#93 - Finally! The wait is over...

Today was a day of tears:  tears of stress, tears of nervous anticipation, tears of worry and unalloyed terror and finally...tears of relief.


Yes, it's official - I passed both of my practical exams although the Patisserie one was a very near thing.  It wasn't anywhere near what I would have called even a good effort in terms of technique, having done every single element better previously (and actually, same for the Cuisine final) - but it was done and it was enough to get me through.  I heard someone who is progressing through the levels tell someone else that now they are nervous - well, I can't help the tears which came with the relief of finally knowing, one way or the other.


The rundown
Friday's Patisserie was a nightmare.  It started with a dream during the night in which I was already in my exams, but then I woke up and I actually had to do it.  Who knows how long the dream lasted, but I was working on my sable biscuits in it - and in that odd, dreamlike way that time passes, it seemed like it had been going for days.


It was time to get equipment and things ready for the exam room - my bag had been packed the night before and all extraneous knives had been removed from my knife kit.  Eventually found the bread knife and the cleaver I had removed for the Cuisine final - in a box with odds and ends when I tidied up my room.  See, it might look more tidy with things put away, but then I can't get my hands on things so tidy is not the same as organized.


The first 3 hours of my exam were great - the brioche was done on time and proving in the prover (although I had initially written down the wrong time, I had written the start time so it was easy to fix) and the sable dough was done.  The bain maries were set up for the chocolates, my lemons zested, juiced and on the stove, ready to start reducing when we were allowed to turn on the heat and the raspberries with the sugar on another burner, ready to go for the jelly.  They have a rule that in the 1st hour, you may not turn on your stoves.


Turned the stove on as soon as I was allowed to so that things could do what they needed to do.  I set up my tray for the truffles (paper, wire rack) and baking trays for the jaconde biscuit (the cake sponge for my dessert) and tuiles.  The brioche was chilling in the fridge so I tempered the chocolate and checked on the lemon juice and raspberries, both merrily heating but not boiling away - perfect, right?


In which the cascade starts
Somewhere in the 4th hour, things started to go wrong.  I was all of a sudden starting to get a little behind and I'm not sure why.  The melted butter for my sponge had disappeared off my stove when I wasn't looking and I thought I had messed up the sponge (no, it turned out ok) but it was time to make the mousse.  The jelly was already setting in the blast chiller and the chocolate twirls were in the fridge but all of a sudden - my lemon juice and zest for the mousse were no longer on my stove.  There was no chance of sabotage because everyone was making different desserts and I wouldn't have taken the pots to the washup because I needed them - but where was the lemon juice?  The chef went to investigate but all of a sudden my timing was off.  The sugar couldn't get started because the mousse had to set while I did the sugar and my truffles hadn't been capped - already a problem because it was so cold in the Patisserie that the chocolate was too cold when I flooded the mould and the shells were very thick - I knew they weren't going to score high...what do you do when you know that things aren't going well and you can't fix it?  You keep on going and hope that somehow it works out. Had to keep going but there were a few moments when it would have been nice to curl up in a little ball under my station and just wait to wake up so that I could do my exam for real.  Except this was real and it was starting to feel horrible.


Towards the end, I knew I wasn't going to get the biscuits done in time because I didn't have enough time to chill them down as much as I needed to - a lightning decision to salvage what was possible - take them out early (delineations of the colors got lost, lost a bunch of points for technique and presentation) and presented them less than half baked because I was already 5 minutes over (automatic 10% deduction) and didn't want to get disqualified by going over the maximum time.  There is a certain agonizing pain that comes with presenting something you know is sub-par but there was nothing to be done except hope for the best and hope it was enough.


Debrief
Waiting for the results was absolutely excruciating.  On the one hand, not knowing means that there's always a glimmer of hope - you haven't failed until they tell you that you did.  On the other hand, waiting to know one way or the other leaves you unable to think of anything else. Despite everything I could do to keep my mind off it (tons of laundry, packing and re-packing,   multiple ballet classes in the same day, going out with friends) somehow it always came back to the nauseating finale of the Patisserie.  I knew the Cuisine exam wasn't as good as the mock exam but the Patisserie - it was touch and go as to whether I had passed.  Failure meant no Patisserie Diplome, no Grand Diplome (and trust me, it's a big piece of paper) and could almost seem to be a waste of having returned to London to finish the last month of classes.  Of course there's a bright side (seeing the new school, using the new equipment, being back in London)  but the silver lining was hard to see under the doom and gloom of a possible failure.


