Day 10

Today's lesson is on plating and we get to do a mango avocado prawn salad for practice.

We worked in pairs. The photo immediately below is from my group. The portion is a little too big partly coz the chef said to use "all" our ingredients, and we just used them all. The other mistake is in using the margins of the plate for decoration - that's a no-no (e.g. for service purposes, you need to allow the waiter space for his fingers).

More photos

Day 9

For some reason, day 9 is back to theory. Maybe they thought they'd give students time to recover from any knife injuries in the last 2 days?!

Tomorrow, it is half theory and half practical (plating). After that, next 2 weeks is cooking everyday.

Days 7 and 8

These 2 days are devoted to Mise en place. That is to say, the preparation that happens before cooking. In this case, we are supposed to practice cutting vegetables. I only took a single photo of my efforts at the beginning - I forgot to take photos later which includes my cute little tourne shapes of carrots and potatoes.

Also took some other photos within the school (this is frowned on unless you are photographing your own stuff).

Just so happens the only photo I have are my bad cuts at the beginning :-)

Even though we only cut vegetables, we do about 50 minutes of cleaning of kitchen. This includes gutters, windows, sinks, washing area, floors and even polishing the sides of the cabinets.

Must be in order. Red for meat, yellow poultry, blue seafood, green vegetables, and white for cooked food (and vegetables as well).

Side view from inside one of the kitchens.

washing area.

library

gathering / break area.

where we have our lunches - all cooked by batches of students (we have one chance in about 3 weeks)

.

Baking class.

baking class. oops i attracted unwelcome attention.

culinary class (diploma). The chef instructor came out to warn me off.

The 30th batch of culinary diploma class gave a lunch presentation of the cuisine of France. They fried a heck of a lot of foie gras (the school has a foie gras supplier as a sponsor) and gave 2 as prizes for a quiz.

Day 6

Not much to say about today as well as it is again a theory day. This time related to stuff like needing to take into account costs, inventory control. But I can tell the chef is just going through the motions and who can blame him since this kind of thing cannot really be taught just in a classroom setting and only in one day.

Tomorrow is our first practical though. We're doing Mise En Place. Or just prep basically (the bit of stuff that happens before cooking).

Some asides.
- the average break even of a restaurant is 2 years!

- more reiteration of how difficult it is to break successfully into this business. Stories about starry eyed would be restauranteurs who had reality checks (the chef has a consultation business btw).

- McDonalds mac nuggets are scraps of left over chicken meat, processed with chemicals (ammonium chloride) and then mixed with gluten, compressed and then fried. :-)

- Restaurant specials are typically the restaurants way of recycling leftovers.

Day 5

Most of the time today, the Chef spent telling anecdotes or tales. He covered the actual lesson material (cleaning agents, chemicals etc) in probably about 30-45 mins.

As for the "homework", I brought a caramelized carrot soup and my reliable mashed potatoes. I probably overdid it a little, but I was quite happy during the break asking people to taste my product. I got some of the diploma students to taste as well - one of them even recognized the recipe immediately when I mentioned I pressure cooked the carrots with baking soda.

I found out both of the guys with Kitchen experience are returning to work immediately after lessons and the previous night, they worked till 11pm. One works at Latteria Mozarella, and the other one at Table at 7.
I just tried my new knife. Curiously enough, I don't think it performs much better than my fairly cheap (I don't remember how much) existing chef knife. The new knife is also slightly large for me.

Day 4

Still on theory plus got some show and tell on the equipment in the kitchens.

Our chef instructor also spent a lot of time just chit chatting. Or rather him mainly expounding. But there was quite a bit of foodie/technique talk (mostly on baking though due to the other group). All in bits and pieces.

Some interesting asides.
- you want to find out if your oven has cold spots? Just put a layer of white bread on a tray and put it in the oven and bake (say at 180C). After a while, take it out and note the pattern of browning.

- Rationale and Eloma make good ovens. (but the instructor did say, just buy one of the common brands.).

Got my knife kit today, but slight disappointment, I think I'd rather buy my own. oh well. Still an improvement on my home chef knife which I've been using for years.

