Level 5

I know it's been so long since I updated on what I've been up to at school, but believe it or not I only have about 6 more weeks of the program! I'll be done on February 16th and the time just keeps flying by. After a grueling 4 weeks of Level 4, where we did family meal, production and buffet and I developed what appears to be a slight case of carpal tunnel from the heavy lifting and repeated knife work from cooking family meal (lunch for the 400 or so people who eat everyday at FCI), I'm now onto Level 5, where I cook in the FCI's restaurant, L'Ecole. In the last two levels of the program, we rotate through the different stations in the restaurant kitchen, cooking two to three designated dishes, depending on the station. We go through garde manger (cold and hot appetizers), entremetier (usually the vegetable dishes and specials), poissonier (fish station), saucier (meat) and pastry (pretty self explanatory). At the beginning of level 5, our class was split into five different groups and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the fourth member of our group decided to drop out of the program before we moved onto Level 5. He had been in my group throughout Level 4 and drove us all absolutely insane...I'm pretty sure he was high the ENTIRE time, or recovering from being high and would take hours to do the most mundane tasks. Which is why I say, it's probably more fortunate that he decided to drop out of the program, leaving our group with just three people, Ivan, Nancy and myself.

We started out on garde manger, prepping and serving four dishes: escargot, boudin blanc with lentils, a seasonal salad and a chicken salad. There was a lot of prep work involved for the three of us to manage, but we were able to get it done in time for service everyday. We only have four days at each station, so by the time you're able to get used to the recipes and the routine of prep for the day, it's time to move on to the next station! And our next station was poissonier, which compared to garde manger had relatively little prep work and we were usually ready to go for service by 10:45/11, leaving us with an hour and a half until any customers would come into the restaurant. At this station, we cooked scallops with butternut squash puree, brussel sprouts and pomegranate seeds and pomegranate vinaigrette as garnish, and a pan-roasted branzino with white beans and braised radicchio and endive. Even though we didn't have as much prep work here, we certainly made up for it during service, since scallops is one of the most popular dish on the menu. At first it was hard to adjust to the organized chaos of service, the expeditor yelling out "ORDER TWO SCALLOPS," and you having to respond "TWO SCALLOPS", then you pull everything out to get it ready and wait until you hear the expeditor yell "FIRE TWO SCALLOPS" where upon you yell in return, "FIRE TWO SCALLOPS" and you fire (cook) those damn scallops. When you want to know how many total scallop orders you have, you yell "How many scallops all day?" instead of going through the process of asking, "Now, how many scallops do I have in total?" I never thought cooking on the line would have so much of its own little lingo.

Next up was saucier...by far the most challenging. Here our two dishes were rabbit terrine and rabbit loin with a potato fennel pancake and grilled scallions and a hanger steak with peppercorn sauce, cauliflower and bone marrow puree and a pommes darphin. Not only was there a ton of prep for this station, but we were also crazy busy during service and had to somehow figure out how to test a steak for doneness just by poking it a little with your finger. When someone orders a steak medium rare, it has to come out of the kitchen medium rare, but did I know what that felt like before rotating through the saucier station? No! The first day we were at the station, Nancy and I let Ivan take control of the beef situation, but the next day we decided to tag team it and try to figure out the beef together. Hanger steak is particularly tough because when it's portioned it is in all different sizes and varies a lot in thickness, so you have to pay attention to every single portion while you're cooking it to make sure that its going to end up being the doneness that you're looking for when you slice it to put it on the plate. Occasionally we would slice into a steak that was supposed to be medium well and find it still dripping with blood so it would have to go under the salamander (basically a broiler) to cook a little more. Typically we would sear off about five steaks before service and take them to the rare stage then once we got an order and knew how the customer wanted it done, we'd cook it a little more, pop it in the oven with the rest of the order and plate it once we heard the command to fire. It was not easy, but by the end of the rotation I was feeling a lot more comfortable with beef.

Right now, I'm in pastry where everyday we make a pumpkin souffle with egg nog cream sauce and a Calvados Baba (it's like a little muffin-type thing soaked in calvados liquor) served with a chestnut ice cream. I've been enjoying pastry a lot the past few days because it's a lot calmer and more relaxed than being on the line, and it's also fun to do something different. And now I know the secrets to making souffles and getting the timing right for serving them in a restaurant. It's all about the timing with the souffles....Everyday we make the souffle base, which is basically just flour, butter, pumpkin puree and egg yolks. Then we carefully portion out four recipes worth of egg whites and sugar and we portion the souffle base into four portions as well. We keep all of these on hand and starting at 1:15, we whip up the egg whites and mix the souffle, pipe it into ramekins and keep them on hand until we get an order. After the souffles have been mixed and piped into the ramekins, we have 35 minutes before the souffles die aka lose their ability to magnificently and magically rise. Once one batch it about to die, we throw it into the oven if no one has ordered it and give them out to whoever wants one (it's not hard to find people who are in the mood for a souffle). It's also tricky because as soon as you take a souffle out of the oven, it starts to deflate, so you have to get it to the table as quick as you possibly can. So we have to time exactly when we put the souffles in the oven and get everything else that's going out with that same order ready before the souffle even comes out of the oven. As soon as it comes out of the oven, we run it up to the front of the kitchen for the waiters to pick it up and take it to customers. We also get the chance to do dessert specials in pastry, and today I did a carrot cake with cream cheese ice cream and a pineapple compote. We also molded little marzipan carrots to put on top. I'll post a picture of it soon.

On the next post...my menu project.

Elise