Day 5 - the big finale!

Last day, how sad! But I decided to stay for dinner service tonight because I wanted to see what it was really like at a busy time in the kitchen. Thirteen hours on my feet was hard but fun all the same!

I began once again at 9am in the pastry kitchen and my first job was helping with the flat bread again; just weighing it out and rolling into balls. My next job was to butter the soufflé ramekins and then coat them in sugar and cocoa powder. I did this later too, with mini round tins for mud cakes.

My next job was to make the layers for the Bomb Alaska’s. So I had to layer raspberry and pineapple sorbet on top of a lemon sorbet into bowls. I used a new machine that softens the sorbet so it becomes spreadable.

I then had to cut some pastry into rounds for tartlet cases and spray, flour and place the pastry into muffin tins. These are what the orange curd from the other day is used on.

Andrew, one of the pastry guys, got me to make a pear and mustard chutney next which are used on sausage rolls. I had to peel, core and dice 20 pears and then sweat up some onion, herbs and bits in oil; added the pears; cooked that for a bit; added some mustard and salt and stuff; added some apple juice cider; let it reduce for hours; blend mostly all of it up, leaving a bit so it was chunky and served it with sausage rolls later.

I made the sausage rolls next. I had to mix pork mince, Worchester sauce, tomato sauce, and a heap of other ingredients which I forget now – in a mixing bowl and fill up a piping bag. They had this massive roll of pastry which I unrolled a bit at a time, squeezed on a row of mince and then used some egg wash on the side to allow it to stick and then wrapped them up. Easy!

It got to about dinner time and there was a canapé tasting happening at Wildfire so the next job was to help make some canapés! I used a hand slicer to slice cucumbers after I peeled them and finely sliced them into very thin strips. Justin then added black sesame seeds and some of a Thai dressing which I whipped up. This was to be the base of the canapé. I laid out 24 canapé spoons onto a white rectangular plate and added a little of the cucumber on each. Nico sliced up small pieces of tuna which had been slightly cooked and had a herb crusting. I placed one of these pieces on top of the cucumber and then drizzled some extra dressing on each one. To finish, I garnished each spoon in 3 pieces of mini coriander. It looked so good! I did another 2 plates of these.

The next canapés which I helped make were the duck pancake pyramids. I laid out the mini pancake wrappers and we filled them with duck mixed in hoisin sauce, julienned cucumbers and curled spring onions (both of which I had previously prepared!) We then smeared a little of the sauce at the top of each pancake to help it to stick and rolled them all up. We arranged them into a pyramid and plated it with some extra sauce and lime wedges.

We also had a lovely staff dinner of Thai beef salad and other various salads and some fries J

The orders were still coming in for the entrees so I was helping Justin plate up some of these. He showed me how to plate up the duck which included the candied ginger I had made! I also plated up some pork belly (which had the vinegar things I cut up on Monday) and watched some other things be plated up. I loved the way they worked in the kitchen, it was so hectic because of the business but everyone was weaving in and out of each other all with a common goal of getting the food to the customers!

 

Vanilla Cheesecake

 

Duck                                                           Pork Belly

Oh I also forgot to mention that earlier Andrew had asked me if I had a job, and he offered me a position here. I was SO EXCITED!! Of course I would LOVE one! So off he went and talked to head chef Luke and came back with a pack of paperwork for a new employee! :D :D :D YAY!

Can’t wait to start work here at the coolest restaurant with all my new mates!

Day 4 - Entrees

Another fantastic day at Wildfire however a lot less busy than what I was used to! I came in on the ferry again and headed up to Marella at 9am again to help out in pastry. I did a few little jobs for her like package my chocolate soil from yesterday and de-ring all of the tiramisu’s. We halved one and I don’t even like coffee but this was awesome!!

Justin popped in not too much later and said he needed to steal me for the day because he had a heap of prep to do! It was because last night at dinner was so busy, he said they literally sold everything they had previously prepped so they had to start from scratch today. Lucky thing lunch wasn’t busy and nobody ordered entrees so we just did prep in general, which would be used for dinner and the next few days.

I began with cucumber rolls, which are used for garnishes on the ocean trout entree. I had to make 30 and they took me FOREVER. I had to peel the cucumber and then peel off a strip of the inside bit and very tightly roll it into a little cucumber roll. Voila!

After the cucumbers, my next job was to make candied mandarin peel. I had to peel 20 mandarins (making sure I didn’t get too much white insides due to the bitterness) and then finely finely finely slice them into strips. It was really good for my knife skills and I got really fast after a while but it took so long! I brought to the boil a pot of water and blanched the peel in it for about 10-20 seconds, then refreshed them in iced water. I had to get a fresh batch of water for the stove and repeat this process once more. For the third time, I got new water but also filled 1/2 of the pot up with sugar and then let the peels boil in there for a few hours to candy up! They became kind of translucent and shiny looking. Justin told me that they were perfect, couldn’t get them looking much better! I was proud :D

 

My next job was to use the vacuum sealer to vacuum pack lamb mince (which Justin had chopped from a piece of lamb). It was so cool to use! I also had weighed out the portions previously on a scale.

