Half Way Home

Wow, what an experience the midterm was! I am happy to report that I have successfully passed and will be moving on to level 4 on Monday!

We each drew randomly from a hat which dishes we would cook. Half the class, including myself, drew the Consomme and the Chicken "Grand-Mere". The other half of the class had to make the Skate Grenobloise and the Apple Tart. I did a silent dance when I looked at my draw and saw it was not the apple tart! Have I mentioned a million times how much I HATE that dish?

We were each given an ID number. There are 18 of us so, there was A1-A6, B1-B6 and C1-C6. In the next room, there was a panel of 9 judges, broken up into groups of 3, and each group was assigned to judge all the A's, all the B's and all the C's. Our head chef was left to taste all of our plates. So, there was no room for error. We had to produce 4 plates of each dish and each one would be eaten.

I successfully got both my dishes out on time! It's a great feeling when you hear the chef yell "It's 8:59! Consomme group 3 let's go!" And you look down on your tray and see 4 perfectly plated dishes ready to go and pick up your tray and head to the next room for service. Remember, I have been late almost every night on my dishes leading up to tonight, so when I hit the time for dish one, I finally realized I had the ability to do this.

Both dishes were a challenge. You think you have so much time in the beginning, given that we started at 6pm and my first dish did not have to go out until 8:59 and the second at 9:41. But there is so much you have to juggle. All the perfect .5cm cubed vegetables that go in the soup. The football shaped potatoes, 3 per plate, for the chicken. Not to mention all the other garnishes like bacon, mushrooms and caramelized pearl onions (which are a "bleep" to peel)! It was not until about 7:30 that I realized I may be in trouble. I had not even prepped or trussed my chicken. Prepping consists of removing the wings at the second joint, removing the wishbone and then having to "machonner" the wing tips and drumstick ends. This just means removing the skin and cartilage at the end and scraping it back so that the bone is exposed at the tips. Once that is done you can truss and season your bird. I have never done this as fast as I had last night. Primarily because there was one angry Chef yelling, "Chicken people who do not have your chicken in YOU BETTER PUSH, NOW! COME ON!!!! YOU ARE IN THE WEEDS!!!" There was actually a lot of yelling going on last night. The Chefs were constantly trying to get us to work faster, cleaner, and did I mention faster??? It was intense. So much, in fact, that one guy in my class had a panic attack and left the exam before he even presented his first dish. Guess we are a party of 17 now?

I love this stuff.

As for the judges feedback, they were really happy with my vegetables in the soup and said I did a perfect job of cutting them into the little cubes and cooking them to the right consistency. They also thought I hit the mark on the seasoning on it as well. Their only criticism was that there seemed to be a slight "roasted" flavor to the soup. I knew this right away, because after I strained out the consomme from the clarifiation mixture, I noticed that some of the ground beef that should have floated to the top, had fell to the bottom and burned a bit. As for my chicken, it was just a bit dry (after it came out of the oven and I quartered it, I noticed that all the pieces except the breasts were still raw - I put them back in the oven to finish cooking, however, perhaps a couple minutes too long). Despite that, they were really happy with my jus that was served with it and again thought I had hit the perfect seasoning and consistency.

With this behind me, I have a totally new level of confidence of what I can do. I was really worried going in that I would not be able to hustle enough and stay focused. I definitely need to work on being more organized and keeping my station cleaner, which is where I lost most of my points during the night. That's ok. I'm a newbie. And that is exactly the area I hope my internship will help me in. So, only good things to come!