Info for Day 8- Vietnam

Remember - Sit-down quiz with ingredient ID component after clean-up tomorrow!

Sous Chefs:

The good news is you don't have to set up the steam table today, everything comes off of it's station.

Fisherman's soup - recipe is easy, watch demo of how to cook shrimp in the soup. You can make soup early and hot hold - keep cooked shrimp on the side until service, put them in cups and ladle soup over them.

Green mango salad - mangoes should be green and firm, if not - talk to me. The salad goes on the street food plate, so you don't need a lot per portion - about 1 TBSP.

Sticky Rice (Sweet Rice) - is soaking over night. You need to drain it, put it into a perforated hotel pan lined with moist cheese cloth and steam it for 15 minutes. Do this early, it's usualy served at room temperature, so it doesn't matter if it's not hot at service. Keep it for the street food station in a 1/3 hotel pan, covered with a moist towel.

Your primary responsibility besides soup/salad/sticky rice will be to set up the Street Food Station. This should be done on Station 5 using one chaffing dish with three 1/3 hotel pans in it to hold the hot food - like the dimsum set up. The street food plate will go to every customer with an entree, so we need to be prepared for 50-60. Each small (6") plate will contain a 1oz. ramekin of nuoc cham (made by station 6), a small portion of green mango salad, about a TBSP. of sticky rice, one rib, one Beef in La-Lot portion, one salad Roll, one shrimp on sugar cane. It should look like this:

From K1 Menu Photos

Draw a great diagram of how this will look on Station 5. Where will everything be? Plates? Ramekins of sauce? Chaffing dish with each compartment labeled, Where's the rice? The salad rolls, and mango salad? Don't use utensils to plate- use gloved hands - faster that way.

BTW - All of the nouc cham for the class will be made by Station 6 and distributed or portioned as needed.

Station 2:
Salad Roll set up is deceptive. It looks and sounds simple, but until you've made a few, it's awkward. For that reason, have all your MEP set up to start rolling by 9:00 AM - we'll get everyone to practice rolling a few, I'll help, and it will be easy. Watch the video - ask me for the towels early. These go on the street food plate, so don;t worry about the nouch cham dip - station 6 will make and portion that for you

Pho - You will have 2 types of beef to add to this - boiled beef (already done) and thin slices of raw sirloin. Plan to go to the meat room for about 30 minutes and slice the semi frozen met down there at about 7:30, be sure to talk to me before you go .Plan to set up Station 2 table and a tray stand with sheet tray for Pho pick -up during service. The broth has been made for 2 days, so only heat 1/2 on Day 8. Heat it in a stainless pot on the range ,use one of the station 2 woks, filled with simmering water, as a hot water bath to hold the stainless pot of broth. The wok next to the broth should have simmering water and a china cap - this is to heat and refresh the noodles in.Draw a diagram of how you are going to set everything up. Noodles should be portioned ahead and held in cups - where will they be on the station? The Herbs? The raw beef?Where are your bowls kept? Underliner plates for Table Salad, Sambal, and Lime? All of this should be mapped out before you get to class. Check with me before service if you have any doubts about the efficiency of your plan. You wil pick up ala minute from Station 2.

Station 3
Shrimp on Sugar cane - all of the shrimp paste is made for both days. Take out 1/2 for tomorrow, keep it on ice. Watch demo on prepping sugar cane, but also ask me to get you started. Everything else should be pretty simple. Talk to the sous chefs about who will do the finishing grill work on these - probably we only have one person to grill both your shrimp and team 5's Beef in La Lot skewers.

Fried Fish - use the flounder flits we have in the cooler already - they need to be cut into chunks (see me for size) and portioned into 6 oz portions. You will set up most of your mise en place on your station, the fish portions and seasoned flour mix on a tray stand next to the wok, and one of the large woks dirctly across from your station will be filled with 6" deep of fry oil and act as your deep fryer - just like down town Siigon on the side walk. Let me turn on and adjust the temp on the oil - if you get it wrong, it's a BIG fire - very scary. Draw a diagram of where everything will be and label everything, it will make your life soooo much easier. You will be frying ala minute - order-fire-pickup as the rders are called. Served in the wide, shallow bowls.

