Carlos

Today was our first day in Kitchen 2, our first day with Chef John, and our first day in the Tarts section. My new Partner for this section is Carlos, who is a very funny guy. I'm not sure he had the most experience coming into school, but he has doing a lot of practice at home and is progressing well. I'm looking forward to working with him over the next few weeks.

Over the last several weeks, I've been trying to figure out who in my class will be the superstars after graduation. Carlos may or may not end up being the most talented, but for some reason I think he has the ambition and drive to be very successful in the pastry field. I can see him being the guy that is wildly successful after taking a few risks and surrounding himself with the right people.

Carlos tends to be very quick witted, and has a good banter going with the Aussie, Pete. It's all good-natured fun, and everybody (almost) gets along really well.

So far, none of us are very happy with the layout of Kitchen 2. The dishes area seems to be a little cramped, and our work areas are not layed out as well as Kitchen 1. Having said that, K2 is much warmer than the 58 degrees we normally experienced in K1.

Today we made Sweet Dough, Sablee Dough, Chocolate Sweet Dough, and Chocolate Flourless Cake, and the beginnings of our inverted puff pastry. Over the next few days, we'll be making Lemon Tart, Strawberry Rhubarb Tart, and others.