Hello Garde Manger! Moved over to the appetizer station where we were assembling the soups and salads for level 5. I tell you- I don’t know what it is about the first day of every station, but for some reason I feel the need to try EVERY single dish and I don’t just mean try, I mean end up licking the bowl completely. By the end of today, I was so full, I barely ate the lunch that level 4 family meal made for us. I was in charge of the smoked salmon appetizer and the roasted pear, goat cheese, beat, spinach/ arugula salad. Luckily, the group before us, did some extra prep before we switched, so we only had to prep a few additional items. Not going to lie, moving from the production station, where if we are lucky got 2 orders of the sandwich special and 4 burgers (not when I’m working- I get 9 orders!), to the garde manger station is a little bit of a difference. Everyone mostly orders appetizers, not always the specials!
However, I am not complaining because I was a very busy girl today. Tyler did the seasonal vegetable salad, Pandora handled the potato soup (the recipe is about 4 pages long with all the garnitures), and I had both the spinach salad and smoked salmon dishes. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I feel like I am the honey and the orders are the bees. Every time I am at a particular station- it gets swarmed with orders! At one point in the day, I had to make 3-spinach/arugula beat/pear/goat cheese salads and 1 smoked salmon dish ALL at the same time! My plates were becoming a hot mess as I was trying ever so desperately to create height with my lettuce on the plate. We had so many orders for the pear salad that we started running out of poached pears. Well, guess who that fell on- yup this girl! So, now I am multitasking. Chef is on my case about my station being a mess. Well, I am managing a thousand things at once (or telling myself that I am) and orders are coming in!! I finally got my pears poaching in the wine, cinnamon, sugar, star anaise, and water mixture though.
Pandora and Tyler specifically gave me the smoked salmon dish to do today because they know how much I loved the gravlax in level 4. Well, that probably wasn’t such a good idea because I think at times my subconscious purposely cut the slices too thin, so that they weren’t perfect enough to plate. Then somehow my brain told my hand to pick up that imperfectly perfect slice of salmon and pop it into my mouth. Nom. Nom. Nom. I can’t be held responsible for my fingers in this case. Too darn good, can’t contain myself. I even took home some of the scraps.
Tomorrow we are staying with the same dishes and then will rotate as the week progresses. Chef Joe is the man. He is great and his chef coats smell of fresh laundry. I was creepy and even asked what detergent he uses. Tyler gave me the funniest face- like really Eliana really? Yes, Tyler, Yes.
Happy December 16, 2013!
Eliana