Day thirty-six: We hit our limit
Posted on | September 3, 2009
The second term is coming to an end. Today, we had our last day of bakeshop. The focus was on working with filo dough and appetizers. Tomorrow and the next day we will do game, first feathered, then furred.
Then, we have two days of tests, both in and out of the kitchen.
So, I suppose it is understandable that everyone has pretty much hit their limit.
“I like children; fried.”
~ W.C. Fields
It was a typical morning: The pastry classes dive bombed us with all sorts of sweets, predominately cookies, all spread out on tables in the student lounge. Most were pretty stale and nasty. But the madeleines were tender and lovely and called out to me. Several times. Alas.
All the female students were in the classroom on time. Actually, we were all in a bit early, just gabbing and munching. This one was telling us about her ride in (“The train stopped for, like, five minutes and went totally black and then someone screamed and I have never been so scared”) and that one was telling us about her weekend (“I wanted to make a salad but we didn’t have any salad makings in the house so I looked in the pantry and just grabbed whatever and made stuff out of that”). You know. The usual time-filler visiting that is so nice.
And where were the guys? Chef Ewok was on his way (he does not like to get in early). And the others were outside. Smoking. As usual. (Try and enter or leave the school just before a class starts or just after a class lets out and you have to secondhand smoke your way in or out.)
Only, normally, they dribble into the classroom just in the nick of time. Today? They were just late.
Yep. We’re all a little fried.
“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
~ Calvin Trillin
In the kitchen today, I made three things. First, I made the dough for char siu bao (Chinese steam buns). These are a family favorite, so I really wanted to learn how to make these. Gawky Guy decided he wanted to make not one, but two, sweet fillings for them. So were were going to have three types – his two plus my barbecue pork.
First, Gawky Guy made a sweet coconut filling tinted with so much vivid green food coloring that, even if it had been delicious, no one would have been brave enough to try it. Second, he made a lemon curd that was delicious, but that magically disappeared (seeped out?) when the buns were steamed, leaving them pretty tasteless.
Two down one to go.
I was going to make barbecue pork filling, but Mr. Big decided he wanted to do it, so I let him. But I shouldn’t have. His filling never made it into the dough. Instead, at the end of kitchen production, the student who was cleaning the stoves picked up a full saute pan and yelled “Hey, who’s meat is this?” It ended up in the garbage.
I suspect he never bothered to make the buns out of sheer ennui. He snuck out of production not once, but twice, for a smoke. Something students typically never do.
So nix on the steam buns.
Gawky Guy didn’t do anything else in production today (he also snuck out for a smoke). Mr. Big made a spanakopita filling (I made the actual spanakopitas) and a few lopsided puff pasty appetizers.
And I made a nice Moroccan almond and filo pastry (ground almonds and butter with sugar and cinnamon rolled into a filo dough, brushed with a bit of melted butter, and baked).
As for Chef Ewok, he was his usual very quiet, very droll self, offering a bit of quiet help, as needed. But, I suspect, even he, too, has hit his limit because by the end of the day he just sort of wandered out. Once he was gone, the guys disappeared yet again for yet another cigarette (we had plenty of visitors today with not one, but two, bunches of high school students touring the place, including one student who was very heavily pregnant, and odds are they all got a good lungful of secondhand smoke).
The women ended the day as they had started it: Munching and gabbing in a room void of males. Only, this time, it was what we had just baked instead of what the pastry students had baked.
And so it goes.
Comments
4 Responses to “Day thirty-six: We hit our limit”
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September 3rd, 2009 @ 7:04 am
You don’t make cooking school here sound either tasty (except what you make) or productive. Well, so it goes. Your filo sweets sound fabulous! Yum! And tell me, how in the world can people who want to cook, smoke? Or how can smokers be good cooks? Never figured that one out!
September 3rd, 2009 @ 8:40 am
Yes doesn’t smoking ruin the taste buds?
September 3rd, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
I always thought that it’s such an oxymoron for COoks to smoke…but I guess it’s like when nurses smoke right outside of the hospital.just my opinion, but I think smoking should be banned near cooking schools; it’s just bad advertising.
September 7th, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
Are you still in school or are you in your externship?