Level 5 Garde Manger – Me and Shrimp… (Shrimp and I?)

Level 5 Garde Manger – Me and Shrimp… (Shrimp and I?)

So where are we…? Well, I’ll tell you. This may be a little spoiler, but we’re 3 days after I have graduated the FCI. I’ll leave that comment at that, and when I finally get to this point in the story, I’ll give you my insight.

So then, where were we? We were done with pastry, Level 5, and about to begin Garde Manger. On the menu was seafood ravioli for level 5 and consommé for level 6. I don’t remember what exactly was in the consommé (I think it had some star anise flavor, but there was a baked custard in the middle – placed on the plate and the consommé was poured over it - that was absolutely delicious). The seafood ravioli was also a big hit, considering it has mussels, jumbo lump crab meat and shrimp in it, but the true beauty of the dish was the pasta.

Chef Justin was our main garde manger chef, and Chef Wanda subbed in one of the 3 days of the week. I found both of their styles interesting, and have drawn my own conclusions on which I thought had better techniques.

I’ll touch upon all of this. The pasta takes about an hour to prepare. That is, after measuring out the amounts, incorporating, kneading, and finally resting in the fridge for a while, it will be at LEAST an hour before you can begin to roll it out. Further it wasn’t simply rolling it out and making raviolis. The dish was an open faced ravioli, so we had to cut squares and just layer them like a sandwich. However, the pasta was unique because we pressed fresh herbs into the pasta! We would roll out a sheet of pasta. Layer fresh parley and tarragon in it, fold the pasta over, and re-roll it. As we rolled it out again, the herbs would flatten and spread out within the pasta, leaving a blown up image of the herbs within the dough. It looked so friggin cool, and added a nice touch to the pasta. Preparing the pasta, from start to finish took one person almost all of the time before service to finish. In the meantime, the other person would have to work on the seafood and the sauce. The seafood was no walk in the park either. You had to sift through a tub of crab meat for shells and other hard pieces, peel, de-vein, and cook the shrimp. Cook the mussels and remove the meat from the shells, and prepare the sauce, which was usually prepared ahead of time. There was also some cutting of fennel and onions and other veggies as well. So there was quite a lot for this one dish.

Remind me to tell you guys a little something about peeling and de-veining shrimp that I didn’t learn until my last class in the kitchen. And perhaps one of my fundamental gripes with the FCI (it’s not that bad at all).

Anyhow, at service time, we would cook up a couple of pasta squares, reheat some of the seafood mix in some butter and broth, and then sandwich them, froth up some sauce and send it out. It was a really beautiful appetizer, and quite tasty (lord knows is met the minimum butter requirement that makes everything tasty). What I loved about this station was that once you were ready for service, if you received one order, or 12 orders, it was a simple bam bam bam operation. Cook the pasta, reheat the mixture, froth the sauce and serve. If your mis en place was set up nicely, it was a walk in the park (after the initial set up, of course).

So, on to the differences between Chef Justin and Chef Wanda. Chef Justin had the pasta pre-made by one if his earlier classes. That was cool because quite frankly, we did know how to make pasta, and with the right ingredient amounts, we should be able to produce the same results. However, it detracts a little from the experience because we did not have to make it, let it rest, and so forth. But it was a nice break for us. With Chef Wanda, we made it ourselves, which, again, is also cool.

Now the real difference was the setting up of the mis en place. With Chef Justin, when it came time to reheating the seafood mixture, we would take a few spoonfuls of cold mixture, sitting on ice, and reheat it with a touch of butter, a touch of broth, S&P and reheat it until it was warm. This was an a la minute preparation, which I thought worked well. Chef Wanda’s setup was a hot bain-marie, with all of the seafood mixed with about a pound of butter resting inside, over a low flame. So basically, the seafood was drenched in butter and continuously cooking, or should I say, over-cooking. I felt like this made the seafood so much more touch and chewy, and took away from the meal. This was the primary difference, and I felt that it was enough of a difference to really hurt the dish. I did not like that method, but of course, I appreciated being able to learn and choose which I preferred. Oh, she also put a lot of butter in the pasta water, which I felt was unnecessary. But again, I drew my own conclusions after experiencing both styles.

Either way, Chef Wanda is awesome, but perhaps crazier than she leads us to believe. What I loved most about her was she liked to cook with flavor. She was, after all, Puerto Rican. When she would make family meal, and add the Latin flare to the dishes, everyone ate and enjoyed, especially the dish washers, who were primarily Hispanic. But I loved her arroz con gandules, and other sofrito laden dishes.

Chef Justin is a relatively young guy, ex-college baseball player who at some point took a turn to the chef life. I think he went to the CIA, but I don’t recall. I also think he has a lot more stories than he shared with us, but I guess that’s for other students to drag out of him. It was a good station, without the stress of Chef X breathing down our backs, but still a high quality product.

Oh yeah, and one more thing which was what I mentioned previously. We had to peel a box of shrimp each time we were in the Garde Manger station. I also had to peel boxes of shrimp for other stations. Chef Justin gave me the basis of peeling the shrimp. Pinch off the legs, and the pull it out of the shell. Chef X took it a step further, after pinching off the legs and peeling the shell, lay out all the shrimp on the cutting board and slice them all, really quickly, down the back, depositing them into a bowl. Then you wash them in the sink to remove the veins. However, Chef Janet took the cake with her method. She simply took a pair of scissors and cut down the back portion of the shell. This not only made removing the shell a cinch, but it also cut the back and often times removed the vein, all in one shot!

WHY WAS I NOT TAUGHT THIS FROM DAY ONE?! Things like these, short-cuts, efficient shortcuts that save time and effort (perhaps the definition of efficiency), should be taught in classes, in the restaurant, etc. Why don’t the chefs communicate this with each other? Even after Chef X showed me his way, and seemed very confident that his way was perhaps the best, he seemed mesmerized by Chef Janet’s way, and said “do it her way.”

I learned this on my last day of level 6, after de-veining 8 boxes of shrimp at school by myself, and lots of shrimp at home. Seriously, why?

So, if Chefs are reading this at the school, I think its something to consider. Perhaps you should have conferences to discuss simple menial tasks that are carried out regularly, and then share your thoughts and decide upon a best way. An FCI way. So when we go to a kitchen, and they give us 20 lbs of shrimp to peel and de-vein, we have the FCI agreed upon best way. Yes, all chefs will do things differently, and some ways are better than others, but at least we’ll have in the bank what a collective group of great chefs determine to be the best method(s).
With that said, I can’t imagine what other ways there are to do the things that I’ve learned and have gotten good at. I wish I had more learning experiences like those.