16 Mar 2014
Taking the path of a chef - 10 factors you need to consider before accepting the job as a chef
SingaporeanAlumni of At-Sunrice Global Chef Academy (Diploma in Pastry and Bakery Arts)
Date entered : 24th Sep 2012
Date graduated : 7th Mar 2014
My days of being a trainee has ended and my job as a full time chef has commenced. This blog would be my space to blog about my experiences and journey to be a chef since I have decided to stray away from my design diploma and pick this challenging career after attaining my 2nd diploma.
Being a trainee for a year at any apprenticeship site has its peaks as trainees are just considered as a helping hand (and we hardly get screwed). I was allocated to this not-my-choice company by the school's administration and the feeling definitely, seriously sucks big time. I was constantly relocated to different stations where I get to learn the basics of production line and also where manpower is required. Since the company focused on mass production, I got used to producing huge quantity instead of quality food. Worst still, the travelling distance from my house to my workplace can add up to one and a half hours long. How I dreaded stoning in the Mrt and bus, reading from my bought-for-that-purpose Ipad mini and yawning from time to time.
Just merely a year of apprenticeship, I felt that my story could go on and on. Dwelling about the past would be useless as right now, I should be focusing on the present.
About 2 months before my graduation, I have already started researching and hunting for my ideal job as a chef. Come to think of it, 2 months before is way too early and I think about 2 weeks before would be great.
As I mentioned, there are many factors which contributes to the meaning of ideal job and these are some of the common factors that you could refer to. (Provided that you also want to be a chef.)
10 factors you need to consider before accepting the job as a chef
1. Cuisine of Specialty
Pastry, Bakery, Western, Chinese, Japanese, or even more exotic cuisines such as Mediterranean are different and special in their own ways. They could differ in preparation methods and the ingredients used. I am not the right person to describe in details since I am not specialized in anyone of them yet. The best if you could continue that particular cuisine and master it.
2. Location
I consider this quite an important factor since I have to travel to work 5 or 6 days a week in future. One worst case scenario would be travelling from my house to my apprenticeship site which required me to change from red line to circle line, to green line and taking a bus again to reach my destination. Another reason is that if you are late for work, you actually pay lesser for your cab fares due to the shorter journey. With shorter distance, you would not feel that demoralizing going to work and enduring the overcrowding transport system.
3. Pay
Money makes the world go round. For fresh graduates like me, with or without culinary experience or certificates, $1500 is already considered decent to start with. Some places' salary could be as low as $1200 and after deducting your CPF, you get peanuts (<$1000). Unless you want to consider migrating to neighboring countries with exchange rates twice of Singapore's currency. For some places, you do get tips as extra pocket money!
4. Working hours / Shifts
It is either a straight shift, split shift or even a midnight shift. (You get roughly about $200 more from a split/midnight shift.) Even if yours is a straight shift, it could be morning this week and afternoon the following week. There could also be plenty of OT (overtime pay) when it gets busy during festive seasons or during the holidays period.
5. Brand
The same reasons why people go for Gucci or Louis Vuitton, I also picked a quite-new 4 stars hotel to work in. I felt that it is more of a satisfaction issue if the name of the establishment is of a certain popularity and class. Sounds better for resume purpose too.
6. Company Benefits
Different companies may have slightly different benefits. From what I have heard, hotels normally have more perks than restaurants. Up to you to find out.
7. Laundry Services
For lazy people like me, I would prefer laundry services to be provided. At least there is one less thing to fret about - ironing my own clothes.
8. Excitement Factor
This sounds rather random. It could be helping out with some banquet, the restaurant importing some rare seasonal products from other countries or even an ultra hot lady keeps coming into the restaurant just to see you. LOL
9. Learning Opportunities
A wide array of options from a menu that changes from time to time would mean more learning opportunities. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect!
10. Advancement Opportunities
I definitely would want to advance in my career and not stay stagnant. The chance to exhibit your skill is important, to prove your worth and not stay within 4 walls peeling potato for years. Promotion also means more responsibilities too.
Anyway, these points are just my personal opinion. Feel free to list anything I happened to miss out.
I can't guarantee I am able to stay in this industry throughout my career. Who knows? ...