Station 4- Making the table salad is labor intensive and time consuming, you're making them for everyone, so start early. Watch the video on handling herbs and table salad and then set up a production assembly line so you can knock them out fairly fast. Keep completley covered with moist towels at all times and, if there are any left over, they can be wrapped and used on Day 9 - you won't have to make as many.

The Chicken salad is very straight forward - follow the recipe and serve at room temp. You are responsible for your own Jasmine rice and making enough to share with Station 5. Hold it hot in a chaffing dish on your station.

Station 5- Beef in la lot leaves is time consuming. set it up "production style", meaning don't make one at a time, lay out all of the leaves, filll them all , roll, them, then put them on skewers. Have a conversation with Station 3 and the Sous Chefs about who will work the grill for both your product and the shrimp on sugar cane during service. They will both be cooked in batches and brought to the street food station in 1/3 hotel pans.

Crepes- Do onl y 1 times the recipe for the batter. Make batter early and consult me when you are toasting the mung beans and then again when you are straining the batter. I'm trying to load a demo of making them, but nt having luck. May have to re-shoot tomorrow or Thursday. Anyway, when you have batter, filling, pans, etc ready to go, I can demo. You make a head and re-heat ala minute. Plating instructions are in recipe method.

Station 6 - Weigh out ingredients for dough and let me get you started on it. While dough rises, prep and set out all other sandwich ingredients and make chips. The rolls should be ready to bake by 10:00, so that they have time to cool before cutting for service Chips can be made as far ahead as you want - just not a day before. You are alos making all of the nouc cham for the rest of the class. Most will go into ramekins for street food, about 2 cups will go to station 3 for their noodles.

Day 7 - Japan and Beyond

Hey, everything is cool, and apparently I'll live to torture at least a few more CIA students in K1. Let me know how Day 6 went, post any questions for Day 7 if you have them - BE SURE TO LOOK AHEAD TO DAY 8/9 FOR THE VIETNAMESE MENU. Make sure you know what you're expected to do for prep.

Station 6 - you need to organize the Japanese Tasting on Tuesday - who's helping?

Remember - Quiz on Korea and Japan on Wednesday.

Check out the "Key Terms Link" I added to the China section of the Web Page and give me feed back - Helpful? Boring? Don't Care? OMFG, It's great? - Just tell me what you think.

I'll check back between 8-9.

See ya in the morning

Information for Day 6 - Japanese menu

Whoa! this took a lot longer than I thought it would....I talk too much (or type too much, or both).

I've spent about 3 hours on a beautiful Saturday morning typing this stuff up for y'all...please read and use it. Read recipes, watch videos, and ask me questions on Sunday. I'm still building the Web Site, so if any photos or videos are missing, let me know and I'll load them up if I have them. I've loaded plate presentations photos for each menu item into the recipes, the sushi plate prez is in the Maki Recipe. Below, embedded into this page, are photos of the sushi station set ups. Keep in touch, see ya Tuesday...

Sous Chefs:

The only things coming off of the steam table today will be the steamed white rice and the Braised beef, You only need to use 1 steam table.

Making Sushi Rice is key. Watch the video and be prepared to start the process as soon as you come in at 7:00 am.
- Rinse and drain rice until water is clear - the more clear the water, the better the rice. Anticipate spending 15 minutes or so washing rice.
- Soak rice for 1 hour in fresh, cool water
- Drain and Air Dry rice on lined sheet tray from 30 minutes
- prepare vinegar solution while rice dries
- Steam rice - while rice is steaming, fill hangiri with cool water, when rice is finished cooking and while it's resting, dump water from hangiri, towel excess water out and then put rested rice into hangiri and add vinegar solution while "cutting" and fanning. Ask Chef Smythe for additional demo on this if you're not clear.
- When rice is cool to the point that it's no longer steaming, stop "cutting" and divide rice into 3 1/3 hotel pans - one pan fr each type of sushi. Cover rice with damp towels to keep from forming a crust and hold at room temp - don't refrigerate it.

