We continue our series looking at the Karen Blixen Camp‘s very own Hospitality School which was set up to provide training for the local Masai young people.
Beef and Veal
This week followed last week’s initial lessons all about veal and beef. After kitchen duty was finished the Head Chef and Head Teacher Rune added the missing recipes to the first few days of this week. These were in order to catch up on the missing dishes from the previous extremely busy week. This meant that the students were going to have to cook twice as much over the first two days as normal. And guess what – they managed just fine. They really have progressed so well and so quickly over the past 6 weeks.
The students all received some more intensive lectures all about veal and beef such as the different cuts on both, the different cooking methods for the different cuts, different breeds, why we hang meat, hygiene, storage and quality control. The students also gained greater knowledge of the real importance of temperature control when cooking meat. They covered the different levels of cooking from blue/bleu, rare, medium-rare, medium, medium well-done and well-done. When Rune started his introduction to meat, he could see that this absolutely huge topic about veal and beef was very confusing. However as the days went by the students seem to understand and that gradually it started to make sense to them. By the end of the week they could manage the cutting down from a whole cow right down to a steak and every cut in between. Pretty impressive!
Hygiene
The students are now also operating with two cutting boards , ever since their last module as this is a vital part of kitchen hygiene. They use green for vegetables and red for meat and they are working a lot on remembering to change the boards whilst working in a busy kitchen. Every time they change ingredients they must clean workstation, change their board, change to the right knife and keep the ingredients separated. This extra work due to changing ingredients doesn’t always seem logical to the students but none the less, they are learning to appreciate a clean kitchen and the importance of cleanliness while cooking. All the students have really improved a lot since their last module on cleaning and hygiene a while back. More of them are also starting to show individual responsibility by starting cleaning tasks off their own backs rather than being told by the teacher. They themselves can see what tasks need to be done or when they think that the kitchen could be cleaner. Their handling of knifes and their respect for them has also improved significantly recently.
Timing
This week also saw the students tackle more cooking with whole recipes with a focus on cooking timing. This meant they had to focus on the main element, the sauce and the garnish to make sure they were all perfect at the same time. This is important as some elements of the dish can be reheated, whilst other elements must be served immediately once cooked. This week’s focus has been on calculating the time needed and putting these calculations to work so that the students could serve their food all together when hot and cooked. The students actually managed to do this one day this week but at the same time they were also very surprised to find out how hard it is to make a hot, tasty and good looking plate of food.
Deep Cleaning the Kitchen
The students deep-cleaning has really improved – probably more than anything else. Head Chef Rune is very impressed with them as they managed to deep clean the kitchen in just two hours on Saturday which is miles faster than previously. If the students keep the kitchen really clean during the week then the weekend’s deep clean will be even faster in future.
Progress
There are two students who are really beginning to achieve higher levels than the others at this point. They seem to have grasped what Rune is looking for and are achieving very high levels with all the non-food tasks and skills. They also have a feeling and understanding of the day’s dishes before they start to cook and they are happy to criticize their own efforts to Rune as they can see where they can improve and spot what might have gone wrong. Rune is very happy and it allows him to concentrate on the other 6 students who still lack confidence and need a little more hands on help from him.
Posted by Ruth Bolton
