Cranky Day

This morning I wasn’t in my usual cheery mood going into work today. I won’t go into the details, but let’s just say I am not a happy camper when my sleep gets interrupted. That in combination with a rainy day and a headache, don’t make me very happy. I made a batch of chocolate mousse straight away because it was a popular seller lately and I wanted to have backup – only to discover we didn’t have enough cocoa powder. I made it anyway. Then I sorted out the sorbets – I needed to pipe some for the two wedding tastings today. The head chef sent the breakfast chef to scoop my sorbets for tonight for me before he left, which was nice. I sorted out the other things for my wedding tastings one for two people and one for six people – bread rolls, petit fours, and the desserts – three pavlovas, three brownies, and one Bailey’s cheesecake. 

Madeleines - the trickiest wedding petit fours to pull off. So temperamental in baking times.

Next I trayed the petit fours and weighed out bread, tried to make passionfruit rolls but then had to remake the jelly, cut up fruit for fruit flowers, prepped the wedding desserts, made bread rolls (tomato basil, fennel, maple oat), etc. 

I got ready for service – we were expecting 67 diners with the two tasting first, and a table of ten, a table of six, a five, and some fours, threes, and twos. Service didn’t go so smoothly. The chef on the pass was not happy, making the other chefs not happy, causing the waitress on the pass to be fed up trying to communicate with us while trying to train a new server. When the chef is mad, I find him hard to understand. SO I wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying to me. He said something to the starter cook about me helping him – he wasn’t mad at me, but I think was getting at he should be able to handle it on his own and I should focus on pastry? I’m not really sure. At the end of the night, all my pastry orders were done quickly and stunningly, even the table of ten by myself. It wasn’t all bad though, I got a few compliments tonight. First the starter chef (who is the old pastry chef) complimented my chocolate mousse and soufflés, saying they were perfect. Then I opened up my crème brulée drawer and he said, “Wait.” I thought he was going to tell me I did something wrong again, but instead he said they were cooked perfectly and cut very nicely as well. I also had several pastry questions about orders from servers toward the end of the night, and each time I was addressed as ‘Chef’. It’s weird to be called chef when you aren’t even done culinary school, but I like it!