breaded pork chops (entree station)

After pasta station I went to the main entree station, which was a lot of work because of the massive amount of proteins we would work with (though usually portioned by the downstairs meat lab, which is my next and last rotation of this semester). Despite the work, it was still simple because we only had to keep track of only a few elements: protein, sauce, and sometimes a garnish.

My first day on the station we breaded and fried pork chops. The standard breading procedure is done in three steps: first a thin layer of flour to coat, then a dip in an egg bath, then finished off with the breadcrumb coat (the flour helps the egg adhere and the egg helps the breadcrumbs adhere). For the pork chops we seasoned the flour with powdered onion/garlic, salt and pepper - it's not necessary to season all three steps, but you can if you want.



My partner Dustin fried the pork chops in a tilt fryer with a thin layer of oil. By frying I really just mean searing, for that crispy brown layer that looks and tastes appealing (thanks Maillard reaction!).



Then, to ensure the meat inside was cooked, we popped the trays of pork chops into the oven until a thermometer inserted into the chops read 155°F.



To finish, we ladled gravy (veal and chicken stocks thickened with roux) over the chops and garnished with a slice of lemon and a parsley leaf.



***

The same technique of sear-and-bake was used on another entree my station made - blackened catfish. The blackened-ness is due to rub of pre-mixed cajun spice that I put over the filets, surprisingly easy and super delicious.

The sauce was just roasted red bell pepper pureed and mixed with mayonnaise. The garnish was chopped scallions. The result? Yum.

pasta station

Maybe I've been making pasta all my life, or maybe there were less tasks to keep track of, but pasta station was pretty simple. Make spaghetti, reheat marinara and bolognese sauces, and put together a pasta special.



In the time that I was on pasta station, a two-person station, I made up two pasta specials. One was penne with italian sausage, caramelized onions, corn and spinach in a light tomato sauce (as seen above). The other was penne with bacon, bacon-greased onions, peas and cherry tomatoes in a bechamel sauce. (Yes, I like penne a lot.)

With the amount of volume we were doing, the ingredients had to be pretty simple. The bacon basically cooked itself over heat, the onions were sauteed in the same pan the bacon was done in, the peas were from a box (freshly thawed!) and the cherry tomatoes came straight out of the basket.

Mise-en-place was to be expected, knowing me and my organized-ness, but it made things a lot easier since the pasta server out on the cafeteria would sometimes be giving us a minute's notice before another full hotel pan was expected to be out. So I would blanch some cooked pasta (by lowering a colander full of it into a steam kettle like the one I made soup in), go down the line and toss stuff in, then add sauce and mix.



For the pasta special to sell well, Chef Hammerich reinforced that it needed to be very well-sauced and super colorful. Hence the cherry tomatoes on what would've simply been bacon, peas and cream sauce.



I discovered belatedly that though the special was well-sauced, it wasn't well-salted. But it sold well! :X

dicing tomatoes

Another fixture of prepping for Latin Quarter was making salsa fresca.



I don't know how many portions that was, but 40 tomatoes went into it.



And by 40 tomatoes, I mean 40 tomatoes small-diced by hand. But you know, that's in addition to those 6 onions, 6 bunches of cilantro, 4 bunches of scallions, and 12 jalapeños all small-diced. Repetitive motion injury aside, this meant a lot of time meditating on how tomatoes could be diced better/faster.

So the one thing I hate about cutting tomatoes is that usually the skin is so tractionless that the knife experiences resistance trying to cut. So I wanted a dicing method that would sidestep cutting into skin. Several experimental methods later, I settled on this one.



First cut the sides of the tomato off so the tomato is one block (this is good practice for cutting cube-shapes out of any cylindrical-shapes, like a carrot for example).



Cut the block into slices (vertical cut) and then cubes (horizontal cut).



Take the tomato sides/ends and slice, then dice those.

And there you have it, the dicing tomato method that is almost all flesh and no skin. Now salsa fresca your way to happiness!

mass production

It happened pretty fast, a third of the semester went by and it was time for us to rotate into Chef Hammerich's section, or the mass production every day section.

My first station was prepping for Latin Quarter, a culturally-themed cafeteria outlet run by third semester students. We made things like carne asada and queso and mexican rice, which was what I did the first day on station.



And there you have it, a gigantic rondo (round pot/pan) full of mexican rice. Not hard actually, just sweat onions/garlic in butter, dump rice grains in and mix till shiny, then add water & canned tomatoes, season, and cover + simmer until done.

When I made mexican rice at home today I did a different take by using a rice cooker. I sauteed onions, mixed in fresh tomatoes, then some canned pasta sauce, then poured in the mixture into the cooker with rice and chicken stock (made by diluting "better than bouillon"). It came out pretty well.

I have to say though, after cooking massively quantities of things, home cooking begins to look like small peanuts. The stock pot I once thought was huge now looks like a bowl.



(Said stock pot with homemade pasta sauce inside, roughly the one for this lasagna recipe.)

But really, I think that anyone who can cook at home can also cook massively. The processes are pretty much the same, it's mainly the equipment that's different (which makes it seem daunting). And the large quantities just mean that mise en place is ever more crucial, because at home you can afford to zip back and forth between the refrigerator and prep, but in an industrial kitchen? Fuhgeddaboudit!

entree station

Next was the daunting entree station, where I was alone with the work of producing 120 portions of something. Well, usually starch station (in charge of making the accompanying rice/pasta/potato/etc.) would help me out and we would partner up to do both things, but there was this one day where I roasted 120 portions of chicken by myself, and if it weren't for the fire alarm that disrupted everything, I wouldn't have gotten the chicken out in time for cafeteria lunch service. Sadly that was one of the days I forgot to bring my camera, so I don't have evidence of that catastrophe/accomplishment.



Other things we did in entree station were, for example, frying 120 portions of fish (I did the flouring of the fish filets, which was fun - slap, flip and pat down, a rhythm you could get a groove into).



What distinguishes a culinary school cafeteria from a regular one would be the little touches - for the fried fish, it was the beurre meunière Chef Ogden piped with a pastry bag - butter we flavored with parsley, lemon and black pepper. Sadly I don't think anybody but us got to see the piped rosettes - the butter melted soon after meeting the fish (a match made in heaven).



The one thing I super enjoyed in entree station was the making of tamale pie, otherwise known as tamale filling + cheese sandwiched between slabs of cornbread. The cornbread dough had to be hand-spread to cover the bottom and top of the hotel pan, and I don't know what it is, but working with dough just makes me happy.



It's a kind of respite from the hustle that is everything else.