[Music] hi i'm miss penny and i am thrilled to spend a day with a chef to find out all about what chefs do hi miss penny my name is chef michelle bernstein we are here at our restaurant called cafe la troba could you tell me what's the difference between a chef and a cook oh it's huge so cooks cook hopefully they cook really well chefs of course cook and we should be the best cook in the kitchen however most importantly we need to learn how to create so we write menus we have to come up with recipes it's it's a lot of responsibility there are so many things that are involved in a day-to-day uh in a chef's life what does your typical day look like there is no typical day in a kitchen which is probably why i love this life in this career but i will tell you that it ends very late at night and usually begins very early in the morning and a typical morning is receiving product and that's a really big deal for a lot of us because when your produce and all of your products your meats your fish your fruit when everything comes in the back door you have to check it and so when everything comes in the door and everything is to your satisfaction then you know that you're starting off your day right jeff what's your very favorite part of the day probably the part where i get to create i do this because i love to create i love to kind of like when people paint pictures i love to paint a picture but on a plate so before we get a chance to look in the kitchen would you show us what you wear do chefs wear certain clothes not only would i love to show you what we wear we call it our chef garb i would also love to show you our tools wonderful let's do that okay [Music] let's talk about your chef's uniform absolutely i love the chef's uniform this is actually a really really nice material of chef coat because it breathes really well and as you can imagine the kitchens are really hot so it's really important that they're made out of a breathable material like a good cotton the buttons as you can see essential there's always really nice buttons on a chef coat and of course you have to have your name the next thing is of course the apron and this is actually my favorite part of the day is putting on my apron i like to tie my apron in the back really nice and tight and then of course you have the shoes usually you see chefs wearing claws now these are actually clogs they're just boot clogs the clogs have really hard fronts so that if anything falls on them you're protecting your toes they are non-skid which means that even if there is a wet floor or if something has fallen on the floor chances are i am not going to slip and fall which is great what about chef's hats so we call them tokes however the chef is usually not wearing one it is really hard to move as fast as you need to and and to go into the hotline into the refrigerator doing all the things you need to do with a hat on because it constantly gets knocked off right and you brought some tools to show it i did i would love to show you my knife bag man yes please so a lot of chefs have bags like this they're either called chef rolls or chef bags but basically they all unroll as you can see in this layer i have a couple of smaller knives like an everyday knife and i always have guards on my knives i love the fork the carving fork is is essential but i'm going to show you my favorite tools believe it or not spoons are my favorite tools in the kitchen you can pretty much do almost everything needed to do in a kitchen other than with a knife with a spoon and i saw before you had a meat thermometer oh i do hold on where would you take a meat's temperature so when you're cooking almost actually anything if you're cooking a turkey you want to make sure that you always have a thermometer with you to make sure everything is cooked through perfectly so how do you take their temperature on their forehead it's not like taking our temperatures so this little part of the tool is very sharp and this is inside inserted into the fattiest part of meat fish whatever it might be you insert it quickly and then this registers and it will tell you probably in a couple of seconds what temperature you're at that's terrific well let's take a tour of the kitchen sounds good okay [Music] and you were here in the kitchen at cafe la trova my restaurant the kitchen is where we cook everything we make everything delicious so that you can enjoy your meals now there's a couple things behind me i wanted to explain first of all this door leads to what's called a walk-in refrigerator why is it called a walk-in refrigerator well because you can walk in now everything should be labeled with a date and with the name of what everything is so everyone knows when it was made and what exactly is in every container there's heat lamps all over so that we make sure that all the plates stay nice and warm before they come to your table unless of course you're ordering something cold like a salad so this is how the kitchen works this is a hotline and we call it a line because it's really a straight line and it's hot because all those things back there cause a lot of heat we have burners we have stoves we have ovens grills fryers something called a griddle which is also called a plancha and then over there we have something called the salad station or the pantry station and as you can see i the chef stand kind of in the middle of all of it and why am i standing on this side and not back there so that i can see all the food before it goes out to the dining room to get to your table i want to make sure that everything looks just right so that when you come in and you have dinner you will love your experience here at cafe la trova and that my friends is how a professional kitchen works so now we're going to go into the dining room because i want to teach you all a delicious recipe it's an oldie but a goodie it's one that you might see in a lot of grocery stores but i'm going to make it into a more chefy recipe so follow me [Music] well whatever we're making sure looks delicious what are we making i thought that i would teach you and everyone out there how to make ambrosia salad sounds wonderful have you heard of ambrosia salad yes i thought so so ambrosia salad is a good old american recipe now ambrosia salad is delicious and you find it in the deli section of a lot of grocery stores i'm gonna go ahead and start mixing and talking to you about the ingredients in my ambitious salad there's only one thing i'm giving you the choice of and i love to i'd love people to choose so we're either mixing it all in yogurt or whipped cream what do you select whipped cream please i love you miss penny you're the best all right so this is unsweetened whipped cream you do not want sweetened whipped cream because you have a lot of things with natural sugars all around here that we will be adding to the mix so let's start with everyone's favorite some marshmallows i love marshmallows so we have those mini marshmallows that you want to put into your hot cocoa sorry i dropped one all right it looks delicious already all right yes okay we're ready to eat and then let's start with our fruit so we have some fresh little diced pieces of pineapple i love pineapple these are cut up mandarin oranges you know the little clementines that you can buy you peel them and then um you can easily run them under some water and just rub off some of the white pith the pith is the white part around the citrus cherries so if you're lucky enough to have cherries in season that's what we have here then let's talk about the not so fruit things but are still part of that fruit grouping so we have coconut and i'll add some of that to the mix oh it looks beautiful already and then nuts are so healthy they have such good oils in them if you can eat nuts i suggest a walnut it is my favorite for ambrosia salad so we're going to mix this together look at all these beautiful colors so so delicious it looks and there we have it and so the last thing you would do when you serve it is top it with sprinkled toasted delicious coconut right on the top of it michelle i have to tell you it has been a wonderful day to spend a day with a chef a day with you it's been absolutely delightful and delicious thank you miss penny it means so much that you came and spent the day with me you're the best you are uh i just we idolize you in our home and uh we start our days with you so thank you miss thank you let's toast to that salute