Just got back from a demo with Chef Jacques Pepin (famous chef and also one of the dean’s at my school). That man can work a knife like nobody’s business. He molded butter into a rose and cooked up garlic, as well as vegetables faster than I can say spaghetti. During the day, again the restaurant was slow, but this time Chef John who teases me to no avail took my phone away from me for the day. He thinks that I check it too much and that I am always on it! Which is SO not true- but I blame that on all the group messages I am in or constant emails I receive (no, I’m not trying to sound cool). Anyways, Chef had me in level 4, so we are old pals. Little does he know, every now and then I would steal glances at the phone when he wasn’t looking. Oh also, since I have this amazing purple water bottle that I fill up five times a day, I am a frequent visitor of the bathroom. Today, he told me that I was only allowed to go up to three times! I don’t know what has gotten into him, but he clearly was up the night before thinking of how to make the day better—and I was the main star.
Today I worked on making the gargenelli dish and the vegetable terrine. We make this Roquefort (blue cheese, but the real deal) mousse that is delicious. I swear it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Palm’s blue cheese dressing. It’s basically 240g heavy cream, 240g crème fraiche, and 240g of Roquefort cheese. You first mix the crème fraiche with the cheese and then you whisk the heavy cream into it. Add salt and pepper and there you have a yummy thick mousse to smear on whatever your heart desires. The garganelli was fun to roll, but very time consuming!
A funny thing I saw on the way to the dishwasher was a waiter eating fries off a plate that he had cleaned off the table from the dinning room. He cleared the plates and decided to continue eating the costumer’s food once in the kitchen. I was like—um dude, you can just ask us for fresh/clean/untouched fries… we make fresh batches! But, hey! Who am I kidding—I eat anything and everything from every station especially gnocchi! Ugh miss those little potato goddess like crazy.
Feliz Hump Day!
Eliana