The kitchen is closed.
Well, when all is said and done, I've rated a 'B-' in the Fundamentals of Culinary Arts. I did great on the written test (The four basic elements of a stock are cold liquid, nourishing elements, aromatic vegetables, and seasonings. The five leading sauces are bechamel, espagnole, tomato, veloute, and hollandaise. Don't memorize that if you're not in an American Culinary Federation program because other courses will list a different five sauces... ) Anyway. The practicals did not go so well.
The cooking practical, well. Understand, I have to prepare an eggs benedict at some point, and then prepare the fried fish / french fries / potato salad / coleslaw dinner plate. I have 3 hours in which to do this, working in a 4x4 prep area, sharing a 5 burner stove (6 burner but one doesn't always light) with at least one, sometimes two people, and with extremely limited equipment and the pot sink 50 feet away. Plus, I have to first get and place in my prep area everything refrigerated that I'm going to need because the walk-in refrigerator is supposedly going to be locked. 'Potentially Hazardous Foods' (in this case fish and eggs) must be chilled with ice. (The iron chefs, btw, have 1 hour, but 3 people, and an excellent kitchen.)
I didn't grab five bowls at the very beginning, so I had to keep washing the same bowl over and over (100 feet of walking each wash); plus my mayonnaise took me 45 minutes, which is too long, but at least it didn't break. Still, I took too much time with things and in the end was rushed to finish up and my plans kind of fell apart. I was under the impression we used panko bread crumbs for the fish breading (which tastes just great, btw) but apparently we were supposed to use regular bread crumbs. Plus, somewhere in there, I was supposed to have butchered a chicken even though it wasn't on my menu, just to show the chefs that I had done it. I didn't learn this until after the exam was closed. In the end, the potato salad never got made because I hadn't cooked the potatoes as plating came rushing up. Ow. Anyway, I need to get faster at making mayonnaise (among other things); an additional 20 minutes of time spent on other things would have made a tremendous difference in the final results.
Knife cuts are another thing I need to get faster at. A separate day, we had an hour and 15 minutes to - first set up the work area with sanitizing solution and rag, 'useable' and 'non-usable' waste containers, secured cutting board, etc, and then concasse a tomato (peel, seed, and chop), slice onion, brunois (extra-small dice) onion, make 4 different size cuts of carrots, two different size cuts of potato, as well as the tourne - birdsbeak carved into oblongs - of potato and carrot ; segment an orangee, and chop half a quart of mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot in a 2:1:1 ratio). I completed everything except the carrot tourne, orange segmenting, and half-quart of mirepoix, but some of it was very rough.
Given time, I can make near perfect cuts, however, we weren't given time. And I lost time off the front because of the snowstorm - I left early, but it was really, really awful on the roads. Traffic on a 65 mph highway was moving 45, and often only one lane was navigable. Fortunately it cleared as I got closer, and in the end I was only a couple minutes late. But the door was locked,and I had to walk around the building to another door. And the clock for the exam started at 6:30 - the time class nominally begins - but I still had to get my apron and cravat on, and get my marker and thermometer into the side pockets, etc. "Full uniform." Then my teammate (although exams are individual, still, he's been my teammate all semester) had no thermometer and needed to borrow money from me to get a new one from the vending machine, so I delayed another couple minutes to go back to my desk and dig around for my spare thermometer, give up on that and lend him the cash instead. Ultimately, I only had a little under an hour to do my knife cut practical, about 50 minutes to actually cut after the set up steps. Ehhh.
Speed will be essential in a professional kitchen, of course, so it does make sense for the exam to have time pressure; and clearly I'm going to need to get a lot faster. Anyway, this time pressure for the exams was significantly more than in any of the class practical work before had been, and I wasn't really ready for it. Let me try twice more and I'd probably be able to ace it, but practical exams don't work that way...
Ah, well. All done now, passing grade recorded. Next up, 'Purchasing and Receiving' and showing up half an hour earlier, 6am start time.
The cooking practical, well. Understand, I have to prepare an eggs benedict at some point, and then prepare the fried fish / french fries / potato salad / coleslaw dinner plate. I have 3 hours in which to do this, working in a 4x4 prep area, sharing a 5 burner stove (6 burner but one doesn't always light) with at least one, sometimes two people, and with extremely limited equipment and the pot sink 50 feet away. Plus, I have to first get and place in my prep area everything refrigerated that I'm going to need because the walk-in refrigerator is supposedly going to be locked. 'Potentially Hazardous Foods' (in this case fish and eggs) must be chilled with ice. (The iron chefs, btw, have 1 hour, but 3 people, and an excellent kitchen.)
I didn't grab five bowls at the very beginning, so I had to keep washing the same bowl over and over (100 feet of walking each wash); plus my mayonnaise took me 45 minutes, which is too long, but at least it didn't break. Still, I took too much time with things and in the end was rushed to finish up and my plans kind of fell apart. I was under the impression we used panko bread crumbs for the fish breading (which tastes just great, btw) but apparently we were supposed to use regular bread crumbs. Plus, somewhere in there, I was supposed to have butchered a chicken even though it wasn't on my menu, just to show the chefs that I had done it. I didn't learn this until after the exam was closed. In the end, the potato salad never got made because I hadn't cooked the potatoes as plating came rushing up. Ow. Anyway, I need to get faster at making mayonnaise (among other things); an additional 20 minutes of time spent on other things would have made a tremendous difference in the final results.
Knife cuts are another thing I need to get faster at. A separate day, we had an hour and 15 minutes to - first set up the work area with sanitizing solution and rag, 'useable' and 'non-usable' waste containers, secured cutting board, etc, and then concasse a tomato (peel, seed, and chop), slice onion, brunois (extra-small dice) onion, make 4 different size cuts of carrots, two different size cuts of potato, as well as the tourne - birdsbeak carved into oblongs - of potato and carrot ; segment an orangee, and chop half a quart of mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot in a 2:1:1 ratio). I completed everything except the carrot tourne, orange segmenting, and half-quart of mirepoix, but some of it was very rough.
Given time, I can make near perfect cuts, however, we weren't given time. And I lost time off the front because of the snowstorm - I left early, but it was really, really awful on the roads. Traffic on a 65 mph highway was moving 45, and often only one lane was navigable. Fortunately it cleared as I got closer, and in the end I was only a couple minutes late. But the door was locked,and I had to walk around the building to another door. And the clock for the exam started at 6:30 - the time class nominally begins - but I still had to get my apron and cravat on, and get my marker and thermometer into the side pockets, etc. "Full uniform." Then my teammate (although exams are individual, still, he's been my teammate all semester) had no thermometer and needed to borrow money from me to get a new one from the vending machine, so I delayed another couple minutes to go back to my desk and dig around for my spare thermometer, give up on that and lend him the cash instead. Ultimately, I only had a little under an hour to do my knife cut practical, about 50 minutes to actually cut after the set up steps. Ehhh.
Speed will be essential in a professional kitchen, of course, so it does make sense for the exam to have time pressure; and clearly I'm going to need to get a lot faster. Anyway, this time pressure for the exams was significantly more than in any of the class practical work before had been, and I wasn't really ready for it. Let me try twice more and I'd probably be able to ace it, but practical exams don't work that way...
Ah, well. All done now, passing grade recorded. Next up, 'Purchasing and Receiving' and showing up half an hour earlier, 6am start time.