The Culinary Tales Week 40: Keep Calm and Just Cook

November 10, 2014

I might have mentioned it before… But before we could graduate, even if we completed ALL the classes and put in the required externship hours, we had to pass one final practical. It’s almost like a thesis defense, a final to end all finals.

 

We were going to have one more crack at a written exam, knife cut and chicken or fish fabrication (we wouldn’t know which one until the test) before preparing a three-course menu. At this point, knife cuts were a no-brainer but the menu scared the shit out of me, knowing full well that there were a ton of dishes that I didn’t get a chance to make during my time in school.

 

At least we were given a clue what we might be making; we were handed a list of 12 pre-determined menus. And we were expected to master every single one. We were tasked with putting together a production schedule (see photo below) but we couldn’t make recipe notes on it (no cooking steps, techniques or amounts). But a well-organized, well-written schedule could tell you exactly how to make a dish anyway.

 

All year long, I had dreaded this day, as if all my previous hard work would be negated by one bad night of cooking. Apparently it has happened before. And all that a “fail” meant was that you had to take it over.

 

A lot of the pressure came off when we learned one of our classmates, Teddy Bear, who had signed up for one of the early slots, had messed up his dessert. He had to make chocolate mousse quennelles and instead of sugar, he had put in salt. He had barely put his knives away when news of the misstep spread all over the school.

 

Chef Satan walked up to us hanging outside during a smoke break to tell us that one of our friends had “fucked up.” The exam chef, who apparently had a sweet tooth, eagerly bit into the salted mousse only to spit out a mouthful. Teddy Bear joined us a few minutes later to recount his story, finding a cup of untouched sugar after the mousse was done but deciding it was too late to repair. He submitted his plate anyway.

 

“You mean you KNEW???” Chef Satan had bellowed. “That’s WORSE!”

 

But Teddy Bear passed. And I knew I was going to be okay, because if he can turn in something that bad, one would have to have an abysmally horrid night to fail this test.

 

I signed up for one of the earlier slots as well, figuring that I might as well get it over with and spare me the agony of stressing out the entire 12 weeks of rotation if I waited until the last possible minute to schedule my exam. Advertising Buddy and I even subjected ourselves to a practice session, during which we performed horribly. But we were assured that as long as our written, fabrication and knife cut tests didn’t go catastrophically, we stood a fair chance of passing.

 

There might be a god, after all, because as it turned out, I pulled one of the easiest menus on the roster, what some folks called the “sleepwalk menu.” For my final test, I was to make French onion soup (easy peasy), grilled pork tenderloin with sauce robert (a wine reduction sauce with dry mustard and caramelized onions), creamed spinach and potato tournés (which we could cook any way we wanted), and chocolate soufflé with espresso creme anglaise (I made three just in case of trouble and they all turned out perfectly, which caused me to scream in delight – Annoying Girl-style – even though we were ordered to complete silence during the final.) I didn’t even have the opportunity to mess up the tournés because the student in charge of supplying the order made sure to stock fingerling potatoes instead of regular ones, making it impossible to cut tournés. To cook the simply chopped taters, I turned to my tried and true method of  tossing potatoes in oil, herbs, salt and pepper and roasting, wrapped, in aluminum foil.

 

The law of averages dictates that when so many things go wrong for you, sooner or later the tide will turn in your favor. At just the right time.

 

 

 

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