Wraith's Food Journal

Well... I have a habit of taking pictures of the meals I make at TAFE during the week. And some things from work (if I get a chance).

They're not really doing anything... and well... I thought I might as well share. This site seems to be able to stand up to the amassing of pictures

Okay... so, here's one of the first things I did for a Tafe class:

Its called an Orange and Avocado Salad. Not original - not too bad on taste - but not the most advanced thing in the world. LOL.

Please take note that this was taken on a camera phone.

That reminds me: we're still waiting on photos of your new knives.

Are those croutons surrounding your orange and avocado medley there?

Yep, hand made. It actually went really well with it.

Also, I will endeavour to post piccies of my current knife collection- but what can I say, I'm lazy. lol.

Hey, everybody! Wraith's online! HI WRAITH!

LOL, I'm in chat, doofus.

SHOW US YOUR KNIVES IN CHAT, WRAITH!

Ahh... well, no knives this week. But I've got some piccies of my food

Its somewhat out of sequence but I thought I would post up piccies of what I did for our first Service since becoming apprentices. I mean, we're all in Trade, but still, its exciting when you cater for Tafe for a change

Anyways, i'm in a team of two and i was on Desserts 1 - which was a fresh fruit salad with vanilla yoghurt.

Anyways... I show up after 4 weeks of holidays ready to do my thing. And find out my partner didn't show. I'm lucky though because dessert 2 is icecream of the day. I chose on the fly to do coffee icecream with white chocolate snow and chocolate filigree.

I'm proud of myself. I did 20 portions of each and had to make everything but the yoghurt from scratch. Of course, the fruit was all there for me, but don't be wiseasses, you know what I mean.

Anyway, it was refreshing because i was chef of desserts.... so that meant i was in charge. Even if It was only a team of one... it was still nice to make all the decisions and have my teacher cater to my needs.

Anyways, I later found out that my partner had her wisdom teeth pulled and got an infection. Couldn't be helped. Hope she gets better soon.

Here's my piccies - yes, some are blurry. I took them in a hurry during service and didn't have time to get it right. Next time I'll just plate something up after service for the express purpose of piccying it.

Here's the ice cream



And here's my salad


Don't be fooled, a lot of work went into that salad. I cubed all the apple, balled the watermelon and rockmelon (which I think you call canterloupe, or something) and cubed pineapple, also froze and iced the remaining excesses of melons, segmented the oranges and sliced 40 slices for garnishes, leaving the juice to top off the salad as well as slicing and then cubing the kiwifruit. I fanned twenty portions of strawberries too. It doesn't sound like much, but trust me, when you've got to do it in bulk - it takes a toll. Especially when you're looking after churning icecream, as well as trying not to burn the melting chocolates and then trying to figure out how to plate it all up with the limited resources available. I'm lucky that a person (whose dish was aparagus hollandaise) came to help. I had him do most of the grunt work. It was even nicer cos he listened to me lol.

Okay, next week I'm chef again - so my team's been added with 1. They've got Tempura of vegetables and prawns with sweet vinegar dipping sauce. Entree 2 is Potato and Celeriac soup. Easy stuff.... but time consuming if they dont' show. So you know, even though the Chef is only supposed to make sure things get done - I'm going to have to go the extra mile and prep both dishes in my head and on paper with full costings, function sheets and planning sheets just incase someone doesn't show and I've gotta pick it up.

*sigh* Good thing i'm not on mains

But that comes up the week after... *double sigh*.

And next time, we'll have piccies of Wraith feeding Shadow a serving of Steak Gorgonzola (which I happen to be eating right now) with her fingers, right?

It looks like you're doing well in chef school, though. And you're certainly talking circles around me, as I have no idea what celeriac soup and function sheets are. I trust we'll be seeing pics of the prawns with sweet vinegar sauce next week?

(And once again I learn something new: Australians call canteloupes "rockmelons". I can only wonder how that nickname came about. )

Celeriac is a type of root plant thingy... its looks somewhere between an underground pineapple and a custard apple. Tastes like celery too. Ugh. But not as bitter or sharp. Look it up in wiki

I'll try to get piccies of my food for the service stuff from now on.

Also, I don't get to feed Shadow by hand... I never get the chance. I put the plate down and you can hear the echo of a spinning plate before the food disappears..... so yeah Can't get a piccy of that either. Too fast!

Well hey guys.

Good news. My team showed up.

Bad news: someone else's didn't.

So I filled in, naturally.

Anyways, here's the tempura prawns as promised (I didn't do them, I did promise the piccy)


And here's what I had to pick up. Its perch fillet wrapped in cos lettuce with duxelles (fried onion and mushroom) with Beurre blanc on a bed of wilted baby spinach with tomato concassee and a mushroom on the side.

It looks like hell... I didn't have much choice in how to plate it up, unfortunately. Oh well.


Oh and lattice potatoes on the side

Hey, I'd still eat it. I don't care how it's lumped together!

Well okay... so....

