"Service"

So after we went through the rest of the long ingredients lecture (cause there are a lot of them!), we also got a demonstration on how to properly sharpen our knives, and a demo on how far is just right when whipping cream.  From there we went to our specific groups and today I was part of the "Service" group which means we had to prep some desserts for tomorrow night and then go plate the actual desserts for the diners in the restaurant tonight.  First off we made a double batch of the chocolate dream torte, which is a flour-less chocolate cake.  We mixed it up and while it was baking we got to work on our chocolate filigree (which is basically drawing with chocolate).  The chocolate filigree is actually harder than it looks trying to make the same design look exactly the same (eg. lines are the same thickness, same size overall, no random extra drops of chocolate) and so it took me doing the same design at least 25 times before I got a check off for having done 3 similarly.  Making all the designs look exactly alike is kind of frustrating, but I really like the chocolate filigree work.  It's creative and fun to mess around with trying to draw with chocolate, though the chocolate kind of does its own thing sometimes too!  Depending on how hot the chocolate is depends on how easy it is to work with - too hot and it just flows anywhere it wants to, but too cool and it doesn't want to pipe out at all.  So I got one design checked off, but I have two more to do before the whole thing is checked off.  I did get my dozen cornets checked off - yay for having played with henna so much the last few years, I had the cone rolling down pat!  We also had to work on piping whipped cream rosettes, which I did some, but haven't quuuuuuite gotten it down yet, so I'll work on it some more tomorrow when I am not plating desserts and have more time to practice.  

So just after our dream torte came out of the oven to cool, we had a dinner of a veggie nacho type thing (rice, beans, veggies, guac, etc), which was yummy again (so far I like most all of Chef Hammer's dinners!).  My group had about 10 minutes to eat dinner before we had to be over in the T3 kitchen for dessert plating, so we quickly ate and gathered up the necessary items to take with us, mainly cornets for piping, the carmel nut tarts, and the torch.  We got to the kitchen and immediately had to start working on the 4 different desserts, starting with making whipped cream because all of the desserts have at least a little whipped cream on them.  We whip the cream by hand, and gosh my wrists are sure going to be strong after all the whipping we'll do!  We could do it with a mixer, but it comes out better if we do it by hand, but we make so much it seemed to take forever!  But we started that and took turns mixing while we prepped the rest of our plates.  

Each in our group took one dessert to prep - Michelle prepped the apple strudel, Hannah prepped the brownie sundae, Natalie prepped the chocolate dream torte, and I prepped the caramel nut tart.  For my dish, I started with cutting and caramelizing bananas.  The first batch I did didn't have enough sugar on them, so the sugar was absorbed into the banana and I pretty much char-grilled the bananas with only like 2 of them actually caramelizing.  Chef Hammer showed me how much sugar to coat them with and I cut some more for try #2.  The second try worked out and the bananas caramelized perfectly!  I had started prepping enough plates for 5 caramel nut tart desserts, but in the end only 3 were ordered so we ended up eating the rest of the bananas ourselves - though I don't think I did eat the caramelized one, but I did eat the other half of the regular banana cause I was still hungry!  :)  So I finished up my plates by putting a mango and a raspberry sauce together to form 3 fancy stars (a big dollop of mango sauce with a small dollop of raspberry in the middle and a star drawn out of the middle if you can picture that) and I put the caramelized bananas on top of the caramel nut tart and my dessert was ready to be served!  All of the desserts except for the brownie sundae can pretty much be made ahead of time, but the sundae has to be made right before it goes out or the ice cream melts.  

So we got most of the desserts plated ahead of time and then practiced some more whipped cream rosettes and other chocolate filigrees while we waited for our desserts to be called up by the servers.  In the end, we helped to serve the desserts (which I don't think we normally do) since one table had 18 people at it.  I wish I had pictures of the desserts, but I don't know when I would take the pictures.  The kitchen kept going from busy to a short down time then busy again then small down time again then busy again.  I guess you all will just have to come up here and have dinner at the restaurant and see them all for yourselves!  :)  Then I can make your dessert for you, yay!  Working in service was fun though.  I liked the plating. While we have to plate the same way each time, there is a little bit of fun to be had with each of them, a chance to be creative, so it was fun.  Tomorrow I think I will be in the "Special" group, which I think preps more desserts for the next nights and just gets to work on other regular class work to be checked off.  And so I am off to read my next chapter and then go to bed!  Nite!