Last weekend at my internship at Perche'No...

it has been a wonderful learning experience, Chef David and his crew made my internship fun and interesting. They were all great teachers and I will miss my weekends working there.



We capped off my last evening with a family dinner at Perche'No. My family came out to enjoy a delicious 'Chef's Special' dinner from Chef David. We were treated to tastes from a variety of dishes from squid ink risotto with calimari, panko fried frog legs, and antipasta plate with house cured lamb, wild boar, and pork prosciutto and house cured olives. We were treated to Chef's tofu and asian spinach soup and my sister's favorite, the Lemon cream intermezzo (Lemon cream gelato with presecco and vodka).

Getting ready to head off to the bakery...

more fun making bread and baking till the wee hours of the morning. Got more pictures of Alex and David working at lightning speed to move the hot bread from the ovens to the cooling racks. They work so fast that they don't get burned from touching the hot bread with their bare hands. David shared when he first worked at the bakery in France, it was very painful but after the first month, his hands got used to the heat and it didn't hurt anymore.




Made sure I planned my schedule for the weekend cause it's going to be a busy one, no time relax or to play.

I planned ahead to take 2 days of vacation from work to not have to worry about waking up to go to work after working at the bakery. Tomorrow night will be the start of my last weekend working at Perche'No, Saturday morning at the bakery, Saturday evening my last day at Perche'No. Sunday, do some work for Boeing and off to the bakery Sunday night till the wee hours of the morning. Sleep in all day Monday after coming home from the bakery at 4:30 am. So by the time Tuesday rolls around, I'm back to Boeing at 5 am and do that schedule everyday til Thursday, then it's off to the bakery again. In between, I'll fit in 2 afternoons (Tuesday and Wednesday) at Pho House.

Completed supervisor evaluation at...

Perche'No today. Chef David said I did a fantastic job, he said everything will come with time and practice. Chef said the turnover of kitchen help is high, he had trained over 500 people. I will need to continue to work on my knife skills, so all you who are still at Kitchen Academy, work and hone your knife skills, not in terms of cutting perfect little cubes but more like lightning speed. It is not exactly the precision, but the speed to slice, dice and chop that the restaurants are looking for.

He said if I still want to come back to help out, he would take me any time. I thanked him for letting me learn and work at his restaurant, and let him know that the next time after I am done with my internship, I plan to return as his customer to eat his delicious food.

Today was my last day of internship at Pho House...

trying to balance 3 internships is tough, I have 3 times the paperwork/time sheets and 3 different places to travel to. I have been very lucky to have all three and I am able to learn different aspects of the types of food our family enjoys eating. Pho House is my kid's favorite place to eat soup and noodles and now after interning there, I know why Chef Kevin's soup is so tasty and delicious, today he showed me how he makes it, it takes him almost 30 hours to simmer the bones (50lbs), after the beef stock is made, he adds in roasted ginger and onions in a mesh bag and more raw onions and the lower parts of the scallions, all this is cooked for another 24 hours. So the big pot that he made today will not be ready for serving until Thursday.

Today, he taught me how to make bubble tea, his favorite flavor is Green Tea, to enhance the flavor of green tea, he adds a scoop of lichee powder. Those of you that like to drink this asian inspired concoction, it has sugar syrup, scoop of powdered creamer, some liquid (like green tea), and flavor powder (lichee, mango, strawberry, etc) blended together and poured into a plastic cup with some black tapioca balls and crushed ice.

Before I went home, he taught me how to make my own fried rice to take home, he said the trick to making good fried rice is 'wok heh', in english terms it is the smoking hot temperature of the wok with the oil before you put in your ingredients, and you have to toss and cook it fast so nothing burns on the searing hot wok. He flavors his fried rice with sesame oil and 'maggi' sauce. The kids are glad I get to intern here, they have been able to get their favorite noodles for dinner once a week since I have been interning here.

Getting ready to head off to another night...

at the bakery. I get more practice rolling and shaping bread, so the goal is when I am done here, I will be proficient at bread making and to be able to do well at my last baking course in school. I will also get the experience of working in a small bakery/coffee shop, so some day when my sister is ready, the two of us plan to open our own little bakery/coffee shop.

