Today, we continued yesterday’s “a la carte,” or made-to-order, cooking with three more difficult, more complicated recipes. Monday’s dishes were pretty straightforward, so this was the real test of our abilities.

On the menu:

  • coconut-curry tempeh with black rice and pineapple chutney
  • tofu ginger stir-fry on sticky basmati rice
  • pan-seared chicken breasts with mushroom sauce and mashed potatoes
I was most excited to make the chicken, just because I feel like I don’t cook with animal proteins very often and could always use the practice.

For this recipe, we pan-seared the chicken, then popped it in the oven to finish cooking. Meanwhile, we sauteed some mushrooms, de-glazed the pan with white wine and emulsified the sauce with chunks of butter before serving it over the homemade potatoes with some grilled zucchini slices.
I did the mise-en-place for the pineapple chutney to top the tempeh cakes. These were fairly simple- we just pan-seared the tempeh, then served them on black rice with the reheated curry sauce and some of the chutney.

The pineapple was definitely my favorite part!

And finally, the tofu. We used woks for these, heating up the vegetables in sesame oil before throwing in the tofu and some sauce and pouring it over the rice.

Simple and delicious. Using a wok makes so much difference for stir-fries.

At the end of the program, we each have to complete a 100 hour restaurant internship (I recently got mine figured out, but I won’t be saying where until I’m done for safety reasons!). I have to say that I’m kind of nervous about it, but breaking everything down like this really helped. It’s obviously nowhere near as intense as a real restaurant, where each chef would be manning multiple stations and firing off several orders at once, but it just made me comfortable with the idea of cooking and plating things in a crazy, crowded environment.

Tomorrow we’re cooking our entire Friday Night Dinner for the first time. Wish us luck!