Garde Monger

I'm sure you are wondering, what do those words Garde Monger even mean? Well, before this class I had no idea either! The definition is actually, "The Keeper of Cold Food, to be Eaten." The Garde Monger department in a hotel or restaurant is in control of the salads, hors d' Oeuvres, canapes, cures, brines, cold sauces, and ice sculpting. Basically, everything coming from the Garde monger department is cold food.

Day 1 we learned the structure of salads and basics about hors d'Oeuvre platters and such. The chef had a lot of ingredients he picked to have and said we can just go and choose what we wanted and make a salad with all the components. I decided on making a spinach salad with a raspberry red wine and honey vinaigrette with cucumbers, chopped red peppers, boison cheese (garlic and herb cheese) and toasted almonds.  The four components of the salad include the base (bottom: spinach), body (main feature: spinach), garnish (accents: cucumbers, red peppers, cheese, and almonds) and dressing (vinaigrette). Also, a crunch component is important in salads(mine was the almonds).

Day 2 was....ICE SCULPTING! I'd have to say, I was pretty intimidated when I heard we had to sculpt a 300 lb block of ice!! After all the blocks were out and ready, he taught us all the steps and how to go about this endeavor. First we had to figure out a design, and then mark all the dimensions and draw our designs on a 40x30'' piece of paper. Then we placed it on the block of ice and pricked the outine of the drawing into the ice.

Then we started to use the chainsaw!!! I was super nervous...but it was actually a lot less scary than I imagined! It was a little heavy for little Nikki, but I managed!

Once all the big pieces were cut off, my partner with this project, Laura, used an iron to smooth off all around it so it looked cleaner!

After a hard mornings work, our SNOWMAN was complete!!!

Day 3 we made some salads again, and also preserved a certain protein. My groups's protein was flank steak. We had to brine and cure it. Brining is preserving the meat in a liquid with salt, sugar, and herbs/spices. Curing is preserving with salt, sugar, and herbs/spices. Curing is a dry method. We let those sit over the weekend and cooked them on day 4. Before jumping to day 4, I'll show you the salad I made (Butter lettuce with a lemon and dill vinaigrette with yellow peppers, avocado, salmon, and pistachios!)

Something exciting also happened on day 3! I was working at my station, and right behind me was a sausage maker deconstructed. The handle was attached to a big piece of equipment and while someone was passing me, their apron caught ahold of the handle and brought the whole thing down and it landed on my ankle! It hurt soo bad and left a bruise. It mainly just hurt that day. This just adds to my collection of kitchen battle wounds! haha

Here's the platter we presented with the roasted beef on the left and the smoked on the right. The white sauce is a creamy bleu cheese sauce and the other is a brown sauce with red wine and heavy cream. The two bowls on either side of the meat is pickled ginger (we were required to pickle something for this platter).

I'm going to stop for now, but I'll fill you all in soon on my platter presentations that we'll be working on next!