Dave's Culinary Adventure: NAC Black and White Gala Weekend!

Appetizer Dish, originally uploaded by FinasZ.

Alright the past few days I’ve been quite busy as well as lazy, Wednesday and Thursday I was just lazy. Friday and Saturday though were different; I was the complete opposite from being lazy. But before I get into what happened on Friday and Saturday lets start off with Wednesday. For me Wednesday was a bit of a wind down from the Monday class, because we were doing a dish that I felt was simpler. The dishes we learned in demonstration class were Filet de rouget a l’ains (red snapper), Lotte au poivre vert (mon fish), Filet de feltan a la duglere (halibut) and Escalope de saumon en papillotte (salmon). The way that the salmon was cooked was actually pretty neat; it was also pretty different compared to the other recipes we’ve learned in the past. The previous recipes we’ve learned were all generally cooked in oil or butter, but this was just seasoned and cooked. Making the vessel that contained the salmon was also quite neat; you don’t even need tape or glue to hold the edges together. In the next demonstration class we learned how to make sautee chicken with a mushroom and tomato sauce which tasted so very good. The other thing was we had to debone the chicken whole. We also did a few other recipes that day which were Pintate au chou, perdix pochee a l’estragon and Margret de conard aux champignons sauvages.

The practical for Wednesday which was the Filet de rouget a l’ains (red snapper), went pretty well for me. Preparing the fish was a tiny bit hard but after filleting it, it wasn’t so bad. The rest of the recipe went by pretty smoothly, the fish stock was good, the vegetable was okay and the extra dish we had to make (rice pilaf) was okay too. When I presented I was quite happy with my dish, but the chef told me that my vegetables were a bit over cooked and that I should be a little gentler when stirring the rice with my fork. The practical on Friday night was a bit tougher than the previous fish recipe. First off we had to debone a whole chicken; the deboning process was a bit tough for me at first. Now that I think about it though it actually isn’t too bad, at first I wasn’t sure which bones stayed and which were to be removed. I also wasn’t too sure on which parts of the chicken bone that were left I was supposed to cut the tips off of. After deboning the chicken the rest of the dish actually went by pretty smoothly with a few exceptions of course. Those few exceptions were that I burned my sauce a bit and by making the sauce more of a darker brown color it gives it more of a bitter taste. The end product was decent, it could have been a lot more runny, needed a bit more salt and of course the bitterness. The vegetables that went into the dish weren’t hard to do at all; I cut my tomatoes a bit larger than what I should have though. At the end everything came together, I seared my chicken perfectly and plated all correct. We also had to do an extra dish on the side since we have so much left over time, the chef made us do which ever cut we wanted to do of a potato. I decided to make them into little balls and cook them anglais style and then sautee them in butter (which I forgot to do, due to the time factor).

Now with the school part out of the picture, we move onto the other exciting part of Friday and Saturday! Friday before any of my classes started, I went to the NAC (National Arts Centre) to volunteer in the kitchen. I got there at 8am with Dat; we got settled and went straight to work. The task they had us to was make salmon roses, one of the chefs at NAC would slice the salmon for us and we’d roll it into a rose (I later learned his name was Trevor). When we thought we had finished all that was needed, it turned out that we were short a few salmon roses. So Chef Bento came by and inspected each and every one of them. He saw some were a bit larger than what was needed, and asked us to redo some of them. After readjusting some of the larger salmon roses, we were able to squeeze out another 32 pieces. Once the salmon was complete, we were sent off to another section of the kitchen and were told to wrap lettuce and daikon into bundles. These bundles were for the appetizer, they were to stand in the middle of the plate on top of some hummus to hold it up. So we did 50 of the lettuce/daikon wraps and had to get ready to go back to school for class. So we went back to class, did the class thing, went home, slept and were suppose to wake up bright and early but ended up sleeping in till about 8. I was suppose to meet Dat and Lisanne for breakfast, but I was so tired from the night before I kept sleeping till the time I had to leave for the NAC. Got to the NAC at about 10am and started work right away. The first thing they had me do was use a machine to roughly peel potatoes and then finish off the job with my paring knife. At first I wasn’t sure how to use the machine that well, so I was a bit slow to start off. Then the chef working beside me showed me a few small tricks and after that I was zooming through the potatoes. Once the potatoes were finished off, we headed over to the other side of the kitchen and started plating the part of the appetizer that could go on before service. Which were the salmon, coleslaw, beats, blue cheese and the hummus in the middle to hold up the salad. We all worked quite quickly, each with a task to do and complete. We had to do a total of about 600-700 plates and we zoomed through it like it was nothing. After the plating of the appetizers we went for a short break, because of the adrenaline I wasn’t too fond of the break (it made me a bit tired from lack of adrenaline). After the break though we got to do the fun stuff, we got to plate the main course blanks. A blank is a plate with only the vegetables or side garnish and the protein (which would have been the lamb, beef steak and salmon) would be put on seconds before service. So we were like a well oiled machine and zoomed through all of that pretty quickly as well. With the blanks done we started getting ready to bring up all the food to our stations and prep for service. I was paired with Stephen and we went with Chef Madan to his station and help him setup for service. About 20-30 minutes after we moved all the plates and food up, we started stacking the appetizer plates to be ready for service. Then once the gala was getting a move on, and we finished the appetizer plates, everything else pretty much came like wildfire. Stephen and I were busy restacking clean new plates for the desserts, when done we went out and saw that the whole kitchen crew was plating all of the main course meals. Pretty much right after the main course was done we went off and began plating the dessert, which was a frozen parfait (the parfait was quite heavenly with a nice rum taste to it). BOOM BOOM BOOM as quickly as we came in, the dishes went out even quicker. The whole service was probably about 45 minutes to an hour (or more long), but it felt like only 15-25 minutes had only passed by. Once the last dessert went out, I felt a sense of accomplishment; I was there to help plate over 150+ dishes.

Once everything was completed, all the dishes and carts were brought back down; we all had a toast with Chef Bento. The team that I was able to work with Saturday night was an amazing group. They all knew exactly what they were doing, when and where they were doing that task. They were so cool that I went out for some drinks with them afterwards. I had a lot of fun volunteering at the NAC Black and White Gala, and had hoped to go there again (which I will be in the future). Saturday left me extremely tired with about 11 hours of work and then having some drinks after.

This here was the awesome team I worked with (stephen left before we could get the picture taken)