Dear Diary.... Just kidding.... I do need to vent a bit though.
The first night I MISTAKENLY found myself on the WRONG team. Just to give you a glimpse, I walked in and saw no one at my usual table, and someone called me over to their table, so I naturally went over and found a seat. Turns out the guy who annoys me the most, and who left my group in the first place, happened to be at this table. Great. This outta be fun.
Sure enough in the first 30 minutes while we were trying to get started he does it again. We were substituting pork for chicken in a recipe. Granted there is not necessarily much difference in the 2 types of meat, it is a pretty good idea to read all the directions first to see if you will be cooking it exactly the same way, right? Say if you were substituting Steak for Chicken in a recipe, and the chicken was to be pan fried, but you were going to grill the steak. For example, you may not need the same spices for steak as you would need for chicken. Also you may not need the olive oil for steak on the grill as you would for pay frying chicken.
As ignorant as people can be, we he went to start gathering his ingredients, I suggested he read it all first because all we need to do for this recipe is make the sauce portion. Instead he starts raising his tone with me saying Chef said to do it "exactly the same way." I said again, well read the first few lines on the recipe first, (I could see it said to season the chicken and saute in the olive oil). Since we didn't need to do the meat potion yet, I told him we could skip the olive oil for now. Needless to say, after a few more snips, he said he would just do it himself, and he went about collecting the ingredients, before reading the recipe anyway. Fine. Whatever. I thought to myself, I know people have different personalities, and everyone works their own way in the kitchen, as long as his part gets done, I don't care.
I am still wondering if I am frying the fried chicken, who is making the potatoes, the pan gravy, or the sauce?
So I go about frying my chicken and I come back to the table after placing it to warm in the oven. To one of my teammates I said, "How's the sauce?" She answered, "He don't wanna do it." Somehow he got about 4 of the ingredients and he is now refusing to finish it. I asked the other guy on our team if he could help out with the sauce so he did. Eventually The Stubborn One helped the other guy finish the cooking of the sauce, but since neither read the recipe, the mushrooms were put in at the wrong time making our sauce a dirty brown color. Sweet.
The other lady took care of the potatoes and I started the rice. So we were all covered in the end anyway, even though he stood around and skimmed veal stock all night. I was proud of our dishes they tasted good. I still am struggling to make the fried chicken spicier though. I added tons of seasonings to both flours and added Tabasco into the egg wash. I still didn't taste one bit of spice. Still more to work on.
Also as a windfall of the evening, I spent more time talking to J* ("Mr. Teen Chef"). I do still think he is arrogant, and doesn't work well with others, but I can see why. He is still very young, and people in our class are naive morons at times. He plans his menus and takes risks, which I like. But he doesn't communicate his ideas or timing to his teammates. It leaves them in the dark and leaves him frustrated. If they spent more time planning in the beginning this wouldn't be as big of an issue. Chef always says, "I need to know what you know now." Well if he listened to this his ideas would work. He also is on his own schedule of planning on his own dishes and cleans up his own things, leaving the team to think he isn't doing his share. But really he does, he just plans and executes better than the team does. Even though he won a competition and all, I still would consider myself on par with him, if not better. But I am also older and wiser. I am learning that kitchen experience doesn't make you smarter. Your own quest for knowledge makes you smarter.
As a result of being able to talk to him a bit, we teamed up on day 2 for our Veal and Pear dishes. Just the two of us worked out fine, I know Chef's intention is to get us working in larger teams, but I think we both needed a break from the team thing.
We talked about our ideas for about the 1st 15 minutes when the other teams drained their stocks. We divided up the work. I didn't want to make Veal Parmesan and he knew how to make Veal Marsala. So he was going to work on the Veal. I was going to handle the Poached Pear Dessert. All night we worked well, helping to taste and prep for the other person. In the end, I thought the Veal he made was quite good! And I don't really like Veal. I loved the Marsala sauce and I could have honestly eaten a whole plate of it at a restaurant. We collaborated on creating a side dish of asparagus as well. We also were asked to use up leftover yellow tomatoes and we made a pasta with tomatoes basil, it was pretty, but needed Parmesan cheese.
My pears turned out excellent. I thought they were better tasting than any other groups. I marinated the pears in orange juice w/ Star Anise, Cinnamon Sticks, Nutmeg (J*'s addition), and some cloves. I pre-sliced the pears in 1/2 so they would cook quicker and be easier to plate. I made the mascarpone creme mixture (I have experience with it) and J* helped me plate it. We leaned the pears up against the creme and poured the reduced spice sauce over the top of the pears. It was beautiful and tasted so good. Definitely restaurant quality. I was proud of the food and proud of being on a good team!