Once the sushi stations are set up, have Chef Smythe demo each type of sushi to get you started - if you're set up for demos by 10:00 am you can make all of the sushi slightly ahead of family meal and hold it. It works best to set up all 3 sushi stations on the same table so you can share ingredients. I usually use stations 1 and 2 (because they should be finished their other prep by 10). When the sushi is made and the garnishes (from station 6) are all together, you can plate on small plates and hold for service on the shelves under station 5.

Sushi Plate:

From Japanese Plate Presentations

Sushi Station Set ups

Maki Station:

From Japanese Plate Presentations

Nigiri Station:

From Japanese Plate Presentations

Inari Station:

From Japanese Plate Presentations

Make the Dashi for Miso soup in a stainless steel pot,not a wok, the wok makes it dark and muddy tasting. You should anticipate making about 3 gallons dashi all together so that other stations can draw from it. Save the solids when you strain the dashi, they can be used on Tuesday to make a "second dashi"

The sunomono salad is supposed to be placed on the sushi sampler plate as a garnish - small pile, about 1 TBSP. per plate. The sunomono can be made early and dressed close to service.

The steamed white rice should be made the same way as the rice for the Chinese menu.

Station 2:
The braise is pretty self explanatory. Choose a small rondo - you don't want too much surface area or your braise will burn. When finished, hold it hot in a deep 1/2 hotel pan in the steam table. See photo in recipe for plate prez.

Station 3:
Pork Cutlet is also self explanatory. You should anticipate plating directly from the fry station, so draw a detailed diagram of how the station will look. The only thing you won't have near the fryer is the steamed white rice - once everything else is plated, pass it to the steam table for rice. The sauce should be in 1 oz. ramekins, the cabbage salad should be dressed just before service, and the cutlets fried to order - if they are pounded thin enough they take less than 1 minute to fry. You'll need a cutting board and knife on your station to slice prok before plating - everything in Japanese service is cut to "bite size" before plating because there are typically no knives at the table.

Station 4:
The tracking schedule calls for you to produce both the steamed fish AND the Udon Noodles. Don't do the fish - too much work for 1 person. I'll do it with you on Tuesday. Concentrate on setting up the Udon noodle station. Set up the station using the 4 burners on the right side of the range. The 2 left burners will be for station 5 to saute their vegetables. Have one large pot of boiling water with a china cap in it to refresh your noodles ala minute and then have 3 small pots with lids that you can use to make small 1-2 portion batches as needed throughout service. There should be a video for making the "spinach/cabbage" rolls - if you can't find it, let me know. I prefer to make this dish a few at a time during service so that everything is fresh. It's best to make a couple of portions starting at 10:30 for family meal, just for practice. When you get back from Family meal, immediately start 2 portions - 1 for demo and one for the first order. When they are done, hold one for the first order and then start another 2. It takes about 7-10 minutes for each batch, so if you fire the portions about 5 minutes apart, no one has to wait more than a few minutes. If you get hit with a lot of orders all at once you can fire 2-3 in the same pot and have the expediter explain that there's a short wait. Chef Smythe may want you to fire them ahead and hold them in the steam table, if that's the case, we can do it my way on Tuesday


Station 5:
Beef Teriyaki - Make sure you watch the demo on cleaning skirt steak. Cut and portion into 5 oz. portions. Marinate steaks and prep vegetables. You will cook and plate from your station, so Draw a detailed diagram of how the grill will be set up - Grill cloth, oil, grill brush, resting pan with rack, cutting board to slice meat, slicing knife, tongs. Also, you will be sauteing the veg (snow peas, bean sprouts, mushrooms) in small batches on the range. Set your station up so that you are "self contained". Grill set up - saute/veg set up- plates on shelf above saute line- cutting board on end of table closest to grill- chaffing dish set up with two 1/2 hotel pans in it , one for rice and one to hold your veg batches as they cook. Again - if you draw a detailed diagram of your entire station and label all of the items you'll need, setting up will be much easier on Monday morning and you'll look like a rock star. Hint - Beef teriyaki is very popular. You're going to get hit hard as soon as the doors open. Have 5 steaks grilled and resting(not cold,just resting) at 11:30 and have 1/3 of your vegetables already sauteed and in the chaffing dish ready to go. As you get an order for one steak, fire another. Skirt steak should be cooked to medium doneness. Medium rare is too chewy.

