I woke up at 10am, got my stuff ready, went for a run then changed for work.
I was at work early but there's not a lot of prep work to do since we got ourselves caught up with our shared mise en place over the weekend.
I got to work at 1:30. I working with Zak, a newbie the last couple of weeks and I think it's my responsibility to train him. He's been doing most of the knife work but today I decided to to the knife work so I can teach him how to prep the stuff we need to cook.
Cooking for Garde Mange is quite a challenge because the line is always busy doing their own prep work so it's a strugge to get a stove top. It's handy that our station has a little butane burner for small volume prep cooking but it's not at all times available.
For the knife work, I did the ff:
- microbrunois of peppers (fresno, habanero, jalapeno) for the classic tartar
- microchiffonade of herbs (basil, mint and cilantro) for the regular and classic tartar
- chive rings that garnishes a lot of things so I needed a good pint of it almost
I can proudly say that I've gotten pretty quick with my knife work. What used to take me 2 hours to prepare now takes me about half an hour.
While doing the knife work, I was training Zak to do the rest of the cooking stuff such as:
- Blini - make the batter, proof it, fold in the whites and run a tester
- Yellow Tomato Gazpacho - macerate tomatoes, puree, emulsify and season it for service
- Onion Tarts - cut puff pastry dough, braise and caramelize cippolino onions, build the tarts and bake them off
By 430 which is our target set up time, we still had quite a bit to do. I ended up doing the tarts, the blini and the gazpacho.
Blini proofed the blini batter but he left it uncovered so skin formed on top rendering it unusable for service. He was lagging behind his prep list of cutting pears and yolking quail eggs so I had to do the tarts and the gazpacho.
I'm proud of being able to manage my time to get my prep list done and still be able to assist somebody lagging behind.
I feel bad though because I think I'm not succeeding in teaching somebody what I do. I remember Chef Peter would always repeat himself, 'Namee, make sure this happens even on your days off.' He likes my work products and sets them as standard. And I take pride in that, the challenge now is transitioning that to the rest of the team.
Service went by smoothly anyhow.
Lessons learned:
- Being busy is never an excuse for underperforming, we're always busy as everybody else in the kitchen.
- Take time to explain how things are done exactly. Begin from getting to step 1 and go step by step from there, this is the only way to ensure that things are done right.
- Don't hesitate to repeat yourself or raise your voice, in most cases, it's necessary
Best Practice:
- INVENTORY (regularly) - It helped me get ready for service today because Chef Peter pushed us to make an inventory of everything on our shelf last night. Now I don't even have to take a second look, I knew exactly what was on the shelf
- Leave a LIST always to whoever you're transitioning a task to. IT REALLY HELPS to be aware
I'm getting anal with my lists though, just what I did for GM's closing inventory, it looks like I'll end up making a form for GM Shelf Inventory which I think I'm going to do right now.
Whew!
I'm off at Aqua tomorrow but I'm working at Chez Panisse tomorrow to do pastry. It's something to look forward too.
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