My Bistro Bleu Service Shift (7 & 8 May 2009) - Part 2

(Continued from a previous post.)

As I mentioned the other day, I was doing my service shift in Bistro Bleu last Thursday and Friday, and these were the dishes some of my fellow students prepared for Bistro Bleu lunch:

Alsace Menu
Appetizer: Warm Leeks and Cream Tart
Main Course: Pork Tenderloin Medallions, Beer Sauce and Sauerkraut
Dessert: Mirabelle Plum Millefeuille and Pear Sorbet



Day 1 plating of appetizer: Leek Tart



Day 2 plating of appetizer: Leek Tart



Day 1 plating of main course: Pork medallion with beer sauce, served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes



Day 2 plating of main course: Pork medallion with beer sauce, served with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes



Day 1 plating of dessert: Millefeuille with caramelised pear and mirabelle plums, served with pear sorbet (the curved piece next to the quenelle of pear sorbet is made from chocolate cigarette paste)



Day 2 plating of dessert: Millefeuille with caramelised pear and mirabelle plums, served with pear sorbet and topped with chocolate decorations (this photo is courtesy of a friend who was working in the cuisine kitchen on the day)

My Bistro Bleu Service Shift (7 & 8 May 2009) - Part 1

Yesterday and today (from 8am to 2:30pm) I did my Bistro Bleu service shift. It was truly an eye-opening experience.

The Assistant Maitre D for Signatures restaurant came and taught the four of us how to do service in the Bistro Bleu dining room. We learnt to do table setting and service in the way they do it in Signatures restaurant, albeit a much simpler/basic version of it. It was so good to have a professional show us what exactly needed to be done, and how to do it well.

Before this, I had no idea so much was involved in fine-dining service. I had never worked as a server (or waitress) before, so I had to learn everything from scratch for Bistro Bleu service, including
* how to position the tablecloth on the table (always find the centre of the cloth and make sure that is in the centre of the table),
* how to fold the napkins,
* how to determine position 1 at any table (the single folded crease on the tablecloth points to position 1, then go around clockwise),
* what cutlery to use and where to place them,
* how to serve water (fill 2/3 of the glass, no more and no less) and coffee (fill to about 1.5cm from the top of the cup),
* how to remove plates from the table (tuck the knife under the fork before picking up the plate),
* how to present a plate to the patron (which not easy when you are serving a plate with a napkin),
* how to serve bread,
* who to serve first (always serve a lady first), etc.



This is the Bistro Bleu apron the servers wear over their chef's jacket. I love this bright blue colour. Looks really nice and cheerful indeed.



This is a photo of the cutlery from Signatures restaurant that we use in Bistro Bleu. We got them ready before service, so that we could place the required cutlery on the table ("mark the table") just before serving the main course or dessert.



This is what a table setting for two should look like. With the cutlery for appetisers and bread set out on the table before patrons arrive. The blade of the knife should always face the left side. The bread knife is lined up with the fork, the water glass is placed within comfortable reach of the patron, the napkin folded and placed between the fork and knife, the width between the knife and fork should be about the width of the chair (and wide enough for the appetiser plate) ... There are many of these little "rules" to remember. I know some of these are commonsense, but it is good that we were explicitly told the rules (so that we can pay attention to them).



Here's a table setting for 10. We used a large round table for it. And the Assistant Maitre D showed us how to set out the cutlery for a round table (which is set out somewhat differently from a square table).



This is what coffee service entails. We were shown how to position the coffee cup on the table, how to prepare the milk, cream and sugar tray, and how to serve coffee.

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It was fascinating to see how effortlessly the Assistant Maitre D was able to move around the dining room without disturbing the patrons. He obviously has had years of experience to be able to do this.

I made quite a few mistakes yesterday, simply because I didn't know what to do some of the time or I forgot what to do. It was fortunate the Assistant Maitre D was there to whisper hints to us, and to coach us on what to say and do. I am glad the patrons allowed us to practise our skills on them. Most of them were really nice about it - they understood we were just beginning to learn about service in the dining room.

