The Culinary Tales Week 30: Better Lucky Than Good

August 28, 2014

 

 

At long last we came to the final week of garde manger. I don’t think there was a single soul who didn’t want that day to arrive and fast.

 

All term long (and even way before we started) we had been warned that 50% of students do not complete the Garde Manger final, which involves presenting your own individual buffet. I was resigned to being on that list, though that still didn’t stop me from trying my best not to get on it.

 

Monday kicked off with the usual written test, followed by production for our final products. Tuesday was salad night, so we each had two salads to turn in in addition to prepping for our final buffet. Wednesday was sandwich night, and we had a sandwich entree and tea sandwiches to turn in as well. Thursday night was when our buffet was due, and each person’s buffet had to be decorated with, among other things, a theme (which had to be finalized by week two), a pretty printed menu, a completed salt dough sculpture (on which your theme centered), a melon carving, a turnip carving and flowers carved from radishes (at least 10). As for food, the buffet had to contain four platters of hors d’oeuvres (12 pieces each) and a chicken galantine served on a chaud froid platter.

 

Like previous finals, we were allowed to bring in a production schedule each night, but unlike previous finals, we could only list ingredients and not amounts nor methods. Any hint of instruction and the production schedule would be taken away. We single-filed ourselves outside the door while the teachers checked our schedules, backpacks and knife kits. It was more akin to a post-9/11 security check at the airport than a classroom.

 

We were allowed to bring in ONE blank note card a day, and we could write methods on these – but only after the teacher checked it at the door and gave you the OK to write whatever you want on it when you got to your station.

 

I tried and it proved pointless. I later learned that a few classmates snuck in extra notes (it wasn’t hard). One of them even wrote notes on his hand… until Chef Nazi caught him and made him wash.

 

The truth is, if you did the allowed production schedule right, by listing the ingredients in the order they go into the dish, one doesn’t need a recipe card. Besides, the beauty of savory cooking is its flexibility. The only things that require precise amounts and process are baking and chaud froid production. Everything else can be improvised.

 

And we still had our daily head-to-toe uniform checks. Seriously, this class was like an airport and military inspection all at once, only worse. Because it was unnecessary. This rigamarole was beyond ridiculous, with the only consolation being that this was the end. As if the stress of finals wasn’t enough.

 

As usual, I packed waaaaaaaay too many tasks into my daily schedules. I tried to be realistic about it, but previous finals taught me that no matter how fast or much you try, you can’t really squeeze into one night what needs to be done over three.

 

My Monday production list: starting chaud froid platter (easy); making the bases for three of my four hors d’oeuvres (these required baking); mustard for sandwich day; and starting the chicken galantine (which, if you’ll recall from the Week 28 post, was made over the course of two/three days.)

 

I only got two bases done (the shortbread cookie and the barquette), a couple of inlays for the galantine and the mustard.

 

My work was cut out for me on Tuesday, because it was imperative that I finish the other two bases, as well as the gallantine roll and mayonnaise. With two salads due as well, my prospects weren’t looking good. I had to make chinese chicken and nicoise salads. The chinese chicken salad wasn’t difficult to do, but there were a million ingredients and precise knife cuts were needed. That took up the better part of an hour. Interestingly, our official school recipe didn’t call for mandarin oranges, but my chef called attention to the fact that my dish lacked those. I had a pretty good defense that even though oranges are a much-welcome, much-needed garnish, the school recipe excluded it and therefore I shouldn’t be docked points.

 

Nicoise wasn’t challenging either, but I bungled the tuna during salad week, and managed to undercook it for finals. As ever, better to undercook than overcook. An undercooked protein can be put back on the stove and cooked to proper doneness; there’s no saving overcookedness.

 

I still hadn’t gotten to starting my chicken galantine by Wednesday. I really needed to get this going two days earlier and I went into panic mode.

 

While most of the prep for the canapes were done, I still had to do the profiteroles for the shrimp avocado canape and the bouches (cups made with puff pastry that look like little bread toilets) for the chicken curry. And as it turned out, I forgot to do the shrimp avocado filling. I managed to at least get the first layer of my chaud froid done, with colored design and all, but the aspic layer was still missing.

