/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>15833041
vs an average dinner entrée I served them

I applied at a nice bistro, got an interview and the chef seemed to take a liking to me and invited me for a stagier for a few hours on a slow night. This caught me off guard, I'm not a complete stranger to decent restaurants and even less so to scratch cooking and classical french cooking but I'm not a culinary student and I had to ask him to actually explain a stagier to me, which he simply described as an audition. I've pretty much just been hired and trained at any kitchen I applied, or they just never contacted me after the interview; the few who weren't interested. I'm perplexed

Does anyone know what I should expect? From what I've read, which is pretty much all the resources online about staging (usually done at multiple-michelin starred restaurants by culinary students as a final assignment, making this seem even more strange as its not THAT nice of a house nor am I a student) sometimes its a several month long internship (I know its not that), sometimes they cook a meal for the chef or the entire crew from the ingredients available in the house, and sometimes its simply the opportunity to observe, whether to learn or so the applicant can simply see if they would fit in / want to work there. I'm kicking my socially anxious self in the head for not asking what to expect, all I know is he told me its an audition, and that 'you can bring your knives or use our house knives' so naturally I'm bringing my tool roll.

>pic unrelated but is the first dish I made that caused me to have the epiphany I wanted to cook for a living, nothing special at all but I'm glad I still have it
was working maintenance at a retirement home and they just threw me in the kitchen one day that cooks 3 meals from scratch from one person and I had a blast, I wish I could still work there I've never learned anything so fast in my life. Honey curry glazed chicken, classic shroom pilaf and steamed broc.
>tl;dr wtf happens at a one-day stagier

>>15578165
vs what I cook for them. Was supposed to just be chicken and rice, but we had some leftover onions and mushrooms so I made a pilaf, and made honey glazed, curry spiced chicken. really good actually honey and shitty ol "curry powder" make a pretty good chicken glaze.

>>14465107
what the fuck does that even mean lol

im broke as fuck right now

what else is black-beans-and-rice level cheap? even when i get my finances in order im gonna just fuck around and eat like that for as long as i can because i dont see any good reason for my food cost to be more than a forethought as a poor person.

egg fried rice is about the only other thing i can think of at the moment.

how do you plan your meals for the week? im young and dont have a lot of money but enough i could plan some form of home cooked breakfasts and dinners (my restaurant feeds me lunch). Im just venturing out into cooking i dont have enough recipes memorized to be able to just stroll up in a store and plan a weeks worth of grocery shopping and meals that will use up all my different ingredients and use the same ingredients and multiple to be cost efficient.

pic is oc from the last cooking job and first cooking job ive ever had. ran the entire scratch meal service for a very small fancy old folks home. i enjoyed the freedom to plate however i wanted but it wasnt preparing me for a real kitchen whatsoever, only cooked for like 20 people a meal and it was only boomer food

>>12165021
this is what i cook them. dont often get to plate it this nicely and its not like im working with the most complex of meals here but hey they were happy.

if i recall this was a honey curry chicken breast with mushroom pilaf and broccoli. the garnish is just the curry sauce, figured itd be good with the rice.

>>12165037
its a very, very high quality and expensive facility. i guarentee you there are no problems like that, im actually the maitenance man. management was just unaware of how inept the nurses were and that this was going on. theyve since hired cooks that do alright and are replacing me with an actual dietary nutritionist so i can return to my main job functions that arent even cooking related. I like my job and the facility is not truly at fault here in my opinion. nobody should be this incredibly stupid.

>>12165042
private