In the Words of Fiona Apple

I've been a bad, bad girl. The last month has been pretty crazy between work and school and this and that and I've been quite remiss in posting my adventures in Baking/Pastry here as well as all the "fun" I've been having working, when they have the hours and I'm available...two variables that don't seem to have too much overlap.

I promise, promise to get this updated by cob Sunday. Right now I'm off to do my reading for class tonight while I bask in the glow of getting 17 out of 18 on my SUPER hard quiz. Yay!

Paella Madness

So, one of the amazingly cool things I've gotten to do in the first three days of my new, awesome job is work with chefs and staff from Jaleo at Taste of Bethesda making paella in a 7 foot pan. Yes, you read that correctly. I could have rolled around easily in the thing if it weren't so darn unsanitary and hot.

Here's a couple pics of the ginormous thing. To put it in perspective, those paddles are 3-4' long. This is the second step - the chicken is pushed to the sides (where the burner is turned off - there are three total) and the squash and other veggies are in the middle getting caramelized.

Here we are cooking the sofrito and tomato paste, right before adding the stock and rice.

This is us using doubled up spoons to mix up and scoop the paella onto plates. It served about 600 portions each time (we made three rounds). The guys from Jaleo were awesome. So friendly and nice and patient when I had 7,000 questions. I have been dubbed "La Reina de la Paella" and I love it. I'm waiting for my sash and tiara.

Plan B is Once Again Employed

For those of you who I haven't squealed with delight to...I recently was hired to work for a new venture which has the potential to not only be an incredible learning experience, but also an amazing first entry on my culinary resume. Jose Andres is starting up a catering business and I've been hired on as one of a small number of lucky chefs who get to learn how to make his food. I'm still somewhat in a state of disbelief to be honest. I've been putting in really long hours, all on my feet, am in a considerable amount of pain (thanks ankle and knees!), exhausted but completely exhilarated by what I've had the opportunity to do and see the last couple days.

Things I've learned so far:

• Slicing ham for four and a half straight hours did not change the fact that ham is one of the few things that makes me nauseated on sight.
• I can peel roughly 30 lbs of onions in 25 minutes.
• I really really need to become fluent in Spanish ASAP.
• I can still smile through anything, even four hours of back spasms while working.
• I'm able to make about 400 potato pancakes in 3 hours.
• Using the palm of your hand to cut off the ends of shredded potatoes against a metal scoop will leave scoop shaped welts on said palms for at least two days.
• Handling dry ice with bare hands will burn your skin.
• Working with food and chemicals and fancy schmancy equipment is ridiculously fun.
• Saying "I personally prepared food for Jose Andres, Placido Domingo, and their wives" does not get old. Ever.

In all honesty, I am so totally geeked out about what I'm getting to do. It's such a tremendous opportunity for me, having absolutely no industry experience, I wake up each day (sometimes as early as 3:30 am) looking forward to going to work. It's, thus far, been a blessing and a great reminder that this is what I want to do. This is the industry I want to be working in, these are the people I want to be surrounded by and learning from. It's such a great feeling I almost don't mind the fact I'm making less than half of what I was before. I will somehow find a way to make it work so that I can continue pursing my passion. After spending the last 20 years searching for it, I'm not letting it go. It feels too good.

Never Fear, I *am* Alive!

So, I decided to wait a bit after the practical final because I didn't want to relive the absolute anger and frustration I felt that night. Now that I'm completely (read: mostly) over it, I can gloss over it so I can get to the excitement that has been the last couple days.

That Friday night, we turned in our 200 questions of ridiculousness and each graded someone else's test. It was a really long, frustrating process. I ended up missing 10 of the 200 possible questions, which was only 5 points, but still. I strive for perfection, so when I don't reach it, I get irritated. Especially when it's due mostly to the absolute crappiness of the wording of the questions. Anyhoodle, we were all fired up and in surly moods heading into the practical portion of our final...which might explain why both teams failed it. Yeah. FAILED. It was horrible. Just a mess. Sigh.

Chef split us up into two teams and off we went. Our plan from the beginning was to have one person working on each dish and time them so we could serve him an entire meal, not piece by piece. About ten minutes in, Chef came over and asked me why the chicken wasn't on ice. Since I wasn't working on the chicken, I didn't have an answer for him. He got on me pretty hard about how I needed to be leading my team, watching over everything. So we adjusted and I became the head chef and periodically checked in with each person, pulling the team together every 15 minutes so that each of us knew where everyone was on their dish and ensuring that we were on schedule. Well, while our communication and planning was top notch, the execution was...well...obviously lacking. I'm not going to go into particulars because I'll just get annoyed again. Instead, I'll let you know I earned an A in both classes (lecture and practical).

Saturday we went through our presentations for the Safety and Sanitation class. Some were fantastic and some were...not. Mine was just fine thanks almost entirely to my friend Blaise. He's a rockstar for helping me out! I ended up getting a 93 on my Serve Safe test (equals missing about 4 questions out of 80) which isn't bad given that I really didn't study or go over anything after the mid-term. Unfortunately, I missed one class so that dropped my final grade to a B. Grrrr.

Saturday night we did a deep clean of the kitchen. I got to work on the spice rack cleanup with the young nice guy from my second group and Air Force. I'm really thankful we had those three hours cleaning the kitchen because most of us managed to make it a fun experience and that's what we left the class with - a final reminder of how much fun we had over the previous 10 weeks.

So that's the first quarter of school wrap up. I start my second quarter Thursday. Well, technically my classes have begun because my online nutrition class (which, thankfully, is only 5 1/2 weeks) has already begun posting assignments. In class classes start for me Thursday though. I'll once again be spending my Thurs, Fri, and Sat nights from 6-10:30 in Rosslyn. This time I'll be regaling you with tales of Baking and Pastry.