Another Week

So yeah, this week was pretty darn good!

I can't remember much, but a few choice things come to mind. To start, I made this Pain de Mie, which is a milk and butter enriched bread, and decided to add roasted garlic to it. This turned out to be a terrific idea and the owners have now insisted that it become a regular on the bread rotation. I also scored big with a new dessert I introduced on Thursday night, involving brownie and blondie scraps that I always have to cut off when I make perfect squares for the portions we sell. I borrowed the basic idea from a place I worked at for one day when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to take this job or not. The other place was doing a "brownie martini" and using only brownie bits and adding chocolate sauce and maybe chocolate liqueur, but I'm not sure about that, served in a martini glass. The dessert had a lot of potential, but I don't think they had made it really what it could be. My "brownie-tini" has both brownie and blondie bits, chocolate creme anglaise (creme anglaise is ice cream before you churn air into and freeze it) and then topped with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream. I made 8 servings on Thursday. When I came into work the next day, there was only 1 left! That day the chef told me to make 10! When I came in on Saturday, there were only 3 left. I'm pretty sure this will be a good seller, and that's awesome because the scraps were being given to the kitchen staff before, and now we're actually making money on them. Now don't think that I'm putting together stale brownies and blondies, they're totally still moist, which is the best part!

Also made one of my favorite desserts that I haven't made in a long time, cobbler. I was going to make apple-ginger, but the chef told me at the last second that he had overordered pears, so I changed it to pear-ginger. It made a nice contrast and the biscuit dough on top came out great. I love cobblers so much, as they are ridiculously simple, easy to make, and delicioso! I realized how much I am completely different from everyone at the restaurant though while I was making the cobblers. I was maybe a little too excited over them, knowing how great they turn out and having some feelings brought up by the memories of events happening during cobblers gone by (I know, it's cheesy, but it's completely true). I expressed my excitement about the cobblers to the chef while he was in the middle of a very relaxed service, and he said "you know Cyd, you really are a freak." He totally said it with a smile though, so I had to respond that I couldn't work there if I wasn't. But I could tell he still didn't get it. But you know what? He tasted the cobbler when it came out of the oven, and he said, "Put this on the floor (meaning out for sale on the menu) right now, cause it rocks." I was overjoyed, and I bet he knew right then what I meant about cobbler.

Other highlights were that we had a wedding in the place on Sunday. This meant no brunch, and 300 mini pastries instead. That must sound like a lot of work to most people, but it meant only relief to me. I chose to make blueberry tartlets, chocolate mousse and white chocolate mousse cups, chocolate covered strawberries, and tiny petit fours that looked like dominoes. It was so much fun. I know I can do those petit fours better the next time around, make them flatter and all the same size, but they still tasted good and the effect was totally there. They gave me an idea for a whole gaming theme next time around, like making little red dice, some type of cookie that looks like betting chips, and maybe pool balls or darts! It could be cool to make a cake like that too, like with a green top and tiny balls, or a dart board! I love the art part of this job! Oh, and the strawberries were pretty silly. Since it was a wedding, I dipped them in white chocolate first, then dark chocolate, to create a "jacket" effect, then I added bow ties and buttons on the exposed white so it made it look like the strawberries were wearing tuxedos. It was so cool and fun. I'd seen them in books before but never done them myself and they were much easier than I expected. Some of them turned out a little messy before I added the ties. This was because I got an unexpected slave who wasn't so good at dipping them. His name was Tom, and he had showed up that morning to assemble and decorate the wedding cake that he had made as a gift to the bride & groom. He wasn't a professional cake baker, and ended up needing a LOT of help. While some of his stuff was waiting, since he cooled down his frosting a little too much, he offered to help me, so I took him up on it. Let's just say I could definitely tell the difference between mine and his, but thankfully he didn't do too many of them! So I decided to be funny on the messy ones and do a couple of un-tied bow ties, giving that, after the wedding type of look. I also made a few with some regular ties. I hope the wedding party got it. But I'll bet they were too drunk anyway. At least, I hope they were!

Last but not least I have two non-food subjects to talk about. This week I think I bumped way up the "girl who knows her shit" scale. Basically what happened is that one of the new chefs, Joe, burned the shit out of something in a big pot. He then put the pot out of the way, but in the back of the restaurant. While going back there to sharpen my knives, I was almost choked with smoke, it was so bad back there. I wondered why he hadn't just put it outside. It turned out that he couldn't because the back door handle was malfunctioning and you couldn't get the door open. Luckily there was another door on the side that could be opened without going through the restaurant and the chef put the pot outside that way. We then both went back to look at the door and couldn't make head nor tail of it. We both walked away, and I went back to preparing my cobbler. I thought about it, and I started to get really pissed, because that door was a serious safety issue. What if there was a fire and no one could get out that way? I immediately found some tools and went to work on that door. I discovered that there was a piece of the handle that wasn't gripping the latch correctly any more, and I fixed it as best I could, but warned the owners that it would break again. No one said anything about it at first, but the next day, the chef told me he was pretty impressed to see me out there. I gotta say, I don't think anyone expected me to do it, let alone a girl. I think that even though I'm getting my shit together in the baking department, it's things like this that are going to save my ass later if I royally screw something up, like I'm bound to do!

The other thing that's been going on is that I want to throttle one of the dishwashers. I don't think I even know his real name. He's from Ecuador, as are most dishwashers and the like in the restaurant. I think there's one dude from Liberia, but he's a chef, so it's a totally different story. Anyway, this particular dishwasher told me his name was Jonathan, when I met him about two months ago. Every time I talk about him with someone else, they have a totally different name for him, like Turtle, or Gremlin. He totally looks like a turtle! Anyway, Turtle has been harassing me since day one. I thought maybe after a couple weeks he'd give it up, but I think he just likes to push my buttons now. He's not at work every night, but when he is, I just don't want to be there because he's always telling me that he loves me and asking why I don't like him. Why I won't just give him one kiss is uncomprehensible to this idiot. I want to kick him in the balls, but I also don't want to alienate him. He does a decent job at all the things he has to do, and I wouldn't want a backlash to happen, such as leaving my pans and bowls to the last to wash and such. So first I told him I had a boyfriend, and I told him that it was Papi, another guy in the restaurant. Papi is probably the oldest dude who works there, and he's totally awesome. I'm always happy to see him, and sometimes he stops in for coffee in the morning on the way to his other job. Papi is also from Ecuador. Well, Turtle didn't believe that for one second. So then I told him I was into girls. This may not be true either, but he doesn't have to know that. He took it seriously for a tiny bit more time than me going with Papi, but in the end, he didn't believe that either. So on Sunday he came back at me with more advances, and I finally had to put my foot down and tell him that it made really uncomfortable and that if he didn't stop, bad shit would happen to him. He apologized, but I wonder if he really understood. I didn't hear anything from him for the rest of the day, but I wonder if this will come up again. Somebody I was talking to about it this weekend said that if I had to, I should get him fired, as there was no excuse. Another guy at work said that Turtle was pretty stupid, so he probably wouldn't get it. Argh, my faith in society and people at large was finally starting to be solid again, and now it is being tested. Lame.

Okay, starting the hex cake construction this week. Wish me luck folks!