2 Mar 2014
Finalized Bak Kwa
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| Quite an obvious delayed post on Bak Kwa since Chinese New Year had passed more than a month ago. Anyway, this was the finalised version which tasted as good as the actual commercialised ones out there! Tested and many tasted!! (For method 2b below) Satisfied! |
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| I guessed this was the final form... |
My reference for different types of meat for Bak Kwa trial can be found here.
The second post on the more complicated version using dehydrator and smoking of Bak Kwa can be found
Ingredients:
300g Minced Pork
1 tbs Thai Fish Sauce
1 tbs Light Soy Sauce
1 tsp Sesame Oil
120g Caster Sugar
1 drop of red food colouring
Method:
1) Marinated overnight (or a few hours, up to you)
2a) Spread on tray, placed into the oven for 10 mins at 100 degrees. Flip over and place back into the over
for another 10 minutes till a bit charred.
(Better Results)
2b) After spreading on tray (your desired thickness), dehydrate using your dehydrator for 3 hours, medium
heat about 55 degrees. (Want to dehydrate longer to remove more moisture also can.) After that, place
it over a bamboo tray (for better results) and cook/smoke over charcoal, which is about 200 degrees
for up to an hour. Remember to oil your bamboo to prevent sticking. Grill on pan a while before serving.
27 Feb 2014
Making Sugar Showpieces - An art that I enjoyed!
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| Posting this post about sugar showpiece would meant that my graduation day is approaching!! Like finally? Woohoo... Left a week more of school (basically examination week) before my final group presentation and I am out of there. I shall blog about my final presentation next time! Anyway, I had a 5 days module on sugar works and was taught to do sugar casting, sugar pulling as well as blowing. Among the entire 17 months course, this module was my favorite as I could express my artistic style through the showpieces. In a team of 2 throughout the 5 days, my friend and I created 5 showpieces, only to demolish everyone of them (except the last) at the end of the day. The 1st day was basically to hands on and get a feel of the extreme heat! Despite the 2 layers of glove, the heat could still penetrate through, making sure my hands were constantly in perspiration mode. Such heat would not stop us from assembling our masterpiece! Showpiece #1 - Fruit Farm Started blowing sugar in the first day itself! Dam difficult to blow but managed to get an apple done! My friend was practicing doing some twirls and leaves using molds. |
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| A bit too much text above? I shall go straight to the point then... Showpiece #2 - Fruit PartyMore blowing to practice my skill although the shapes were slightly (ok, very) mutated. Spot the lemon and bell pepper? A bit of rose petal design on the casting itself. Basically I handled the blowing part while my friend focused on the swirls and leaves. This is what I would call assigning specialization! |
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| Showpiece #3 - Do you want to build a snowman? Based on the recent trend of the Disney movie called 'Frozen' and one of the songs 'Do you want to build a snowman?', we too, decided to build a snowman! Not with snow and magic but with heat and sugar LOL! Practiced a bit of shape manipulation to create objects such as the broom. Damn difficult to blow up large regular sphere shape sugar pieces as the room humidity was not right in the first place. I did managed to blow one up as large as your face! |
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| Showpiece #4 - Into the depth Day 4 already and we got more enthusiastic and adventurous, so we decided to go for the underwater theme. That day was when I started to blow teardrop and oval shaped sugar pieces, creating whales mating and a bird..? Underwater? Trying out casting for irregular shaped base, with 4 rectangular blocks of water swirling design as backdrop. Not to forget a mesh of spiderweb-like extract for additional contrast. |
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| Showpiece #5 - Do you want to build a snowman? Again? The final day of our sugar showpiece module as well as our assessment day! A new improved version of 'Do you want to build a snowman?'. A very Christmas theme with the tree for extended height purpose and presents to showcase fine detailing of ribbons. Hi cute little snowman! It was so much fun and I bet it would be my first and last chance to do sugar showpieces. |
22 Feb 2014
Maison Kaiser - A filling high tea set
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| It was a rather random choice that day as I picked Maison Kaiser for high tea with my mum. Being tempted by a couple of other tables who had ordered the 3-tier high tea set for 2, I decided to go for the similar set as well. I am a typical follow-the-crowd person indeed! When the 3-tier stand arrived with 3 large plates of food, it basically occupied most of the table space and it was so annoying to eat with such limited table space. (See from the picture what I meant?) |
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| The set came with a pot of tea of our choice and we picked the Lemongrass and Verbena. (Free refill of hot water available but reusing the same tea bag.) I really disliked the cup design, as with such large surface area, the tea turned cold really fast unknowingly. |
