Today is Saturday July 10th and the first 24 hours of my internship is complete! To my own surprise, I am feeling fairly confident and productive. Even more surprisingly I find myself looking forward to working next week! At the end of last semester I was dreading this whole internship course; I thought for sure I would hate it and be a failure. Perhaps I would hate it if I were working in a restaurant kitchen but as it is, the farm has been a fun place so far.
The kitchen at the Griggstown farm makes me feel comfortable, almost like my own kitchen. My job this summer will be to come up with a simple and seasonal menu for lunch that will be served Thursday - Saturday from 12-2 pm and to prepare those items. I will also be helping in the kitchen making salads, cookies, and other baked things and working in the new ice cream shack making homemade ice cream sandwiches and cones! While the kitchen is hot hot hot and working on the outside grill is roasty-toasty, working in the shack is pretty cool (literally!) since it stays air-conditioned at a pleasant 70 degrees.
On Wednesday I came in at 8 am and before I knew it, it was 4 pm and time to go home. I already am comfortable and get along with the people I will be working with. That's definitely a plus! It seems I will have a lot of freedom to do my own thing as far as the lunch menu goes. Mike, the sous-chef, told me he would get any ingredients that I might need and that I am free to experiment and do what I think would be fun.
The first thing I made on Wednesday was some tabbouleh salad, followed be a cucumber salad. I didn't have a recipe for the cucumber salad so instead of being nervous I just imagined that I was at home making it. How would I make this if I were winging it at home? That's what's fun about working here! After that, Mike was talking to me about being a vegetarian and asked what some of my favorite things to make are. When I told him that I really enjoy grilled pizza he suggested I put that on the menu for lunch. I suggested a sundried tomato and mozzarella pizza with pesto and he said to go for it. Again there was no recipe for the pesto. Of course it's a simple thing to make but I wanted my pesto to be fantastic. I pretended that I was at home making it, and it came out fantastic. On Thursday I brought in a pizza dough recipe and made up 1/2 lb. rounds of dough. They were a little to big and we had some problem with it sticking to the parchment paper so on Friday I made them 6 oz. and separated them with tin foil. Always learning!
Probably my favorite part about cooking here so far is that a worker on the farm will come into the kitchen with a bucket of eggplant he just picked and that we need for sandwiches. Or that when I need some herbs for a marinade I can walk outside and pick it.
P.S. The photo is obviously of one of my grilled pizzas. It is delicious in both my opinion and the customers! :)
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