Kitchen Layout

I have made a few observations about the layout of the kitchen, during the month that I have been working here at the Marriott. (Already been there for one month, hard to believe.)

The keys:
The is my biggest issue, just for the sheer amount of time it wastes. Apparently someone was stealing salmon from the walk-ins, so now they must all be locked, at all times.

Meaning that we need keys to get into the fridges, freezers and dry storage rooms. The only exception is the fridges in the kitchen - I'm assuming this is because someone is around to see food being stolen - though they all have locks to lock up at the end of the day.

I made a little rough map, so you can get an idea of how far away some of our fridges are. Light blue is fridge, dark blue is freezer, lightening bolt is unlocked/located in our kitchen. Purple is the dry storage. My station is the red star, keys are the orange star.

If I want to go get 1 pint of strawberries, I have to go get the keys, than walk to the fridges. While the location of the fridges cannot be changed, the key issue can be. Think of how many time people grab something out of a fridge or freezer, or dry storage. There's 44 North, Banquets, and Pastry all working on one shift. Plus those keys also go to the chemical closet, so our dish pit staff use them as well. If the keys are in their place, it is a fairly quick trip, but if they are not, you have to hunt them down, or wait for them to come back. Hunting them down isn't a possibility, as they could be in any of the fridge locations, while waiting for them makes you feel like you are wasting time.

Logical solutions:
Cameras - People will get caught stealing if they put up cameras in the hallways leading to these fridges. It will also cut down on people going to the fridge to text on their cellphones.

More sets of keys - A set in each department would be fair, or a set for each fridge (though they all use the same key, with dry storage being the only exception.)


Plates/bowls:
It seems that every time I go to plate up dishes, I do not have enough flatware. In this case I have to go upstairs (which is where the banquet rooms are, with a larger dish pit in behind everything) and ask around to try and scrape together more dishes. Or I can look in our dish pit, or steal some from the restaurant. The latter is frowned upon.

Logical Solution:
I always seem to be short under 10 bowls. So a new box of flatware would solve this issue.

(I asked Chef once, and he did find another box, so this was solved for medium sized plates.)

Donald's lessons of "S#!& you don't learn in school"

I learned a quick way to cut up and tear artisan lettuce.

I was setting up my cutting board by the sink, when I noticed Donald, our first cook, sit down on a bucket and observe what I was doing. I didn't think much of it, and set to cutting up my lettuce.
Soon after he came over, grabbed a head of lettuce, and slammed it down on the cutting board. This frightened me, as I have seem him have a fit of anger before, when my fruit cart was in his way (more on this later) and I was afraid I did something to upset him. Until I noticed that the core popped right out of the lettuce, without using a knife. "And since you are not using a knife, your lettuce will not bruise and go rusty as quickly."

(Check out this 20 second video to fully understand)

Later on I was cutting up blue cheese. Before I went to slice the wheel, Donald came by again and pointed out the holes in the bottom of the wheel. These holes went all the way through, and seemed to be the start of all the blue veins. Or should I say green. When you first cut open blue cheese, it isn't blue, but green. It is the oxidation that changes the green to the familiar blue. This is created by needling, which is poking the cheese with holes so that air can be ventilated through, and the mould can be introduced.


While I stood there cutting pineapple, I thought out loud, who eats pineapple, besides humans?

Feedback

Today I had the chance to talk with Sous Chef Chris Profit for 20 some minutes.
He gave me feedback on how I am doing. He said he noticed when I first arrived I was working rather slowly, and that has improved, as well as my caution with knives seems to no longer be slowing down my knife skills.

We talked of all the places he has been, and he spoke of working in Jordan, Africa. He said the resort was huge, and had 8 different outlets.

Worldwide work is now something to think about.

Short Day

Today was a holiday, and also the first day that I was in GM by myself.
There really was not that much to do, in fact there was nothing to do for today at all. So I got started on tomorrow's work. Finished up until the afternoon of tomorrow, and decided to go home.
Put in a solid 3 hours today.

Staff Barbeque

At the Marriott, they do everything in their power to make their staff well welcomed, appreciated and loved. Not just during a certain time, but all the time. I have never felt out of place here, nor have I regretted my choice to switch my internship to this location.

