Many more Lessons Learned

Friday was another one of those eye openers for me. It does not matter how much I am practicing my knife skill, if I am practicing it wrong. Also I found I like the carrots at school better for practice. I know we are suppose to cut other items, but I really need to get the carrot thing down.

Our team came into the kitchen with a plan, my plan. It worked really well, we were on top of everything until the plating. I did not have plating in my plan. It is now my understanding I need to do that first.

The food was really good. I had only occasionally cooked with wine. I had never cooked with a whole bottle. My Beef Bourguignon Pot Pie should have been called a stew. I did not have my oven hot enough to get the needed puff on the pastry top. Also I think that the dough was in contact with the liquid. I will try this again at home.

Our Braised Short Beef Short Ribs were off the chart good, wish I could take credit, Drew did an outstanding job. We could have done a better job plating, each plate was different in appearance.

I even tasted two new vegetables. You need to try Pureed Celery Root, it was wonderful. Our texture was a little off. We used the Food Processor instead of a Ricer. In the Pot Pie were baby turnips. They were surprising delicious.

As Chef told us we need to take the blinders off and be prepared to try new foods. We do not have to like it, just try it. I have spent my life assuming that I did not like this or that. The sad part is I never even tasted most of them.

So the biggest learning lessons. Be prepared to try new foods and plating, plating, plating. I need to make plating a part of my Mis en Place. I need to make it part of the set up. I must visualize what my final dish is.