Friday, 4/23/10 – Level 3 Day 4 (Garde Manger)

Garde manger is finally over…even though we'll be back at it in a few weeks anyways. Who ever thought soups and salads would be so hard?? In my defense, I think the hard part was that we were always the first to present, and therefore had to high-tail it around the kitchen, throwing vegetable peels and salad spinners in our wake.

We made a vegetable soup called Potage Cultivateur, which includes many many carrots, turnips and potatoes cut into tiny tile shapes. We cooked a vegetable stock with the scraps, sweated some leeks and celery in butter and poured in the stock. Then we added cabbage and our potato tiles, cranking the heat so that the potato would semi-dissolve and bind the soup into a thicker consistency. We served it with some baguette slices and grated gruyere, and got it to Chef right on time. Phew! The taste was fantastic, and he even commented on our perfect taillage, or knife skills, while cutting the little tiles. Dish one down, one salad left.

We then got started on our Salade Nicoise, the classic French composed salad with tuna, olives, anchovies, tomatoes, green peppers, hard-boiled eggs and potatoes. Sounds easy enough, but each item has to be cooked separately, seasoned and cooled, and we had about 15 minutes and two burners to do everything. Unfortunately, our potatoes were still a little raw, but that may or may not have been what we intended…you don't know me!! I was actually just really happy to have made it to class that day, as my afternoon had been a little nuts, to say the least…

I decided to take a temporary receptionist job on Friday that ended at 5pm. I like to get to school around 5:15 to get dressed and ready, so in order to make it on time would simply need to hop in a cab, New York City's fastest mode of transportation from areas not close to a subway, and zoom down Broadway to be dropped off at school. Seems simple enough, of course this will work! I got out to Park Avenue at about 5:10, already running a little late. Can you drive 60 blocks in 5 minutes? I sure hope so! It was rush hour on a Friday evening, and although a million cabs kept zooming past me they were all occupied or off duty. Ok, I'll just walk to Lexington Avenue, which is a one-way downtown street, where I will surely catch a cab. Not so much; it put me on an emotional rollercoaster, calling Steve every five minutes sobbing telling him I was just forgetting it all and coming home. No, I'm going to stick it out, a cab will come eventually. No, I am not putting up with this I would rather not go than be embarrassingly late. Oh crap, we have a test today…TAXI!!! No, I'm coming home I need a drink. I have to get to school, I can't skip it!!

It was taking a huge toll on me; I yelled at a tourist mother and daughter troupe because they were also trying to get a cab. "Do you see me here?? DO. YOU. SEE. ME. HERE??" (They'll never come back to New York.) I finally got a cab…at 5:45 pm, the exact time that class was starting. I was now on my way…slowly. The kind and understanding driver (not) decided that driving out of his way to go through Times Square would be the ideal route…on a Friday evening. While it inflated the fare, it added about 20 minutes onto the trip…a lose-lose situation for me. We finally pulled up to school at 6:25pm, a full 40 minutes into class. I was so apathetic at this point, I didn't even care. I swiped my credit card and gathered my things to get out. What's that, an error message? Ok, I'll swipe it again. He claimed that the machine didn't have a signal, so he'd have to drive around the block. To make a long story short, after three credit cards and seven blocks, the machine still wasn't working. We got in a little tiff because he told me my cards were bad and I had overdrawn my account…and I kindly informed him that his machine was obviously broken and that he would need to take me to a bank if he wanted his fare. He agreed to do so, because I think he saw the foam starting to form in the corners of my mouth, but then tried to charge me again for the ride back to school. Keep in mind that at this point we were in the heart of Chinatown, fighting tourists clamoring for their knock-off designer goods and fish markets piling more ice onto their rotten fish, so it would be about another $6 to get back to school. Nope, not on my watch. I explained to him that the police man standing on the corner would LOVE to get involved in this mess (by mess I mean - My Life in Song), and as I started to roll down my window and call to the cop the driver turned off his fare machine. Ok, small victory. He pulled in front of school, I threw him some cash (but made him give me $1 change ha…ha…ha) and ran into school. I got changed and walked in the kitchen…at the exact moment they were wrapping up lecture. I didn't miss a single minute of cooking - what are the odds?? I got incredibly lucky, and although I missed a good amount of lecture it won't be hard to copy someone else's notes. And the test? Postponed…unbelievable. Looking back on the fiasco, I was obviously not meant to get to class on time with all of those ridiculous obstacles. Imagine my surprise when we checked our online accounts and found that each of those card swipes had in fact worked…and we're being charged multiple times to each of our cards. Don't worry, Steve has already put a call into the bank and I will be alerting the local news as soon as the charges clear. Dear Yellow Cab: I may look sweet, but I pack a big bite.

I love you, New York.