We started in on our 4th term today called “APC,” or “advanced professional culinary arts.” It is the final term before we start our externship! We were introduced to 2 new teachers, Chef Gielen and Chef Brown. They both have taught this class many times before and have a great chemistry between them. Today was the first time since the start of my schooling that we didn’t even step into a kitchen! It was a complete lecture day, which was actually kind of refreshing. We got a chance to sit down and have a lengthy chat covering the range of topics that we’ll be dealing with throughout the term. We were also given a surprise quiz! It covered a bunch of technical material that reached as far back as the 1st term. (Hollandaise anyone?) I’ll have to say, there was a lot of stuff I really had to reach for and just couldn’t recall. When concepts aren’t in heavy rotation they can slip through the cracks. If anything, the quiz was a precursor to the daily quizzes we’ll be having during this term. Which is nice because the material won’t have a chance to swim away…
We spent a bulk of our day discussing the major project for the term, creating a “tasting menu.” But before delving into too much detail, we got an overview of some different kinds of menus in existence...A static menu has the same dishes on it every day. A cycle menu changes daily and then repeats in a cycle of the same order. (Schools and cafeterias often incorporate this.) A la carte menus are ones where each item is listed separately (i.e. fast food). In the prefix menu, the price is fixed and you are allowed to choose selections from each course. And then there’s the tasting menu, which we will be presenting on last week of school. Its a special prefix menu designed to offer a sampling of the chefs creations…
It can have anything from 5-12 courses of really small portions. Ours will have 10 dishes. We won’t only be cooking the food, but also choosing a theme for the entire meal, which will determine exactly what the menu will be like. For example, we can go by holidays or different countries as our inspiration. And even though the dishes will be bite-size, the quantity will add up to quite a lot of food! Because of this, the menu has to be very well designed. We also had to start thinking about budgeting. The whole class has 1500 dollars to buy all the ingredients. I’m pretty excited about getting that part down as well; it’s a fascinating area for me. So this week we’ll start the planning process and get into some research for our tasting menus. It was such a great class today! I really learned a lot. Getting the opportunity to thoroughly discuss what we were doing in detail was really nice…
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