First Day -- Pastry Monkey v Marshmallows

Today was the first day of my externship!

The girl who started me out was waaaaay cooler than the girl I had to work with way back on my trail. (In kitchen speak, a "trail" is when you work a shift at an establishment you are considering for a job, or in my cae an externship.) Why was this girl cooler? 1) She was not bitter about her job. 2) She didn't seem to misinform me about pastry basics. 3) She had sturdy wrists. (The uncool girl had sore wrists or something and complained about it when I shook her hand 'hello'. And she continued to whine about the wrists the rest of the day.)

I am currently assigned the "swing shift" which means I work the night shift doing various prep work while the rest of the staff does service (plating desserts as they are ordered for dinner.) Tonight I got to learn a number of things I will be doing everyday: making the daily giant batch of coffee cake batter (to put "big" in perspective, it calls for 5 pounds of butter and 10 pounds of sour cream), making various petit fours (marshmallows and tiny lemon cakes), making seasoned mixed nuts, etc. All of it is pretty straight forward and things were going fairly well until I met my nemesis -- the marshmallow.

I've made marshmallows twice in culinary school without a problem, so it was really frustrating that it took multiple attempts to make 1 batch today. I actually lost count of my attempt. I think there were 4, but I am not totally certain. Marshmallows are simple enough. You add cooked sugar and gelatin to egg whites as they are whipping. Then you add any flavorings. Pow! Instant marshmallows. How could something so simple get fucked up by me a bunch of times? Well, first Chef told me that usually you are supposed to add 30% of the sugar's weight in water to the pot of sugar, but that you can actually put less. You just need to make sure it is wet like sand. Here is the main source of failed attempts 1 and 2. Chef's definition of "wet sand" vastly differs from mine. When I think wet sand, I think of the sand that is near the water and is sort of wet, but not totally. Chef thinks wet sand is the sand that is still totally covered in water. In the end, I wasn't putting enough water in AT ALL, which resulted in the cooked sugar to heat up too quickly and to crystallize. What about the other failed attampts? Cleaning guys were spraying down the floors and I had to move. Even though I truned down the heat, the sugar had overcooked by the time I could get back. The other failed attempts? Who knows. All that matters is that EVENTUALLY (literally hours later) I successfully made 2 whole batches of marshallows. Yay!

Now on to those guys spraying the water. The thing that irks me a bit about this restaurant is the fact that it is constantly wet. They are constantly mopping, which is great, but they are also pouring giant buckets of soapy water everywhere. And the process to clear out the soapy water involves letting the soap water sit for a long time, eventually spraying the soap away, letting the remaining water sit a while, squeegeeing the water away and finally mopping again. It turns the place into one giant puddle of water. I am always worried that I will slip and fall, especially when carrying something bulky or heavy. I had asked the uncool girl from way back if anyone had ever fallen because of the water. She acted like it was the most ridculous notion that someone would slip and fall with all the SOAPY WATER on the tile floors. Grrrrr.

Despite the battle with marshmallows, things went well. I like my chef a lot. She is a shorty like me and I enjoy her personality. She drops the f-bomb with ease and gets her energy up at the end of the night by playing some Guns N Roses. I heart Chef! Sure, she also rocks out to that song Fancy by Reba McIntyre, but no one is perfect. (Remember when Kellie Pickler butchered that song in American Idol?)