First Day as Pantry Cook

Yesterday was officially my first day as Pantry Cook (salads and plating desserts) at my new job / externship.

They trained me through all of their newest salads and cold appetizers such as shrimp cocktail (new and old plating styles) as well as let me take the reigns (on my first day!) to create the amuse bouche for dinner! I was able to choose from anything in the fridge and found some nice chunks of lobster claw meat (already out of the claw) that I was able to make into a lobster salad crudites:

I poached the lobster claw meat in clarified butter until tender, with just a little bit of fresh black pepper. Then chopped up scallions and piquillo red peppers with the cooked lobster meat and a little bit of the leftover lobster butter, added a squeeze of lemon juice and just enough Japanese-style mayonnaise until the consistency was perfectly creamy. For the crudites, I cut out circles of kalamata-olive ciabatta and crisped them in the oven with a little bit of olive oil. On a small square plate, I placed olive bread chip on bottom and served with about 2 tsp of the chilled lobster salad, topped with pea shoots and other micro-greens for color, some plates also got a sprinkle of paprika for added color; and voila! My first Amuse Bouche at my new job!!

My trainer also went through a few of the lunch meals that sometimes get ordered after the lunch crew leaves that we (the dinner crew) have to man until 3. Next, he showed me a quick overview of the salad courses, cold seafood appetizers, cold soups and the dessert plates.

One we looked at was the new shrimp cocktail -->
which included yuzu lemon poached giant shrimps, cucumber slices, red pepper aioli sauce and hearts of palm soaked in beet juice (which turned them purple). pretty!

<--The most popular salad was the Salad Panche with heirloom yellow tomato slices, mixed greens, cinnamon and sugar roasted pears, sprouted peas, special cheese and pear vinaigrette with fried leeks (not shown). This was super tasty.

More later - I need to go to work! ha.