I didn't put up my dish for last week. I'm sorry for that. I've been really busy this past week (i haven't even had time to Aion!) and last week I got really pissed. Long story, I'm not divulging.

Anyways, i was on Main's last week. Here's the piccy:

Its Vienna Style Chicken Breast on a bed of Creamy Mash with Nut Brown Butter and a mini Tomato, Basil Salad.


This week however, turned out to be pretty much better. I got to do my own thing the whole way through and was pretty much just left alone for the entire lesson. It suited me just fine

My dessert for this week was a Vanilla Bean Bavarois with Mango Coulis. I chose to serve it with Brandy Snaps with Rose Cream and Pistachio Dust.

I have no idea what a brandy snap is, but it sounds snacky.

So one thing I've noticed about gourmet dishes like these (and elsewhere; TV commercials over here are known to lampoon gourmet food from time to time) is that the food looks pretty and fancy and it probably tastes good, but the portions seem so small and not very filling. Why is that?

Our portions are very nice

But mostly, in expensive "gourmet" as you american's know it, you will find that the ingredients used are usually rather expensive, even bought in bulk.

For example, when costing my dessert last week, I had to include my pistachios, for my dust. They are currently $49.95 per kilo. (discounted because it's wholesale) I needed perhaps 300 grams..... with a 1000 grams in a kilo, that put (per twenty portions) my pistachio costing to $14.98. So that's 70c per dish - and that's only the pistachios.

Now, that's just simple food. Imagine when you start using fancy things like saffron - at $1300 per kilo. Granted, you only use a small amount, but what if you're catering for over 300 guests? That adds up. Along with the cost of the gas to cook, the service staff to cook and serve and clean, the importing cost, the cost of preserving it (electricity to keep fridges etc running) as well as wage costs, utility bills etc. It all adds up.

When you're upper class like that, using like $100 per kilo cuts of meat for a standard meal - or using first class seafood (don't even get me started!) then the cost will be high with the food wastage relatively low. So you pay a high price for a quality product, but that product is scaled down in order to deliver it to you, the public.

Also, consider with a whole fish. If filleted any (ANY) fish runs at about 60% wastage (and that's if you're REALLY good at filleting a fish. I mean... PROFESSIONAL) so that includes the bones and gizzards and what not. So you buy a fish that costs about $90 per kilo - its a 1.5 kilo fish and more than half of it will go into the bin. You're gonna sell it for a higher price that what you paid, simply so make a profit.

The running total in Aus for profits per meal is around 10%. 50% goes into overheads, 30% into costs/bills, etc and 10% into wages. When you're selling a $25 dollar meal.... you're making back only $2.50.

Restauranting is hard work.

Of course, its mainly in America that you have those TINY plates, lol. We here, the majority of privately owned business, have more gusto to our food. The average price of a main meal is about $25. The 'upper crust' is around $35 - and international hotels usually charge you your liver.

Does that clear up a few things?

WELL!

Ho, Ho! Its been quite a while, hasn't it?

I've done several modules since the last time I posted. I have piccies for most of them, but I've decided that back tracking 10 weeks of dishes is probably a feat i'm not up to at the moment.

The modules you guys missed were "Hot and Cold Desserts" and "Pastries, Cake and Yeast goods".

I did well enough, top of the class. But I screwed up so much that my estimation of the rest of the class is pretty low considering I got top.... Anyways, though I did enjoy the concept and theory of those subjects I found that actually putting all that into practice was very hard and a complete hassle. I hope I don't have to do it again.

Anyways, the module I'm doing now is "Prepare, cook and serve Seafood".

So yay! Seafood. Not a big thing in my diet, so I know relatively little about the subject. Its pretty enlightening and there is so much detail! I've already done two weeks - so that's about six dishes. I'll be putting up piccies soon of my efforts.

We kicked off this module with a visit to our local fish market, it was pretty cool. We actually got to go down onto the auction room floor and come face to face with the fresh produce. Very interesting indeed! I have piccies of that too, but they're pretty bad and shaky. That was that period where i was really sick and my hands couldn't stop shaking, so the pictures are very blurry.

Anyways... piccies to come soon

Aw. Shaky hands sounds like a nervous system disorder. What did you come down with?

And yes, food piccies would be nice.

Okay, so here is a host of images. All from the last three weeks


Mussels Sailor Style

(these aren't in any particular order, I just took them from my phone


Seafood Mousseline with Artichoke bottoms and Cucumber Foam


Chermoula Snapper


Fillet of Snapper on Mash and Asparagus


Crispy Crab Stack with Lime Mayonnaise


Lime and Coriander Calamari


Pan Fried Sardines with a lettuce and pine nut salad


Oysters Florentine


Snapper Delice with Cocotte potatoes

I had one more dish, but I forgot to take a picture of it LOL

Anyways, I should update this either each monday or tuesday, seeing as I go to TAFE on mondays. I've got an assignment thingy due... ugh. But its pretty easy, so I should be right

Fingers crossed.

Love ya all!