Loves Cooking: Day 19 – Buffet Day!

(some pictures to follow)

Well the day arrived and we were all ready. Strike that..they were all ready. I still wasn’t there yet. Friday night traffic decided to really back up on me tonight. *sigh* As I impatiently watch my clock and the minutes click by I ponder…why are all these people here? I swear even though my clock in my car is digital I could hear the loud “Tick…..Tock….Tick…you’re gonna be late…Tock….Tick….you should have left earlier….Tock…” I make a bold decision…get of the freeway now and wing it. So off I go having no clue where I am and where I should go but at least I’m moving. The people of LA are ok. I would stop and ask “Can you point to Sunset?” and they would. I get to school at 6:05pm. As I’m walking up to the building I have that moment where you slap your forehead and say “oh my lord I’m an idiot” and to make matters worse you promptly blurt out you’re in idiot and why. Seems I forgot about a new feature my car has – mapping. Yeah could have turned that baby on and set my end point (which is already programmed in) and said Go Baby! Ah…hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So Chef’s Knight and Richardson give us a pep talk and assign us to our stations. I shall be making the quiche and acting as a runner for the evening. First up…fix the quiche problem. Seems when they changed the recipe for the quiche Lorraine they made an error in the amount of cheese. The old recipe called for 1 cup of cheese. Then they halved everything. Well instead of saying ½ cup of cheese they took the weight measurement of 4 oz. So 1 cup of shredded cheese weighs about 2.2 ounces, so ½ cup should weigh about an ounce. So you can see we had a very cheesy mess on our hands. I discussed it with Chef Knight and she gave me the go to fix them. Which I did, I just wish I had added more salt. I guess some of the batter made wasn’t seasoned so by adding more cream and eggs the batter that was got diluted.

Chaffing trays are prepped, food is being warmed, stations assigned and a light nervous chatter fills the room. But we’re all very excited. The guests begin arriving and the food starts being served. I must say it all looks fantastic and I hear everything tastes wonderful. Yeah!!

After it was all over and the class was sitting down to eat, I stayed in the kitchen to clean a bit. I had been snacking earlier so I wasn’t hungry. Everyone else needed a break to sit and take a breather – they earned it! Chef Knight and I were chatting about all the leftovers and she gave me a compliment that just made my week “Red I don’t think you realized just how good you are and the potential you have.” All I could do was meekly say Thank You, as I was shocked to hear her say that.

Everyone gathers together for a final discussion from our Chef instructors. Everyone did a fantastic job! Next week is review week of some of the dishes we’ve done, (with a couple of new ones) and then it’s cram cram cram for our finals. On Monday we’re making Gnocchi!