Later on, Nico gave me 10 cucumbers to julienne and 2 bunches of shallots to finely slice them and put them into ice water to curl. This took me ages but Ms Dengate came to visit half way through. She was happy to see me so happy and got some good reviews from Nico.

Next, I vacuum sealed 6 pieces of duck per bag which had been slightly cooked but ready to be finished off when needed. Justin then asked me if I wanted to learn how to de-bone a duck. Uhh, of course I do! It was cool, Nico walked me through it and I was pretty please with myself. Basically you had to get the 4 main pieces of meat off the duck and square them ready for vacuum sealing. The main meat is in the 2 breasts and the 2 thighs. It was fun but oily so I had to wear gloves.

These gloves were all over the kitchen and very easy accessible to anybody in the kitchen. This as well as these signs below display the Food Act and it’s legislations due to the hygiene practises of the signage and OH&S warnings and regulations.

Had a fabulous day again with no breaks because I was having too much fun to bother sitting by myself for half an hour! But one of the girl chef’s cooked me some cheese and pea risotto for lunch which was lovely. I also tried some of Justin’s TENDER pork belly. It was absolutely to die for!

Last day tomorrow L I think I’ll be depressed! But I’ll probably stay for dinner service because it’ll be so busy and fun!

Day 3 - Pastry Kitchen!

Today I caught the ferry and the view was so lovely on the harbour. I came early again today at 9am and found it was pretty empty except for a couple of people so I helped out Marella (mid 40’s – owner’s wife) in the pastry section to start with and stayed there all day. Definitely put on like 5kg today from eating but it was SO worth it!

Marella and I began the day making flatbread and sourdough bread. She had already prepared the dough’s before I got there so for the flatbreads, she weighed 350g of dough and rolled them into their oval shapes. My job was to sprinkle semolina onto the trays, place the dough on there, brush them with olive oil, sprinkle with thyme salt, then press with my fingers and pop them in the oven. For the sourdough, I weighed them and she shaped, cut and sprinkled them with flour. They came out half an hour later and tasted SOOOO GOOD! I fell in love with the flat bread – definitely making these at homeJ

< Flat bread           ..        Sourdough >

Paula and Andrew were the main pastry chefs and they were both so nice and funny. Paula helped me out so much and I learned a lot from her all day. She told me in all seriousness I was the best work placement student she’s had and that made me so happy! So after making bread, I had lots of different little jobs to help the prep of all the desserts throughout the day. These included:

-          Zesting and juicing heaps of oranges for this thick orange curd; made with eggs, sugar, orange, zest and juice whisked over heat until thick. Then butter is whisked through. This sauce is used for tartlets later on.

-          Blending up the caramel pistachio nuts. Paula put a heap of caster sugar into a pot and simply let it cook. I was amazed as it just melted and turned to toffee! When it was melted, she took it off the heat and chucked in the pistachio nuts, stirred them up and let them cool on a tray. When they were cool, I blended half of them and packaged it and bashed up the other half for presentation. I can’t wait to try this sauce on popcorn or peanuts at home!

Pistachio blendOrange Curd

-          Breaking up this sponge-cake like creation that will be used for presentation and putting these into containers. These tasted awesome too!

-          Peeling 20 pears which were poached in water, red wine, lemon juice, actual lemons, oranges and cinnamon quills. This smelled so good.

-          Bashing up cooked honeycomb to put into containers – yum! (for the vanilla cheesecake presentation)

-          Very carefully peeling off these thin jelly circles from the flat board they were cooked on and packaging them in plastic and storing them.

-          Helped Marella coat ramekins in butter, sugar and then cocoa which were to be used for chocolate souffle’s (these tasted so good raw!)

-          I also helped plate up some trifles and cheesecake again however these 13 plates were all sent back later because the people decided they didn’t want dessert anymore! How annoying!

(1st step of pres for trifles & cheesecake)



-   Everything was labelled with dates which I also helped doing throughout the day. It’s so organized and helps hygiene standards too.

Andrew asked me later in the day if I wanted to do a cool job and I jumped in excitement. He told me to follow a recipe and he wasn’t going to help me so it was all up to me! I felt so pro doing it all by myself because the others had gone downstairs to help with service and I had the kitchen to myself (doing my recipe and also stirring Paula’s toffee sauce). So my job was to make 4x the amount for the ‘chocolate almond soil’ which goes on the recipe “Chocolate mint aero with Ron Zacapa rum jelly, sour cherry foam, chocolate bark, lime and coconut cream sorbet”. So I followed my recipe and used a MASSIVE mixing bowl to measure all my stuff and baked them in the huge oven (I asked for the name of it but I forget now- below is a photo). They turned out well! J

I popped down to the entree section to see my mates down there and saw Justin plate up a duck entree. It looked so pro so I took a pikki. He cut off some for me to taste and YUM!!! It had my candied ginger on it from Monday, as well as my segmented mandarin and other bits and bops.