Station 6:
Your big job is getting all of the sushi garnishes prepped and collected. Each sushi plate will need
- 1 oz ramekin soy sauce
- 1 shiso leaf
- small amount of drained pickled ginger - house made on Friday, ask Tim
- wasabi for the plate and wasabi for the sushi production - see below
- sunomono salad - get from sous chefs
- blanched soy beans (make sure you get the ones IN the pods - the store room usually messes up the order and sends the ones out of the pods)

Get all of this stuff together early. The soy sauce in ramekins - about 50 ramekins - and all of the other stuff together on a sheet tray so you can bring it to the sushi production area when they need it (hopefully by 10:00 am). Communication with the other teams and sous is important. You can see a picture of the finished plate with all of the garnishes in the Maki recipe on the Web Page.

When you make the wasabi paste, follow the recipe, but add the water slowly while stirring. When it gets to the consistency of play dough, good for shaping into balls or cubes for garnish, take half out of the bowl and set it aside. Continue adding cool water and stirring until it reaches a smooth, spreadable consistency - like toothpaste. This should go into a brown plastic cup for the sushi production stations.

Vegetable harvest is simple. Once all the vegetables are prepped, you can arrange everything EXCEPT the tofu and cucumbers in deep bowls. Keep a perforated hotel pan in the steamer. When you get an order, ladle dashi over vegetables, place the whole bowl in the steamer to reheat everything for 2 minutes, remove bowl from steamer and finish with Tofu cubes, cucumber slices, miso sauce and scallions. When you make your vegetarian dashi, you can save the kombu seaweed, chiffonade it, and use some of that as garnish as well.

Open Forum For Day 5

Day 4 was pretty smooth, and I think tomorrow will go well, as long as you put the effort into it and don't become complacent. I'm starting a new thread so that you'll have a sequential trail to follow and a logical place to ask questions about the work for Day 5. Remember that there is some prep for Day 6 involved, make sure to check you're tracking schedules and start researching Japan now - Monday can be really fun, or it can be a train wreck. I'll start posting some Japanese info later today under a new heading. Remember, questions about Day 5 should be posted by 8:00 PM

Korean Menu Day 4 Info

Hi, everyone. Here's the heads up for typical questions and common problems for the first day of the Korean menu. Read all of the recipes, watch all of the videos, make a bunch of notes, distill them down into a few questions and post them here. PLEASE feel free to try to help each other answer questions and give advice. If it's inaccurate, I'll chime in between 8-9 and let you know.

Sous chefs:

Spicy Beef Soup - broth is already made and beef is already cooked. Make sure we have enough for 2 days - we make the same soup both days this menu, talk to me if you don't have enough broth or meat.

Rice - Medium Grain rice. The tracking schedule says to make 12 cups, but you should make 16. This needs to be soaked for one hour before cooking, other wise, treat it like the Chinese rice. The result will be a lot more sticky than the Chinese rice - so don't freak out when you see it. You still have to fluff it and rest it.

Salads/Kimchi - This will be a 6" round plate like we used for the Dim Sum, with small portions of each item on the plate - a "sampler".

Sous Chefs should make the daikon salad and delegate the spinach salad and soy bean sprout salad to teams 2+4 = 1x the recipe for each salad. Team 5 should make the scallion salad - 3x the recipe for that with the expectation that 1/2 will go on the salad/kimchi plate and the other 1/2 wll be served with their grilled beef.

