Next, I cubed up four loaves of bread so that they could dry out to make breadcrumbs tomorrow.
After cubing up loaves of bread, David got me working on shelling edamame. Was I supposed to stay uncool, please remind me?
I have shelled edamame before, but as a snack or appetizer, never to be used for something. That's why it was interesting to learn that there are three layers of edamame shell, and I had to remove all of them. Believe it or not, I shelled edamame for the rest of my shift and only made it about 1/4 of the way through all the edamame that needed to be shelled. Luckily, I had shelled more than enough for the night, they just wanted it all shelled because it would have to be done at some point anyways.
Family meal today was....interesting.
We had a salad, roasted chicken, and a pasta salad. It wasn't that it was bad food, because the food was pretty good. But it wasn't until Woody asked if I was enjoying my ketchup chicken and blueberry pasta that I realized how odd the meal actually was. However, the ketchup was homemade, and I avoided getting the blueberries because I though they were olives, so it wasn't so bad.
After not possibly being able to shell any more edamame, I organized the walk-in before I left for the evening. However, I opened the door to leave the walk-in to see all the line cooks and prep cooks standing there. Then Jason looked at me and said, "A table of 12 just requested pimento cheese fritters. Do we have any?" After telling him that we don't have any fritters (remember, they were removed as the amuse boushe a few days ago), Jason asked if I could make some really quick. I told him that I could do that and everyone offered to help me out. Woody and Jackson started shaping the fritters and breading them while I began to make the breadcrumbs. After a short while, we had finished all the pimento cheese fritters for the table and I was able to leave.
Turns out that Chef Hopkins was taking some friends to dinner and he was the one that requested the pimento cheese fritters.
Today, David got me working on slicing cucumbers which we would use to make the bread and butter pickles. Finally, I have pickled just about everything except pickles and now I was finally getting to make the bread and butter pickles.
As I was slicing the cucumbers (which also needed to soak in saltwater overnight) Jason came up to me with a menu and told me that a corporation had bought out the restaurant for lunch and dinner and he needed me to make pimento cheese fritters and BLTs for the dinner that night. I was pretty excited because they wanted me to make the appetizers for the buy out, this was a big deal given who had bought out the restaurant for the evening. Who bought out the restaurant you ask? I'll give you a hint....
The Coca - Cola Board of Directors. Yeah, pretty big deal.
The minute I finished slicing the cucumbers for the pickles, I got right to work on making the pimento cheese fritters. I wanted to make sure that I got them done fairly early because then I could have the rest of the time to focus on making the BLTs. Once I had shaped the fritters and they were firming up in the walk-in, I made some more bread crumbs with the bread from the day before.
As I was making the breadcrumbs, Woody called me to the line to help them plate the entree for the lunch portion of the buy out.
My job was to take three slices of (very hot) roasted chicken and fan them out on the bean salad. Above is what the plates looked like after my job was finished. The entree would be finished and garnished by Chef Hopkins after I placed them on the pass.
The dessert portion of the lunch buy out was a peach clafloutis with vanilla ice cream. The best part about buy outs like this is that we always make more food than we need, so we get to snack on the leftovers in the kitchen. That means leftover roasted chicken (which we would later use to make a chicken salad for family meal) and peach clafloutis.
These things were like personal peach cobblers and they were amazing.
Next I got to work on making the BLTs. I had made the BLTs before, but every time at least one aspect had already been done for me. This time, though, I had to do everything. I had to slice the bacon, bake the bacon, slice the tomatoes, slice the bread, toast the bread, pick the basil (because we didn't have any lettuce), and lastly assemble the sandwich. The only thing I didn't make for this sandwich was the mayo, but it was homemade as well.
When I finished with the BLTs and took them to the line, the dinner part of the buy out was about to get started and a man (Muhtar Kent) came into the kitchen and thanked us in advance for the wonderful meal. After the man left, Chef Hopkins informed us that that was the CEO of Coca-Cola. "Just like President Obama, they don't allow him to drive. They took his license and credit cards. He's that important. He could sell his stock for hundreds of millions of dollars." Chef informed us.
After doing a few more odd jobs, it was past time for me to leave. As I left the restaurant, I couldn't help but notice multiple identical black mercedes' driving around the restaurant. Very important people indeed.
Till next time,
Ben
93 hours left
I hope your Saturday VIP's will be important enough to get pimento cheese fritters.
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