Things Change, Things Remain the Same

Changes: I had my hair cut today and told my guy, for the first time in a year, that we're growing it out. The hat days are soon to be behind me.

Same Old Same Old: Even though we're in the very very very last class of our "senior" (advanced) part of the program, we've got a classmate who seems way out of her league. She's taking Advanced Garde Manger for the second time, but she's apparently missed quite a few days between here and there. I think there's some disability involved; I get the feeling that her vision is not 100%, which is a scary thing. And English is not her first language.

She started this morning taking the poaching jobs (oven-poaching of our salmon terrine; stove-top poaching of the squid bodies and the roulades), but by 9 am, she still didn't have anything in hot water yet and Andrea was the one getting heated. We switched gears and instructed her to slice zucchini in preparation for grilling. She told me she'd never used the slicer, so I went through it with her, stressing the use of the guard and other safety features. I mentioned to Chef Al that I was unsure of her abilities, and he said, "She's paid for an education just the same as you have." But the slices ended up grilled improperly; she can't seem to follow even the most basic instructions.

While trying to monitor our under-achieving teammate, and without Derrick, who didn't show up, Andrea, Silvia and I managed to get everything accomplished. In addition to the poaching, Andrea made mushroom salad and cold- and hot-smoked all the fish we'd prepped yesterday: salmon, sturgeon, trout, monkfish, oysters, and scallops. Silvia made a many-layered terrine of aspic, avocado, lobster, crab, and caviar. I skinned three monkfish and a big piece of tuna. The monkfish were dressed with truffle oil, saffron, lemon peel, and some of Chef Al's "special seasoning," then poached. I peppered and seared the tuna, then started on a marinade for the scraps, which will show up on Friday as ahi poke.

Andrea has correctly identified one of the main frustrations of this class, despite the ongoing presence of unqualified students: Chef Al gives us a list of tasks every day, but there's little reference to what we're actually trying to accomplish with each step, or what the end result would be. I mean, we know that we'll be building Friday's buffet, but it would have been nice to know where the seven salmon would end up when we were fabricating them (one cold smoked, one gravlax, one ka-su [an Asian-style cure], and the rest as roulades). Or that the fish stock we made yesterday with prawn shells would ultimately become aspic for the lobster-crab terrine. Maybe some people find it easier to work a step at a time. But some of us can handle the Big Picture.