So - how did it all go?
Cuisine:
Chef EB told me I should go to France for 5 years and eat out at restaurants more.  Yes, chef!  I think he told a lot of people that they should go to France and eat there more, though - at least 5 other people in my group were told the same thing.  Oddly enough, the dishes were better during the mock exam although the timing was definitely better for this one.  Managed to have a respectable plate although the detailed comments weren't available due to a computer glitch.  Good - I don't need to know about my hollandaise or my tartlet which I know could have been better.  I'm sure they would have said the turning could have been better, some veggies overcooked (turnips again?), some veggies undercooked (carrots?) and who knows for the rest of it?


"Congratulations - you passed."  Even though I had felt quite confident about the Cuisine final, I didn't realize how tightly I'd been strung while waiting to hear those words until the tears started.  The release of some of the tension was almost unbearable, especially as Patisserie debrief was next and the tension ratcheted back up almost immediately, even worse than before.  I exited the debriefing room for a hug from classmates who were going through the same thing.  Some concern from the others as they saw my tears - "What happened?  Did you pass?"  A sigh of relief as I nodded, then congratulations all around as we said them to each other as each person exited a debriefing room (the Cuisine and Patisserie debriefs were in adjacent rooms - I am guessing it's because a few of us had to go to both rooms).


Patisserie:
Chef CB's comment about my tuiles - "cremated".  Well, that's about right - I'm not sure what happened - the temperature in the oven at home must be a little different from the one at school - hard go gauge, I didn't use the oven thermometer at home.  Also - a tuile and the backup broke during plating so marks were deducted for the plates not being identical, although since all the elements on the plate were present, I got credit for that and the portfolio.


And then the compulsory items...brioche - a bit tasteless (needed more salt) and the head was crooked.  Otherwise, ok.

Truffles - white chocolate went out of temper (again!) and the shells were too thick, the caps uneven, but the ganache had a good texture, technique was fine and tasted very nice (yes, the extra 5 drops of Framboise helped, I think).


Sable biscuis - were not cooked, not chilled enough before cutting, etc. etc.  No points for taste because it wasn't cooked so they wouldn't have tasted the biscuits.  Evil petit fours - I saw some on a menu the other night and ended up pushing it away with a shudder, unable to think about the ones I had presented on the cakeboard.


Coulis needed more sugar, the glacage was a bit too runny, mousse was nice, jelly was too jelled and at the bottom of the mousse instead of in the middle and the sponge needed more syrup (which also had Framboise in it.  I soaked the sponge well, but maybe I should have done the sides too...)  Messy plate, messy sauces...it could have been so much better.  The white chocolate twirl was way too thick - I probably should have used the small teeth on the comb but was too nervous I'd melt through them while plating - my fingers tend to run hot which sucks when working with dough or sugar or chocolate.


Then the sugar...oh dear - let's just say it was not good - but I'm glad I managed to get it done at all and it was still standing when it got downstairs - a relief since the sugar kind of got overcooked at the initial stages.  I don't have a photo of it (for my reference only) but let's just say that it fell far short of what I had hoped to produce.


"Despite all that, you passed."  More tears, a hug and a kiss before heading downstairs to clean out my locker.  What a relief to know that it hadn't all been in vain and although the day produced a crappy performance, it was enough to get me through to the end.


Nor was I the only one to cry from the sheer relief of knowing finally - and knowing that we had done it.  There was more than one person who was still upset about the performance we had handed in on the exam days and we compared notes in terms of what we had been told - quite a few of us were told our dishes didn't taste so nice (hence the the suggestions that we live  in France and eat out more), as well as other problematic areas of our techniques and things.


I do want to re-do and try out some of the suggestions the chefs made - I'm sure I can do better than I did.  Now just to figure out a way to do it...some things are easier to try at home than others and although my sugar pretty much sucked, I am so glad I don't have to do it again.


So until next time, may you find that the effort you put in is worth the final result.

#90 - The C word...

Committing...
There it is - the "C" word...once we turn in our Patisserie portfolios, we are locked in with our desserts, decorations and plating.  I'm going to have to take in a photo of mine so that I can remember what I committed to on paper.

I spent Sunday afternoon experimenting with tuiles, puree and plating.  If there was ever a time that drove home how unartistic I am, today was it.  There was also the scientific curiosity which made me see if I could marble blackberry puree with white chocolate for a tempered decoration.  I know that a small amount of water (or other liquid) can make chocolate seize.  I just wasn't sure what the quantities were.  So the unscientific part of me didn't measure, but it doesn't matter.  The puree on chocolate was an unmitigated disaster - if the chocolate stayed tempered, you couldn't see the purple.  If you could see the coulis, it took the chocolate out of temper in a spectacularly disastrous fashion that I would be ashamed to present to the chefs at the Patisserie finals.  What to do, what to do?  I was still dithering as I fell asleep last night...plate design depends on so many factors (like, what if I accidentally overcook my coulis?  It turns out blackberries do have pectin so cooking it too long or cooling it too much will make it lumpy because it does something or other to the water.  I'd tell you more but that would require going into permutations and I'm still finishing the portfolio which just makes me want to curl up and eat Snickers bars.)  You'd think with all the chocolate, sugar, butter, milk and cream around, I'd have no problems making myself something sweet in the absence of any Snickers bars, but no - you'd be wrong.  Making any sweets would require cooking and I am pretty much through except for the exams.  As for the Snickers bar...well, I already ate it so another one would be massively naughty.  And I only had one so actually...


