A Short Addendum

Eating and Cleaning

Hello again Friends! After several of you commented on the blog and to me privately about some lingering questions regarding procedures at LCB I decided to write a quick follow up.

To answer the question of what happens to the food we prepare at LCB-we can take home whatever we make and I usually do. That is not to say I always consume it—but I do take it home. While my husband was here this past weekend he completely devoured my duck meat pie and declared it the best thing he ever had. Hmmm. Maybe he missed me? Maybe it was better than airplane food? Hard to say exactly, and I am not one to speculate, so—I’ll take it! Love you Honey! I will just whip up a duck meat pie whenever things are looking dicey at home.

We eat, neither alone, nor together at LCB. Our time is so short at the end of class that we would never have time to eat together and everything has to be packed up and cleaned before we leave. Honestly, unless we were going to eat standing up, there really would not even be an appropriate place—see blog from yesterday—nowhere to sit.

That conveniently brings me to the other question about clean up. Part of the reason we only have two hours and fifteen minutes to cook the dish of the day in the practical is because the remaining 45 minutes of class are devoted to cleaning. Yes, it is a sad fact—yours truly has some serious dishpan hands. We clean our work stations, the stove tops, the common areas and even inside the ovens if required. Also, we clean all of our own equipment from the knife kit— knives, whisks, vegetable peelers, spatulas etc and also the presentation plates that you see in my photos with the food on them. There are dishwashing rooms between the kitchens that paid staff work in during our practicals, and there they wash all the pans we use and all the bowls, and bowls, and bowls.

As we are not allowed to have phones out during the practicals, I risked the pain of humiliation and possible dismissal from LCB to snap a few surreptitious photos (when Chef wasn’t looking) just so you could get an idea of what the kitchen and cleaning area look like.

These are where the newly cleaned bowls and pans live—in the dishwashing kitchen.

The photo below cracks me up as it completely illustrates the seating issue and the fact that there is nowhere to put anything. Those are my things on that counter top. Please notice the sign that says, “PLEASE DO NOT PUT ANYTHING HERE.” Seriously, like nobody is going to dump their gear for a hot minute while they regroup? Of course, everyone ignores it and puts their knife kits up there so they can —you know—look inside them. Instead of laying them on the floor. You can’t tell from this innocent photo how much that thing weighs but I am here to tell you I have some serious biceps these days. Them people be crazy.

Today was Fried Monday. We made potatoes “gaufrette” (which I am guessing means waffle cut—need to google that) and this fish that looks suspiciously akin to a fried rat; with a side of tartar sauce and fried parsley. It was actually delicious! You never can tell.