All is quiet but the whisk and ladle

All is quiet, but for the sound of the whisk and ladle.

Tom starts on his risotto,
the second course of the day.

Our weekend class- a new addition to the Liaison schedule in the past few months- hit the kitchen about the time that the rest of us were putting our feet up for the weekend. These students were often overlooked in our blog and Facebook page for this reason. In the midst of their final exams though, Chef Greg took a few minutes to capture them at the height of concentration.

Students from this class will be amongst our lineup when we hold our next graduation ceremony in January.

Aaron

Students prepped everything they needed the day before, so they were at the
stoves right away starting their mushroom soup and  risotto.

Hitting the sauce

The transition is seamless as students enrolled in the Chef de Cuisine diploma complete their Cook Basic training and move on to Advanced Level 2. First on the agenda for the current Advanced class, along with some Basic students and alumni, was three days of prepping, cooking and serving a Christmas lunch to almost 400 children at Hess Street School.

Jessica works up a bechamel sauce.

Kevin starts his veloute with a roux.

The glow of team work and camaraderie that made the Christmas lunch lively, fun and efficiently executed will follow everyone that pitched in to make it work. With such a concentrated curriculum to work through in the next 15 weeks though, our students have little time to digest the experience before returning to the kitchen.

Essential groceries for sauce week-
the reason those sauces taste so good!

After a quick review of mother sauces (béchamel, velouté, Hollandaise, brown and tomato sauces), Chef Dan demonstrated an array of small sauces that are borne from these five. Students cooked up a few of them; the rest were relegated to quick jottings in their kitchen bibles. Chef delivered a homework-in-the-making heads-up: they will be making sauces from their own notes in a few days, and will need to remember much more than turkey gravy and cranberry sauce. 

A lot of sauces start with quality stock,
so this spigotted stock pot is often on the
back burner. 

Students' kitchen bibles are their best friends
when a demonstration includes twenty sauces. 

Chef Elaina Ravo makes us gush

Chef Elaina Ravo amongst the books that she loves best.

We train a lot of chefs here at Liaison College Hamilton, and meet many more who do great justice to their chosen craft. We are proud of all of our graduates, but we don't often melt into a barrage of superlatives. Chef Elaina Ravo, though, is worthy of all the accolades we can summon, and we are extremely happy to count her amongst our graduates.

Chef Elaina's story is the latest in our series of alumni profiles on our website. Check out this recent addition to our pages (Graduate Success Stories), and get in touch if you, or someone you know, has a story to share.

Gearing up for the final stretch

BEFORE: students' evaluation depends
on matching the dish to its rightful owner. 

AFTER: Chef has to try them all, but a
spoonful is all he needs to determine
if the soup is done right.

Gearing up for final, practical exams, Chef Bill challenged his Basic students with a couple of black box days, named for the culinary competitions that present competitors with surprise ingredients, and a short time-frame in which to produce a dish from them. Our students were kept in the dark about what they would cook, though they had already learned how to prepare the dishes at some point in their lessons.

Tom works with melted
chocolate for his mousse

As they set up their stations, ingredients were revealed: all the fixings for cream of mushroom soup and chocolate mousse with Genoise sponge. The deadline for the first – 45 minutes, no more, no less – presented hot, in a warm bowl. The timing for dessert: finished, ready to unmold and plate the following day, when they also had the challenge of producing a risotto and a main course of stuffed chicken supreme.

Joleen whips egg whites for her Genoise sponge.

These challenges were a lead-in to exams last week, both hands-on and written. As the last pen was laid down, the knives laid aside and the ovens shut down, silent tension made way for giddy relief. For better or worse, exams are over.