We did up a barbeque for the staff. Chef Trevor had 3 whole pigs brought in, pulled pork was made, and the pigs were cooked in their entirety. 44 North's private room was rented out just for staff, we made tons of food for everyone. Potato salad, tossed salad, three bean salad, we used our leftover fruit platters. Pastry made a wonderful Bailey and cream trifle for dessert. It was to die for.

Starbucks was bought for all the kitchen staff, this is a rather common. Has happened 3 or 4 times since I started working for Marriott.

It's the little things, the thank-yous, that really add up, and make this a happy work environment.

Mother's Day Weekend

For the past few days I have been putting in a lot of hours in the kitchen. We had a huge Mother's Day Buffet to prepare for. Reservations at a little over 300, with walk ins, we believe we served over 400 guests.

There was a lot to prepare, on top of the usual banquets. I will try and remember the order of everything, but the past three days have blended themselves into one large buffet mess.

Jennifer had a few (317 actually...) salads, so we had a plate up. This are always a lot of fun, I love seeing a finished plate come together through the help of many hands. I had the task of grating, by hand, 6 kilos of applewood smoked cheese, and quartering 325 strawberries.

I love applewood cheese, I find it has such a nice flavour, we would be sprinkling this on top of the finished salad. The salad would be topped with 4 strawberries, 3 blackberries and 5 blueberries. All counted, so each plate looked the same. We did 5 plates without cheese, due to allergies.

I also made bruchetta, which turned out fantastic! I was very pleased, since it was my first time making it. I let the roma tomatoes sit in the oil and seasonings over night, and then scooped a bit onto toast points with some hard cheese placed underneath. The cheese was used as a moisture blocker, between the tomatoes and the bread, this ensures the guest is receiving a crunchy snack, even if it's been sitting their all through a meeting. I will have to ask what sort of cheese it was, as I forget, it was similar to Parmesan.

For Mothers' day, we had a lot of work cut out for us. I did not take pictures of everything, as many things I have already made, and therefor already have photos of. We did up trays of smoked salmon, scallops, haddock, cantaloupe, watermelon, grilled red pepper, grilled mushrooms, capers, muscles, and a salad bar complete with bacon and croutons.

I had the task of cooking off the shrimp. This was a lovely time to find out that I am allergic to raw shrimp juice, or the oils on the shells. When I went to load the hotel pans into the steamer, shrimp water ran down my arms, and into my jacket, my hands turned red and my arms got all bumpy. I could feel my stomach start to itch. Donald, the saucier, taught me that rubbing alcohol takes away the itch. Though my hands and arms still look a mess from the reaction.

While helping set up for the buffet, Chef Chris asked if I wanted to take some photos, but guests were already trickling in, so I snapped a few quick ones, but missed pictures of the lovely folks over at the carving stations, the waffle and omelette stations. Here you can see most of our work, as well as the wonderful goodies pastry did up.

They put a lot of work into those treats, and it smelt fantastic.

Last but not least, those lovely little tedious tea sandwiches, each one is about 3 fingers wide and long. Also known as 3 fingers squared. I only remembered to take a photo of the last two, but they were smoked salmon with caper creme frisch on a baguette, cucumber with dill cream cheese on whole wheat and tomatoes and bocconcini with olive pesto on foccacia bread.

I learned how to make olive pesto, and I am in love with it. I am going to try and find several uses for it, so I have an excuse to make it and eat it at home.

(Not) Overwhelmed, Swamped, Smothered, Crushed, Distressed

Jennifer seems to think I can be easily overwhelmed.
She keeps asking me if I can handle it. Honestly, this is a walk in the park compared to wedding season at the Cake Box. I really miss the stress, and hope that things pick up here soon enough. Sure we get a full day of work, but I want deadlines, and hoops I need to jump through.

Today started with this.
This is a cart full of all the fruit needed for today. That is 12 cantaloupe, 12 pineapples, 12 honeydew and 3 watermelon, because that's all that were in storage. As well as 2 flats of strawberries, 2 flats of blueberries and a flat of blackberries.
This took me til lunch time to complete, but I was impressed with how much quicker I am getting at slicing up fruit.