Today, our pastries and croissants came out beautiful, nice color and the right size.

Just got home from my internship at Perche'No...

it was a busy night, we ran out of all the daily specials except for 2 servings of sea urchin. Just one more weekend at Perche'No and I will complete my internship here. I can say I truly had a great time and enjoyed working with Chef David and his crew. They were all great teachers and taught me a lot, being very patience with me especially when I have never worked in a real kitchen before. I will miss the friendships I have made there and I know the next time after my internship is complete, I will return as a patron to visit and to enjoy Chef David's wonderful cooking.

Got some awesome photos...

of how all the breads get into the oven in the wee hours in the morning at the bakery.



Quite the process, and a lot of hard work, it was neat to watch!

Getting ready to head off to the bakery...

got in a 2 hour nap after work this afternoon, just so I can stay awake at night. Some times one doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry, because you are so tired and exhausted you can't even think straight. Made myself a "Banh Mi" sandwich and had a bowl of soup to wash it down. Drank a glass full of extra "C" to keep up the immunity so I don't get sick. Eat dessert at the bakery.
Saturday is graduation, hard to believe it has come so fast. I know I still have 3 more weeks of externship left and 3 more weeks of baking. After talking to Chef Fritz, the director of education, I'm going to take a leave of absence and resume the 3 week baking class in January 2010. My reason for this is "Sanity", juggling 3 internship sites, working full time at my real job and finding time for the family. The flip flopping of night and day don't help in any way, I'm finding myself wide awake from 9pm - midnight and falling asleep at my desk job at 7:30-9am in the morning.

Anyhow, it will take the stress level down and allow me more time at the bakery to enjoy my learning experience there. I like all my internships, everyone is so nice and helpful to me, but when it come down to my favorite, it has to be the bakery, because it is where I'm most passionate about. One can not find joy in their job, if it doesn't come from the heart. The heart of it is, I love to bake. Just learning from the different internships, whatever you chose to do in life, it has to come from the heart, especially in cooking since it is such a demanding job, low pay and the rewards are few. I'm glad, I was able to learn a little from 3 different internship sites, because it has given me a broader picture of what I enjoying doing the most.

Today, at Pho House...

I fabricated more shrimp for their grilled shrimp kebabs. I also got a chance to make their famous Pho Noodle soup. They use fresh noodles in their 'Pho', Chef Kevin said it taste better and it is nothing like that dried noodle that needs to be cooked up.


I'm learning a lot in differences in where is the best Pho place to eat in the city. After talking to Chef Kevin, I have confirmation why Pho House is our favorite Pho Noodle place. He uses the best ingredients that he can afford to purchase and he uses great quantities 50-70 lbs of bones per stock pot, he takes great care and responsibility in making his soups. He said he could be like the other "pho" places but he doesn't, he shares that he takes 20 - 30 hours to make his soups while other places take 3-6 hours.

And for a word on sanitation wise, he keeps the kitchen pretty clean and does not re-serve served bean sprouts, unlike his competitors. He takes great responsibility for the health of his customers. It was funny how he discovered that the other pho places re-serve their beansprouts. He said he has a fairly high turn over in waitstaff, all the experience people he had hired from other pho places seem to all have the same habit, "save the beansprout, don't waste", he had to "de-program" them that it was not wasting but it was for sanitary purposes that we don't make our customers sick. So if you are looking for a delicious bowl of pho noodles, please head off to Pho House, you know the chef put in great cares to make sure you have a delicious bowl of soup without getting sick.

I also got a chance to get Pho House on the internet, I'm working with Chef Kevin to design a website for him. Today, I started preliminary design in powerpoint to design the front page for his website.

Survived my first night at the bakery...

actually it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed myself even if it was late at night and we baked till the early morning. This was my first night to learn about baking at Boulangerie Nantaise, a quaint little French bakery in "Belltown" district in Seattle. I got a small taste of working in the retail portion of the bakery, Saturday morning. It was a neat learning experience to see the whole process on how their artisan organic bread is made. I learned how to set up and prep up the pastries (croissants (raspberry, marionberry, cinnamon and of course my all time favorite - pain au chocolat), for baking. I learn how to make those delicious Almond Croissant, day old croissants are sliced, dipped in sugar syrup, piped in with a almond meal butter sugar mixture and sprinkled with sliced almonds and re-baked. Delicious!


