# Good times:Funy School Stories



## thetincook (Jun 14, 2002)

Everwonder what the joker/clown/dummy in clas was going to do next? I sure do. So come on guys lets share some laughs and giggles!!!!!

At school we have this two deck oven that the Gardmanger use for baking, pastry, and roasting, thats been the center of a lot of screwups.

My buddies had no luck with this thing. My first friend had watched the chef throw some ice into the oven with the bread to make the steam. So my friend figures to do the same thing, and goes of the to ice machine and comes back with a gallon measure, opens the door and dumps a GALLON of ice into the oven. There was hiss and clouds of steam, and then the brown trickle of water from the bottem of the oven started. All that ice not only washed out the oven but had put the burner AND the pilot light.

The other time, my friend was making some flatbread/cracker thing as a base for his hors deourves. So everybody was prepping for the buffet we were haveing that afternoon, when the kichten started smelling like burnt popcorn, and we all look up to see my friend, engulfed in smoke, hurridly brushing out buring cornmeal from the oven, with the grill brush he swiped from the breakfast line. The chef had told him to bake it on the oven floor with a little polenta to keep it from sticking. Instead of sprinkling a little on the peel, he had just thrown a couple of handfulls of cornmeal in.

We got the biggest laugh from that when we broke down the oven to clean at the end of then semester a month ago, and we found scads of burnt cornmeal, still stuck in the oven.


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## monkeymay (Feb 11, 2002)

Who says you've got to be in school for hijinks?

I've had a few clowns in my kitchen and they were not all funny,,,
Like the guy who burned a batch of rice pudding brulees and then picked off 'the brown spots' leaving big holes in them for service?

Then there was the bourbon sauce incident where I told a clown to take the butter/sugar mixture OFF the heat before adding that really big glass of bourbon (I told him to pour in only 1/2 - I was going to drink the rest)
Needless to say his eyebrows and the guys forearm hair next to him have grown back.,,,

And then there's me. Maybe sometime I'll tell you about the Italians, a case of asparagus and flooding the wine cellar...  

Monkey


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## theloggg (Sep 28, 1999)

we had our share of 3ft high flames from deglazing on the stove. 

We also had the guy who threw a half sheet pan (with parchment paper) into the salamander. since there was only one or two items on the paper and a fan breeze in the kitchen, his paper lifted into the burner, setting it on fire. To top it off he pulled it from the sally, and dumped it into the trash can, while pieces of paper where still flickering.

We had a batch of hot sauce (not hotsauce) put into a blender and exploding the lid off from the pressure when started on high.

I'm sure I'll think of more....

logan


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## monkeymay (Feb 11, 2002)

LOL!!!
Logan, that's pretty g*dam funny...

Monkey


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## theloggg (Sep 28, 1999)

And how could I forget my own mishap!?!? So, I was in intro to baking and I took a sheet pan off a speed rack and threw it onto a table. I overlooked the white plastic dough scraper laying there and put the pan down on top of it. I guess there was still dough on it and it stuck to the bottom of the pan. I picked up the pan and slid it into the oven. It was a bread oven so the pan said on the oven shelf, no racks. One of my buddies sees this white stuff leaking from under the pan and he looks at me (this is all goin on while the pastry chef is lecturing to the class huddled around a table right next to the oven) with this look like "what the heck is that?" I subtly look in, not to cause a scene, and can't tell what it is. He looks at me and mouthes "marshmellow??" I said "taste it" and he does. At this point the chef notices and says "what is that?" Steve is chewing on this stuff and says, "plastic". It dawns on me that it is a pastry scraper and I thought "****!" It came off without any serious damage and Chef wasn't too happy, but we all had a laugh later. Hmmmm, and my only C+ grade, hmmmm.

And there was that time I tried to set the dining room on fire, but that is posted in my column....

logan


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## kuan (Jun 11, 2001)

I once dumped a bunch of marinara sauce in a 6" steamer pan. I'm all going about my business when all of a sudden I hear the DMO laughing his butt off. I'm like WHAT? wtf? He didn't say, he could not stop laughing. After a few seconds he finally pointed at the pan with all the sauce leaking out through the holes. By that time the whole kitchen was laughing at me! I had such a fit! I had to carve that day too. After brunch chef bought me a coupla beers.

