Epicurean Encounters: Drain Pain

The worst part of cooking school is cleaning up at the end of the day. From noon to 1pm, we are scrubbing the floors, stove tops, ovens, tables, etc. This is in addition to the dishes that have accumulated through five hours of cooking. We rotate through the dish room in 15 minute increments. Somehow I lucked out this block with 8:30 and 11:30 dish times which is usually during lecture or eating respectively. I was, however, assigned to cleaning the hot line which includes 14 burners, 4 conventional ovens, 2 convection ovens, the grill, and the fryer. This was originally a three person job, but through attrition, I am the last person standing. I have to make sure the stove tops are free of grease and debris. This was challenging during pastry week with daily burnt caramel sauce. The drip pans must be clean as well as all the ovens and fryer. Sometimes we pull the ranges out and clean behind them. Never the less, this job is still an improvement to the floors. Especially when the drains over flow, such was what happened yesterday, our last day of cooking.
We were all looking forward to a relaxing last day when, without warning, the prep sink started back flowing. We were ordered to stop using the sink. This is rather difficult when you are cooking. Luckily we were mostly done. Then the drains started to back up in the adjacent kitchen 1. Now two classes had nowhere to wash dishes except in the pastry kitchen which had one tiny dishwasher. We basically washed all the dishes piecemeal by hand. It made for a very long day. We looked forward to our two week hiatus from the kitchen, mostly for the cleaning part.
Today begins our two weeks of entrepreneurship during which we will develop a business plan and present it to the class. We have guest entrepreneur speakers to inspire/frighten us almost daily. I am not particularly interested in starting a business, but the research should prove an interesting experience.
Back to food, on Friday, we had an hors d'oeuvre buffet, and yesterday we concluded our last day of cooking with a garde manger buffet which included pate, terrines, and forced meats. It was not the most glamorous part of cooking but surprisingly tasty. (My productions are in bold).