Today was much better. I did make a couple of mistakes, but I remembered not to make the same mistakes I made yesterday, and I felt much better about the whole experience.

On the whole, I have to admit there were a number of things I simply could not do very well first up. Many of the skills require a lot of practice, and strength. I didn't have the strength required, nor enough practice, to be able to do some of the things the Assistant Maitre D asked us to do, so he simplified it for us. For example, I was finding it difficult to carry some of the plates and trays. They are large and heavy! I could only carry 2 plates at a time (whereas the Assistant Maitre D could carry 3 plates to the table easily), so he allowed me do whatever I could manage, without compromising the quality of the service. This, I am most grateful for.

If I had a choice, I would never do service again, because I prefer to be back of the house (i.e. in the kitchen) -- my comfort zone. But I am glad LCB Ottawa got us to experience what it is like to do service, because I now have a new-found appreciation for what the servers do in a fine-dining restaurant. All the little details involved... They are definitely good to know.

Anyway, it's been a gruelling day. I shall continue my blog post on Bistro Bleu another day.

Bistro Bleu

Yesterday and today I did my official Bistro Bleu shift in the pastry kitchen, from 8am to 2pm. There were altogether 9 students involved in this week's Bistro Bleu: 4 for service, 3 for cuisine and 2 for pastry. Each group of students was supervised by at least one chef. We used the Signatures restaurant kitchen to prepare the dishes on the set menu, and Salle Cointreau was used as the dining room (photos below).


Salle Cointreau dining room


Table setting for four (Everything was prepared on the day by the students who were working as servers)

The menu for 16 & 17 April was as follows:
Bressan Menu
Appetiser: Chicken Liver Salad with Sherry Vinegar
Main Course: Roasted Chicken Supreme, with the Leg prepared Parmentier style
Dessert: Galette Bressane (Regional Buttery Pastry) served with a Dark Chocolate Cream
[It costs $25 per person for just the 3-course meal; but $32 per person for the meal with a glass of wine. The boutique bread/baguette served at the start of a meal is made in-house and is complimentary.]

Students were given an opportunity to learn how to prepare, cook and plate the food. It was exactly the same menu for both days, but the plating designs varied slightly (because the cuisiniers had two different supervising chefs on Thursday and Friday, and they had the chance to see and learn how each chef would plate the food).

Here's what the 3-courses looked like, for Day 1/Thursday and Day 2/Friday (click on photo for a larger image):


Day 1 plating of the appetiser: Chicken Liver Salad



Day 2 plating of the appetiser: Chicken Liver Salad (The garnish on top of the salad was made with pâte à choux -- I made the pâte à choux, the cuisiniers piped it in a crosshatch pattern onto a silicon mat and baked in the oven until golden brown, and it came out crispy like a pretzel)



Day 1 plating of the main course: Roasted Chicken Supreme, with the Chicken Leg prepared Parmentier style (Basically, it was a piece of beautifully-roasted chicken breast, served with vegetables and a delicious sauce. And the confit chicken leg was served with mashed potatoes in a glass, topped with a parmesan chip)



Day 2 plating of the main course: Roasted Chicken Supreme, with the Chicken Leg prepared Parmentier style (Here, the confit chicken leg was wrapped in crispy spring roll wrapper, and also served with mashed potatoes in a shot glass, topped with a parmesan chip)



Day 1 plating of the dessert: Galette Bressane with Dark Chocolate Cream (Note: the orange-coloured fruit is the physallis or ground cherry, aka cape gooseberry)



Day 2 plating of the dessert: Galette Bressane with Dark Chocolate Cream (Galette Bressane is a disc of brioche dough, topped with a sweet cream mixture, and baked until golden brown)

So, would you pay $25 for this 3-course meal?

