Maison de Gastronomie

Week 10

Here’s the entire crew at the end of the event. They all rose to the occasion and did a fantastic job.

Pasta Event Week. Day 1 was prep day and it went well overall. Things got done, which is the main purpose of prep day. The food was as prepared as it was going to be before event day on Thursday.

Here’s a quick 19-second video to demonstrate the entrance to our dining room. The front of house crew did a good job to set the mood for guests as they entered.

DAY 2. The big day had arrived. Overall, things went well. As I walked around the dining room, taking notes and asking for feedback, I saw some disorganization. Overall, however, things went well. The worst aspect of our day was the POS system. The servers did not have a uniform way of filling out the forms that we had typed up specifically for the purpose of ease and utility. Oh well. Our food was good, and the crowd confirmed that fact. The dish with the most criticism was the crepe cake, which guests said was not sweet enough.

Here is a view of the general setup of the dining room. We had five tables with four people at each table, which made for a more intimate setting.

Our theme was “Paris Catacombs”, so we named the restaurant “Catacomb Cuisine”. Since the event landed on Halloween, we decorated to match the mood of the day. Guests complimented us on the surprisingly relaxed setting that we had created for them. This entire week flew by like no one’s business. Before I knew it, it was over. Now it’s time to start a whole new week and adventure.

Here’s Team Alfredo doing their thing. All of their pasta was made from scratch, as well as the Alfredo sauce.

My AHA Moment

My AHA moment for this week would be the fact that everything worked out fairly well. Even when things get rough, if you choose to have a good attitude and power through with the best of intentions, things seem to work out every time. There’s just no reason to stress out over silly things, but it is so easy to do exactly that. Just take a deep breath when there are bumps in the road. Find the most appropriate way to proceed, take accountability for your mistakes, apologize and move on. Life continues even if you don’t, so try not to get too far behind. “Keep on keeping” on as Joe Dirt would say. Hard days come and go. Cherish the good days because they’re few and far between sometimes.

Week 9

Here’s Chef Mark demonstrating how to make pasta from scratch! I didn’t get to make any for the event personally, but it looks like fun, plus it’s delicious.

Day 1 of Week 9 had Chef demonstrating how to make pasta from scratch! Not only was it cool to learn, it was also delicious. If I’m remembering correctly, he made a garlic, red pepper fettuccine dish. Straight carbs, but it was delicious.

The process starts with two important steps; making a dry kit and a wet kit. as is more than likely self-explanatory, one kit has all of the dry ingredients in it, such as flour, salt and so on, as the other has all of the wet ingredients, meaning eggs and oil. Start by placing the dry kit ingredients into a large, metal mixing bowl. Create a crater in the middle of the ingredients so that you can see the bottom of bowl, then add all of the wet ingredients into that crater. Mix the wet ingredients carefully into the dry ingredients, slowly eroding away the dry “beaches” into the mix. Finish mixing and kneading by hand to create elasticity in the dough, adding flour as needed to get the correct consistency.

8-minute video of Chef Mark going through the pasta-making process.

Place the dough in plastic wrap and then in the refrigerator for an hour or so. Then it’s time to roll it out. A picture of the tool used to roll out the dough into a thin slab is below. Attach the pasta cutter after having gone through all of the five settings on the roller, and voila! Pasta. Super cool. Tastes better than the box stuff too.

The most important aspect of this picture is the Weston pasta machine that you see top-center. After making the dough into the desired consistency, this machine becomes your best friend. It rolls out the dough for you into a slab, then has an attachment (see left side) for cutting the slab into noodles.

Day 2 was another day without Chef, so the class used it as a pre-prep day for event week. I have no pictures from this day, I’m sorry to say. But, most of the pasta was prepped on this day and I helped to facilitate the majority of the final tweaks that would be needed for the following week. Hopefully our pasta event goes well! I’m excited and hopeful that it will. Some people are putting in a lot of effort while others are not. What’s new.

My AHA Moment

My AHA moment for this week is that you can only motivate people to do as much as they are going to be willing to do. At the end of the day, I am only responsible for the efforts and actions that I have put into improving myself and my surroundings. I can’t control other people. Perhaps this AHA moment sounds very similar to another one in the past, but it is a key idea of which I need constant reminding. There are going to be some people who try their best at everything that they do, and there are others who put in what is minimally necessary to get by, and I need to come to terms with the latter of the two personalities. Not everyone is going to go above and beyond the call of duty to get things done. So be it.

Week 8

I have no pictures for Week 8, so feel free to start docking the points now. On Monday we were without Chef, our fearless leader. So Alexis lead the class, and it was boring. Productive, sure. But boring. We ended up focusing entirely on our event, and there was so much tension in the air. It feels like a lot of people in our class just don’t like each other. Oh well, semester is halfway over now. We’ll just have to finish strong.

Day 2 was braising and sauteing, among other cooking styles. Due largely to the tension in class, as well as forgetting the chef’s coat that one of my friends in HRM so graciously has let me borrow, I didn’t attend class. The beginning of the semester was going so well. What happened? Ah well, minor road blocks always arise when you’re on the right track. I’ve made some mistakes thus far, but overall I think I’ve kept a positive mindset, and that will propel me through all the crap that seems to be arising out of nowhere.

AHA Moment

This was a rough week. But I’ve concluded that my AHA moment is to continue having a positive mentality. The only way to beat the log that’s blocking your path is to step over it and keep on going. Don’t turn around and regress to something less sophisticated. Challenges are there to challenge us, otherwise why would they be called challenges? I can beat this week and all of its garbage that has been thrown at me. Rising to the occasion is the first step, and I plan on doing that by taking responsibility where I feel that I need to, and putting my foot down where I feel I need to put my foot down. I refuse to be trampled by selfish and bogged-down people (for any students who may read this, this is not aimed towards you).