Garfield high school Auction dinner

I attended another auction on 12th of April.

The head chefs of the dinner were the same as WMS’s auction dinner, John P at St. Clouds(1) and Thierry of the chef in the hat of Rover's (2).

I volunteered precooking chickens at St. Clouds restaurant the day before the auction. I got to St. Clouds at 2:30pm. There were still some customers for the brunch. John P showed me to the hot grill which I would be grilling chicken.
Shortly later two parents of a Garfield student came to join us. John P pointed 4 large pots full of chicken breasts marinated and ready to be grilled. I think he told us they were 350 chicken breasts. Chicken was grilled diagonally and turned 90 degree on the same side then turn over do the same to make the nice brown lattice. Two of us, women, took in charge each half of the large grill. We grilled 10 chicken breasts on a half of the grill and 40 total at once. It was very hot standing by the barbecue grill without doing anything. We had to be closer to put the chicken breasts on the grill, move and turn them with the tong. My previous task for WMS auction dinner to prepare bread pudding was easy and cushy compared with this task. My hands were greasy and slippery from moving the meat from the pan to the grill. The Chicken breast was large and heavy. It was a hard work to turn using the tong. My hands and arms were burning hot being close to the grill to do the job. I was very sweaty. We cooked all of the 350 chicken breasts in 2 hours. The husband of my grilling partner moved the grilled chicken to the tray to the cooling room for 10 minutes and he stacked the cooled chickens to several layers into the deep pan. Finally he wrapped the deep pan with plastic wrap several times and they were ready to store in the fridge for the final bake the next day. His task required muscle because the deep pan of chicken was very heavy. We completed our tasks and left St.Cloud about 5:00pm. Three of us will appreciate to the grilling cook for his hard labor when we order grilled meats at the restaurant in the future.
The day of the auction, I was nervous to find out thefinal results of the chicken. The dinner started with greens with goat cheese. Main course came next. Barbecued chicken breasts with rosemary sauce looked good. It had nice smoky taste matched well with the special sauce and the meat inside chicken was moist as expected. Our hard work to pre-grill the chicken paid-off. The side dish was delicious too. It was sweet and white potato gratin. I like this better than the bread pudding at WMS auction dinner. It was a great idea to precook chicken half way on the grill first then cook it in the oven. It prevents juice of chicken coming out and the resulted chicken is moist inside and nice brown barbecued looks outside. When I have a big barbecue party at home, I will use this method to serve delicious chicken.
I realize that this method allows the host to spend time with guests instead of barbecuing meat during the party. What's a great way to cook and serve great chicken barbecue!

I bought Girls' night out ticket at this auction. I will write about it after the party is over.

Website references:

(1) St.Clouds website: http://www.stclouds.com/

(2) Rover's website: http://www.rovers-seattle.com/

My experience working at a commercial kitchen

I had an opportunity working at a restaurant kitchen for three days by volunteering food preparation for Washington Middle School’s fund raising auction. The restaurant was St. clouds(1). I was very excited working in the commercial kitchen for the first time. John Platt, who is owner and the chef at St. clouds, was very nice to let us use his kitchen and gave us cooking instructions. Our job was mainly peeling, cutting, chopping, and mixing vegetables and other ingredients. Some people may think it is boring and tiring. But I love cooking and loved this task. I brought my Japanese knife and tried it out then borrowed the restaurant's knife. I learned while my Japanese knife may be good to cut large pieces or slicing vegetables, I liked using the restaurant’s knife which was more efficient chopping vegetables into very small pieces than my knife.

One of dishes which I helped cooking was bread pudding. It is interesting coincidence that I helped making the bread pudding after I wrote about the pudding in the British food. I asked JohnP if this pudding was British. He told me we were preparing French pudding not British. According to him, French loved bread and made pudding using day old bread.

At my first day at St. clouds, my job was peeling and slicing onions. Two of us tackled many onions. Amazingly we had no tears in our eyes. Next I chopped and minced fresh thyme. All chopped onions were placed into huge metal pans with melted butter and oil on the bottom and spices and minced fresh thyme and other spices were added to it. I mixed these onions with all sort of spices with my rubber-gloved hands. Onions were ready to be cooked to be caramelized in the oven. Meanwhile, other volunteers were cutting the crust off from day-old bread which the head of food preparation volunteers got free from Essential baking Co.(2). Essential baking Co. is one of the best bakeries in Seattle. The day-old bread was still tasted delicious. I helped cutting crust off bread and non crust part into smaller pieces while I snacked delicious crust which would go to composed bin soon.

At the second day, onions were already caramelized and ready to be used. I spread one layer of chopped bead into 8 large metal pans. Other volunteers were chopping pears into small pieces and cooked them with caramelized onion in a large frying pan. The pears looked like red potatoes. Two of us spread onion-pear mix in the pans. We added another layer of bread pieces. Meanwhile, two ladies were mixing eggs, milk, cream, and blue cheese with spices in the large container. We got this egg and milk mixture and mixed well and pour into the eight pans. Our final task for pudding was pushing bread down to soak into the liquid to prevent being dry. JohnP told me push floating bread pieces down every 20 minutes. While I waited to press bread pieces into liquid, I helped chopping a lot of pickled green olives into paper corn size to prepare Olive Tapanade.

Final day at the restaurant kitchen, I chopped chives for the Tapanade. I washed many pans, knifes, pots, spoons and everything. I was surprised that dish washing machine was not like one at my house. I scrubbed and rinsed to remove any food waste on the pans. The dish washing machine rinses dishes or anything inside twice and sanitizes them. It only took about 5 minutes. The restaurant doesn’t need many plates using this machine. Only it need person pre-washed dishes and insert it to dish washer. The last task was to help rotating 6 bread pudding pans clockwise from bottom to top, left to right every 20 minutes. This will help cooking pudding in the pans evenly. The pan was very heavy. The chef has to have muscle.

These were my three days’ experience working at restaurant’s commercial kitchen.

I enjoyed meeting and talking other volunteers at St. clouds. I was excited going to auction to help final preparation for 2 hours in advance. And I will be the guest to try out the final meal after 3 days of our hard work. Please read my next blog article to find out the meal at the WMS auction night.

References
(1)St. Clouds restaurant website. http://www.stclouds.com/
(2) Essential Baking CO. website: http://www.essentialbaking.com/