Chefie’s World

With over three months of preparation, this dinner for 350 persons sit down plated 8 course for the benefit of my student’s movie Ploning was one of my most exciting events to do. The whole school with batch 18 MWF AM class and some from the PM class were part of the three day preparation and actual dinner.

A few weeks before the dinner, I volunteered myself to Gino that I could do the chocolate pralines for the dinner and he obliged, giving me full responsibility with it. With Toto in command and heading the catering team, I knew that it would just flow through with all his experience in big functions here and in Davao, he was the right choice. But he did give me another responsibility which was creating the dessert from what was given by Chef Gene. I tested three different cakes with a variation of amounts with regard to black pepper. Oh by the way the dessert would be three components….a flourless black pepper chocolate cake, tomato ice cream with balsamic cream and poached pears with coffee mascarpone stuffing….it would be good together and individually, one blending just right with the other. I was also assigned to be the leader in plating this dessert which I eagerly said yes to.

The pralines were hand done and the filling I did from scratch, dark chocolate with a cherry liquer filling, milk chocolate with a hazelnut praline filling and white chocolate with a raspberry and cranberry filling. I had all this done in two days….why it took that long, the main reason is that I had to make 1500 pcs and I only had 12 praline molds which totaled to 380 pieces so we did the chocolates five times using the molds again and again. Thanks for the great help from Batch 17 TTHS who stayed with me even in the making of the flourless chocolate cake. Pralines were done by Monday and the event was Wednesday so I helped out with all the other components of the dessert, it was the brandy snap that was shaped into waves that took the longest, also since our everlasting assistant Lito dropped a box filled with it so the 50 pieces became 10,000 smaller minute tiny shards of brandy snaps. So up until the last hour of Wednesday there were still making brandy snaps.

I enjoyed the flow, the helping out and most of all the camaraderie that existed that night.
All chefs, former students who are chefs now were there to help….I just felt so much good energy and enthusiasm from everyone.

By the way, I also had to plate the sorbet which was Frozen Red Thompson Grapes stuffed with Lychee and decorated with dry ice….which burned a lot of fingers that night.

Truly, magical! An adrenaline induced night of fun and joy. I am so proud of my school working for a benefit dinner for a fellow student, Judai who believes in the Filipinos zest for good and creative work.

No pictures in the plating of dessert and sorbet. We were so involved and concentrated in our work that night that taking shots were only done during our free and waiting time.

• Cakes & Dessert Binges
• Pre Valentine Brunch
• Just a thought
• Conti’s Dinner and others…
• The Feeling / Filling Still Lingers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.