During the morning, one of the girls from Starbucks came downstairs with some samples of Mocha Coconut Frappuccino. Best thing I have ever tasted, I went and bought one on my break. Honestly, if you love the taste of toasted coconut, go buy one now.

This seemed to end the morning trend of gloominess, our Banquet Chef was in a bad mood this morning (everyone was saying it was due to his low blood sugar levels), and it quickly became contagious.

The rest of the day was broken down into smaller tasks. I had 3 smoked salmon plates to do, Club Lounge was already done, so I didn't have to cut up any more fruit, but I did have to do up a skewer tray for them, which is cherry tomatoes wrapped in thinly sliced salami. I learned how to do a cereal station today which is just setting up a bowl of raisins, granola and banana chips, for guests to sprinkle over their cereal, if desired.

Today I made croutons. They were so good, loved them couldn't stop munching on them while I was putting them away. (And I noticed staff that passed by grabbed one as well.) I was very impressed with myself. First time I ever made them! Also made baguette sticks, and french bread rounds with the same herb blend as the croutons.

Worked some over time today, was supposed to go to pastry department for a bit, but we were still behind in Garde Manger, so Dylan went over instead of me. I was looking forward to learning a bit about a new department, so I was a bit disappointed.

Today I tried: Beef Bacon, honestly it wasn't that bad, almost prefer it over regular pork bacon. It was heavier, but still very salted. Apparently it was a leaner choice to pork.
Cucumber sandwiches with pickle juice cream cheese.

Here's to hoping tomorrow contains some entertaining stress!

I Have Lovely Melons

Yesterday was the day of fruit.

I had a rather large order or fruit trays to slice up, or rather, 6 small orders. I needed 9 trays each of watermelon, honey dew, cantaloupe, pineapple and berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries).

I surprised myself and how quicker I got at peeling and cutting up these fruits. I was done everything in 5 hours. Still a lot longer than I want to take, but slowly getting better.

I have this tendency to sing Berries & Cream while I'm bowling up the berries, so I hummed away at that while slicing up my strawberries, and layering on the blueberries and blackberries.


The atmosphere in the kitchen was a little tense, an order for berries weren't done, pastry thought it was just berries, and therefore it was on our list of to-do, we thought it had granola in it, and therefore it was an order of parfaits, which is then placed on pastry's to-do list. After that was all sorted out, it was realized it was our task, and was quickly done.
Early in the morning a service staff came to pick up an order, that wasn't due 'til tomorrow, and almost took off with it before anyone noticed. More words were exchanged, and we all realized what a foul mood everyone was in.

After I was done with the fruit, Jennifer went for her lunch break, and I was left to do a vegetable platter, which was not hard at all, bowl up some nachos and dip, which I laughed because we use the same ones as we did at the movie theatre, and slice up some tomatoes. To slice to tomatoes, all I had to do was remove the core and slice them with this gadget Jennifer had at her station, with it I was able to slice up a whole box in under 20 minutes.

When Jennifer came back, she showed me how to do up meat skewers and we tidied up and went home for the day.

Longest and Best Day Yet

This morning started off a bit rough. I woke up plenty early, was ahead of schedule and decided to head to work a few minutes early for I could grab a bowl of cereal there, since it's free. Well I got about 10 minutes into my 25 minute walk, and realized my swipe card wasn't in my pocket where I thought I had put it this morning. I had already forgotten the card once, and we only get 3 chances before we get written up, so I ran home, to look for it. I tore apart my room, and could not find it. It was now 7:00 and I had to be in the kitchen, dressed, by 7:30. So I took off without the card, and ran to work. I got someone else to let me into the building, and ordered a new card from HR.

When I entered the kitchen, on time might I add, I noticed a beeping sound. This was the carbon monoxide detector. They didn't know if it was malfunctioning or actually going off, but we all had our work to do, so the engineers were called down and everyone went back to work.

Matt was in today, so there were three of us to work in Garde Manger, and thank goodness he was in, as we had a busy day ahead of us.

I got started on salads, I made the same salad as I did the first day I was in. The cherry tomato, green onion and grilled lemon. This time I made sure to remove all the seeds before I went to grill the lemon, as it is a lot harder to remove hot seeds from a hot lemon.

