A la Carte Kitchen Week 9

Finally, an update! The last few weeks has been kinda crazy and I don't even know why. But this coming week is the last week of school; the Grand Finale (a.k.a. the Last Supper) dinner will be on Wednesday. Tomorrow, the class is going on a 'field trip' to a restaurant for lunch. We'll be prepping on Tuesday. But anyway, here is the long-awaited Week 9 menu and the dishes.

This week has been different, due to the Memorial Day holiday. School was closed on Monday, so we only had the dinner service. Because of this, I didn't get to taste a lot of the dishes, since everyone, including myself, were (extremely) busy prepping the dishes for dinner service. Lunch services are considered as 'practice run'; if something goes wrong at lunch, it's fixed before the following dinner service. But this was a one-shot deal.

I'm glad my parents made it to this one with a family friend of ours. It was a pretty hectic, but good dinner service

Menu:

Amuse: Cheese-stuffed Cherry tomato on puff pastry

Bread: Hong Kong Bun Duo

Soup: Chilled Melon Soup

Salad: Ahi Tartar Salad

Pasta: Ricotta-Mozz Gnudi

Entree: Buffalo Flank Steak

Dessert: Wild Dessert

Amuse: Cheese-stuffed cherry tomato on puff pastry. Served with opal basil. Didn't get to taste this one.

Bread: Hong Kong Bun Duo. I volunteered to do the bread. The steamed bun recipe is from Momofuku, and they turned out great. My partner and I made bacon-ramp-guava jam and it paired very nicely with the bun. The Hong Kong sweet bread, however, didn't turn out so great. I baked them at the temperature (190C, or 375F) and the time (15~20 minutes) that the recipe called for...and they still turned out very pale. And although it was very tender, it tasted rather bland, despite the amount of sugar and caramel sauce we put in. Later, I baked the leftover batch of dough at 450F for 15 minutes, almost out of spite, and that actually turned out perfect!...if only I did that before the dinner service... But people seemed to like them, and I think the butternut squash butter definitely helped.

...Then all of a sudden, a guest with Celiacs Disease (gluten-allergy) arrives unexpectedly/unannounced. There was no mention of her in the reservation book, but something had to be done quickly to accomodate her. Miraculously, I had just barely whipped up a batch of mochi balls that I was planning on serving for take-home treats. I quickly rolled some in sesame and coconut and skewered them...very Japanese. She happily ate it without any complaints. The dessert station wasn't so lucky however....

Soup: Chilled Honeydew Melon Soup. With strawberries, bacon, and port wine sauce. The soup was very refreshing. Our family friend thought it was different, but liked the soup.

Salad: Yellowfin Ahi Tartar Salad. Kinda like ahi poke, with seabeans and edamame.

Pasta: Ricotta-Mozz Gnudi. A gnudi (pronounced noo-dee) isn't really a pasta per se. It's basically a cheese-dumpling that's been fried. My parents really like the pasta, saying it had a nice cheesy flavor.

Entree: Buffalo Flank Steak. With pesto, radish slaw, and seabean tempura. I'm glad my parents got to taste this one, they actually liked it.

Dessert: Wild dessert...and apparently, it was quite wild. I didn't get to taste all the components, but I didn't like the one that I tasted. It was breaded and deep fried rhubarb gelee...it was kinda gross. And they also put some smokey stuff in it for that smoked flavor, but all it did was make it taste as if though they burned it. The pear-cranberry cookie bar tasted decent, and I didn't taste the white cream--I believe it has blue brie cheese. My mom thought the dessert was awful.

And then, with the leftover steamed bun dough, I made more buns....

Stuffed with the bacon-guava jam.

All in all, it was a good week.