Just before I left, Paula had to make 6 “Bombe Alaska’s”. It consisted of 3 types of sorbets with a crumbed base and Paula piped small meringue spikes to completely cover it. It will later be blowtorched. I asked if I could try pipe meringue onto the last one and she was more than happy to let me. So she showed me how to do it and I tried but didn’t do a very good job! She had to redo it quickly because the sorbet melts in a short period of time but she said to practise with the rest of the meringue on the bench-top and she would get me to do one tomorrow J So I did and I got a lot better at it! When I went to get dressed, I was covered in sticky meringue and loved it.

Some of the equipment:

Huge dough mixer

Huge oven (where bread was cooked)

I also noticed how everyone calls each other “chef” so they would say “yes chef” and stuff like in masterchef! I really like it as it shows respect to each other even though they are all chefs themselves.

I love it so much at Wildfire, I didn’t want to leave at 5! I’m hoping that I can get an apprenticeship here when I leave year 12 next year. Can’t wait for tomorrow again J

  

Day 2 - Melbourne Cup Day at Wildfire!

Today was a bit different to an average day at Wildfire due to the Melbourne Cup. The guests arrived at midday all dressed up and ready to eat! The menu was not an average À la carte menu but Justin was telling me how today they use a special type of menu called a degustation menu. It consists of 5, 7 or 9 courses and a different type of wine with each course. Each course is in a small portion but of extremely high quality and in this type of menu type, the restaurant serves its best dishes to show off basically.

So I took the ferry today from Huntley’s Point and in my race to catch it, I dropped my phone at the wharf so couldn’t get any photos all day L (the police gave it back to my parents later.) When I got to the restaurant at 9am, I think I was an hour early but I helped out in the grill section to start. Then I moved to entrees and desserts for most of the day. I didn’t have a break so 8 hours on my feet was a struggle but fun all the same! Justin was telling me how they don’t really go on breaks because it slows everything down and they eat enough picking through the day at different foods – so that’s what I did too.

The first thing I did in the grill area was to make a béarnaise sauce. I separated 18 eggs, added white wine vinegar (that was marinating with tarragon and black peppercorns) and WHISKED WHISKED WHISKED until my arm was too sore to whisk anymore! I did this over hot water so that it got thicker but not so much so the eggs cooked. Then, slowly whisked in heaps of clarified butter, salt and finely chopped parsley and coriander. Walah! It was delicious J

Before I moved to entrees, I did a few other jobs including blending these warm hard liquorice pieces to make a powder, chopping chorizo, cutting up pork and finely chopping parsley and coriander.

When I was back with the entree guys, we had to plate up 45 plates of “Citrus cured ocean trout” which looked amazing on the plate, I wish I had a photo! It had a small circle of chopped ocean trout with citrus salt, with goats cheese, cucumber sorbet, avocado drops, caviar, micro-herbs and cucumber. It tasted really good too! We had everything ready and whenever we got an order from a table, we would plate up that many and then wait for the next lot.

In between waiting, I was helping Paula, the pastry chef (dessert section) to compose the macaroons (mini ones). She had cooked the shells and piped the inside onto one side and I matched them up according to size and put them into containers. They tasted DELICIOUS!! She had four flavours; peanut butter and banana, cereal milk, caramel and strawberry mint.

Next, I helped plate up two different desserts. The first was “Vanilla Cheesecake” which also tasted awesome and looked fantastic – it had caramel sauce, coffee crumbs, caramel popcorn, honeycomb, salted caramel ice cream and some other bits and pieces.

The other dessert was a double layered trifle – I think it was raspberry and lychee with some mixed berries, champagne jelly and a scoop of white chocolate ice cream. It was ALSO delicious J

Plating up these three dishes used a GREAT amount of teamwork, cooperation and a production line. It was great to be part of this however at times there were so many people around and I felt like I was in the way a little.

Later on Justin also taught me how to skin ocean trout which he said was so hard to do it well at the beginning. I did it well! He was pretty impressed! Oh and he also told me an easy way to make banana ice cream; juts blend banana, honey and vodka and shove it in the freezer. It’s because the banana doesn’t need churning and the vodka will keep it from freezing hard – can’t wait to try it!

Some of the career paths of the workers there:
Paula dropped out in year 10, got an apprenticeship and was qualified by the age of 18. She’s now 19 and a full time chef at Wildfire.
Justin used to be a personal trainer and then became a chef in fine dining. He then moved to the entree section of Wildfire as being in fine dining requires a perfectionist attribute and very careful hands which is also needed for entrees.

