Production Kitchen Duty

Each pastry student at Cordon Bleu has a few requirements on top of attending every class: One day on Production Kitchen Duty, one day on Demo Assistantship, and one day as Sous Chef.  I was terrified for all three of these, but had the good fortune to be one of the first to do every one.

Chef Philippe in a Lab Kitchen

First for me was Production Kitchen Duty.  This is how it had been explained to me:  Report to the Production Kitchen, the place where our chefs prepare all of the food for the coming day and get ready for Demos, find Chef Philippe Guiet, and do whatever he says.

Sounds pretty easy, right?  Well, I was worried that he and the other chefs down there would expect me to do things that I had never heard of, or do technical cuisine prep (like “turning vegetables”…I would have no idea where to start.)  So, when the day came, I crossed my fingers that the chefs would just have me crack 4-dozen eggs, and I was off to the kitchen.

I reported for duty, and was pleased to discover that one of my Group A friends was there with me.  We found Chef Philippe (who we had met during Orientation) and got our marching orders.  We were to prepare trays of pre-measured ingredients for chefs to use in Demo and for advanced students to use in Practical.  Piece of cake!

The only little problem we had was with exotic ingredients we had never heard of and with a few items on the list that needed to be prepared (example: a few different types of herbs and peppercorns wrapped in a leek leaf and tied with string).

I was also asked to slice strawberries, something I was very familiar with after working at Panera for a year. 

So the Production Kitchen was harmless.  One chef was rude and condescending to us, loudly arguing with Chef Philippe in French about why we even had to be there, how slow we were, and how we were taking up space.  I never mentioned to them that I speak French.  Another chef made fun of me for wearing white kitchen shoes, joking about how I’ll never ever keep them clean.  It was a great experience, though, and I was glad to see how a large-scale kitchen is organized and how it works.

This past Monday I reported for my Demo Assistantship and the chef simply said that he didn’t need me that day and that I could go home, so that was even easier.  I was just as nervous for that one, as it was for a Superior Cuisine course.

Being the Sous Chef was a piece of cake, too.  My job was simply to put a large bowl at each student’s station in the lab kitchen before they came into the room.