Day 71 - January 13, 2010

Day 71:

Today Adrienne finished baking the last layer of the cake and started making butter cream. It was quite the process and several test batches later, she had it figured out and it was beautiful! Her last couple batches were white and fluffy, as opposed to her first batches before she figured it out which looked like whipped margarine. She did an awesome job!

After that we stacked our cake up to see what the layers would look like next to each other.

I really like how fat the middle tier is compared to the other two. It's definitely my favorite part of this cake!

That was it for today. Tomorrow we have a lot on our plate...tomorrow is assembly part of this project.

Day 70 - January 12, 2010

Day 70:

Today we spent the whole day baking cakes. We only had a couple pans so we could only bake a layer or two at a time. We wanted the batter to be fresh for each batch so we would scale it and mix it right before it needed to go in the oven. By the end of the day we had all but 1 layer ready to go. Tomorrow we are just going to finish baking the one layer and move on.

Day 69 - January 11, 2010

Day 69:

Today I got to school and warmed up my brown sauce. It needed to be warm when we put it over the steaks. After that I coated the steaks in a seasoned flour and browned them off on the flat top. Once they were brown we put them in a hotel pan and covered them in warm brown sauce, sauteed mushrooms and caramelized onions and left them to bake for an hour or so. While they cooked I learned how to properly clean the flat top. I also checked on Greg's baked potatoes that were for lunch to see how close they were getting.

When they were finished, I took them out to the line and ended up staying there and helped serve. Kristi got sick and couldn't come in so Katie was on register and I served.

That was about it for my day. The steaks must have been good because by the end of lunch, I had sold all of them! Not bad for a Vegetarian!

Day 68 - January 8, 2010

Day 68:

Monday I am in charge of Swiss steaks. They are somewhat similar to a chicken fried steak, but has some differences. Swiss steaks are a cubed steak like a chicken fried steak, but they are only coated in flour when they are browned not egg and flour. Once they are browned they are covered in a bit of gravy, caramelized onions and sauteed mushrooms and put to bake for 30 minutes to an hour.

I started the day off by making a brown sauce. I needed a mirepoix cut into a small dice and a sachet. I started by browning my veggies, and by browning them I mean browning them! I think that's the longest I've ever cooked veggies on the stove. I took me a good 30 minutes if not longer. Once they were brown, I had to add my flour to make a roux and then brown my roux. That took a long time as well. The brown veggies and brown roux is what gives the brown sauce it's flavor, just like gumbo. When you make gumbo, your roux should be so dark, it's close to black. That's the authetic flavor of it. Anyway once that part was finished I added it to my beef stock and was able to go work on something else. The sauce was left to simmer for a couple hours to let it reduce and thicken.

After that I got some help and we started trimming the fat off eye of rounds. What an annoying process! I needed to do it as carefully as possible because I was doing a yield test at the same time. I needed to end up with less than 23% waste once all the fat and silver skin was cut off. The silver skin was covering the entire slab of meat and was way hard to get off without taking off a bunch of meat as well.

After spending a ton of time working on it, Blake (a high school kid) came in and I asked him if he wanted to help us trim the 3rd slab of meat. He said okay and 20 minutes later handed it to me perfectly clean! Apparently he worked in a butcher shop and I had chosen the right person to help me. He sped up the process considerably! He was in the process of making french onion soup and flavoring his stock so I offered a switch. I would flavor his stock if he finished trimming mine! He agreed and we switched jobs. He went way faster and I got his stock flavored. When we were finished trimming we sliced them into 1" steaks and then ran them through the cuber machine. It mechanically tenderizes the meat and gives it that distinct cubed steak look.
After we had them all finished I added up my loss numbers and I passed my yield test with ... 21.6% waste!! I was so excited that I didn't have to do it with that type of meat again!

After that I put the meat into the walk in and was ready for lunch on Monday.

Day 67 - January 7, 2010

Day 67:

Today when I got to school Rex had just barely put my meatloaf and potatoes in the ovens to start baking. They would need a while to get cooked all the way through.

While they were cooking I started prepping some broccoli to go with it.

My cousin Marcie is getting married on the 15th and Adrienne and I are making her wedding cake. So while the meatloaf and potatoes cooked, we started planning the cake.

I went to go check the potatoes and meatloaf and ended up asking John and Rex what temperature I should take the meatloaf out of the oven at and they were both in one of their moods and I ended up getting a math lesson instead of an answer. It started driving me crazy! By the time they were finished, I had about had enough for the day. When they gang up they pick on me all day long! All in all, when the math lesson was over I figured out that I needed to pull the meatloaf out of the oven at 155 or 158 so it could rest and hit 165-170.

When it was finally finished I pulled them out and let them rest in the warmer in the back and checked my potatoes (which would be done at 180 degrees).

I sliced my meatloaf and steamed my broccoli and put them all out on the line for lunch.

Besides being super frustrated because of John and Rex ganging up on my for a math lesson, it was an alright day. A bit frazzling, but alright.

Day 66 - January 6, 2010

Day 66:

Today was my prep day for meatloaf and scalloped potatoes for lunch tomorrow. Adrienne helped me all day today and it was nice working with her. I needed to get a bechamel going so I started with that. After that was on the stove, we washed and started slicing my potatoes. I also sliced up some onions and set those aside until my bechamel was finished.

I made my meatloaf and ended up with 4 good sized loaves. It looked pretty good, considering I don't eat meat.

After that was finished we started layering up the scalloped potatoes and halfway through I ran out of bechamel! The recipe didn't have me make enough so I had to start again. Because of this, my project ended up taking way longer than it should have. I guess it had it's benefits, I was busy all day long. I hate not having anything to do while I'm at school.

After my second batch of bechamel was finished, we finished up the potoates and cooked them about halfway so they would cook faster the next day.

It was a good day and nice because I was busy all day.

Day 65 - January 5, 2010

Day 65:

Today I was in charge of chicken alfredo for a lunch we were catering. I started the morning off by putting a gallon of heavy cream into a non-stick skillet with a 1/2 pound of butter and let it start reducing. While the cream was reducing I started working on my whipped cheesecakes. They were going pretty good and I was staying busy running between the alfredo sauce and the cheesecake. As it got nearer to lunch time (which was moved up a half hour from what I was originally told) I needed to spend more time on my alfredo and had to keep putting off my cheesecake. I needed to get my noodles cooking because I had a ton of them and they would take a while.

I got to the last step on my cheesecake and started to put it into the pans and spread it out when I ran out of time and couldn't focus on it anymore. Megan helped me out and finished my cheesecake while I finished my alfredo.

My sauce wasn't quite thick enough, we ran out of time and had to thicken it up faster than we would have liked. We ended up adding a little bit of a cream base and tossed parmesan cheese in with arrowroot powder. Arrowroot powder is a thickening agent like cornstarch, but unlike cornstarch it is clear and not white when it dissolves. After that was all in the sauce, we seasoned it up with salt and pepper and added a touch of white wine and it was delicious!

We got two more new people today, Rosemary and Cami. They were in charge of cooking my chicken because I was still focusing on other things. I trimmed the pieces up and Rosemary started cooking. We also started steaming some mixed veggies to go with the pasta.

After it was all ready, John and I started plating it up. We had a big bed of noodles with alfredo sauce and a couple chicken tenders sliced up with a side of veggies. It all looked really good! I was very happy with how it turned out.