After a nice vacation back home, it’s time to get back writing. I’ll continue where I left off, last week of school before Christmas break. We had the sixth restaurant service this week. What I think about the services did not really change since my last post about the fifth service. I’m feeling these are the downfalls of the Ferrandi’s program. Even though they are extremely proud of putting it into the 5 month program, I don’t seem to be getting a lot out of it. When 25 people cooking one dinner and having a whole day of prep before time, there’s not much to be done. Or even worse, the weight of the work is unequally distributed, making some of the people work very hard and some haven’t much to do during the 3 restaurant days which makes almost the whole week. More then twice I felt I don’t have enough responsibilities and even after pointing this out to my chefs, nothing’s changed this time (and seems like the next last service is gonna be the same). 7 services in a 5 months program makes almost 25% of it. I feel like I would learn a lot more if half of this time was dedicated to more cuisine classes. This week there was a big group of Japanese who came to the lunch, made the organizers call this lunch a fixed menu lunch without a choice, eliminating half of the groups from cooking their dish that day, including my group. Some of the people joined the other groups, made it even more crowded in the station. I didn’t find my place, I made the foie gras to take home which I will tell all about in one of the next posts, but it was not a lot to do in so many hours. And for a final positive note: I did like our entree this service, and I liked the presentation as well. After all that said, lets see some pictures of this time’s service dishes. Excuse me for not spending more time finding out the names and ingredients of these dishes, I just don’t feel like doing so.
Amuse bouche #1:
Shrimp in a safaran marinade, celeriac soup
Amuse Bouche #2:
Entree #1: Bar (sea bass) and beef tartar (my group)
Filetting all the fish, freezing in the garde manger
Cleaning the beef filet
Cutting the fish and beef to small squares
Preparing the condiments
Anchovy roll
Mise en place complete
From top, clockwise: anchovy roll, yellow edible flower, caper, purple edible flower, scallion with black olives, green of scallion, oyster leaf. All this over a ring of lemon puree
Ten best minutes of really good plating in the middle of service
The tartar dressed with soy sauce, sesame oil, roasted sesame, scallions, ginger, some tabasco..
Forming the dome of tartar in a ladle
Final touch
Presentation
Was very good, for me it was lacking some sweet ingredient in the sauce and the lemon paste was too bitter for some reason.
degustation
Entree #2:
Using a ruler to put the sauces in straight lines
Foie gras, mushrooms and chicken terrine, pheasant (a poultry game meat which goes right into my list of "tastes like chicken" stuff)
The lunch service, when they had 75 plates ready to serve
Fish #1:
I had helped a little bit with searing these pork cheeks in the prep day. My hands and face were shining from fat jumping on me, but it was funny
Same cheeks, after sous-vide
Squid stuffed with pork, white beans and parsley sauce
Fish #2:
Meat #1:
Pepper flowers
Braised beef, kumquat, fennel and peppers
served separately and put together at the table
Meat #2:
[…] » #header #title a { background: url(https://www.eatingcookingfooding.com/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/bannerfans_1290202-2.png) no-repeat; } .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;} img, div, a, input, body, span { behavior: url(https://www.eatingcookingfooding.com/wp-content/themes/organic_structure_free/images/iepngfix.htc); } var $j = jQuery.noConflict(); $j(document).ready(function() { $j('.menu').superfish(); }); […]
[…] they had a whole class dedicated to preparing the foie gras, we made it in the second day of the restaurant service that week. Chef Sebastian printed out 4 different recipes for us and I decided to make a spiced […]
[…] with ham and squid […]