NUMA, Portimão, Portugal  - Part 2

Hey everyone Bruno here,

I´m in the middle of my placement now, on my 5th week, so far, I've been doing well here.

I made bread today. In the Numa the bread is made fresh every, day except Monday.

I make sourdough bread, every day the first thing I do before starting anything is the bread dough. I also feed the sourdough starter. On Friday's we add some flavours to the bread, for example some weeks we add walnuts and sultanas and other weeks we add seeds. I´m also in charge of the amuse bouche, I have the choice of what the amuse is going to be.

I'm also in charge of the covert and cold plates, and of course the desserts. The best part is when I have to do a birthday cake or wedding anniversary cake. I can do some creative designs, if I want to. Chef Nuno encourages me to be creative and think of solutions to problems.

Doing all the preps and elements for the dessert dishes is very time consuming but very enjoyable. I have the possibility of making beautiful dishes.

I also get the opportunity to be a part of big events, and working with other professional chefs from the region.

The best part is we use up everything and there is no waste making the restaurant sustainable. Any food waste goes into the composter and that is used to put in the mini garden that the owners have.

These are some of the cake designs that I did. We use a square shape for birthday and a heart shape for wedding anniversaries. They are lemon cakes with pumpkin jam, and meringue coating that was browned using a torch.

This is one of the starters that I helped with while we were doing a tasting menu event.it was new for me because I never did a tasting menu. This was a great experience. I enjoyed the whole thing and being part of the process.

This the bread I make every day. It has a nice crispy crust and a soft middle. We use it for the coverts but there are some customers that actually order the bread because it´s so good. Seeing those orders made me so proud of my ability.

This is a starter plate that was made in one of the biggest events in Numa. It´s beetroot textures, with a goat cheese foam, bacon flavoured popcorn, and red pepper crispy. The event was a tasting menu with the collaboration of four great chefs in the region. It was really a onetime opportunity that I got to experience it was so big that there was even a filming crew. I t was exciting.

I can't believe how the time has flown since my first entry, but every day there is something new and exciting happening!

By Bruno Silva