Oddness in the Air

Chef Duffy seemed a little bit edgy today, and strangely, Andy seemed to irritate him. Andy, who's one of the class stars, always willing to do the extra chore. He was garnishing smoked duck canapés with large pieces of dill, and both Silvia and Derrick asked him about it, as it looked like the filling would be totally overwhelmed. Andy, in his enthusiastic way, said, "Try it! It really tastes good!" and kept going. When Chef passed by, he immediately made the same "going overboard with the dill" kind of remark, and Andy repeated with his earlier confidence. "You're doing it again, Andy, " Chef said. "You are not listening to me, and going full steam ahead just as you please." Andy instantly began dismantling his appetizers. Later, he tried get the Chef's advice on a piece of partially-cured gravlax, which he had rinsed and was holding in his hand. I'm pretty sure Chef said the same words, "You're doing it again, Andrew! Don't carry around food in your bare hands!" Andy grabbed a piece of parchment for the salmon and said, "I'm sorry, Chef, but I've never heard that instruction before."

Meanwhile, Nadeen, who's been in class approximately 30% of the time, actually asked Chef yesterday during lecture for the definition of a canapé. I so wanted him to say, "Well, if you'd been in class on the first day, you would know because we discussed it in the first fifteen minutes." But no, he reviewed that definition and several others. Today she asked if we'd be making fondue in class. "I like fondue," Chef said, "but it doesn't exactly fit into the definition of Garde Manger." "Well, what is Garde Manger?" she asked, and you could hear loud sighs from throughout the room as he back-tracked again.

Andrea is big into beets, like she is into confit. So today she spent the morning roasting and peeling beets and making bread-crumbed sautéed goat cheese disks for them to sit atop. Silvia assembled a fruit platter and a cheese platter, and the garnishings for each. I peeled and deveined and poached two pounds of shrimp, then poached a pound of sea scallops, and made canapés from each. The best ones were 1-1/2" pita bread rounds, toasted, spread with curry mayonnaiase, topped with a slice of scallop, a dollop of chutney, and a sprinkling of mint chiffonade. Then I sprinkled them with a bit of cracked black pepper. They were happy-looking. I also made shrimp on herbed goat cheese "toasts" (though Chef picked up one of the naked rye rounds and said, "Where I come from, we know toast, and this isn't toast.") And I mixed up a spicy sauce of garlic/chili sauce, honey, lemon juice, and fish sauce, and tossed it with the rest of the shrimp. Those went onto buttered dark rye bread (closer to toast this time), garnished with a sliver of pineapple and some really cool little onion sprouts. There were some shrimp left over, so I made it into a salad with chopped romaine and cucumber. Now the fresh seafood shelf is empty.

As class ended, several of us were obviously scouting the contents of the refrigerators in preparation for Monday's Canapé Competency. We have a lot of stilton and red grapes. I'm going in that direction, I think. On toast. With some chopped walnuts.

As I was emptying my locker after class, Andy came down the hall to gather his stuff. "Have a great weekend," he said. "Are you okay?" I asked. "Hey, it comes with the territory," he said. He's got the right attitude, and no obvious need to carry a grudge.