So, did you think I’d quit school? Run off to the big city to make my fortune and end up on the Food Network with my own show? No, silly, it was just spring break. 10 glorious days of waking up at 10 am, lounging around watching Food Network and Bravo’s Top Design to my heart’s content. (I was pulling for Goil)

The last couple weeks of first quarter went a little like this: zoom, blam, crash, pow, whomp, zallawazoo. Hard and fast. I scored a 93 on my knife test. It was nerve racking. I completely botched my batonnet (far too big, steak fries anyone?) and brunoise (screw brunoise, seriously. I’m over it), but managed 40 minutes. I scored a crackin’ 100% on my final, and even managed to pass the servsafe exam with a 92. Not too shabby. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t finish the quarter with a bit of an ego (Come on , a 4.0, how could you not think you’re the queen of the world- that and forcing kevin to greet me every morning saying “hey queen of the world”).

The change from first quarter and second quarter could not be more dramatic, physically and emotionally. This quarter my classmates and I are responsible for crafting up lunch service for the entire culinary and baking programs as well as the lunch buffet SCCC students and faculty frequent. It is quantity cookin’ baby. Yee haw.

Quantity cooking has it’s purpose, hospitals, weddings, my lunch Tuesday-Friday, but dang is it hectic. For one I am preoccupied with maintaining quality and integrity of the food I produce, on the other hand, I have a time deadline along with a heavy workload. As eaters/consumers we can’t help but be skeptical, a little suspicious even of large vats of food sitting out on the buffet line. And I find that same feeling creeping up on me when I am fixing up 75 servings of salad dressings. “How can this possibly taste good?” I’ll ask myself, assuming that larger = worse. Maybe that is why fine dining servings are so tiny. Tiny = better.

I think I have explained before a bit about my first quarter classroom, it was at the opposite end of the school, a quiet, serene, Zen rock garden of a lab compared with the steam whistles, oven hums, and range fan droning of the main kitchen where the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarter students go about their work. I feel a bit out of sorts, if my life experience and obsessive home cooking aided me last quarter, then my lack of kitchen experience has me doubting my performance now. Time management is a huge issue, as is learning when to finish a dish, even if it means not rearranging the shrimp to look like the NYC Rockettes doing the can-can. I hope this is only beginning of the quarter jitters.

Culinary School Diary, Recent |