Day 18 – Prep, prep, prep prep…Prep prep prep prep…

Yes that’s all we had to do tonight was prep for our Breakfast Buffet scheduled for tomorrow. We were all divided into teams of 3 or 4 and had to do a specific task. On my team (I say ‘my’ team because they voted me team leader. I bet they regret doing that! [grins], was Johnny and Marcella. And our task for the evening was to assemble the Crepes Florentine. We rocked!! I had Johnny get the asparagus ready, I chopped all the onions and Marcella cleaned all the spinach. Next as Marcella is cleaning the spinach in batches (it was 15 bunches!) we’d dry it and get it all sautéed. I had 3 big pans going.
Next I had Marcella coat the pans with Mornay sauce, Johnny started laying out the crepes and I would go behind him putting asparagus on each one.

**Hold up! We only had 3 bunches of asparagus! We need 6 bunches for our recipe of 5 #200 hotel pans….think…think…Ok I got it. I asked Chef Knight, can we slice the asparagus lengthwise. This way each crepe gets some at least for flavor instead of just having half of them with asparagus and half with just spinach. We get the holy nod let’s do this thing!**

As I put the asparagus down Johnny came behind me with the spinach. I went back behind him and rolled them up and put them in to the pans. Fill a pan pass it to Marcella who then finished them off with more Mornay sauce and Gruyere cheese. It was a beautiful thing to watch and participate in. We (the entire class) were done with everything by 8:15. We beat the morning and afternoon class with out prep time and we did it right! Next up? What…we don’t have to cook anything and present it tonight? Oh I bet they have us do the deep cleaning then…no? HHmm we can’t leave this early (although I wouldn’t complain)…nope we get to go to PCA-2’s buffet. Our class is 18 strong and their class is 5. These 5 individuals knocked it out of the park!! I was so impressed. They served Mac n Cheese, Spanish rice, hush puppies, refried beans, pork n beans, bbq ribs, pulled pork, beef roast (this was just perfect!), onion rings, corn on the cob (trimmed with butter, mayo, parmesan cheese, paprika and cayenne), fresh tortillas, guacamole, homemade ice-cream and bread pudding. Yes 5 students did all this and served their guests and the other students in the school. Impressive.

After this nice treat it was back to our class for some lectures. I kind of missed out on the first 15 minutes because I was sitting with Chef Knight having a nice conversation and Chef Richardson took the rest of the class back with her. We got out tonight at 9:40! BooYah! I’ll get a normal nights sleep…or not as I hear “Yeah Red! Come on we’re gonna go get a beer.” “No that’s ok..I need to get home and get some sleep.” “Come on it’s one beer…” Yes I sucuumbed to peer pressure. But it was only one and still got home around 11:40 so it was a treat getting a full night’s sleep!

Tomorrow – It’s Buffet Time