The Creative Part
Take five ingredients: a whole chicken, a whole trout, new potatoes, Swiss chard, blueberries and raspberries, plus CDN $10 (which the school funds, thankyouverymuch) for whatever extra goodies you'd like. Invent and deliver: an appetizer, a "trim dish" (more about this later), a main course, and a dessert. Deliver the trim dish for the first day, and also do all possible prep for the remaining dishes that same day, so they can be delivered quickly the second day. All these dishes get critiqued by the Chef-Instructors, and we're to perform self-critique as well.
My mind is pretty well wired (no, not that way -- think "rigid") so it is both a challenge and a source of frustration to deal with these aspects of the assignment. To my delight, however, I find that exercising my right-brain through assignments like this (and prior menu development exercises) spills over into other creative outlets. My photography has improved; I can "see" things better in my mind's-eye. I used to see education just as a process of assimilating new facts. This is a whole nuther thing. It's scary and exciting at the same time.
The Analytic Part
Restaurants try to operate at a profit. The ones that are successful (that's about one in five) are usually those that have a handle on what profit means: the excess of income over expense. Most of you reading this would say "duh, it's a business. Money comes in, money goes out, you keep the difference". But I think a lot of people who get involved in the restaurant trade fail to grasp these basic ideas. They don't know what their costs are, and don't know what steps to take to manage them. They're hooked on some romantic notion about owning a restaurant. It's good to see this as a prominent aspect of our training: for those who will rise into restaurant management, it's an invaluable lesson.
The profit margins in most restaurants are pretty slim -- 8 to 10%. Owners have control over some aspects of their expense line (what to pay workers, how much to pay for ingredients). The rent, the utility bills -- they are what they are; one doesn't have much control over these. The choices are, then, what to pay for what goes into the food, and what to charge for the food. Its an interesting balance (this appeals to my analytical mind): if you make food out of garbage you can't charge much for it (and you won't be able to for long), if you go "hog wild", you can't charge enough to recover your costs. The Home Chef might think ponder what cut of meat to buy, or whether to "invest" in an expensive ingredient. But the cost of delivering food to friends and family isn't at the forefront of his or her shopping experience -- it costs what it costs.
In addition to the menu synthesis, we're to report on the complete costing of one of the dishes. This includes analytical aspects like:
-
As-purchased cost. You bought a chicken; what'd it cost?
- You used the two chicken breasts and one leg/thigh, in your appetizer and main course: what are those parts worth ("portion cost")
- You used the wings (which you'd otherwise toss) -- how's this affect your "bottom line"
plus
- Critique of the dishes
- Wine pairings
- Ingredients and methods
Foodstuffs are broken down into the portion, the trim, and the waste. "Portion" and "waste" should be pretty clear; trim (thus a "trim dish") is some byproduct of an ingredient that may be used in some creative way. For example, another group used slices of pineapple in a dish, leaving the core and a few "bits" -- we used these in a sweet/sour sauce
A couple of twists
-
This is 5% of our grade (so, half a "letter" grade, in effect)
- Since we're in pairs, we're both graded on the project -- not necessarily our individual efforts
- All the dishes are supposed to be "Fine Dining caliber" -- but we have little training (aside from our individual experiences in fine-dining restaurants) -- what this really entails
Mixed Success
My partner Will and I delivered:
- Trim dish: A mostly-classic Waldorf salad, using tasted hazelnuts for some extra crunch (walnuts are classic), and topped with chopped pistachios (mostly for color). Verdict: well prepared, good flavor... but "not a fine dining caliber dish". We liked eating it anyway.
- Appetizer: Pecan-encrusted Trout on "Seedy Garlic Swiss Chard", with a tamarind spicy-sour sauce. We took a single trout fillet, dipped in egg white, crusted with ground pecans. We fried it briefly (simple olive-oil blend), served on the chard (for the chard, we roasted minced garlic and sunflower seeds, then wilted the chard in that along with its own liquid). Topped the fish with a tamarind sauce (orange juice, liquid made from tamarind paste), fresh pineapple, serrano chile). Lovely; Chefs wanted only for more sauce.
- Main: Chicken en papillote. Another [deemed not sexy-enough] classic, we started with a bed of medium-sliced zucchini, fanned out. On top of this (each layer seasoned with fresh thyme and sage), we layered BC nugget potatoes cut to identical thickness as the zucc's. Then the chicken breast, then thin slices of lemon.
The Results
Here're a few photos of classmates' plates (ours' aren't here... we were too busy preparing them to take pictures of them!). My partner and I got a 94.5 for the effort -- I was expecting more like 85%. This was genuinely a thrill.
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