Fire and Knives Internship Day 9
May. 3rd, 2009 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamadebDay 9
Another Friday in the kitchen. More eggplant and more potato salad.
I cooked the potatoes. That was a problem - many of the potatoes were bad and I had to pick through them to find good ones. I found too many and made the pot too full.
Then I did the eggplant - slicing them and then breading them. *This* time, when I ground the panko finer, I made two gallon buckets instead of one. I figured that the very worst that would happen would be a gallon of preground panko, and how could that be bad?
Why was this better? Because, as the breading continues, the panko gets clogged with egg. I can and do sift out the bigger clogs with my fingers and with shaking the hotel pan, which brings the clogs to the top, but that also means less panko. I need to do this or I get big clogs on the eggplant itself - a very bad thing. With enough panko, I can keep refreshing it as needed. This meant that all my eggplant slices had a nice, even, thin coating of panko crumbs. MUCH better.
Meanwhile, the potatoes cooked. A helped me dump them into a colander and then onto a sheet pan to cool. I SHOULD have put them on several sheet pans in one layer. I made the same mistake later on.
I fried the eggplant as usual, getting more control and better looking eggplant slices. Here again, I needed to use more than one sheet pan to get better cooling of the cooked product. But I know this now. I hope I don't forget.
Then I quartered the potatoes and made the potato salad. I had to chop up a few more onions and some rosemary and thyme for the salads (the fresh herbs are what we have on hand.) So, while I wanted to leave by 2PM, I ended up leaving 20 minutes later. Fortunately, I'd made most of Shabbat dinner ahead of time, and anyway, I had plenty of it.
Another Friday in the kitchen. More eggplant and more potato salad.
I cooked the potatoes. That was a problem - many of the potatoes were bad and I had to pick through them to find good ones. I found too many and made the pot too full.
Then I did the eggplant - slicing them and then breading them. *This* time, when I ground the panko finer, I made two gallon buckets instead of one. I figured that the very worst that would happen would be a gallon of preground panko, and how could that be bad?
Why was this better? Because, as the breading continues, the panko gets clogged with egg. I can and do sift out the bigger clogs with my fingers and with shaking the hotel pan, which brings the clogs to the top, but that also means less panko. I need to do this or I get big clogs on the eggplant itself - a very bad thing. With enough panko, I can keep refreshing it as needed. This meant that all my eggplant slices had a nice, even, thin coating of panko crumbs. MUCH better.
Meanwhile, the potatoes cooked. A helped me dump them into a colander and then onto a sheet pan to cool. I SHOULD have put them on several sheet pans in one layer. I made the same mistake later on.
I fried the eggplant as usual, getting more control and better looking eggplant slices. Here again, I needed to use more than one sheet pan to get better cooling of the cooked product. But I know this now. I hope I don't forget.
Then I quartered the potatoes and made the potato salad. I had to chop up a few more onions and some rosemary and thyme for the salads (the fresh herbs are what we have on hand.) So, while I wanted to leave by 2PM, I ended up leaving 20 minutes later. Fortunately, I'd made most of Shabbat dinner ahead of time, and anyway, I had plenty of it.