Week 3: May 23rd-27th, 2011 Weekly Reflection

I'm so glad this is the last of my weekly reflections.  These are getting a bit tiring to write.

This last week has sort of been my evaluation week.  On Wednesday and Thursday (Monday I was doing pots and Tuesday I wasn't here) I had to make my own dishes completely from scratch using the ingredients from the walk-in (fridge).  I had to multiply the quantity of ingredients from the original recipe by at least 10 if not 20 times to ensure that I would be able to feed over 300 starving people!  I can assure you that I used a lot of ingredients.

As I said in my blog for Thursday, the challenge of cooking for 300 people is much more difficult and demanding than I first thought.  Not only did it require me to use a lot more ingredients, I also had to occasionally modify the method of the recipe.  If it said I had to stir the sauce at step 3 and cook and put the meat in at step 4, I might have needed to cook and put the meat into the sauce at step 3 and then stir it at step 4 or 5 due to time restraints.  That is not to say that I didn't enjoy cooking for the entire school.  On the contrary, I do enjoy cooking for the whole school so that they can enjoy my dish and say how wonderful it was.  (Haha just kidding.  That's not the reason).  But really, I enjoy cooking for the school because I want people to try different things and to say "That was great!" or "That didn't really sit well with me."  I was glad that people actually liked my lemon chicken w/broccoli on Wednesday and my lemon pasta on Thursday.  I thought people would say the chicken was too spicy (I added chili flakes) or that the sauce of the lemon pasta was to lumpy (from Parmesan cheese).  If people had those comments, they didn't share them with me.  I hope that if people do have something to say about the food that they will say it to me.  Not because I like to hear criticism (no one does), but because if I don't hear any negatives, I won't know how to improve.

I think the cookout lunch on Friday was a good way to end my stint as a "chef" in the kitchen at Proctor.  By doing this lunch, I've experienced all the facets of the kitchen.  From washing pots and chopping ingredients to cooking the actual food, cleaning the dinning hall after lunch and grilling burgers on the grill, I've had an incredible three week journey.  Even though my time in the kitchen is over, I still have an exhibition on Wednesday to think about.  Even then as they say, it's not the final destination but the actual journey that counts.  I must say, for this journey, that statement couldn't be any more correct.


P.S: I'm cooking something if you were wondering what I was doing (and no I won't say what I'll be making).  You'll have to come on Wednesday and find out for yourself.  For those of you who aren't at school and are reading my blog, I guess you'll have to miss out! Sorry!