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A classmate and I had the opportunity to work in the pastry kitchen under the supervision of Chef T, who is a really good mentor (even if he does not speak a great deal of English). Chef T was so patient with us, and he showed us a number of really good/smart techniques for doing things (those which make you think "why didn't I think of that?" when you see him doing it). He talked us through how to prepare the individual components for the dessert. We made brioche dough and a cream filling for the galette bressane, and we also made a smooth and silky dark chocolate cream to be served on the side. This dark chocolate cream was so good that even the cuisine chefs, who came over to have a look at what was going on in the pastry kitchen and were given a taste of the cream, thought it was amazing. And I have the recipe for it now. ;-)

On top of that, we had time to practise making chocolate decorations for the plated dessert. I finally got the hang of making chocolate fans using the cold marble board. Yesterday, I could not make any chocolate fans that were good enough to be served (so the failed chocolate fans were melted down and re-used), but today I was able to make quite a few nice ones. As I have always said, practice makes perfect.

I just love working with chocolate - I don't mind practising making chocolate decorations again and again because I find it quite meditative. Also, I was glad to learn how to make brioche using a large mixer -- it was so much easier than doing it by hand (which we had to do in Basic Pastry).

On Day 1 our plating design of the dessert was somewhat simple, and even then it took us quite a few minutes to present each plate; but on Day 2 we were more familiar with the routine, so we enhanced our plating design slightly and were still able to plate the dessert really quickly. Not only did we learn to plate desserts, we learnt how to work as a team in a kitchen as well.

Overall, it was a most satisfying learning experience. I felt I learnt a lot of practical skills that will help me greatly in my future career. I have to say the highlight was seeing the plated desserts go out to the patrons and then receiving compliments from them (one of the servers came back and told us some customers loved the dark chocolate cream and sent their compliments). It really felt good. This Bistro shift did my self-confidence a lot of good.

A Long Day

Yesterday was a long day for me. I volunteered in Bistro Bleu from 8am until nearly 2pm, and then I had a 5-hour superior pastry workshop (i.e. practical class) from 3:30pm. I didn't get home from School until well after 9pm.

I knew it was going to be tough, but I wanted to see if I could handle it. Just a test for myself. I'd actually done something similar before: Production Kitchen shifts from 6am to 2pm, and then demo classes from 3:30pm to 6:30pm. Those were pretty long days, but nothing as demanding as yesterday.

With Bistro Bleu, each week there is a different set menu, and it costs $25 per person; or $32 per person with one glass of wine. The small dining room seats up to 30 people (which means students do only 30 covers, at the maximum). Bistro Bleu is a great opportunity for Superior Cuisine/Pastry students to practise their skills and gain some experience in both kitchen and service, all the while under the supervision of chef instructors.

Students do the same menu for Thursday and Friday. Therefore, I was basically doing the same thing I did on Thursday. It made a huge difference to me, because I had an idea of what I was supposed to do and what the finished product should look like. Besides, I was working with a classmate this time (again under the guidance of Chef N), and it was a lot easier. As they say, many hands make light work.

In about 2 weeks' time, I will have my official kitchen shift for Bistro. Some time in May I will have to do an official service shift as well, which will be a real challenge, seeing as I don't even know how to make coffee (I don't drink coffee, and never had to make coffee for anyone).



Bistro Bleu table setting for two


This was the set menu for Bistro for 3 & 4 April 2009:
Normandy Menu
Appetiser: Seafood Feuilleté
Main Course: Valle d'Auge Veal Chop, served with vegetables
Dessert: Normandy Tart, served with apple sorbet and cinnamon caramel sauce


Day 1 plating of the appetiser: Seafood and pasta



Day 1 plating of the main course: Veal Chop and vegetables



Day 2 plating of the main course: Veal Chop and vegetables



Day 1 plating of the dessert: Normandy Tart (Apple Tart) and apple sorbet (The apple sorbet is piped with a 15mm round tip)



Day 2 plating of the dessert: Normandy Tart (Apple Tart) and apple sorbet (The apple sorbet is piped with St Honoré tip)


I enjoyed making the apple sorbet (with apple puree, syrup, glucose, stabiliser and inverted sugar). It was not too difficult and it tasted great! I can imagine making other kinds of fruit sorbet at home in the future -- lime, kumquat, mango, passionfruit, lychee and persimmon, at the very least, because my sister grows these in her backyard.