Kuan


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

Not school, but my first paid catering gig at 16 years old....flameed bananas foster in a private home and their carpet....

Or the time I put in a block of wax in the chocolate for chocolate covered cherries....with the stems they resembled candles...several teachers said they were wonderful!!!???


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## isa (Apr 4, 2000)

That's too funny Shroom but I have to ask why put wax in the chocolate? Is it to avoid tempering the chocolate?


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

I was a teenager (15ish) following directions.....


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## greg (Dec 8, 1999)

One day at J&W, my turn to be the chef du jour had come. As such, other students would come to me first if they had a question. One of my classmates was doing some type of fritter as his dish for that day. Now, in the J&W recipe book, one of the last steps listed for any deep-fried food recipe is to "drain on absorbent paper". Fritter guy walks up and asks me "I can't find any absorbent paper, should I just use paper towels?" I was actually speechless for a bit.

I told the chef-instructor about that question later on; after he had put his head down on his podium and groaned a bit, he proceeded to chide me for not having sent the guy down to the storeroom to ask for some "absorbent paper". Wish I had, the chef-instructor that ran the storeroom was an evil, evil man; he would have had some fun with fritter guy!


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

I grew up with an amazing family who would let me plan and cook meals...so one day in high school my best friend and I decided to make a chinese meal. CANNED SHARK FIN SOUP> what can I say? I did not poison any of the 10 at the table and they all were gracious enough to try the soup....can't remember the rest of the menu but I certainly remember the soup.


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## kuan (Jun 11, 2001)

I did that once, lost my temper 

Kuan


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## shroomgirl (Aug 11, 2000)

Kuan I woulda thought wax would harder your temper.....owww, can it get worse?


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## chrose (Nov 20, 2000)

We had a guy in school that really wanted to be a football player, so why was he in Culinary School? Who the **** knows, but he's probably changing the wrong tires somewhere by now.
In the casual restaurant dinners class we had a dessert tray, the rotation had someone stationed in desserts and they had to show the tray to all dessert customers.
As is common in many places we used made up Crisco in place of the Ice Cream Quenelles to show the flavor of the day. At the end of the night he was breaking down the tray and asked if he could eat the Ice Cream? Why he didn't question the fact that the Ice Cream hadn't melted all night I don't know. But he asked, we looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said "sure, go ahead". The look on his face was priceless as he tried to choke down the big Quenelle of colored Crisco. Never said a thing. Honestly I don't recall if he swallowed it or spit it out, but like I said, he never said a thing. He was about to fail one of his classes and the chef gave him a break and said "if you can answer this question I'll pass you". He said "How do you make Mayonnaise"? The guy looked, thought and said "mmm.. Cream,
and eggs?"
He didn't return for the second year.

At the restaurant I cooked at in Alaska the owner was a big deal in Anchorage. He had all these very wealthy friends and did a lot of personal catering at some very nice homes. We went to one bankers home on a beautiful summer Sunday and set up for the buffet. We did a lot of saute stations at these things. We set up and he decided he was going to show off for his friends. 
On goes the rechaud, and he's talking as it's heating. It got way too hot and he threw a gob of butter into the pan and all of a sudden this Atomic Mushroom cloud of black smoke hits the ceiling and leaves this beautiful grey stain on the formerly white ceiling. It was a great day, he turned all sorts of red and we took over. He had to pay for that ceiling!


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## monkeymay (Feb 11, 2002)

Ha Ha Chrose on the Crisco thing!
When I was still working in film business I coordinated a commercial for some laundry soap. The food stylist was creating a mess with 'chocolate frosting' and had an enormous bowl of it for the shot.The grips and gaffers couldn't wait to get into it - one smart *** manged to walk by and scoop a great big fistfull of the stuff into his mouth.
Imagine his horror and our amusement as he discovered it was Crisco and chocolate syrup! He kept getting offers all day from everyone on the set to lick the bowl clean...


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