Time for a little arts and crafts

I have spent the past 5 days in Fundamentals of Food Service Production (aka FFP). First off let me say that I am way too used to having three-day weekends, especially when I'm looking at a career path that features 70-80 hour weeks as a relative norm. Bad habit or no (but it definitely is, trust me) getting up at 6:00 on a Friday is not what I consider a good start.

Be that as it may, the class is pretty nice. The general idea is to focus on good techniques and basic knife skills and the like. It's very "cooking 101", but even if you've had more experience it's good to get the practice. And speaking of practice, one of the things that we do (on a now daily basis, as of yesterday) is to practice plate presentations. The rules are simple:

1) You don't tell anyone about Fight Club.

Wait, wrong set of rules. Good movie, though.

1) It's all about the looks. It need not be edible, fully cooked, or much of anything other than pretty. Case in point, using a scoop of shortening in place of ice cream.

2) You have 30 minutes out of the day to prepare your plate.

3) You can bring things from home (the selection is a tad lacking in this room), pre-cooked if you so choose.

That's really about it. It can be breakfast, lunch, dessert, appetizer, or anything else. Saute, fried, seared, take your pick.

I figured that I'd do a bit of a series on my plate designs. Give you a chance to get a feel for the ideas bouncing around in my head, and give me a good reason to not slack off... I mean, of course I'd never give anything less than 110% for a class... never...

On to day one.

I thought that I'd start simple, especially given the choice of ingredients to work with. Such was born a delightful bowl of tomato cream soup. And just for the record, no, these aren't exactly magazing-quality pictures... but I don't exactly have a food stylist on staff and a thousand dollar camera to work with.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Well, with what I had to work with, that is. I'd prefer to have more than four roma tomatoes to use (I'd like a bit more tomato and a little less "cream"). I had to bulk out with chicken stock, which did taste great (oh yeah, this one was completely edible and delicious, if I may say so myself), but I'd prefer to use veggy broth just to keep it animal-friendly. Maybe a chiffonade on the parsley instead of a mince.

In case you're curious (which you should be about all things cheese related), those are gruyere shavings floating on top (a bit melted at this point... pictures happen about 2 hours after the fact). It's a very parmesan-esque cheese, with a bit of swiss influence when it comes to flavor. Still very much a hard cheese, and I'd love to have a nice fresh bit on top here, but that's what happens when food sits untouched for hours.

Also, were there a scrap of bread in that room other than Texas Toast, you can bet about anything you like that there'd be some crouton action, or maybe a piece of bruschetta floating on top.

So there you go, dish number one from my mind to your table.