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!