Eighth Week Spring Quarter

In theory practice this quarter, the focus is on baking in the kitchen. The dutch baby pancakes that my group makes from George's recipe are a learning experience. This recipe is among the many things we are baking that contain whipped egg whites prepared with a whisk. We decide that the convection oven does the best job, since we burn the bottom of the one prepared in the conventional oven. The one baked in the convection oven turns out perfectly. The school stoves are gas fired-the best kind of burner in my opinion. However, the electric convection oven is faster and has better controlled oven heat. The class also uses a recipe to make a gelatin candy-not too sweet, with fruit stirred in before it is set. Reminds me of the finger jello moms make for little kids.
Monday was the Memorial Day holiday with no school, so we have classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday only. This is my week for skills development class, which gives the management students a chance to teach, and a good review for me. We prepare seven different cuts of carrots, chop onions, peel and section grapefruit, and make hollandaise sauce with a whisk. (Something I would use an electric mixer to make at home).
My assignment is the soup station, with a manager and two other first year students. I cook a vegetarian soup with smoked vegetables that someone else had prepared. Soup creations are very versatile, in that chefs can add left overs from the other stations to exercise cost control. At the end of the day, when there's not enough food to reheat, the left overs are "dumped" on the soup station. We use many different commercial bases for the liquid part.
With so may students to do the work, one is not encouraged to work at top speed, which will be a real shock upon entering the real world of the commercial kitchen, I'm sure.
I cook a potato leek soup by peeling and boiling the potatoes, mashing them with butter and cream, and adding them to a chowder base someone else had fixed. There was very little left at the end of the day.