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!