The task of baking staff at night is to bake off the pastries made by the pastry chef in the day time and to make and bake off the breads. Everything is down to a science, the temperature is taken of the flour and the water is calibrated to produce a dough at an ideal temperature. Each step is followed precisely to obtain a consistent quality product.

I learned how to hand roll dough and use the special rolling machine that rolls the dough into sausages that we shape into making baguettes and batards. All in all, it was a great learning experience, the staff is excellent and made every effort to make sure I have an awesome internship at their bakery.

Daily Double...

I didn't hit the mega million lotto... only a daily double in back to back internships. I left home at 9:45 am this morning and didn't get home till 10 at night. I'm starting to have second thoughts about working back to back jobs, 12 hours on your feet is too long, it is hard on the feet and my lower back from being on my feet all day long. I can manage the 12 hours at a desk job but being on your feet all day long is hard on the body.

Today was my first day interning at the retail side of Boulangerie Nantaise. I learned how to make sandwiches, serve customers and use the bread slicer. Being a boulangerie, it's main products are breads, artisan organic wholesome loaves of bread(rosemary/salt, multigrain, olive, country french, whole wheat, potato and the basic baguettes), basic croissants and the filled ones (chocolate, ham and cheese, marionberry, almond, apple). Sandwiches are made to order and 2 types of soups are served. If you are looking for eclairs, cream puffs, opera cake, napoleons, you're out of luck. Today, the only non bread items were a large pan of brownies, 2 oatmeal raisin cookies and 5 chocolate chip cookies. Tomorrow night, I get to start the baking internship from 9pm - 2am. So hopefully it will be more interesting.

Just finished up my 4 weekends at Perche' No, hard to believe I'm almost done. Everyone has been wonderful, Chef David is always looking out for his employees and making sure they all eat and are not hungry. Today, he fed me some kind of sweet potato coconut soup, turkey neck bone and a whole plate of spinach linguine with a creamy house cure proccuito sauce. It was delicious!

We were busy, we ran out of osso bucco and cut it close with the lasagna, when I left at 9:30 pm, there was only 4 servings left. I was busy, making chocolate lasagna dessert, nuking up osso bucco, canneloni and lasagna today. In between each order, I was de-steming 10 boxes of basil, so when Chef has time today or tomorrow, he plans to make lots of pesto sauce. My knife skills are getting better, Chef Abdul came by to thank me for slicing up the garlic, he told me they were consistently the same thinness so when he sautes them up, they all cook up the same time. He said I did good and to keep it up. I'm calling it a day and need to head off to bed so I can get ready for another grueling night tomorrow.

Just got home from my internship at Perche' No ...

another late night. But there was a lot to learn today. I learn how to make their delicious canneloni, the filling comprise of oven roasted chicken and pork with onions, garlic and lot's of herbs. All that is grounded up in the meat grinder with some slices of bread soaked in chicken stock. The mixture is put into the hobart mixer with the paddle attachment and we added 8 eggs, 4 large scoops of ricotta cheese, 2 big handfuls of Parmesan cheese and a handful of minced parsley. It is thoroughly mixed and put into a piping bag and piped in a strip on a crepe. To fire it up for service, I usually put 2 cannelonis in a shallow bowl, add a scoop of chicken stock and nuke it for 4 minutes. We take it out to Chef and he plates it up and adds the yummy cream sauce on top of it.

Chef has a thing for exotic meats and animal parts, today, he was feeding everyone samples of this gooey, gummy tasting piece of meat, Evan later told me what it was, "Bull Penis", he told me, Chef even showed him a picture of what this thing looked like before it was cooked.

I learned how to properly clean mussels, pull off the stringy beards and rinse them in water. Chef said not to soak them in fresh water, because it will kill them. So a quick rise is all they need and into the walk in cooler they go.

My knife skills are improving from all the practice, today, I minced up 4 bunches of parsley, some sage and thyme for the canneloni and thinly sliced garlic, lots of garlic.

