An Orgy of Vegetables

Today was veggie day in Intro.

One thing I need to do first is explain the dynamic of the class. It's an introductory class of 12. Half of the class is over forty and they all have no experience. Half of what remains (that's 3 for those not paying attention) have some culinary experience. One of them has only just started - i.e. less experience than myself. So that leaves Jason and I. Jason is 19 and has 6 years experience. I'm 23 and have 5 months.

That being said, the class was divided into four groups. Today there were only eleven of us. So Chef Sue decided to pair the two with the most experience and then evenly divide the rest of the class. She then tacked on two extra dishes for us to prepare. Which I actually was excited about, I read between the lines and felt good about it.

So the assignment in general terms was to bread a veg, saute or blanch & shock three different veg, roast a squash, roast a red pepper, and saute a leafy green.

Team 4-Ever Awesome To The Max (that was me and Jason) was responsible for B/S haricot vert (french green beans, longer and skinnier than green beans), sauteing shitake and oyster* mushrooms, sauteing patty pan (small squash, kind of flavorless), sauteing turnip leaves* and swiss chard, roasted butternut squash, and 2 roasted peppers

*extra dishes tacked on.

I rocked out the leafy greens. Chiffonading the hell out of those leaves, leaving the stems out, small dicing some bacon for rendering(you could just as easily use butter), and mincing up some shallots. I sautéed those suckers and kept them warm, all the while Jason is rocking the mushrooms and patty pan. We both kept our eyes on our roasted butternut (took forever, by the way) and while he finished up his sauteing I got our haricot vert set to blanch. The salted water was boiling (1 tbsp salt for ever quart of water is a good reference) and I cleaned the beans and got the ice bath set for some shock action. By the time I got that all set up jason was done so he took over the haricot vert and I roasted my pepper. That was done, so I checked on our roast squash, not even close to being done. That was fine because someone had to watch the haricot vert. Jason did that, while I cleaned up our station as much as I could. It was just about time for service when the haricot vert "finished" and our squash had finally gotten soft enough. I pull that out of the oven and we tag team the squash to scoop it out. Plate the beans and blamo right before service all of our dishes were out and still steaming.

I was superbly happy with how well we did - despite the hardly cooked haricot vert (not my fault). Every other team had an extra member and two less dishes to prepare and we still finished before two of them. Plus, oh there is a plus, the team that finished first DID NOT reheat for service, so all of their dishes were cold. Team 4-Ever Awesome To The Max deliberately timed everything to hopefully be finished at the time of service (12:30). The only thing we needed to reheat was the leafy greens. Also the haricot vert was not fully cooked. I was pleased, particularly since my 5 months in a commercial kitchen has been almost exclusively cold foods - I have not done much hot food cooking.

Despite the lack of proteins at lunch, it was a fun day. Next week we are going on a field trip to a local kitchen. Might be interesting if we go some place cool.