The Kimchi is already made and in the cooler. Last class made it for you and you'l make it for the next class. There should be cucumber, radish, and cabbage kimchi in the cooler. The teams assigned to "set" the kimchis will take some out, allow me to show them how to cut/prep it for service/ All salads and Kimchis should be in individual 1/6th pans, together on one sheet tray, ready to plate by 10:30.

Sous chefs will only need to draw a diagram for the salad/kimchi station and the steam table. The steam table set up will be minimal - only the Rice, the Stir Fried Noodles, and the Braised Short Ribs will go there. All other items will be plated from the stations producing them.

Station 2 - Half of the short ribs coming from the meat room are for you and the other alf fr team 5. Let T5 have the most meaty ones. the recipe on this dish works well, all you need from me is a demo on how to cut them - it varies from week to week, depending on the ribs, so ask first thing in the morning. "Set KimChi" just means that you take the kimchi out of the cooler, get a knife, board, gloves, and 1/6th pan and ask me what to do. Do this early.
Miso pickles - the recipe n in the Japanese section, if you don't have time on Day 4, it can be doe on Day 5 - BUT IT MUST BE DONE.

Station 3 - Be prepared to make both the trout and the glass noodles. I will take your direction on how to prep the noodles for service - so be ready to instruct me. A solid time line, ingredient list, and equipment list will be your job - I'll use it to prep the entire dish for you- bad prep list, I won't be able to help you and you'll be on your own - follow the format I gave you. You take care of ALL MEP for the trout and be ready to plate from the fry area, cooking the fish ala minute during service. Make sure to watch the video on fish fabrication and to draw a complete and detailed physical diagram of how your fry station will be set up. Show where everything will be in place and label each item. The trout is served on an oval late, the noodles served from the steam table in a deep noodle bowl.

Station 4 - You will get 6 small Cornish hens. Make your liquid early, make sure it's very flavorful. choose the right sized pan to cook them in - a rondo just big enough to fit the hens. Hens must be poached between 165-180F - no boiling! Make the liquid-par cook the rice, cool and mix with other ingredients, stuff and truss hens, start cooking them by 9:30. While hens are cooking, make poached garlic heads and other garnishes. It works best to poach the hens on top of the regular range and, when they hit 165F internal temp, hold them in a water bath in a wok of hot water. You can set up your plates, utensils, and garnishes nest to that wok and plate from there. "Set KimChi" just means that you take the kimchi out of the cooler, get a knife, board, gloves, and 1/6th pan and ask me what to do. Do this early. Pickled ginger recipe is in the Japanese section. Make it on either Day 4 OR Day 5 - but make sure it gets made.

Station 5- You will be sharing the grill with Station 6, space will be tight. You will be grilling thin pieces of marinated beef and plating them ala minute onto 12" round plates with rice, a small ramekin of Korean pepper sauce, scallion salad, and placing 3 pieces of beef onto leaves of cabbage lined with shiso leaves. Since you'll be plating from the grill station, set up a chaffing dish to hold your rice. You can share this chaffing dish with station 6 -1/2 hotel pan for your rice - 1/2 hotel pan for their "mixed grains". I don't have a good photo of your plate yet, draw a diagram of what your station will look like - where everything will be - and a picture of what you imagine the plate will look like so I can help y adjust in the morning. Be as detailed as possible with you drawing - label everything so I can see how you think. "Set KimChi" just means that you take the kimchi out of the cooler, get a knife, board, gloves, and 1/6th pan and ask me what to do. Do this early.

Station 6 - You will be plating from your station. the recipes are all pretty detailed and the videos are accurate, except, when making the pancakes, you will use a flat griddle set over the left side of the grill instead of the cast iron pan shown in the video. Since you'll be plating from your station, set up a chaffing dish to hold your "mixed grains". You can share this chaffing dish with station 5 -1/2 hotel pan for your grains - 1/2 hotel pan for their rice.

Questions for Day 3?

Prepping for Day 3 means being comfortable enough with the regular menu items that you can step up and add an extra item to your routine and still be on time. Everything must be ready by 11:00. Any team that can pick up the slack and produce the stuffed peppers AND their regular duties on time will get extra credit of 5 points for the day. First come-first serve on this one. The down side is - if you take it on and drop the ball you will be assessed as such. so, make sure you CAN do it before you sign up.