 

I managed to get the bouches done but only after screwing it up on the first attempt (I forgot to put a rack on top of them which is supposed to prevent over puffing and subsequent toppling over.)

 

We had two recipes for the profiteroles – one from this class and one from Baking 1. The garde manger recipe didn’t work so well, as proven by the botched demo a few weeks ago. When the chef can’t get it right, something is wrong with the picture. Of course, with the limited number of mixers available, I couldn’t get my hands on one.

 

For the last night of finals, I was looking at one more canape base to do, 90% of the galantine, somehow finding ingredients for the shrimp avocado canape (we were out of product by Wednesday’s end), assembling the canapes, and finishing the chaud froid platter. Chef Nazi said we could come in 30 minutes early the next day, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. That was just enough time, I thought, to get the whole she-bang together.

 

So…. you know the feeling when you do your taxes and get excited that you’re getting $3,000 back, only to find out later that you actually owe $10,000?

 

That was how I felt on that Thursday when I got to school early, only to be told, that yes, we could come in 30 minutes early, but we couldn’t START 30 minutes early.

 

SERIOUSLY????

 

With serious rushing going on, I managed to get my aspic finished and tossed in the fridge to cool (it was supposed to cool at room temp, but I was running out of time.) The chicken galantine was made – butt ugly compared to the one I did in regular class and waaaaaaay overcooked. And the profiteroles turned out wonderfully – I finally got my hands on a mixer because no one else needed it! (One of the most frustrating things during these finals was being held up because the equipment was tied up. I usually had the robocoup or the mixer in place, but someone would borrow, promise to return in five minutes, and then I’d never see it again. And the ovens always seemed to be full, and occasionally, other people’s pots would find their way to MY burners. I would have been done a day early if I didn’t have to wait on other people. And I couldn’t yell at anyone to move their shit, because – unless it was a “Behind you” warning – we weren’t allowed to talk at all.)

 

And I luckily secured some avocado and shrimp.

 

It takes forever to defrost a box of shrimp virtually no time to cook. I didn’t care about pretty knife cuts at this point. When it’s down to the wire, you do what you need to to get the job done. Sometimes, a bad job is better than no job. (And that’s so true these days.)

 

If only I had known that Annoying Girl (bless her heart) snuck over a cup of extra shrimp and avocado to my station, knowing that I hadn’t started on mine. I didn’t see it until cleanup and I was truly touched by the gesture.

 

In the end, I managed to get my buffet up with ALL the required items – salt dough, menu and every food requirement. Except that for all the careful work I did a few days before on my melon carving, I forgot to put it on the table.

 

My theme was Harlequin, and my salt dough centerpiece was the Jester. The Harlequin design is marked with a signature diamond-checked pattern and usually lots of color (you’ll find the occasional black and white take). This is a departure from my usual mono- or duochromatic style. I say one can never go wrong with black, white and a splash of one color. This time, I wanted to do something that was vibrant yet darkly whimsical… and I love the mardi gras palette of purple, green, gold, black and red.

 

I finished my sculpture the weekend before, but I liked it better when it was all white. My coloring job was pretty messy, but then again, I rationalized, I was in culinary school, not ART school. They couldn’t dock me points for a lack of artistic excellence, right?

 

I didn’t have time to color up my presentation. I borrowed mardi gras beads from a friend and bought fancy cocktail napkins, plates and utensils from a party supply store; they never made it to the table, lying in a wasted heap at the bottom of my work station.

 

The chefs sent us out for a couple of hours while they graded us. We were warned not to drink or we would get a FAIL.But I just wanted to drink, chef warning be damned. I earned that drink. So a couple of classmates and I popped into a Japanese place for sushi and sake. When we got back into the lab, I marched straight up to my chef and showed him my melon, because damn it, I did it. It wasn’t Sweet Momma good, but it was my best melon work yet.

 

I wouldn’t have gotten away with it if Chef Nazi was grading me, but luckily Chef Frenchie was so chill. So chill, that despite all my missteps, I got an A.

 

You know, sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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