New job, country pub, michelin star, pastry chef!
Now I’m not a pastry chef, but I asked the owner for a head chef job and he told me “if I made you head chef then I would be out of a job!”. He also has a very capable sous chef so he told me that he’s sorry but these positions are not possible but I want your experience and skill set on my team so how about you join us as pastry chef?!
I needed a job, it’s 15 mins from my house and serves the best food for miles around…. the owner and his wife have both worked in some of the best kitchens in the world, the latter a pastry chef in most of them… So I said yes of course I want the job!
So the Red lion has had a michelin star for a long time and cooks food with some real classic French basis, the owner Guy is the head chef and has worked all over the world from Per se in NYC to Martin Berasategui in Spain and his wife has trained as a pastry chef is these two and more (luckily for me).
First day (Wednesday) and the main thing is bread making because they make sourdough everyday, a white and a caraway and sunflower seed. However as I know from making my breads at home for while now, and thank god I did or I would of looked like a right joker to be honest! It takes two days to make a good sourdough so on Wednesday we must make the two sourdoughs then make two fresh yeast breads for today’s services.
It’s a whirlwind kind of day which requires full concentration from me and due to my teacher having worked in the kind of places where if your shown something then your expected to know it, I was frantically trying to remember things and write things down! It was a lot to take in but great fun and really great to be working in a place with a star again.
The next day I was told to make the bread doughs… I did my best and Only got told off a couple of times!
Through service I was helping the starter section as well as trying not to fuck up desert section which was another challenge. I did feel like the head chef had high expectations of me and after service he told me it was gonna be great being able to give the starter section more skilful/complicated dishes because his team is quite young, really good guys but young and with little experience so normally he cooks the hot food like foie and seared lambs tongue. Now cooking these things isn’t a problem but I was trying very hard to remember all the components to my puddings so being told the components for 6 starters I did feel like my brain was gonna pop.
The rest of the week was better and better, I started getting into the bread routine which meant making the doughs in the morning then periodically throughout the morning stretching the doughs each hour untill well proved then shaping them into loafs and leaving them overnight in the fridge for proving and baking the next morning. Each day we made, cooked or prepped a new dish or component for the menu and I started to learn a few tricks of the trade and the skills needed to be a pastry chef. It’s a more precise skill I think and recipes must be followed with great accuracy compared to savoury things. I learnt how to make a dry caramel which blew my mind… I’ve always been tought to never stir a caramel but that’s now true!! A dry caramel means putting a small amount of sugar in a hot pan and whisk it till it turns a golden in Colour then add another handful of sugar and whisk till golden and just keep going untill you have as much as you need! Simple but a thing I’ve never done so really great to still be leaning. A thing I love about cooking is the Constant learning curve, you can always learn new things even when your a veteran.
Jonascooks 