Two days into my internship, I get a taste of my first big function - cocktails for about 600 guests. I was supposed to assemble pork wantons - spoon kung pao sauce onto the fried triangle of pork, then sprinkle crushed peanuts on top - but got assigned to the pumpkin shooters instead.
That task involved pouring pumpkin soup into a shot glass and decorating it with a drop of yogurt and a papadum sliver. Easy, you say? Fair enough, but the challenge lay in timing assembly and send-outs so that the soup would still be warm by the time it reached the guests. I made two miscues before getting it right. There were heating lamps to keep some of the food warm, but to me this was a cop-out. Sure, they kept the shooters warm, but if you kept soup out long enough, an unattractive film forms on top. The papadums too, which remind me of Indian cornflakes, would become soggy from sitting in the soup too long and would often sink to the bottom. They would have to be fished out and replaced with a new one.
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