Hospitality College work 1992-2004 Part 2

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Around 1999 (give or take a year or two), I wanted to surprise my best students at the time for Christmas, so on December 22nd I held an extra cooking demonstration for them. After some preparations, in 70 minutes, using 8 stoves and one oven, I prepared and plated 10 dish components for tasting by the 15–20 participants. Both cooking skills and logistics played an equally important role.

You have to imagine that I started cooking with the dish that took the longest to prepare, which, if I remember correctly, was a consommé made with stock. This was followed by braised rice, for which I used boiling water when adding the liquid. I also made mushroom paprikash and dumplings. If I recall correctly, I prepared pike-perch à la Gundel, which consists of four components: breaded pike-perch fillet, garlicky spinach, sautéed mushrooms, and mashed potatoes with egg. I also made another main course—perhaps butcher’s cutlet. As I cooked, at least one flame was used on each of the eight stoves. On some stoves there were even two pots at the same time—for example, with the steamed rice, first the water was heating while next to it I was sautéing the rice.

On the first stove the consommé was simmering, on the second the rice was cooking, on the third the potatoes, on the fourth the pork cutlet was being pre-fried and then braised, on the fifth the mushroom paprikash was cooking, on the sixth the dumplings, on the seventh I fried the pike-perch, while on the eighth I prepared the béchamel sauce for the Gundel style.

The students stood in the training kitchen and watched as I started cooking the above dishes, basically moving counterclockwise between the stoves. Later this circular movement became more zig-zag depending on the specific technological steps that were needed at the moment.

In any case, within 70 minutes, all the dishes were completed and plated into warmed serving dishes. I only asked the students to carry the food out to the dining room, enjoy the meal, and then help tidy up the kitchen.

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In 2001, I announced the “Professional Wooden Spoon Award” for the students, the details of which can be learned from the following text written by me:

“The ‘Professional Wooden Spoon Award’ is being granted this year for the first time to that college student who achieved the best performance in the cooking practice classes of Dénes Sándor, the founder of the award. At the Budapest Business College, Faculty of Commerce, Catering, and Tourism, in the English-language college program of the 2001 fall semester, Tamás Mezőssy won the newly established award, while in the Hungarian undergraduate kitchen operations practice, Gábor Fáska received the prize.

At the awarding of the ‘Professional Wooden Spoon Award,’ the winner was presented with a patinated wooden spoon used by Dénes Sándor. At the same time, this is perhaps the only award that brings only moral success.” 

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The research activity described in the previous period (1980–1992) during this period (1993–2004) primarily focused on teaching activities and their development, which was based on personal international (England, Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, etc.) primary and secondary research.