Walkin' to Jersey Shore
We'd planned this trip several months ago and decided to leave on a Thursday night after my school got out. We checked my schedule to make sure that leaving and missing a Friday wouldn't conflict with finals for my classes. Unfortunately, at several months out, it meant I was about two blocks ahead of the class I would be taking and that far in advance, they don't know who is teaching the class yet so that I could make arrangements with the instructor. Fast forward to the beginning of Garde Manger. Yeah, finals are the end of week 5, and the end of week 6. I'm missing the Friday of week 5. Crap! So I made arrangements early on with the instructor to miss the last day of finals and take the written exam early. Typically, we take the written one day and the practical on another day.
Unfortunately, Thursday did not start well. Class starts at 6:30 in the morning and we have until 10:45 to finish the practical exam. But we walk in to find out that there is a surprise fire drill scheduled for 6:30 AM. Scratch 15 minutes from your time to take the exam. In the remaining four hours, we have to make mayonnaise (5-15 minutes), a red pepper coulis (1 hour minimum), Vichysoisse (45 minutes), a Caesar salad (20 minutes) and 4 each of 4 hors d'oevres that you have to design. And you get no notes. Nothing written, just ingredients on a tray, and it has to be perfect. We had a list of ingredients that the school made available to us ahead of time, so some planning was possible. Except that the procurement department hadn't built the trays properly and so not everything on the list was present. Including key ingredients for half of the hors d'oevres I'd planned. Scramble. Re-prioritize. Make it up on the fly. No pressure.
The instructor said he was willing to take items as they were completed, but everything has to be served cold. Now, personally, I hate to turn things in individually because it wastes my time. And time is at a premium here. So at 1 hour, I have nothing turned in. By the end of the second hour, I have the potato-leek soup (vichysoisse) and mayo turned in. Not great but they're done at least. Also at the end of the second hour, the chef says that all of the four required elements should be done by now and we should have started on hors d'oevres. Crap. Behind. By the end of the third hour, I have the 4 required elements turned in, and he says we should be more than half-way done with the canapes/hors d'oevres. I don't have any of them done. Let alone chilling. It's about here that I realize that two of the ingredients I was counting on aren't available. Double, triple, and sextuple crap! Can we say not good? Also, at about this time, I find out that the highest score on the written was an 81 and the second highest was a 66. Commence double pressure cooker. I have to take the crazy thing after the practical so we can leave. The end is not yet in sight by any stretch.
I end up finishing everything but am not satisfied with any of it. The Gingered Apple-Walnut egg-rolls are too big and over-cooked. True crap-on-a-plate that I would toss and not serve at all if that wouldn't have meant 0's on half the practical (We had to present all 4 hors d'oevres at the same time.) Those got a 10/20. Oddly enough, my classmates loved them and there was at least a proof-of-concept for them. Just tweaking execution. *shrug* Could have been worse. On the flip side, the Three Rings canape scored perfectly. Bread round (dried) for air, cayenne/paprika/chili sour cream for fire, and a single slice of cucumber for water. Top it with two 3/8" squares of tomato for garnish. Yes, I know, I'm a geek. It's okay. The Italian canape scored as 19/20, so that helped make up for the roll fiasco. These were a dried slice of baguette with a dill/thyme/basil/goat cheese spread, topped with prosciutto and parmesan, garnished with a basil blossom. The final canape scored decently; I think I called it the Cabo Tostada Bite. Pate A Choux round, with the mayo and red pepper coulis combined and cayenne, Tabasco, chili powder, cumin, and paprika added, a single shrimp, and garnished with a single Kalamata olive ring. It needed tightening, but again, my classmates liked it and I found out that I was the only one to fully cook the shrimp that day. Yikes!
All in all, not as bad as it could have been. But, being me, I'm obsessing and kicking myself over stupid mistakes. During clean-up I start humming "Pick yourself up, Dust yourself off, And start all over again" to myself. After all, I have a test to take that just kicked half the class's collective butt. After clean-up, the chef pulls me aside and I start the test. Some of it I didn't know, and I knew it. But overall, it was a fair test. Not that difficult if you'd paid attention and done the homework. He checks it over and there were several comments to the effect of: "Finally, someone got that right." I mean, it's sad when a question about making an emulsified vinaigrette doesn't have everyone in the class saying you should start with an emulsifier. But I apparently, I was the first to do so. Oh well. It was a high B or low A. Good enough. Also good was the chef's comment that today was not the quality of work he expected out of me in particular. I have one week to figure out what went wrong before the final next week that we don't know any ingredients for before-hand.
Go home, pack like mad.And we get on a plane for Philadelphia. We met my cousin(You know, the one that is disturbingly similar to me) and crashed at his place for the night. Well, eventual crashing. After staying up talking until 2:30 in the morning. And my day had started at 5 AM. Ugh.
More later. Off to ride bicycles down to the boardwalk in Cape May.