Some more observations of methods of communication was one of the head chefs, Jason, was swearing at some of the chefs to get the message through. But mostly, the communication was nice and everyone can take a bit of harshness anyway. The way everyone gets around the kitchen is interesting too because you will constantly hear “behind” or “coming through” or “under” depending on where they are so they don’t hurt you or you don’t run into them. It’s all very organised.

Overall, I had another great day but my feet hurt and I’m so tired! Nearly fell asleep on the bus home a couple of times. See you again soon Wildfire!

Day 1 - Entrees

First day at Wildfire and I had such an amazing day! The actual restaurant was closed today and since it's Melbourne Cup Day tomorrow, there was a whole lot of mise en place to be done so we pretty much were full on with that.

(My view from where I worked all day!)

I had a number of jobs throughout the day and I worked mainly with 2 guys named Justin whose Kiwi, and Nico. They were both crack ups and kept me entertained the whole time. Also met Taylor Lautner’s lookalike who was the grill chef named James. (Below: Justin, Nico, James)

 

My first job was to slice this sweet vinegary-jelly type creation into about 1cm squares to accompany a pork-belly dish (I’m pretty sure)

My next job which took quite a while was to brunoise a LOT of ginger to be made into candied ginger. Justin taught me how to handle my knife so I gain maximum control which was to hold the blade with my thumb and curled forefinger as well as a slicing technique. I got a lot faster as time went by. Before I left they had already begun prepping the candied ginger by firstly softening it in water on the stovetop and then refreshing it in ice. They then put it back on the stove in water and sugar and left it there for a while but I’d gone home before they finished it.

The next thing I made was my favourite; the base for the cuttlefish risotto. On the menu: "Risotto ‘Nero’ $23 - Cuttlefish, squid ink, streaky bacon, heirloom tomato, coriander seedlings".  Justin had blended chilli, coriander root and garlic to form a paste which I stirred over the heat with some oil and red onion. Next, I added the rice and stirred it for a few minutes to allow it to ‘sweat’ which meant it would become sticky like a risotto. I then ladled boiling water in a few ladles at a time and stirred the risotto until the water was absorbed. This formed the base of the risotto and tomorrow they are going to use a stock (which I saw them make today) to heat it up with and add the cuttlefish and other ingredients.

My last job before lunch was to segment some mandarins and Justin gave me a quick demo.  He also made me try some smoked eel. It was actually really nice surprisingly!

I then had a break for lunch at around 3pm and Justin cooked me up some of this black sausage with artichoke custard as well as a delicious side salad and some fries. It was AMAZING yum yum!

After lunch, I helped to shred lamb for the rest of the day which Justin had told me that he saved. They had previously cured the lamb for too long which meant it had become too salty to use. So to save it, they put all of the lamb into a big stockpot and covered it in water, potatoes and herbs and allowed it to sit on the stove for a good few hours. After, I had to tong out the lamb and allow it to cool before shredding it (before lunch). They got me to try some and it was the most delicious lamb I had ever tasted – it was literally falling off the bone. What they will now do to the shredded lamb is firstly vacuum seal it and then it will be pressed into a flat tin so that when it is cut it can be served as a small square as an entree. On the menu this is: “Braised lamb breast $26 - Goat’s milk vacherin, torched cucumber, olives, peas, roasted potato consommé” I’m pretty sure. Below is the machine for vacuum sealing.

(Vacuum sealer)

(lamb being un-cured)

Overall I had a really great day and I enjoyed basically all of my tasks although the ginger and the lamb became repetitive after a while but that was okay :) i really liked cooking the  risotto! It was such a good experience to be apart of such a fun team that worked really well together. Can't wait for the busy day tomorrow :)





Transport to Wildfire

My plan to get to Wildfire is firstly catch the 506 from my house to Circular Quay. To start work at 9am, I decided to come a bit early to get organized so I will catch the 7:39am bus from Sagar Place, East Ryde which should arrive in Bridge St, Circular Quay at 8:34am.

I will walk from the bus stop to Wildfire via the ferry terminal which is shown on the map below. It will be approximately a 15-20 minute walk and I want to have some extra time in case I get lost - because I'm hopeless with directions!

Wish me luck :)

Can't wait!

Complication Day 1!

Seeing as Wildfire had recently had a fire, the restaurant has been temporarily closed.
Miss said I would still be able to do workplacement however when I called them, they said they reopen on Tuesday and the girl had no idea what I was supposed to do. She told me I would have to wait and call back tomorrow (Monday) morning at around 9am to speak to the work placement guy. So I'm not really sure what time I'm meant to be there! For my transport planning I have assumed I must be there at 9am. I will ammend it if this changes.

Hopefully I'll be in there tomorrow!

J