And Here It Is.......

My very first self made dish plated and served to the public :-)

Mango-Yogurt Terrine with Almond Jacond

"Mommy, wow! I'm a Big Kid Now!"

That's right. It's time to grow up and be an adult. Meaning, on Friday, we actually start in the restaurant at L'Ecole!

As it turns out, both levels 5 and 6 are spent in the restaurant. This means my class and I will be there until early January. I am starting on the pasty rotation which I'm not super excited about, but I guess it's a good way to ease into restaurant service.

The menu consists of 4 app, 4 fish, 4 meat and 4 pastry. My level 5 class is responsible for 2 of the 4 dishes in each, while the level 6 class is responsible for the other 2. There is also another station I will rotate through where we are responsible for 1 special and a vegetarian option. For the vegetarian option, each student will have the chance to create a dish of their own. So, if there is some dish you have always wanted to put on a menu of a restaurant, let me know!!!

It was intimidating getting a tour of the main kitchen last night and learning how the orders would come in, timing and everything else. However, I am definitely less nervous having some experience in a kitchen from my internship.

Wish us luck! And please come down to eat some time! My class will be there Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights!!!! I just checked the menu online and it does not look like it has been updated yet, but I'm sure it will reflect the new menu soon. To give you a taste, here are the dishes my class will be doing for the next 6 weeks. I have not seen the level 6 recipes yet so I don't know what the other half will be.

Smoked Duck Roulade with Poached Eggs and Frisee
Pappardelle with Royal Trumpet Mushrooms, Pancetta and Butternut Squash Jus
Roasted, Spiced Monkfish on a Bed of Green Lentils
Pan-fried Branzino with Ratatouille, Lemon Aioli, and Tapenade
Buttermilk-poached Chicken with Salsify Puree and Heirloom Tomato Ragout
Pork Osso Busco with Risotto Milanese
Mango-Yogurt Terrine with Almond Jacond
Fall Fruit Strudel with Armagnac Ice Cream

Level 4 Update

I know, it's been a while. With my internship and a little dog named Jake, it's been hard to sit down and write. Which is frustrating because a lot of fun stuff has been going on!

So, in level 4, we rotate through 3 stations. Buffet, family meal and production. My group started in buffet, which we were in for 2 weeks. Basically, we planned a buffet and for 2 weeks prepped for it. Then on our last day in the rotation, we produced the buffet for the entire school. It was a ton of food!!!!

We definitely had an Asian theme to our buffet, but also just did some dishes that some of us had just been wanting to try. It's hard to remember all of them, I think there were close to 40 dishes.

Some of the highlights included an Uni risotto, various sausages and pates that we made, a foie gras terrine, tons of pork, baby lamb, lamb chops, red snapper, fried sweetbreads, Asian meatballs, hanger steak, seafood salad, fresh tomato and mozzarella, asparagus and truffle salad, BBQ spareribs, and much more. For desserts we had white chocolate cheese cake, molten lava ginger chocolate cake, chocolate egg rolls, Guinness ice cream, lemongrass sorbet, pineapple upside down cake and a banana bread pudding. Of course, I forgot my camera the day of our spread, so I was only able to snap a few with my camera phone which does not give justice to the magnitude of the buffet or how good everything looked.

Hats off to our chef and my teammates for a great meal!!