Finished up another day at Pho House...

today I learned how to fabricate shrimp for the Grilled Shrimp plate. I learned how to make the fresh spring rolls with a peanut hoi sin sauce. They are really easy to make, the most time consuming part of making it is getting all the ingredients sliced up and ready to go. First you dip the rice paper wrap in hot water and spread it out on a flat surface as smooth as possible. Then you center all your ingredients in the middle of the wrapper. We used lettuce, bean sprouts, rice noodles, sliced pork and 3 halves of shrimp. Then roll it tightly, pull the sides in and roll to the end. It is served with a peanut hoi sin sauce. “Delicious!” as Chef Herman and Chef Wong would say.

First day at Pho House...

I learned how to fabricate shrimp for their fresh spring rolls. The shrimp is poached in water, cooled, peeled, deveined and sliced in half. I asked him about coconut milk to flavor the shrimp and he said, just plain water. Coconut milk is a "Thai" thing and it is high in cholesterol, not healthy for you.

Got to watch how to make their beef broth. 50 lbs of frozen blanched and cleaned beef knuckle bones, Chef Kevin has the knuckle bones in white mesh like laundry bags so it makes removing them from the large stock pot quick and easy clean up. The bones are put in to the pot and filled with cold water and brought up to a boil. The nasty looking scum is skimmed off and the bones are set to a slow simmer. There really is no written recipe for making his delicious broth, he said it is all in his head. Every restaurant/family has their own recipe for making this soup. He said the competition of all the small 'Pho' noodle places around him, make him guard his recipe. Found a great blog that explains in detail on how to make it, Chef Kevin said it is similar to his recipe except that he does not add fish sauce to his broth because 'some people might be allergic to the fish sauce'. Fish sauce is made from fermented fish and possibly shellfish which can be an allergen to some people. He said the best bones to use is oxtail but that is expensive and very fatty. The broth is simmered for 3 hours and then cooled down in the refrigerator overnight so the layer of fat will rise and be removed the next day before being cooked back up to a steamy boil to be ladled over noodles.

With the economy being so slow, he is pretty much a one man show, he has 2 full time employees working for him, an older grandmother in the back kitchen and a student waiting on tables in the front. The grandmother is pretty quick, she showed me a few tricks in slicing and cleaning shrimp and she operates that deli slicer like a pro. The deli slicer is used for slicing everything from frozen meat, paper thin carrots to one big bunch of green onions all tied up together, like the size of 2 Kleenex tissue boxes.

Breathing a sign of relief...

found another internship site closer to home and to work. Was starting to worry if I was going to be able to work 150 hours on top of my regular 40 hours/week. Good thing, Chef Hope has a plan and perhaps we will get to the 150 hours in the next 4 weeks. It's wacko but it's for the kids, they want to see mom get the certificate, if it was for me, I think I would of thrown in the towel and not try to kill me self over this.

I'll be starting at one of our family's favorite pho noodle place, Pho House The kids love having their big bowls of noodles and their fried spring rolls. They can't wait for me to learn how to make their soup.

Had a late night at internship...

and did not have time to post last night. This was the 3rd weekend, since I've started working a Perche'No and the first night where Chef made sure I stayed late to have dinner with the team. He called it employee dinner. I'm not one for staying up late nor eating a heavy meal right before going to bed. No more excuses, Mrs Chef, (Chef David's wife) cooked a Chinese meal last night of several different dishes made with pork. There was a braised pork belly with hard boiled eggs, ground pork with pickled cabbage, Egg Tofu, Steamed/baked fish with Shitake mushrooms, ginger, scallions and diced tomatoes, Fish balls with some type of braised beef. Everything was tasty. Mrs. Chef said she was getting tired of Italian food and needed some good home cooking, so she took over making employee dinner last night.

Since Friday night was very busy, we didn't have time to celebrate Chef's birthday, so last night was party night. He had a good time, the piano player played Chef's favorite song, "Sweet Caroline", what a hoot to listen to him singing along after a couple glasses of wine. We had the Tres Leches cake that I made for him and she picked up another cake for Chef Abdul's birthday. The Tres Leches cake was a hit and everyone commented how delicious it was. It was a keeper recipe from Chef Herman's recipe file during Mexico food week.

