Mango Yolks and Baby Eels

It was back to Basic Cookery today with Chef Porter. Again, not tooo exciting - tilting skillets, mixers, pots, pans, etc. However, I did score another brownie point this morning. I pointed out that another definition for the word "supreme" is a segment of citrus that has been cut out sans pith, peel, or membrane. "YES" says Chef Porter. More on this later.

After school I booked it South and walked into the front door of Uchi. *PAUSE ||* For those of you not from Austin (or Austinites that live under a rock), Uchi is one of the few high end restaurants in town. The Executive Chef - Tyson Cole - was on Iron Chef America. I haven't met him yet. His assistants for the show - Paul Qui and Phillip Speer - were there, and I did meet them. Paul is the Chef de Cuisine and Phillip is the Pastry Chef. *PLAY >*
















I told the guy at the front that I was there to stage (like mirage). He got Paul, who introduced me to Ben - who would be my boss for the day. Ben put me right to work. I made sweet potato and yucca chips with a mandolin. I peeled and grated ginger and dikon - 2 cups each. I quartered cippolini onions and brussels sprouts - a quart each (with my Chef's knife from my kit!!!). Then we broke for family meal. They had a lovely spread of a salad, some udon noodles with veggies, chicken legs, a soup of some sort, some fried veggie something and leftover sushi rice. It was taaaasty - to me that is. Everyone else thought it was pretty awful. Perhaps my palette will mature throughout school so that I too can hate family meal. (PS. Anthony Bourdain specifically explained family meal as left over pasta, chicken legs and salad in "Kitchen Confidential". So I thought this was pretty funny).

Back to work: I peeled garlic. Like 10 full heads. A quarts worth. By hand. FOR AN HOUR! Then slid that garlic through a hand mandolin (handolin?) to finely shave it. Then it was shallots through the handolin. 1/2 gallon. Then I made orange supremes (see above) out of 10 oranges. Then we made fennel chips - shaved fennel through the mandolin, dipped it in simple syrup, put it on a sil-pad, and into the walk in to be baked later. We pickled shallots (that also needed to be sliced in the mandolin). Then I consolidated the walk in. Labeled the sauces and veggies that weren't labeled. And changed out the damp towels for the fresh fish.

Then I got to try the "Coffee Panna Cotta with Mango 'Yolk' and Coffee 'Soil'". Wow. Sooooo good. As was the "Peanut Butter Semi Freddo with Apple Miso Sorbet". Geez louise are they doin it right over there!

By this point, Ben had headed home and left me in the hands of Clifton, the expo (Or sous chef? I'm not entirely sure). He and I stepped outside and he inquired how I had liked staging (like miraging) there. I told him that I had an absolute blast. He followed that up with asking if I'd like to return on a regular basis. I peed a little and held in my squeal of delight. "Sure," I responded, as cool as the other side of the pillow. And that's that. My Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings will be spent prepping the hottest sushi restaurant in town for service. Yep. I'm sure I left some stuff out and I'll remember and add it later, but after 9 hours of slicing, mandolining, and peeling, I'm beat! I have a quiz in Basic Cookery tomorrow. Ace needs his sleep. See ya soon!