Anyway, I found it most interesting to observe how the cuisine students work in the Bistro kitchen. The cuisine kitchen is hot, and things move at a frenetic pace (compared to pastry, that is). Some of the stock pots and large saucepans are really heavy too... It is no wonder there are not as many women taking Superior Cuisine (basically, there are more men in Superior Cuisine and more women in Superior Pastry this term). However, I think the women who do take Superior Cuisine have found ways to cope with the challenges.

I shall write about my 5-hour Superior Pastry workshop in my next blog post, along with some photos of my Bûche de Noël (mousse version of the Christmas Log).

Three Important Things I Learnt in Bistro Today

Chef CP (from Production Kitchen) always likes to ask students to tell him three things they learnt in Production Kitchen after their Production Assistant shift. And I like using that as a way to reflect on what I'd learnt after a particular experience. It helps me to remember the more important things I'd learnt. Anyway, that was to explain the title of this blog post.

Today I volunteered for Bistro Bleu (short for Bistro Cordon Bleu), and was fortunate to have Chef N there to supervise the pastry section. I say that because he would patiently coach students through the steps as they do something, and that takes a great deal of pressure off the students. It works for me -- the few times he has coached me through a process, I learnt really well. I guess that's my learning style.

I truly enjoy being involved in Bistro Bleu, simply because I learn so much every time I am there. Often, I am dragged out of my comfort zone, and even though I resist at first, I am always grateful the chefs insist that I do something that I might be reluctant to do initially.

Chef N taught me an important lesson today (I know Chef CP tries to get me to do this as well, especially with bread dough): Always taste your product before you put it in the oven, even if it is raw. That way you can tell if something is not quite right before you bake it. Once you bake it, and find that something was wrong with it, it would usually be too late to fix it. And you would have wasted all that effort and time (not to mention ingredients) for nothing. Excellent point, Chef!

But here's the thing: I was asked to taste a raw egg mixture today (before it was poured over a tart and baked in the oven), and I was quite reluctant, because the thought of tasting raw eggs just did not sit well with me. Eventually, I gave in and tasted it. It (the experience) wasn't so bad. I think I'd always been afraid to taste raw eggs because I heard you could get sick from it. It was a psychological barrier, I guess.

Anyway, I'm OK with the idea of tasting raw eggs now. My comfort zone just got extended by a little bit, which is good.

That's the first important thing I learnt today. The second thing was, customers usually have certain expectations for what a product should look like (especially in terms of the colour of the product), and it is important to meet those expectations if you want them to try your product. That, for me, was rather thought-provoking. I'd been mulling over this all evening.

The third lesson was from Chef G (cuisine chef). He made me describe to the servers (my fellow students, in this case) the dessert I was serving, and questioned me on the ingredients that went into the dessert, for example, whether there were any kind of nuts in the desserts (in case some customers have nut allergies), what was Calvados made of (Chef N had asked me to add Calvados to the raw egg mixture, but I did not know what it was made of and did not think to ask)... All of Chef G's questions made me realise how much more prepared I need to be.

It isn't enough just to follow a recipe and produce a dessert according to specifications. I really have to think about the ingredients that went into the dessert, what exactly are the ingredients made of, where they come from, and what role they play in the product I make.

The more I learn about the culinary arts, the more I realise how little I know about it. A truly humbling thought indeed.

Production Kitchen: 11 Weekdays of Fun and Learning

I was volunteering in production kitchen for the last 11 weekdays in a row, hence I didn't have as much time or energy to tend to this blog. Now I am making up for it.

The last 11 weekdays in production kitchen have been fun. The American chefs were in town for training by LCB Ottawa chef instructors (cuisine), and I was one of those who volunteered to prepare the demo boxes for that. I am getting much more efficient at assembling the demo boxes now, because I know where to go to get the different types of ingredients, how much to include, and how to prepare things. I consider it good practice for keeping up MEP (mise en place) skills.

