Plating (Sauce like yo first boyfriend: Broke, Ugly and Bad Taste)

Today we met Chef K, a short woman with nice glasses and a slight Lawn Guyland accent. It's too early to make any judgements, but first impression is that she's going to take it way too easy on us. In her introduction, she stressed the usual stuff -- timeliness, orderliness, prep your mise in proper order, clean up, wash your hands, etc. Her lecture had a lot more rigor than Chef C's, though not at the level of Chef M.

Chef K reviewed the basics of plating balance -- you eat with your eyes before you eat with your mouth. Balance in color, texture and flavors; create unity in theme with one focal-point on the plate; and flow, which she described as use of negative space, movement and some concept of design I didn't quite follow (despite working as a designer for the past 10 years or so). Chef K topped it with less is more, a concept I can definitely get behind.

Today's menu had a thousand ingredients with a lot of fussy moving parts. After introductions and lecture, we were down an hour. First up is an appetizer of sauteed arctic char with citrus vinaigrette, Mediterranean salad and Fines Herbes Oil. Second up was an entrée of sautéed quail breasts with sweetbread marmalade, macedoine of vegetables and foie gras bread pudding. Finally, the last dish was farm-raised venison medallions with chestnut-redwine reduction sauce, butternut squash and pine nut relish and sauteed wild mushrooms.

Chef K broke us up into three groups, and my team consisted of Dirty Dave, Stalker Koslowski, and Squarehead. Three mid-to-late 30 yr-olds and an 18-yr-old kid, all male. We (well, I) named us the He-Man Woman-Hater's Club. Chef K also broke up the menu -- our group did only the Venison Medalions for the entire class, each group would cook their own proteins and plate with other people's mise.

DD rocked out on the huge deer tenderloin, SH did the butternut relish, SK chopped a whole mess of mushrooms, and I cooked up chestnut-red wine compound butter for another group to make sauce for everyone. Took a pound of peeled chestnuts, carmelized them with sugar, wine, and vinegar to dry, then added a lot of wine and vinegar and reduced again to dry. Blended that mess in a robocoup with butter, porcini powder and salt, rolled into tubes and stuck in icewater to make solid.

We had about 30 minutes to clean up and chill before we could fire up the proteins, which cooked pretty quickly. Everyone distributed mise to the other groups, fired up the meats, and plated, as the Chef went around and commented. I got compliments for swirling my fine-herbs oil with my vinaigrette on my arctic char. My quail and venison were ruined by an ugly, bad tasting sauce which used my compound butter....

During the class, Chef K spent a lot of time with Dora the Explorer, keeping her on track to make the sauce which would be plated with everyone's quail and venison. Unfortunately, despite Chef K's extra attention, the sauce was watery, broken (oil separating) and tasted bad. Two thirds of the day's work was made ugly by one person's incompetence. Then again, to be honest, my two plates were pretty ugly without the sauce, but I feel like I'm still playing with the software, doing simple mistakes before I go make some....big mistakes!

Tomorrow, more fussiness.

ADDENDA:
Took E to Mercer Kitchen to celebrate her new job and pay bump. When our dishes came out, I couldn't help but critique the plating of each entrée. B's chicken with mashed potatoes and string beans was almost perfect, except for a bit of potatoes a little too far up the rim. E's duck was a bit crowded with a poofy salad, wild rice and a veg, needed a bigger plate or smaller portions. My pork cutlet was totally covered by some foofy microgreen, so if I didn't know any better, it was a salad. The pork was drenched in vinaigrette, which was a bummer. And the garnish, a wedge of lemon (which was totally unnecessary) was at the bottom of the plate closest to me....it just seemed off.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, large piece of watermelon, 1.5 bowls, hunger 3/5

AM TASTINGS: 11am, arctic char, small piece of quail, foie gras bread pudding, sauteed venison with sauteed mushrooms, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, apple-cream cheese crumble cake thing, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
On break at God's Love.

PM SNACK: 4:30pm, small ramekin of mint icecream, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
Craving it.

DINNER: 7pm, bread rolls & olive oil, half a tiny pizza, shrimp & avocado salad, pork milanese with wild rice, molten chocolate cake, 1 glass sake, water, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5