Sushi 5 - Some Kinds of Rolls

Today I'm going to talk about a few kinds of rolls made in the sushi bar. I unfortunately never had the chance to make any of these nor do I have photos of them. These special rolls required a higher skill level than I possessed to make them.

First, I want to mention the spider roll which is very interesting because it has a whole, deep-fried crab inside of it. It also has tobiko (flying fish roe), cucumber sticks, and avocado inside.
Another special roll is the crazy tuna roll. I like this one, though it's quite a spicy one. It's a shrimp tempura roll with spicy tuna on top, at which point a piece of plastic is laid on top, rerolled, and then cut into five pieces. Then, tempura flakes are liberally sprinkled on top along with more spicy and chilli sauce. After this, it's arranged on the serving platter in somewhat of a 'U' shape which is a very elegant presentation as well as providing a perfect place to put the greens, ginger, and wasabi.
The next roll I will mention is called the volcano roll. It has tuna, fluke, and salmon on the inside. What makes it interesting is that unlike every other roll we make, the volcano roll is shaped into a triangle. This is a bit reminiscent of what my partner and I did for our Garde Manger final. Ours did not come out as well, however. Oh, and the other reason this roll is called a volcano roll is due to the drop of chilli sauce poured onto each of this eight piece roll.
The last roll I'm going to talk about is the ninja roll. It's a rather special roll as well. First, the nori is put lengthwise. Tuna, avocado, and crab meat sticks are placed at the bottom. A piece of rice is smeared on at the top to act as something of a glue. Then it's rolled and has two broccoli crowns stuck into both ends before being sent downstairs to be deep-fried. This roll also has scallions and smelt roe. Once it's deep-fried, it's cut into nine pieces. Also, tempura flakes and chilli sauce are added. Normally, it's then garnished with daikon radish shreds, red cabbage, seaweed salad, and ginger, wasabi, and greens, of course.

This is only a short list of all of the rolls that were done on a somewhat daily basis. I think it's just amazing the ability to remember all of the different items, what's in them, and how to plate them. That must come with practice, I imagine.

Pastry 5

So today I'm going to share a few photos of some of the items I've been making at the bakery, followed by some thoughts I've had about my performance.

 The items are, in order: Lemon Blueberry Muffins, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Chocolate Macademia Cookies, Chocolate Chocolate Cookies, Gluten-free Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Almond-Anise Biscotti.

As for my thoughts, I just can't help feeling concerned about my organization. That was a goal of mine over my internships but I honestly don't feel like I've improved much in that area at all.
I'm having serious trouble remembering what I've done and how I did it. It seems like I can't even remember enough of it to write notes, or I feel like I'll remember what I've done and then don't. This applies no matter how many times I do something. Which is manageable when a plan is in place and there's someone there to help me. However, if I'm to excel and not merely output some product, I need to figure a way around my blocks. I imagine that my first step is to just force myself to write down the procedures I take and how recipes look at different stages so that I can refer to them later.
Also, I need to keep track of what is needed in the shop's case so that when orders come in I can judge how much of what we need to make to meet quota.
Finally, I should keep track of all of our products' decorations so that I can do that too. Maybe drawing sketches or at least taking photos would be a good idea for the future.

Pastry 3

The bakery is getting busier! Recently the owner has been putting more effort into advertisement and the bakery has been covered by several news stations. Here's a video of the Papa Ganache's owner talking about the bakery a bit: http://videos.nj.com/star-ledger/2011/07/lisa_at_papa_ganache_keyport.html
I was not there that day~
We're also trying to branch out and put our products in more places. For example, tomorrow there will be a big event where we were contracted to send $1000 worth of merchandise to the site. No, $1000 isn't a typo! Five of us, including Derrick, worked on all of the goodies for that today.
So many tarts crisps, muffins and other things I couldn't even keep track of were made today as well. It made me realize that one really needs to keep organized both physically and in their mind in order to handle high volume. Even as the intern I felt a bit overwhelmed and was glad that I wasn't in charge. There's no way I could have pulled it off as well as Sue, Jordan, and the newest hired baker, Jessica.

Also, I've come to accept my position as the resident cookie person and am still producing a high volume of cookies. The other day I made six batches of cookies in one day and scooped about five hundred cookies. It's cookie madness, I swear. Today we experimented with a somewhat new idea of just baking off the chocolate chip cookie dough sans chocolate chips. I wasn't there to see the result but I'm sure they'll be amazing.

We're also going to start shipping orders online and our new website is in the works last I heard. I'm actually really looking forward to that.