After you already seen what was the result of our restaurant service in the previous post, this is the continuing post for advanced readers. Like I said, I was doing the Amuse Bouche dish with Rob and Barbara and the day after joined the Sole fish group so it’s mainly the process of making these two dishes and some of the other dishes I got a glance now and then.
Marchendise came on Tuesday morning. This is the sweet potato, looks totally different than what I know
Chicken bones and wings for our chicken stock. I was responsible to cut them to smaller pieces
Rob burning the chicken hair
My crime scene after chopping the bones
Cover with cold water
Adding some vegetable for the aroma
One hour and a half later, the stock is ready to strain
Barbara and Rob straining our two pots of stock
This is a much larger pot than what it looks like in the picture
Strained stock and the bones kept for another stock to cook the day after
The smoked salmon few days aged
Trimming all the edges (I took them home on my doggy bag)
Demo of how to cut slices of the salmon. This point we took a tasting break. A bit of lime juice and it's very yammy
The next day, Wednesday morning, we had a theory class about how to make and present our dishes. This was the drawing of our plating
The preparation before starting service, cutting the carrot and sweet potatoes
Can you tell which is which?
Sweating the leaks with butter
Adding the vegetables
Cover with chicken stock
Peeling fresh ginger
Zest and juice of a lime
Lime juice and ginger purèe
Rob cutting the salmon for the jelly
After the salmon is placed in the bottom of a tray, a strained version of the soup with lime and agar goes on top and chilled. Then cut
Salmon surprise under the jelly
Barbara squeezing some of the cooked vegetables for the crackers
straining is a big part of being a cook
Creaming the butter
Adding egg whites, flour and the pureed vegetables
After having problem with the consistency of the dough (too hot in the kitchen!) I was able to mold it into shape of something and baked to make crackers
All the soup is being mixed with the giraffe
Cream and spices added
Plates are ready before the service
Service starts
Plating
Finished dish
Waiting to be taking for a chefs testing dinner
In the middle of service, the AB waiting to be sent away to all the tables. We made about 60 dishes of these
The next day on Lunch the other group was responsible for the AB. They made a pumpkin soup.
Chef Stephan helping with the plating
Adding croutons, blue cheese foam and paprika
Ready to be served
The cromesquis dish, Daniel begins what he always do, roast some bell peppers
Film it!
Making bread crumbs from a day old bread, no crust obviously!
Went to dry in the oven
The cromesquis ready to be fried
A close up
Hot fryer when the service begins
Station ready to start plating in the beginning of the service, with crackers of their own
the group working together to plat in the middle of service
Go cromesquis!
Final presentation is beautiful!
We also tested the taste and it was good!
The other first course was also a dish based on smoked salmon
The head waiter waiting for his order
Cutting the marinated salmon
Like a painting, It was very tasty! There's a small lime filet over the patè of salmon and the one on the left side is goat cheese roll covered with eggplant
The fragile toast only showed up for the lunch
Sole dish started with fresh soles, turns out these guys are actually pretty expensive fish
After skinning it this is how it looks like
Fileting the poor thing
Claire is proud with her naked fish
Ericka, action pic
The fish group working together, how lovely
Girolles mushrooms. A lot of work dealing with those but it's worth it
Sweating with butter
Poached thin slices of colorful vegetables
Pretty zucchini
Demo of rolling the fish: vegetables first, then two filets of fish then the mushrooms
Making sure it's tight without any air bubbles
Tuck in the veggies
A knot in each end like a candy
Candy shop!
Razor clams are cooked a la marinier and cut open
Ericka cutting the fish candy after it's cooked
Plating!
Ready and looks tempting
Another angle
Fish is sent out to the tables
The whole group happy to finish the service
The other fish group, waiting for the orders to come in
Yochai making sure everything's in place before service
Fish sent out, there are small sponges to clean the plates before sending them
Beautiful fish!
White beans, sea bass (I think) a crisp of smoked meat and a coriander salad?
The veal dish: Ihsuan taking the veal bones from the economa
Huge forest mushrooms
Roasting the bones for the veal stock
Cover with cold water
Cook for a long time
Degreasing the veal meat
Making a veal jus
The group concentrating in the straining of their complicated licorice sauce
Rocket pesto cream with pine nuts
Slicing chestnets
Chestnuts for the millefueille
Shane trimming the edges off the vegetable millefueille
In the middle of service, Ihsuan taking care of seasoning the meat by the order
Shane grilling the veal
Crazy plating time
Plating!!
The dished taken by the waiters to the hungry customers
Eat me!
finished at last
The happy group all together in the station
Anglo B's duck dish is being prepared by Juan and Marisabel
Antoinio roasting the duck
Kept heated for the service
Elisabeth making the baked potatoes in pot
Looking good!
And also the duck meat samosa with pistachio and cinnamon
Waiting to be served
I tasted it and it was very good, well cooked (red a juicy) and the samosa was excellent as well
The duck
Oh well, good for you for reaching that far in my longest post ever I think.
Real Sole is a very expensive fish. Usually what we know as “Sole” is actually Plaice fish -similar but much cheaper. Eli once had real Dover Sole in England some 6 years ago, and remembers it fondly until today! Especially the way the fish was presented to him whole & then filleted in front of him by the HEAD waiter!
All the food looks beautiful! I’m sure that it tastes great also!
We did have the real and expensive sole, I just like the sea bass kind of white fish better if you know what I mean.
Mashav, waiter? customers??
What’s the story???? Can I come and order a seat?
I’m booking a flight already!
Need details
Hi Shlomo,
Yes we are practicing a real Dinner and Lunch service once every other week starting now. Yes, you can reserve a table, I already know all the dates we will do this, but you have to tell me ASAP so it will be enough time ahead reserved.
Have you read this post: https://www.eatingcookingfooding.com/2011/10/first-restaurant-service-the-short-version.html
and this post: https://www.eatingcookingfooding.com/2011/10/last-week-of-the-first-month.html
both talking about the subject.
Dates I will cook for the restaurant:
12/10 – Dinner
13/10 – Lunch
2/11 – Dinner
3/11 – Lunch
16/11 – Dinner
17/11 – Lunch
30/11 – Dinner (special service with guest chef)
1/12 – Lunch (special service with guest chef)
14/12 – Dinner
15/12 – Lunch
4/1 – Dinner
5/1 – Lunch
I will also post it in a post so that other people will understand
wow – how much work – i’m exhausted just reading it…
but the results look great!
מדהים תמיד כמות העבודה בכדי ליצור עבודת אומנות שכזאת. למשל העצמות אפיתם אותם ואז בישלתם כמרק ולאן הם הגיעו בסוף?
זה נכון לכל אומנות שלומדים אותה לעומק קצךת מגלים שבכדי להגיע לאיכות זה דורש המון עבודה
It’s a lot of work but think about 25 little chefs doing all this, it’s a lot of people, individually we’re not doing that much. Though still when you think about it, spending 5 hours to do a recipe at home I would spend 1 hour of work, that probably mean something 🙂
[…] service was a challenge for me and I’m glad it was. It was better experience than last time but there’s still room to make it better. I was in the third course group, fish. There […]