As for the internship portion, I learned last night, sharing a meal and celebrating birthdays was just being part of the team. After 3 weekend together, I think they have finally made me one of their own. Working in a restaurant is not just learning how to prepare food, but working as team so that everything runs smoothly.

Today was Chef David's birthday...

I started my day early and baked him a "Tres Leches Cake", to celebrate the special day. Today was dessert day, my kind of day. I learned how to assemble together Perche'No's delicious Tiramisu, my sister Anna's favorite dessert. I also assemble together the famous Chocolate Lasagna and the "Pere" (sliced pear poached in red wine with a scoop of mango sorbet. I got to taste their chocolate mousse, that was yummy too! No quite like Chef Kim's chocolate mousse, the house chocolate mousse had small chips of chocolate in it, I didn't tell Allam, he need to fold faster like what Chef Kim told us. It tasted just as good.

I'm enjoying my internship at Perche' No, I only wished we lived closer then I would be able to spend more time there. Every time, I've gone in, Chef has something different for me to learn. Besides learning how to make the house desserts, today, Chef taught me how to pound "Yak" Scallopini, I must of pounded about 60 steaks. He showed he how to pound them correctly so it is one smooth, thin flat piece. I think I did good because none of the pieces had any holes in them. The trick to pounding is making sure the meat tenderizer is contacting the piece of meat straight, so no edge of the tenderizer is making uneven holes in your thin piece of meat.

Then restaurant got really busy, he was going to show me how to make fresh pasta from the 'big' pasta machine that they imported from Italy. So perhaps tomorrow night, I'll get to learn how to make fresh pasta. But before you know it, time just flew by and it was time for me to go home.

It was a good day today...

got to play with a new toy...the industrial cheese grater. It's quite the gadget, looks like a large cheese grater with a large motor attached to it. I grated a whole wheel of Parmesan cheese, when I got done, I had 3 buckets full of white sandy stuff.

Today, I learned how to "fire up" their lasagna, osso buco and cannoli. Everything is pre made and staged in the walk in cooler, it takes 4 minutes to nuke the lasagna and cannoli and 6 minutes to nuke up the osso buco. They taught me how to put together their famous chocolate lasagna dessert, coat plate with raspberry sauce, 3 slices of fried chocolate pasta sandwich with a creamy blob of mascarpone cheese mixture, powdered sugar and cover the entire top of the last piece, zig zag chocolate from squeezy bottle and drag a knife across the top piece, looks just like a Napoleon. Add 3 "S" shape squiggle on 3 corners of the plate with the peach sauce, topped with a sprig of fresh mint and voila!

Just a short blog...

too tired to write much. After a long day's work at my real job, then another 4 hours at Perche No, i'm bushed. More chopping and dicing tomatoes, cheese, carrots and celery, got to use the "robocoupe" to puree up zucchini for Chef's panna cotta experiment and also the 'deli' slicer to sliced a brick of mozzarella cheese. Lessons learned today, be open to help, it is better to be ignorant than to play the role of a "hotshot". You'll get plenty of help from your co-workers. So next time, think twice before you say "I know", just zip the lip and watch with your eyes and learn.

Today, Chef Abdul, took time to teach me how to slice mushrooms at lightning speed. He stressed the importance of working fast and getting things done under pressure. The customers are waiting for their food. I was listening to Chef David barking out the orders to Jose last night. I wanted to help, but didn't know how except to stay out of his way. Chef Hess and Chef Herman was right about getting the sense of urgency in all that we do in the kitchen.

A word about kitchen equipment, Chef Mullins does a great job getting us the best equipment, tools and ingredients to use at school. Be thankful for what we have in school and to take extra good care of it, when we're out in the real world, you make due with what they have, even if their mise cups are recycled used plastic food containers. Another emphasis on portion control and food ingredients. Everything is used, nothing is wasted, even the peels to the carrots and celery scraps are used for stock. The majority of the fresh herbs come from the garden outside the restaurant. I was cleaning and picking through the fresh sage and mint. Herbs with a short shelf life like basil, when it visually can not be served as a salad, it is put into the giant stock pot of marinara sauce. We did have to throw out some cantaloupe melon because it smelled like sour pickles. So it's a good thing to know, customers will not be served spoiled food.