The Culinary Tales Week 24: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times
I had finally felt comfortable with baking, was even liking it. But I couldn’t wait to be done with the track. The whole class had had enough of Chef Tries Too Hard. Even the baking enthusiasts among us couldn’t wait for the class to be over, so that said something.
I spent another weekend getting my notebook together, which by the way, was the last official notebook I’d ever have to do in school again. The school did away with the notebook requirement. While it was tedious and labor-intensive work, it was a ready-made cookbook and reference guide. Sanitation Chef, who’d been out of school for 20 years, still used her school notebooks. And Chef Satan referred his employees to his notebooks for recipes.
The requirements for the notebook bordered on ridiculous though: every page had to be in numbered sheet protectors with labeled tabs, included glossary section (with a 200-word minimum), main and sectional tables of content, etc.
Years of mild OCD, Photoshop experience and project managing prepared me well for the task. It was the only thing I could guarantee an “A” for.
On Day One of finals week, we had our written test and our last mystery box. I pulled sponge cake with pastry cream, pineapple and macadamia nuts, which I didn’t like at all. Fortunately, Class Buddy pulled devil’s food cake with bavarian cream, hazelnuts and strawberry – which he didn’t like either – we surreptitiously traded just before Chef registered our menus. I’d been dying to do a chocolate cake for these mystery boxes and damned it if I had to do another white cake.
For refreshers’ sake, the mystery box was where we were given the main components of a dessert, and then it was up to us to compose a fine dining dessert out of it, complete with garnishes and two side sauces of our choice.
So, in honor of Wimbledon starting that day, I came up with Champions Chocolate Cake – cake and cream in layers with candied hazelnuts and glazed strawberries with a port wine reduction sauce and a mango-almond champagne sauce. A bowl of strawberries and cream is the traditional “snack” served at the tournament, and since England is wild about champagne the combo worked perfectly for me. (I happen to be in love with the almond “champagne” from Wilson Creek. It’s my second favorite thing from Temecula, after the casino.)
I was doing well on timing and set to finish ten minutes early, when (haha – it happens every time!) disaster struck in the form of my cake toppling over.
I had this awesome plate of yum – I even drew a chocolate filligree of straight lines (to resemble the strings on a tennis racquet) and squeezed my yellow and red-colored sauces on alternating squares, with the cake in the middle, topped with a perfect quenelle of cream and glazed slices of strawberries. I had gone to wash my dishes and even took my time with them; by the time I returned to my station, I found a big old mess.
I started a new plate but the chocolate piping in my cornet was close to solidifying so the lines weren’t straight nor consistent in width. The squares were so tiny that the sauces weren’t as pretty as the first plate. Not to mention that the process of moving the cake from one plate to another disturbed the cream layers and quenelle and they were now looking like a wet, shaggy dog.
At the last minute, I decided to move the whole thing back to the first plate. To make a long story short, it looked hideous. And this class was all about presentation.
The rest of the week was spent prepping for the final presentation on Day Four. So far, I’d been lucky to get easy menus, and the only thing I prayed for was to not get the Dobos Torte. (Remember, that thing made me cry.)
This is where I say, kids, be careful what you wish for… because I didn’t get the Dobos. I got the Black Forest Cake, which was even worse because you can’t assemble that b*tch nor make the icing ahead of time (because of the whipped cream, which won’t hold for more than a day.)
My final menu comprised of:
– Black Forest Cake (dear heavens, help me)
– Orange-Ginger creme brulée
– Chocolate soufflé
– sablé cookies (the “checkerboard” ones)
– dark chocolate truffles coated with tempered chocolate
– petit fours, with fondant glaze and decorated with tempered chocolate filligrees
On top of that, we had to produce a menu as if we actually had a restaurant and even had to give it a name. The chefs brought in samples of what students had done in the past… some were in simple folders, but some went all out and framed them.
