Ok, so before I start talking about this class, it’s not going to be too exciting. In this class, we learned about the storeroom with all the food products in establishments and especially the storeroom at Johnson and Wales. Our storeroom is much bigger than probably a lot of restaurants because we’re supplying food everyday for a lot of kitchens, not just one like in a restaurant. We learned a lot about purchasing and receiving food, how to store food, food cost, and product identification.
Our main duty in this class was filling requisitions for all the chefs in the classes. We get papers with all the ingredients a certain chef needs for each day. Each group in our class fills out ‘shopping lists’ for that specific chef and we go ‘shopping’ through the storeroom to gather all the food products. Once we get it all and weigh all of the products and record them, they get checked by a certain person in our group, and then checked again by the manager of the day in our class. They need to be checked multiple times so in case one person doesn’t see an error, someone else will. That way, the Chefs will get what they need.
Yes, that does sound like free labor but we actually are learning to work together as a group, learn what certain products are and look like, and how to work quickly and efficiently.
Another part of the class (much more fun), was product identification. With this, we all sat at a long table and the chef grabbed a lot of different products we had in the storeroom and we learned a little about each of them and tasted them!
We tried a lot of different produce, some really common to me like different berries, different tomatoes, celery, different apples, and so much more. There was other produce either I never tried or never tasted, including rutabega, radishes, parsnips(delicious btw) tomatillos, and daikon. We tasted herbs familiar to me like parsley, cilantro, oregano, dill, and thyme, and others unfamiliar like marjoram, tarragon, watercress, and chervil.
As far as grains went, we didn’t try them because they weren’t cooked, but we did get to see and feel them so we can get a grasp on the different kinds. There were plenty that I didn’t know, like different types of couscous, beans such as black turtle beans, all the different kinds of lentils and millet. I wish we could’ve tried them cooked though…but oh well, I guess I gotta practice making those with different flavors when I go home!
We tasted salt…ick! But the thing was, you can taste the difference…kinda! lol I didn’t know so many existed! Another wierd thing we tasted was extra virgin olive oils. Again, there are distinctions between them all…like thick or thin, and a floral/fruity/earthy taste. There was one that I really liked, called Olio Verde, which had a fruity/nutty taste.
Another few tastings we did were cheese and nuts. Tasting the cheeses side by side was really cool! There was a difference in all the textures and toughness and the amount of time they were aged. There were a lot I enjoyed like feta, brie, neufchatel, boursin, FRESH mozzarella (AMAZING compared to pressed mozzarella), provolone, and smoked gouda.
Tasting the different nuts was really fun as well, because I love all the different kinds! On our 2nd to last day of class, we were given 150 different products of everything we learned about and we had to write them all down, figuring the food products based on sight, smell or taste if we needed to! It was difficult, especially with certain products like herbs and vegetables that look so similar!
No comments:
Post a Comment