Tanta Robina

One chef's sole vin blanc

Last Tuesday I went to school for two shifts in a row, to make up for the time I was going to miss on Wednesday. Our program includes three shifts: schedule A, B and C, so if you miss a class you can make up by going to a different schedule. In my case, I wasn't really making up because I missed the Wednesday dishes and got to cook the Tuesday dishes twice instead, but by doing so I wasn't penalized from the point of view of grading. Me caring about grades may surprise you, but without a good GPA I won't be eligible for an international externship, which is what I would like to do next spring, after I am done with all my classes.

Another chef's sole vin blanc

Schedule B – the only sane choice for me – goes from noon to 5PM (actually it ends up being six hours, but still manageable). Schedule A and C fall in the insane realm: 6AM-11AM and 6PM-11PM, times where I cannot be trusted to be conscious enough to handle sharp knives and hot burners.

So, Tuesday I was running around the lab like a headless chicken for eleven hours straight, not an experience I care to repeat. Sleepiness and feet+back pain aside, it was extremely interesting to see how differently two chefs can run their ship and cook the same dishes.

We used this Robo-Coop to make salmon mousse

and we passed it through this sieve, called "tamis"

Sole paupiettes with skewers

and without

The morning lab has only one class with about ten students, while our lab includes two classes for a total of 32 students; that alone causes logistic differences in prep and cleaning routines. We clean individually as we go and work as a team only after we have presented our dishes. In schedule A, students drop dirty items in the sinks and when those are full, they all pitch in to wash and put away pots and pans. That system would not work in a class our size.

The really interesting part, though, was watching two demos and cooking the dishes twice. Our dishes for the day were Sole Vin Blanc and Shrimp Gumbo.

My morning gumbo

My afternoon gumbo

In the course of the day I learned:

• two ways to gut a flat fish
• two ways to clean a shrimp
• two ways to make paupiettes
• two ways to plate the dishes

Other differences that day were:

• one chef made the salmon mousseline for us, while the other had us prepare it
• in one class we made fish fumet in groups of 5-6 students, in the other we made it individually

As luck has it, shrimp gumbo is one of the dishes I have to cook for my finals. We pulled menus yesterday and today we prepped for the next two days of cooking.

Tomorrow my dishes will be:

• French onion soup
• Grilled Mahi-mahi, sautéed vegetables, ginger-lime beurre blanc and (maybe) rice pilaf
• Poached salmon fillet, steamed broccoli, sauce Béarnaise and gaufrette potatoes

Wish me luck!