If Monday was hell, Tuesday got worse. I was so upset about falling behind schedule that I didn’t notice how fast I was going on the drive home, and didn’t even see the cop tailing me for a few miles.
It was my first speeding ticket in 13 years (I suppose I was due) and I didn’t even have my driver’s license on me.
Considering the thousands of traffic violations I’ve amassed since, I was really surprised it took that long to get caught. I learned during my first stint in traffic school that people usually commit thousands of traffic violations which amount to about one ticket every five years on average. (And I actually have another ticket on file – one for not yielding to a pedestrian – so, OK, three tickets in 20 years wasn’t a shabby record.)
And then, the week got progressively worse. On Wednesday, the soufflé was due (the only item not due on Thursday); I was on my way to submitting a great plate, when I realized my plate wasn’t warm. So I popped it in the convection oven – huge mistake because I practically burned my bones taking it out. The soufflé had looked great when I took it out of the oven, but had deflated about 75% by the time it reached the chef’s table.
I started work on my menu on Monday and had been done with it by Wednesday – one day early! It was about the only thing I did on time for finals. Pulled a few tricks from the scrapbooking hat and put together what I thought was a great-looking menu. Until I saw my classmates’ efforts: framed, put on plaques, and far more intricate menu descriptions. Mine was simple (layered cardboards with satin ribbon, wedding invitation-style), and the menu items were one liners.
Then on the final day of menu production, I had to: temper chocolate, coat the truffles, decorate the truffles and petit fours, bake my sablé cookies, try to save my creme brulée (I forgot to add orange and ginger), assemble the black forest cake (including, hand whipping 16 oz of heavy cream) AND make a sauce for the cake.
For the first time since school started, I did NOT complete a final exam. I managed to get the cake together but it wasn’t as good as the one I did during the first week of term. It even started breaking up as I moved it from turntable to cake stand. But at least it was done.
I managed to grate some orange zest (but no ginger) on the creme brulée right before I torched it. (Chef Tries Too Hard cleared the spice rack to get ahead of the cleaning so no luck on finding powdered ginger flavoring.) But I kicked ass with cutting orange supremes: to hell if it didn’t taste great, at least it looked pretty.
I never got the chocolate tempered so my petit fours did not have any decoration. I briefly considered using plain chocolate instead, but I got to the point where I was simply over it.
I managed to scoop out perfect balls of truffle, but they were partial credit. A “50” was still better than a zero.
The only thing I knew that I nailed was the sablé. After burning this during cookie week, I was super vigilant making sure it didn’t burn.
We had to leave the lab for about an hour and a half – a time usually spent sneaking in a few drinks at a bar across the street from school (even though the chefs ordered us not to), but I was so depressed about my dismal performance that I passed on margarita hour.
I should’ve drunk margaritas after all – because when I got my grade on Friday, I got a hell of a shock: my highest final grade EVER.
The fugly-@$$ mystery box fiasco turned out to be a hit, despite the abysmal presentation. Back to the first rule of cooking: First and foremost, it must taste good. The mango-champagne sauce turned out to be a slam dunk. [Will share recipe in the next post, perhaps.]
The black forest cake turned out swell too even though I could’ve been neater on presentation. I soaked the hell out of the cake with kirshwasser so it had flavor in spades.
The creme brulée was near perfect (I suppose after tasting a few dozen dishes, chef might not have been able to detect the lack of ginger.)
The sablé cookies were perfect, the petit fours almost there – would have been, had I decorated… and then there were the sorry-looking truffles, stripped like Christina Aguilera, but distinctively spherical and lusciously delicious on the inside. I put what I had done with the tempered chocolate in a little bowl for a little credit.
My simple menu turned out to be a 100. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: sometimes, less *is* more.
I couldn’t even bring myself to participate in the last-day-of-term beerfest with the rest of my class, partly because (a) I was still in shock, (b) I had a math final to take the next day at 8 a.m., and (c) I had a poker tournament to play.
Priorities, my dears, priorities.
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