Hell's Kitchen
8:52 AM
As I watched the finale of Hell's Kitchen last night, I couldn't help but
notice that the cooks just weren't that good. Not only did most of the food stuff I
would expect from The Olive Garden or The Cheesecake Factory, it was stuff that
seemed to hard for the cooks to prepare. So they planned boring meals, that their
crews couldn't cook. Not very smart. Of course, that got me to thinking. What
would I have done? As far as I could tell, they each needed to have three courses
with three options for each course. So I came up with my own little menu.
For the first course I'd make butter poached prawns with vanilla bean buerre blanc;
a sweet corn terrine with pea, corn, and cherry tomato salad; and a chicken satay
with peanut sauce and coconut rice cake. Now that all sounds impressive. But it's
really not. The buerre blanc, terrine, salad, rice cake, peanut sauce, and poaching
liquid can all be prepared during prep. For service the only things that actually
need to be cooked are the prawns and the chicken. If you have your poaching liquid
heated to exactly 120F, it becomes simple to cook because they can't be over cooked.
Just drop them in for the order as soon as they are called out. They will be heated
through in 15 minutes, but can wait if they need to. The buerre blanc simply needs
to be kept warm over a double boiler. The terrine just needs to be garnished. The
hardest thing is to grill a chicken skewer!
Dinner is where things can really fall apart. The dishes are really much more
complex and the crews on the show are awful. Again, you want to take as much work
away from service and move it to prep as possible. My three courses for dinner
would be: pepper crusted rib eye with leek rings and mushroom ketchup; pinot noir
poached salmon with polenta cake, mushroom ragu, and pinot noir reduction; and
deconstructed pumpkin ravioli with sage butter. Again, all much more impressive
than it sounds. You do 80% of the work during prep. You drop the salmon portions,
plus a pinot noir ice cube, salt and pepper into a sous vide bath at 130F. The
steaks are seared quickly and they go into a sous vide at the same temperature. Now
technically all your meat is "done" before service. You also make your pinot noir
reduction, polenta, fresh pasta sheets, mushroom stock, mushroom ketchup, ravioli
filling, and cut your leek rings during prep. Now you will need to have three
stations going simultaneously during service. And each cook will have to cook at
least two things. But nothing is hard. Put the weakest one on the fry station. He
simply drops the leeks in a batter and then into the fryer when a steak is 4 minutes
to the window. He also fries a sage leaf when the ravioli one minute to window.
When the salmon is 4 minutes to window, he drops a polenta cake into the fryer. I
had more difficult cooking assignments as McDonald's. The next weakest chef is on
meat. He simple removes the beef from the sous vide bag, dreges it in crushed
pepper, and sears it off for 4 minutes a side in a hot pan, removes it from the
heat, and drops in a nob of butter while it rests for four minutes. For the salmon
it's even easier. Take it out of the bag, and then whack the skin for a few seconds
with a blow torch. The hardest job is going to be my saute station, but again I've
made it as easy as possible. He has to make the mushroom ragu, the sage butter, and
ravioli. The mushroom ragu is easy. Butter and mushrooms in a pan until it
glistens. Add a spoonful of flour and let it cook for a few minutes. Add mushroom
stock and bring to boil. The sage butter consists solely of melting butter with a
sage leaf in it. The only hard part is the ravioli, and since it's deconstructed
that isn't too bad. Drop the past sheets and put the filling in a pan at the same
time. When the pasta sheets come out, dry them. Put one on the plate, the filling
goes down, the other sheet goes down. I think very little could go wrong with all
that.
Desert is the easiest part because virtually everything is already done before hand.
It consists entirely of plating and using a blow torch. The three dishes would be
homemade smore with vanilla salt, shortcake with vanilla ice cream and strawberry
corriander foam, and finally bourbon creme brulee with candied bacon and pecans.
Everything here is made during prep. Service for the smore is: graham cracker down,
piece of chocolate down, marshmallow down, brown marshmallow with tourch, another
piece of chocolate, vanilla salt. Service for the ice cream is: shortcake, scoop of
ice cream, apply foam, apply cilantro leaf. For the creme brulee simply carmilize
the top, and sprinke candied bacon and and pecans on top, then hit the whole plate
with a dusting of powdered sugar.
I don't know about you. But I think I would have won.