L'Ecole Canape station: How to make one bite

[Pork and scallion dumpling with fried wonton strips Photo: Jaume Guerra]

One bite on a spoon can actually become a collaboration between five people. At L'Ecole's Canape station, my group had to come up with one amuse bouche for each person dining at the restaurant. My classmate Dejan had suggested making a dumpling. On our third day doing canapes (Feb. 25th), I brought in a recipe for pork dumplings that called for Fuji apples in the filling. As we prepared for service, the recipe morphed into something else.

Chef Scott suggested I use Asian pears instead of apples since the school had them in the storeroom. Sure, I thought. Why not? Dejan and Jaume cut into wonton wrappers with round molds to make the wrappers smaller. Since we had wonton scraps, Dejan thought we could fry them. Chef Scott suggested we julienne the scraps. Once those were cut, Jaume came back from the deep fryer with golden, crunchy strips.

To test the taste of the pork filling, we pulled off bits of filling and rolled them into five little meatballs. We steamed and tasted them. The pork filling definitely needed more salt. Dejan mixed the pork-and-scallion filling with his hands as I generously sprinkled in more Chinese five-spice and salt into the bowl. I dumped more minced ginger into the bowl. We steamed two little meatballs, and the taste was just right.

Since the dumplings needed sauce, I dissolved sugar in hot water before I added the mixture to soy sauce. (When I made Korean marinades for beef at home, the sugar would always settle to the bottom.)  Dejan and I tasted the dipping sauce as we squeezed lime juice into it.

With one hour to go before service began at 8 p.m., I plopped filling onto wonton wrappers as fast as I could, while Jaume and Dejan molded the dumplings into tortellini. We steamed about 100 dumplings in the combi oven. I quickly minced chives for the garnish.

"Two canape!" Chef Ray, the expediter, called out.

"Two canape!" we echoed.

Jaume heated the dumplings in the oven, while I arranged two Chinese spoons on a cutting board. He hurried back from across the room to place dumplings on the spoons. I poured sauce over the dumplings, letting the sauce pool in the bottom of the spoons. As soon as he arranged the fried wonton strips on top of the dumplings, I sprinkled chives for the last garnish. Dejan ran the small plates to Chef Ray.

"It looks good, but does it taste good?" Chef Ray mused.

Since we had plenty of dumplings, we made amuse bouches for chefs Ray and Scott. They scooped the dumplings into their mouths. I waited until they nodded, tasting the cloves, anise and cinnamon of the Chinese five-spice powder, as well as the crunch of the cubed Asian pear inside the dumplings.

"It's good," Chef Ray said.

Our group made amuse bouches for everyone in our Level 6 class and the Level 5 class. The Chinese soup spoons became empty very quickly.



Out of all the canapes we made during the four days at this station, Katie's Bloody Mary cherry tomato with baby shrimp and tomato water foam was the most creative. She soaked cherry tomatoes in a mixture that tasted like Blood Marys and the taste was dead on.

[Photo: Jaume Guerra]

Jaume's amuse bouche was a deconstructed Spanish omelette. We baked potato discs in the oven. Then we made a savory sabayon. Chef Scott helped us make the potato foam. We pulverized potatoes in water in a blender and cooked the ground potatoes slowly. We added soy lecithin—a key ingredient to make bubbles—before we used an immersion blender to make foam.