I'm Developing My Skills

First day of Skill Development 1. Obviously like any other first day, we spent a solid hour going over everything in the kitchen and getting acquainted with our home for the next 6 weeks (this is the same kitchen and people we have Skills 1 and 2 with). Then we started our normal production, Chicken Stock and White Beef Stock. Neither is terribly hard but we used 120 lbs of Chicken Bones and 60 lbs of Beef Bones for stock. We broke into the team we will have for the next 3 weeks and cut mirepoix (for those who don't know, mirepoix is a 2:1:1 ratio of onions, celery and carrots added to the stock in the last hour for flavor).

Of course each of the first 3 groups have the normal 4 people per group but since there are only 14 people in the class, my group has 2 people meaning we do double the work for the next 3 weeks... fun. Anyways, after that we each had to do our daily production which today was simply; mincing 1 shallot, mincing 3 cloves of garlic, mincing a bunch of parsley, 1 tomato concasse (a tomato that is peeled, seeded and roughly chopped) and 1 satchet d'epice (a herb mixture containing a garlic clove, some parsley stems, a spring of thyme, cracked peppercorns and bay leaves wrapped in cheesecloth). It wasn't hard at all. Then we just skimmed our stock (took off all the crap that comes out off of the bones) and went to lunch for an hour).

After lunch we finished our stock, bagged it up, cooled it down and then stored it. After an hour of lecture we were done.

Tomorrow is the when it gets for realsies. Walk in and start stock production right away and then make, broth as a team, clarified butter as a team, and our knife trays for the day each. Knife trays starting tomorrow consist of 2 onions sliced 1/8 in, 2 onions minced, 3 shallots minced, 4 cloves garlic minced, 2 tomatoes concasse, 1 potato into batonetts, 1 potato into julienne, and 1 potato into brunoise. Basically a ton of cutting that we end with a knife practical of all the same cuts.

Try some of these cuts yourself and then imagine doing all that in 1 hour.

Chef Werblin