Not Loving It…

Friday we had our second “Market Basket” competition with a guest chef from a pretty well established DC restaurant.

The ingredients assigned this time were:

Duck Breast

Sea Scallops

Orange and/or Lemon

After meeting after class, my team came up with the following menu:

Seared Duck Breast Slices on top of a puff pastry topped with Swiss Chard

Scallop “rosette” layered with duxelle and panchetta

An orange and espresso panacota

Again, we had four and a half hours to produce this dish and timewise… my team did very well. We had plenty of time to fully execute everything and kept our work stations very clean.

We drew randomly and my team was seventh in line to present. The problem with this was that we had to serve the courses as they were intended and so it was a challenge to keep a hot main course of scallops warm AND from frying out. Ultimately, I think we did a pretty good job but the chefs seemed less than enthusiastic about the dish. They seemed to appreciate our efforts but reminded us that layered proteins are very hard to control – we found this out first-hand. It is practially impossible to have all of the layers cook evenly. We also served the scallop rosette (we call it that because we froze the scallops to make thin slices and then arranged them in a mold in the form of a rose) with a gastrique because the French feel very strongly that their should be an acidic accompanyment with seafood, which the chefs did not seem to care for as well. Too sweet and too acidic.

I wasn’t feeling great afterwards and my teammates seem to know it and tried to raise my spirits. However, things did look up when the chef gathered us in the classroom before dismissing us to give us the weekly team ranking for the week, which included our market baskets. Turns out that my team is in second place – not bad all – particualrly considering that the difference between first and second place is three points. If we tighten up this week, we could easily move up.

Celebrated by not going to the gym and eating tacos and pizza most of the weekend. I think there were chocolate chip cookies involved as well. My chefs would be totally disgusted.

Also, for the first time in months, I put on something semi-decent and met one of my best friends at Busboys and Poets on Saturday. It felt good to be out. LOTS of good eye candy. I’m going to assume that the reason no one hit on me – was because they were too intimidated? Because otherwise, it means they picked up on the desperation and wanted no part of it.

When I see attractive people in a social setting, my strategy for making contact with them is typically to look like a puppy waiting to be adopted (a real turn-on, I’m sure…) or go with the old stand-by plan of doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and going home soon after.

I’m not sure what business I have trying to have a romantic life, anyway. Apparently, it will all come to a screeching hault when I start working in a restaurant.

Tomorrow will be my first meeting with an Executive Chef about a possible internship. I’m a little freaked out. By that, I mean that I am A LOT FREAKED OUT. When you observe a kitchen, your responsibilities vary – you may just sit and try to stay out of the way the entire time. They may ask me to make a stock or throw me right into it.

Chefs are apparently too busy to give information so all I have in the way of instruction – is to show up at 2:00 p.m – I’m bringing my uniform and knives just in case.

Hopefully I will make a decent enough impression. I still don’t have all of my recipes memorized and I am not as fast as I would like with my knife cuts – but I’m not hopeless. In fact, I look pretty good (on paper) right now.

Wish me luck.