tough day that's for sure, it was especially difficult because we were in a brand new kitchen and had no idea where anything was. The sous chef and tournant also have to get there at 6 in the morning in order to pick up the meat, seafood and produce orders. Class does not start till 7 am so you are getting there quite a while earlier. Day 2 came around and chef said that we could work on our speed but we already knew that, we just had to do it. For day 2 we had another list of jobs that included # 1. Marinate the braised red cabbage as per the recipe. # 2. Make the sweet pickle chips for day 7 and 8. # 3. Trim and sear off the short ribs as per recipe. Cool and refrigerate. # 4. Trim and brine the top round of beef for the Brazilian carne seca. Refrigerate for days 13 and 14. # 5. Make one gallon mayonnaise. # 6. Roast pork bones and mirepoix for day 3 pork sauce. Also add apple cider and apple jack and then reduce & cool. So that was the work we had laid out for us. We completed it all on time, which was a good thing. There was a few negatives to day 2 though, one thing that happened was that I had made 2 gallons of Espagnole sauce for the next days recipe and when we got to class on day 2 it was gone, all we can figure is that the PM class used it and the group that was using it had to go find some espagnole sauce from another kitchen. That was frustrating because I had worked hard making that the day before. Also the girl I was working with made the sweet pickle chips and chef tried it and threw them all away because it didn't taste exactly how he wanted it, once again frustrating. Otherwise we made it through our first 2 days of Americas!