Week 1 of Superior

Alas I am starting to really update my blog HURRAY! So the first week of Superior has finished and we are now going onto the second week of classes. So far up to this point we've done two lessons + practicals and one workshop. The first lesson was pretty simple and we pretty much learned a few techniques on making garnishes for our plates in the future. We were shown how to make tempura, deep frying other vegetables and how to make savory tuilles. The practical was nothing too crazy for our first day back into the kitchen, especially mine since I have been in the production kitchen for the past 6 months. We were allowed to work in groups, so i grouped up with Nicholas and we did pretty good for the first class. The second day of class wasn't so bad either, we did a spiced Pollock with turned artichokes and a eggplant charlotte stuffed with brunoise of vegetables (peppers, zucchini and onions). The first day really helped set the mood to be back in the kitchen but the second day really started to get our engines going. Surprisingly it went by pretty well, the chef had nothing bad to say about my vegetables or fish. Only thing was that my plating was plain and simple, Chef Benoit said that its okay for now but he wants to see more complexity in the future. Then we had our first workshop day, for some reason I was brutally nervous and just could not get a good nights sleep before that day. First thing in the kitchen was Chef Benoit showing us how to cook up the calamari dish, after that we could go on and proceed to doing the workshop. As nervous as I was I went straight to get all my mise en place done and before I knew it I was working faster than what I had predicted. As the time ticked away I thought maybe I could have done some more and told myself that for the next workshop I will try something more complex. At around 6:15pm was when we were to all serve our main courses and clean up. The Chef decided to do a group evaluation instead of a solo one on one chat about each of our dishes. He picked a few out and explained why they didn't work and why not to do something like that. He also picked out a few that were on the right track and some elements that we could try and use for future workshops. After wards I asked the chef what he thought about my dish, he told me that the garnishes were alright but the meat should have been presented in a different manor. He showed me how unstable the meat would be to be stacked up like that. (refer to my veal picture under) Overall I feel that my first week back from not being in class for so long as been pretty good. Even with that I'm gonna work harder and try even harder so I can continue to do well.


Chef's Dishes from Demo 2





My Dishes from workshop 201