Work experience at Westin Hotel Melbourne Day 1

Finally, after studying for almost a year, it is now time to go see the real world. I was placed at Westin Hotel Melbourne for 3 weeks to gain some work experience. I have been looking forward to this for so long. 

I am scheduled to work on Thursdays and Fridays and it starts from 7am to 2pm. I heard from some friends of their experiences at the hotel and I kept wondering how my day will be. I was so excited and nervous at the same time. I barely slept the night before and was up at 4.45am. I got ready and left home at 6.10am. Met up with a friend and walked there together. Got there around 6.25am and went straight to the changing room and got into my uniform. 

Went into the kitchen and met the Chef. She showed us around, met a few more chefs and toured around the kitchen to familiarise with the environment. Then work begins.

In school we learn how to do things in a small quantity. How to half recipes, how to use a quarter of an egg at times. But here we go by the kilos. Everything was huge. The stand mixer was so big and the bar mixer was as big as a vacuum cleaner. 

I was given the task to make lemon curd this morning. I used 3 liters of lemon juice to make the lemon curd. Then I made chocolate ganache with 4kg of chocolate. It was a tough job trying to cut a big block of chocolate into small chunks. 

Then I was assigned to make muffins. I was taught that muffin batters shouldn't be over mixed and has to be baked immediately but today I am amazed to see how the batter was left beating for quite some time. The batter can even be stored in the fridge for later use. The muffins still rose beautifully. I made mini apple & walnut muffins and mini pear & ricotta cheese muffins for a lunch function. 

Muffins ready to bake

I also made lemon and blueberry muffins , banana and pecan muffin, raspberry and white chocolate muffins. These were big muffins that were served at the hotel lobby every day.

After the muffins, I made 35 fruit skewers. I cut 1 melon and 1 cantaloupe into cubes. There were also grapes and big strawberries. The skewer starts with a melon cube, grape, cantaloupe cube and topped with a strawberry. The skewers were placed on a plate and passionfruit syrup was drizzled over them. One thing that I noticed here is the amount of wastage. In order to get a consistent and firm cube size of the melon, a lot of the flesh of the fruit was wasted. I wish I had a bag to take the scraps home. 

Unfortunately I only have one photo to share. It was such a great experience and I hope I don't forget what I have learnt today.