Please Don't Mock Me

Ok, ok, after you read this post you are going to be thinking, "Geez, girl, you sure do choose some cheesy titles ;-)"

Anyway, to the point.

Last night we had our "mock" midterm for level 3. As I have mentioned before, at the end of this level, we will pick out of a hat 2 dishes and have to prepare them for a panel of judges. Last night, we did a practice run and prepared them for our Chefs.

At 5:45, we all drew out of a hat and were given a number. I was B5. When I looked at the board, I saw that B5 had to make the Skate Grenobloise dish at 8:54 and the apple tart to be presented at 9:56. Sounds like plenty of time. But when you think about everything that goes into it all, you definitely have to push. We then had 5 minutes to jot down any notes pertaining to these dishes on a sheet of paper. This is the only piece of paper we can have with us. No other notes, recipe cards, books...nothing.

The fist thing you have to do when you draw a pastry dish, is make the dough. The dough has to rest for at least 30 minutes, and the tart can take anywhere from 40-60 minutes to cook, and then needs at least 40 minutes to cool since it is not supposed to be served hot. I hate the apple tart. I have made this several times at home for the practice, and this dish just annoys me. Having to slice the apples so thin and perfectly, and fan them out 1 by 1 so they cover the entire tart with a pretty little rose in the center.....ugh. Not to mention the apple compote that is used as the filling and must be completely cool before you fill the tart with it or it will make the crust soggy. And don't even think of cooling it in the fridge, because the heat it gives off will raise the temperature of the fridge and put the other item at risk of contamination if the fridge does not stay at 31 degrees at it's highest temp. So, this basically means cooling it by placing it over a bowl of ice.

Before I even thought about filleting the skate, I made my dough and made the compote. Then I switched gears and filleted the skate, cut some slices of bread into small .5cm cubes and sauteed them in butter to golden brown croutons which is a part of the garnish. Then, I went back to rolling out the dough and after lining the tart pan it had to go back in the fridge to rest again and get cold. It was at this time that I remembered that with the skate dish I needed to make 12 fun football shaped potatoes (take me about 20-25 minutes to do) and cook them. Since they need to be started in cold water, and water can take time to bring to a boil, I decided to jump right on that. Once I had the potatoes on the fire, I went back to getting the tart in the oven. Slicing the apples and arranging the tart is so time consuming, it kills me. In the real world, you would use a mandoline that can produce perfectly slice apples in a minute. In culinary school, you use your chefs knife. Woo hoo!

In hindsight, I probably would not have spent time filleting the fish before I got the tart in the oven. By the time the tart went in, it was about 8:30, which means it was probably not going to have enough time to cool to be ready at the right temp by 9:56. In any case, it got in, and left me with 25 minutes to cook the skate, make the sauce and plate it.

All hell breaks loose.

I ended up 4 minutes late on this dish. And this sauce is a beurre noisette (brown butter) with lemon, capers, chopped parsley and finally the croutons. But when I say lemon, I mean carefully removing all the skin, pith and fiber from it, and then carefully removing out the "supremes" (or slices) from between the membranes.

Can the french get any more labor intensive?

I put the capers in about 10 seconds too early and instead of just popping, they burned. When you make a buerre noisette, the butter melts in the pan and then starts to froth up. Once the froth subsides, the proteins in the milk start to coagulate, turning brown and creating the sauce. I have made this sauce about half a dozen times, and generally the froth subsides rather quickly. This time it seemed like an eternity. After a minute the thing was still frothing!!!! Why the !@#!@# was it still frothing?!?! Cook, butter, cook!!!

I delivered my 4 dishes to the Chefs across the hall late, and very frustrated that the sauce and its components had burned.

Fantastic. Now back to the moderately designed apple tart that still needs at least another 30 minutes in the oven. At least I got this one out on time. Although, it was definitely warmer that it should have been.

At the end of the night I was frustrated. One of my classmates told me I was being too hard on myself, as he thought my dishes didn't look bad. I, of course believed he was just being nice.

One by one, we were called into the other room and given feedback on our dishes. I was told that my skate was late, and that the capers were burned. Other than that, they thought my fish and sauce was good. I was surprised that they did not think the whole sauce was burned. This made me feel a little better. As for the tart, I was told it probably needed another 10 minutes in the oven. I can't argue here. I knew that, but took it out early so that I could have more time to cool it. In addition, my whipped cream was not sweet enough, so next time, a bit more sugar. But they thought the crust and the compote tasted good.

Wow. I thought it was going to be much worse than that.

From here on in, my biggest obstacle to over come is organization and timing. Given that last night was the first time we have ever been asked to cook 2 dishes entirely on our own, I guess it was not as bad as it felt. Just growing pains.

Let's see if I can pick it up this week. I will keep you in the loop!