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| We started off with the sausage quiche (quiche of the day) and we enjoyed it thoroughly! (My personal favourite from the entire set.) The savoury quiche had a somewhat firm eggy custard (not watery) with not- so-salty sausage chunks. The taste was well balanced and it was so addictive, especially for a fan of savoury food like me. The smoked salmon side and salad were refreshing and gave the savoury part a different texture. |
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| The desserts were sweetness overload to us, especially the eclair and the chocolate chip cookies. The icing coated eclair was filled with vanilla flavoured ; custard-like cream, thick and sticky. I did not manage to finish my piece of sugar-high cookie though. I loved the moist green tea cake with cream as well as the large slice of mixed berries cream cake. Eat it early or you would witness the meltdown of the gelatin set mixed berries compote (top layer). |
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| Last was not least, these assorted open faced sandwiches were decent and fulfilled their duty in filling us up quite a bit. With such a filling high tea session, my mum and I probably had a bit of problems having dinner at a standard 6+ timing that day. |
8 Feb 2014
Helping out at a VIP Event @ Marina Bay Cruise Centre!
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| Just a little update - My last day of internship ended over a VIP Event located at Marina Bay Cruise Centre. Fortunate for us trainees as it was our first outdoor event exposure that we get to experience, instead of being enclosed within 4 walls of our production kitchen carrying out our boring routines. |
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| Our job here as trainees would be to constantly refill the dessert spread whenever any desserts are running low in numbers. The next few pictures would definitely make you salivate and desperate to dig into the wide array of colourful petite portion desserts! I quickly snapped these pictures before the VIPs (about 800 pax) started swarming in with starving tummies. |
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| Some of the lovely desserts available! |
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| Colorful background lighting as well as sculpture decorations to enhance the overall presentation of the buffet line. |
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| More desserts! Too bad I did not get a chance to try most of them... I could if I wanted to, just that I did not want such high amount of sugar intake in a single day. |
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| Refreshing fresh cream with fruits! |
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| Different types of cheese, dried fruits, grapes and plain crackers. |
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Fact #1 - Do not be surprise if you see many people (ladies especially), going directly towards the dessert
spread before having their main course.
Fact #2 - Macarons were the first to be completely wiped out, including the countless trays of spare which
I had to refill constantly throughout that evening. Fact #3 - Some ladies really could eat up to 12 pieces of macarons (more is highly possible).
Fact #4 - Desserts could be ladies' main course instead.
Fact #5 - Top favorite macaron and first to run out was the nutella flavor (probably closest to chocolate
flavor). went at 9.00am in the morning to help out a bit. The experience sure was a load of fun, better than being stuck in a production kitchen (wanted to stress on that point again)! |
3 Feb 2014
Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons - Back again
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| I mentioned before that I would quit ramen dining somewhere in my previous post and I was back here in Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons again. Not that I did not stick to my words but it was my friend's decision to queue for it since he have not tried from this outlet before. We ended up queueing for more than 30 minutes while he kept sharing his recent 3 weeks of experience in Japan with me. He also mentioned that in Japan, many dining places required queueing too and he did not mind waiting at all. (Provided you don't faint from huger first.) As for me, it was my 3rd visit and I admit that this outlet was one of the better ones in Singapore. Like finally we could step into the restaurant and were given the counter seats. Interesting to watch the chefs in action but annoying to have smoke flying directly at my face while enjoying my bowl of ramen. |
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| I suggested the 'Autumn' ramen to my friend since he loves spicy food. He gobbled it hungrily and agreed with me that it was really delicious, one of the better ones he tried in Singapore, even better than Ramen Keisuke Tori King (its sister outlet). As for me, I tried the Tonkotsu King and it sure was addictive and I could have easily drank 4 bowls of such tasty broth. Another YUM factor was the thinly sliced tender pork with some fats and onions which provided an additional bit of sweetness. I really would not mind eating this bowl of ramen for a week! By the way, my previous posts on Ramen Keisuke Tonkotsu King Four Seasons could be found here and here. |