First days at work

So, I told you about our exciting journey. Now I will continue with my first days at work. Actually we were expected to start on Monday, 10th April, but our chef let us rest for a day after the long hours of travelling and our first working day was on Tuesday. We used the day off to go to Siena, the nearest large city. In the afternoon we went to Borgo Santo Pietro in order to meet the chefs. There was only the sous chef who showed us around the endless yards of this botique hotel and then we saw the kitchen of Restaurant Meo Modo. After that we met the executive chef, Andrea Mattei, who had an important meeting. On the next day we went to the kitchen at 8:30 in the morning because we had to start at 9. We waited for the sous chef to come. He gave us the uniforms and we were ready to start.

He explained us how we have to arranged our stations. In fact the hotel will open at 4th May, so the restaurant is still not working. Chefs use the time until opening for experimenting on the new season menu. The first two days we also had to help for preparing the staff food, because the lady, responsible for that wasn't at work. The first day one of my tasks was to make baked tomatoes with oregano, olive oil and bread crumbs. I also cut some vegetables - onion , celery and carrots, blended them with olive oil and then cooked pasta sauce with fried minced meat. I helped for organising the delivered products, because in the kitchen of Meo Modo every one should stop the work and help when the delivery is made. We had lunch with the whole Borgo staff in the special staff restaurant in the yard. After the half hour break we started to prepare the mise e place for the next day. I formed ready bread dough in a way , shown me by the sous chef. Then we all together deep cleaned the kitchen.

When we left the kitchen we went to receive our cards which allow us to enter the villa. The next day I started with separating some parsley leaves, but then I continued with pastry. I made some plum juice, cut some cake in slices and vacuuming some ingredients. I also prepared flowers and spices for drying and measured the products for biscuits according to given to me recipe. On Thursday I prepared the ingredients for the typical Italian biscuits Cantucci, for plum cake, chocolate plum cake, pasta brise and I also made an apple pie and brownie. Except that I measured the ingredients, I also mixed the different doughs, put them in the moulds and also decorated the apple pie with apple slices. In the last working day of the week I prepared lemon cream, pasta frolla, cake with raspberries and white chocolate, cake with almonds and figs, and put the ready mixtures in previously covered with fat and brown sugar moulds. I also baked some crackers.

My responsibilities also include washing some of the pots and of course cleaning the pastry kitchen after finishing the work. I can definitely say that the previous week was really useful in terms of the gained knowledge and skills. I learned a lot about the appropriate preparation and mixing the different types of dough and I am looking forward for the next adventures in the kirchen. I will tell you about them and also about our days off in the nearest future.