Garde Manger - First Courses and Appetizers

After a quick meeting regarding our upcoming banquet, Chef demonstrated putting together a few first courses then set us loose in the kitchen to make up a grilled vegetable appetizer and a fennel and chorizo strudel. I was looking forward to a lecture today on "building a menu," design in buffet service and proper caviar service but it didn't happen. Chef has been a little, dare I say, "testy" these past couple of days. Actually, his normal personality is challenging, so I should say "testier" than usual.
I worked mostly with preparing the stuffing for the phyllo strudel, stuffing and rolling it out. I had fun. I enjoy working with phlyllo dough and it was a new and interesting technique. Some of the other members of the class prepared a tenderloin (cleaned and coated in herbs) which was then frozen, so we would be able to slice it thinly on the meat slicer for carpaccio tomorrow. Chef plated a demo, but tomorrow we will all plate our own serving. A little raw meat to start off our morning.
We finished up early today, so we made sandwiches for lunch with the left over meat form yesterday. Glenn made an awesome Dagwood. All that beer pong makes him hungry in the morning.

It was a another beautiful spring day and I appreciated getting out a little early. The next few days are only going to get busier and busier as the big banquet day approaches.


I hope tomorrow brings a kinder, gentler Chef!
Goodnight.