A quick reflection on my first month

I’ve completed exactly four weeks in the kitchen. I’m blown away by how fast the time has passed. It’s made me reflect on just how much I’ve learned in such a short amount of time. When I am in the thick of it—in the kitchen by 8:15 AM, out by midnight, five days a week—it’s difficult to grasp just how much I’m taking in, but I realize I’ve been like a sponge soaking up technique, method, philosophy, experience, ingredients, management, and more. I’ve already filled my first notebook with recipes and reflections and will be starting a second this coming Wednesday.

I’ve learned how to make a sage and spinach hollandaise, with pearls of grapefruit, fresh squeezed orange juice and finely hashed walnuts, yodada, a crème fraiche, white wine and micriu thickened sauce-like vinaigrette, fresh seafood aioli with bougavente, scallops, shrimp and crab, tomato water gelatin, onion cream, a mushroom and truffle farse, truffle and foie cream, pil pil sauce, how to use rice and tapioca starch as thickeners as opposed to flour, lecite in foams and agar agar in gelatin. I’ve learned how lovely and delicious kokotxcha is—pendulums of flesh that grow in the throat of hake or cod. I’ve learned how refreshing and thought provoking it can be to mix both hot and cold items in one dish—for instance, a hot fennel risotto (the fennel pieces are cut to the size of and used in place of arborio rice) topped with a sliced, cold, raw fennel salad. I’ve learned how to use one product in myriad ways throughout one dish such as the squid ink ravioli. The ravioli are comprised of a filling of squid ink, fish stock and vegetables, wrapped in tissue paper slices of squid, and swim in a broth of seafood stock. This is accompianed by grilled baby squid and a toasted squid ink rice chip. I’ve learned about mixing savory and sweet ingredients like the salmon keia with seaweed powder of hazenut, coffee and vanilla and the mille-feuille of smoked eel, foie-gras, spring onions and green apple. I’ve learned about layering and textures and have been introduced to new kitchen equipment like the pacojet.

I could go on. Most importantly, it makes me realize how invaluable this experience has been and will be. I crave more.