Afterwards I began to set up for a build your own sandwich bar. I plated up some rye bread, whole wheat bread and sourdough for the bread choices. I had a lot of left over cut up vegetables from the day before, all I had to do was slice up a few cucumbers. I pulled out the Mandolin and was shown how to set it up, and sliced away. I love the mandolin, it makes this job so much easier and quicker.
I also needed to bowl up some gherkins and dill pickles. After a long trip to dry storage, which is a few hallways away, I searched and searched and couldn't find the dill pickles. I went to F1, one of the walk-in fridges, where they should be stored. Here I was told that there were none, and the order for them would be in tomorrow.

I wandered over to 44 North's kitchen, where Pat pointed me towards a bucket of dill pickles. They weren't pre-sliced, but at this point I could care less. I sliced them up, bowled them up, and with that I was finished that order.

At this point I looked over to see what Jennifer was up to. She was rolling goat cheese into small balls, and then rolling them in toasted mixed nuts. I tried one and they were surprisingly, amazingly delicious.

When we came in this morning, we had to quickly bowl up 24 apples, 24 bananas and 24 oranges for the staff. HR was delivering healthy snacks to everyone throughout the day. This is my stash, veggie chips and Oreo thin-sations. They also had granola bars, the fruit, fruit-to-go snacks, and many 100 calorie treat bags.

Next on the list was a mix plate of grilled veggies. So I set off to grill up my vegetables.I was just grilling away, having the time of my life when Chef Brian came over, and I noticed the whole room was smoky. The marinade from the portabello mushrooms, was flammable, so when I saw flames, I didn't worry, but I had forgotten to turn of the vents. Oops. I finished the grilling up, now with the vents on, and a good chuckle shared between Chef Brian and I. Turns out I was too short to reach the vent switch anyways.

In the middle of my grilling, I was pulled away, as we were doing a plate up. This is when most of the current kitchen staff gathers around a conveyor belt, and we do up plates. Each task is broken down so it can run by quickly. For example, my task was sprinkling roasted almonds onto steamed beans. These plates were going up to a banquet, the difference between this and previous banquet orders, is that it's a sit down, as opposed to guests serving themselves.

I put the grilled veg into the oven for a bit, let them roast, and then cut them up into rather large batonnettes and trayed them. Must say, the mushrooms were very delicious. These will be served cold, which confuses me a bit. I wouldn't enjoy eating a soft roasted vegetable, unless it was warm, or hot. Cold, it just seems like a forgotten leftover.

These mushrooms were also delicious, and I was very proud of myself for making them. They were marinated in balsamic vinegar, which I love to death, so they tasted divine. (This is saying a lot since I HATE cooked mushrooms.)

I also made sandwiches today :)
Turkey with cranberry mayo and mozarella.
Ham with Dijon mustard and swiss.
Tuna salad, that I made myself. (I still strongly dislike the smell of tuna.)
I really enjoyed making the sandwiches, they were fairly easy to make, and once I got a system going, I'm sure I could bang out a bunch of them in no time at all. Just like making suppers with Gramp, all I need is a system and everything will run smoothly. All in all I think I am getting the hang of things, although so far nothing is at all too challenging to have to worry about being thrown under the bus. I know I ask a lot of questions, but for the most part I'm just double checking, confirming that what I know is right, is actually right. Also I'm finding that things I was taught in school, don't apply here, as they have their own way that they want to do something.

All in all it was a long day, I worked 11 hours today, on my feet, and it is bed time, for sure. At the end of the day, Chef gave us cab coupons, so we could take the cab home. Very rewarding; after working all day, I was dreading the walk home... uphill.

How to quickly and efficiently slice a honey dew melon

Cut off opposing ends so you have a flat surface, and slice away the rind, from top to bottom, following your previous trail each time, so you don't have to back track.

Cut in half, from top to bottom.

Scoop out the seeds.

Cut each melon into 4 sections. 2 of these sections are shown here.

See those little nubby bits on either end? Cut them off so the section has a flat surface.

Lay the melon on the flattened surface. Slice to desired thickness, and display to serve.