Though tomorrow is not a cooking day yet, chef asked us to bring a little something from home that we made. 

Day 3

More theory today.

We were introduced to the kitchen organization (commis, sous chef, chef de cuisine, chef de partie, garde manger, patissier and the like). Then an introduction to the basic workflow for a kitchen from receiving of raw materials, to storing them, prepping, to serving, washing and rubbish disposal. The chef instructor also gave a group exercise to design a kitchen (for maximum efficiency and safety) and he did a little critique. It did liven the class up.

There was also some introduction to the industrial equipment we would be using. I think tomorrow, we'll get some physical look see. We'll also be getting our knife kit at last.

Some interesting asides.
- We have some of the cheapest food in the developed world (hawker food). Visiting chefs from Australia, USA do comment on it. A quote : "Dirt cheap". A part of the reason below.

- NEA has a number of regulations on the book that are unnecessarily strict, but generally unenforced. On the other hand, it also leaves quite a bit unsaid. Europe and USA are stricter - probably because they have experience of mass poisonings and the like.

- If NEA really enforced all its rules, our cost of food would go up across the board. Example : if we have to store raw and cooked food in separate fridges, all our hawkers would need 2 fridges. Even restaurants would be affected (e.g. if every single food handler had to have a basic hygiene cert).

Lunch today was uninspiring (even  below average). Malay food this time : Sayur lodeh and sambal fish. Dessert did not save the day either : the banana bread was dry and (again) pear tart was mediocre (crust and pear). So the standard does vary across our lunches.

Day 2

Today was "Food Safety" day.

The lecturer is an alumni from the school who's an ex-engineer. During his early days, when At-Sunrice was at Ford Canning and had a spice garden cum cooking demo tour for tourists, he volunteered to be a tour guide just to be able to get free cooking lessons. Later, he joined the school proper. On graduation, he worked in Hilton Singapore and then in Macau. He returned to Singapore to start his own business, then volunteered to be an adjunct lecturer. Very energetic person.

He conducted our first "line up". In industry, this is where the staff has their daily briefing, grooming check, and motivational talks. The school also conducts this to get us used to it. Our lecturer also says the school does it to force us to do public speaking (after the first week, we will take turns being Sous Chef and conduct the line ups).

Besides the lecture proper (which has to conform to NEA materials), he had some interesting asides.

Did you know that in many cases, the bright reddish pink color of farmed salmon is artificial? In reality, the natural color of salmon follows their diet.

In Macau and Hongkong, where people prefer to buy live fish, it isn't always better than in Singapore where we buy dead fish. He implied they are kept alive "by chemical means".

Tuesdays and Fridays are when they fly fish from Tsukiji market in Tokyo to Singapore for Japanese restaurants. Probably the best days to eat Sashimi.

It is not that uncommon to find worms in your sashimi especially if you like eating from the stomach area (toro).

Lunch today was Thai minced pork with basil (decent). Dessert was a pear tart (good) and cookies (good). At mid morning, some of the bakery students handed out some other cookies they made - not bad too.

Day 1

Day1 kicked off with general orientation. Mostly boring.

Only 4 of the 19 people in the Baking course were men ! In contrast, my culinary class had 5 women and 8 men. 

We are going to lunch in every day! Prepared by the culinary students themselves (mostly by people in the diploma course, but we'll have one chance later in the course I think). The chicken parmagiana was basic but nicely seasoned albeit dry. Had a half walnut muffin (ok) and a small slice of mango cake (good).

For the programme itself, of the 25 days, 

First 2 weeks.

- 1 for orientation.

- 5 for food safety, equipment familiarization, industry standard operating procedures.

-  2 for basic mise en place (including knife skills).

- Another 2 for subjects like plating/presentation, portion control, receiving etc.

last 3 weeks

- 12 days of cooking with techniques from Thai, Western, Indian, Chinese, Malay and Singapore.

- 1 day to cook lunch for the school's students.

- 2 days of assessments / tests.

Introduction

This blog is a diary of sorts of my 25 days in Culinary School At-Sunrice. I've enrolled for the Certificate in Culinary Arts starting 17Nov14.