On the 12th June I went to MacNean House and Restaurant in Blacklion which is owned by Celeb Chef Neven Maguire. I had competed in a cookery competition earlier in the year as part of the Mushroom Festival at Lord Kilbracken’s Estate in Killygar. I received a runner up prize for a days experience working in Neven’s kitchen.
I began at 1pm and was kitted out in a full chef uniform and given a tour of the restaurant and kitchen. I then met all the chef’s and began working. As you can imagine I started off chopping lots of vegetables and I also vacuum packed anything that was not being used for that evening’s service. There were lots of different sections in the kitchen where the various foods were being prepared by different chef’s. Throughout the day I moved around all the various sections. Before lunch I made pastry cases which were to be used later for appetizers. Each chef is in charge of making a different element for lunch. We all got to eat this lunch which consisted of chicken, bacon and pasta with a sun dried tomato & pesto style dressing which seems very simple but it really was seriously delicious.
After lunch I helped make some garnishes for the dinner service. Some of the meats I had to use for the garnishes were rabbit & duck. Despite it being a Wednesday evening the dinner service was extremely busy as there were two sittings. I then got to make vegetable stock. I was also shown how to cook a steak properly and learnt some tricks on how to tell if it was rare, medium or well done. I got to try the most amazing dessert ever- a chocolate sphere which was served with a hot chocolate sauce over it which caused the sphere to melt once the sauce was poured over the dessert by the waiter. Inside the sphere was a chocolate brownie, chocolate ice cream and mini malteser’s. I was delighted that I got this amazing opportunity.