I still got to help out with some pastry stuff early in the morning, as per usual. The last few days, instead of making cinnamon twists for staff breakfast, I asked if I could make papillions out of the puff pastry (just for a change), and Chef CP said OK. Chef N had shown us how to make papillions (butterflies) in the puff pastry lesson in Basic Pastry, and I'd always wanted to try making that. Well, the papillions I made sort of look more like bow-ties, but that's ok. They're cute enough!

I also learnt to make some chocolate truffles in production kitchen. The ganache was flavored with orange zest, cognac and grand marnier, cayenne powder, and finely-chopped prunes (for texture). It was a really nice flavour. I'd always loved orange flavored chocolates, but this one had a twist - you can taste a spicy aftertaste in it (because of the cayenne). I loved it so much that I came home and made something similar.

The last couple of days, I volunteered for Bistro, because things were quieter in production kitchen (as it is almost holiday time for the chefs now). At Bistro, I had the chance to learn many new techniques from various chefs, just by watching them, talking to them and also by practising the techniques when the opportunity arose. For instance, I now know a fast way to peel an apple in a few seconds. Chef M (from cuisine) showed me the technique, and I was grateful for that, because I had to peel lots of apples in a hurry for Bistro on Thursday. The way I was taught to peel an apple by Chef T (from pastry) was good (because it makes the apples look nice and presentable), but it was not as useful a technique in this situation.

(Aside: "Bistro" refers to "Bistro Cordon Bleu", a "new application restaurant which is the school's full-service, fine-dining restaurant, run and staffed by students". This is the official description of Bistro Cordon Bleu from the LCB Ottawa website.

Since I volunteered for the pastry station, Chef CF came and talked me through how to make the dessert on the day's menu Prunes with Armagnac in Crispy Phyllo, served with Vanilla Ice Cream. I had learnt how to make creme anglaise (to make ice cream) in Basic Pastry, but when asked to make 2 litres of it, I suddenly had a mental block. So Chef CF patiently took me through the whole process again. Now I won't forget how to make vanilla ice cream from scratch.

[FYI: Creme Anglaise for Vanilla Ice Cream --> Boil 2 litres of milk in a pot, with 2 vanilla beans. Prepare 24 egg yolks in a bowl, and then mix 300g of sugar into the egg yolks. When the milk is boiling, sacrifice some milk into the egg mixture, stirring the mixture to homogenise everything, then pour all of the homogenised egg mixture into the remainder of the boiling milk. Cook (stirring with a wooden spoon the whole time) the mixture for a couple of minutes over medium heat until "a la nappe", to pasteurise the mixture and to get the right consistency. Pour the cooked creme anglaise into a chinois to sieve it (eliminating any lumps in the mixture). Take out the vanilla beans, cut them open and scrape the seeds into the creme anglaise mixture. Then pour the finished creme anglaise into the ice cream machine. Churn for 15 minutes. Done!]

Chef M was most patient when he showed me how to plate up the dessert for the lunch service. I'd never ever worked in a restaurant kitchen before, so I had to ask how to do this and that - I took nothing for granted. He showed me how to pipe the sauce and garnish the dessert, how to place the plated dessert on the pass for the servers...

I enjoyed myself so much that I volunteered for next week's Bistro, which is the last one for the year.

Yesterday afternoon I went with my housemate to Carlingwood Mall, to help him with the third gingerbread house. He was being interviewed by a local radio station's afternoon program (All in A Day, with host Adrian Harewood, CBC 91.5FM), and they'd asked him to demonstrate to a live audience (of shoppers) how he would build a gingerbread house. He was able to turn an ordinary gingerbread house kit into something extraordinary. I was just there as his assistant, helping out with a few things when required. It was lovely to see how well all the elements of the gingerbread house came together. So many kids (and their parents) came over to the table to look at it and we hope they were all inspired by it. I will post some pictures of the third gingerbread house soon.