Sous Chefs - You'll need to have a new service diagram for the Dim Sum. We don't have space on the stream table, so we usually set up two chaffing dishes on table 5. Since Station 6 is down this block - you can set up there. Think about how you would lay it out. Two chaffing dishes with three 1/3 pans in each. You'll need a pan for the steamed dumplings, the pan-fried dumplings, the spring rolls, the ribs, and the stuffed peppers. Everyone who comes to K1 will get a Dim Sum plate on Day 3. Presentation ill be on 6" round plates with a ramekin of ginger-soy dipping sauce in the center. The five dim sum items will be positioned around the dipping sauce and a dab of spicey mustard will go on the plate next to the spring roll. I'll try to have a photo on the Web Page by this afternoon. Make sure that you know who will be doing what during service- figure it out ahead of time and tell the people involved what their duties are well before service. With a small group, you're going to have to be creative and everyone will need to multi-task and hustle.

Station 2 - Braises PLUS Steamed dumplings (Shao Mai) - make sure to remember that each dim sum plate gets a 1 oz ramekin of the ginger soy dipping sauce (only fill each ramekin 1/2 way).
The dumplings can be steamed ahead using the wok steamer and then re-heated as needed during service. They are brought to the service line in 1/3 hotel pans.

Station 3 - Moo Shu PLUS Pan Fried Dumplings. The dough must be kept cold. As soon as it's rolled and cut, it should be stacked in single layers- with parchment paper between each layer - in a 1/2 hotel pan, covered and kept in the cooler. After they are shaped and filled, they should be held in similar fashion. When brought to the cooking line, the pan containing the dumplings shod be nested on another pan of ice. If these dumplings become warm before cooking they stick like crazy and are very difficult to work with.

Station 4- Spring rolls - filling should be made and cooked on Day 2, rolls filled on Day 3. There are two recipes for filling - we can do the stir fried pork and vegetables or the raw vegetable one with the BBQ pork and Shrimp - or both. Once they are rolled, they should be kept cold - layered between parchment paper sheets in a 1/2 hotel pan. Set up a proper fry station and fry them in batches as needed for service. Remember - you're responsible for the spicy mustard that's served with them.

Station 5- Ribs may be put in Chinese oven with the Roasts early in the day. When they are cooked through you can cut them and hot-hold them, covered, until service. Bring them to the line in a deep 1/3 pan.

Questions?

Early Morning Supplemental. Note "Item-Quantity-Station Requesting"

Sanitation Supply Ordering Sheet, based on par-stock system. Amount we SHOULD have on hand is listed, order what we need to get UP to that amount. If we have enough already, fill in blank with an "X"

Flip Side of the Sanitation Sheet. This is the end-of-the-day cleaning check list to make sure everything is left clean and orderly

Daily inventory sheet. While the rest of the group cleans, the sous chefs inventory what we have for the following day's menu.This allows me to order more if we are short, or back something out of the next morning's order if we are over stocked. Important to do this accurately - it shortens early morning supplementals and keeps our cooler from getting over crowded.

Pre Day 1

Testing....testing.....Hey - anyone there? This should be live on Intra-Learn as of August 23rd.
Let me know you're out there!

OK, welcome to the K1 Blog.

This is the place where you post questions for me (up until 8:00PM on School nights) and to interact with each other, answering each others questions, bouncing ideas around, and looking back at past posts from former students to see what THEY did.

It's also the place to tell me what you'd like to see more of, hear less of, and what I can do to make the course more informative. Do we need to shoot a new video clip for the Site? Add some new recipes? Fix some typos in the old ones?

I'll log on here at least once a day, usually between 8:00-9:00 PM to check in, but really, this is a forum for you to discuss things with each other and establish a community learning base. Over time, you'll build a library of experience that help you learn from each others mistakes and build on successes. This is a work in progress, help me keep the ball rolling.

Questions? Comments?