Anyway - the tuiles.  A slightly more successful attempt at the lattice but I am beginning to give up on it.  Part of it is that the equipment at home is a little bit different - like I don't have a blast chiller or a fridge large enough to accommodate the baking tray once I've spread the diamonds on the silmat, before I pipe the connecting batter.  The rest of it was that I was experimenting with the piping but since I didn't use a proper piping bag, the batter melted and I ended up with a closed lattice instead of an open one.


Praticing the plating took a lot of plates.  I think for some of them I tried a couple of designs on the plate.  All I have to say is thank goodness for dishwashers!  This is what the sink looked like after I had cleaned up any and all mess from the preparation and cooking part.  It's a good thing no one needed the kitchen because I had things everywhere (plating area, photography area, rubbish area, etc. etc.)  I got really lucky with accomodation in that the kitchen is actually usable for most of the practice things.


It's all starting to feel real
I have been sorting out my knife kit and Patisserie tools bag only to discover the acetate that I use to line my moulds for the dessert is not thick or strong enough to use for my chocolate twirls (I want a larger circumference on the twirl so I need a less flexible acetate strip).  Ah, the dilemmas of being in culinary school.  They're real in the sense that some people will do this for a living.  On the other hand, they (most likely) won't change the world or bring about world peace or do anything useful to better someone's life or the world so it's not as real as some other jobs I could name where every day you make a difference to someone's life.


There has been substantial panic in the kitchen as tuile paste refuses to cooperate and I keep forgetting which way I bent the tuiles.  Hopefully if it goes on backwards on the day, they won't deduct marks for getting it backwards.


The portfolio has been submitted (with literally just a few minutes, if that, to spare.  Formatting took way longer than I had wanted to spend on it but this is Patisserie - how pretty it is counts.  How pretty everything is counts.  In Cuisine, sometimes you can wing it.  As long as your techniques are good, you can always try to save it by saying it's "rustic" - unless of course, that's not what they're looking for, in which case you're just in trouble.


Must go and start mental review now of my game plan.  And do laundry.  And pack my kit for school.  And organize Patisserie tools.  And pack my bags.  So much to do, so little time.


There won't be much cooking between now and the finals but still a lot of thinking to do.  So until next time, may you have as fun a week as mine will be.

#89 - Death by tuiles...

Replating the desserts... 
I keep thinking it's Friday night but it's not.  My lattice stencil arrived yesterday and I picked it up from a friend today so that I could have a practice run at my plating with all the decorations.  Yech - another try tomorrow...it's a pain because I don't feel like I have a natural talent for putting the shapes and things together.    Nothing came out quite the way I imagined or hoped except for the white chocolate twirls.  I had to make my own blackberry puree so I had to guess a bit.  It turned my tuile mix purple instead of a dark pink or deep red.  I know part of it is the the tuile batter but still...lavender?  And the pretty tuiles broke because I overcooked them so I had to use the crappy one for the plating.

Had to be kind of ruthless with the chocolate twirls.  Hopefully I'll get the same shape or be able to snap it around the same place during the exam - it's hard to get the angles exactly right and depending on the acetate you get, sometimes it's easier than others to get the twirls to be around the same circumference/curve as what you're aiming for.  Got lucky today with the twirl, but still ended up breaking the long twirls into a better height to go on the plate.

Have been having trouble coming up with a design on the plate where I would have enough sauce and still have something that looks clean and interesting.  This still isn't quite what I was looking for, but it's an improvement over what happened during the exam skills class with our plated dessert earlier in the week.  I've been lucky enough to get some suggestions from friends who did this exam two terms ago.  They had a couple of ideas which I think I can try tomorrow so that I can put photos in the portfolio.  At this point if it takes too much time, I'm not doing it for the exam (except for piping the poppyseed tuile and even that has me whining that it sucks when the batter is melting).

The Anglaise came out this time but the coulis is still really thick even though I didn't boil the sugar as hot as the other day.  The coulis gets this weird skin on top - I think blackberries must have some kind of pectin because the coulis looked like it might set if I left it to its own devices for a while.  In any case, the Anglaise wasn't as runny today and the coulis not as lumpy so I think I've fixed my technical difficulties.  Hopefully there will be time to do them again tomorrow - just in case, and also to try out the suggested platings with the sauces.  We've got a few ideas on the go so hopefully one of them will look good.  I don't want to try anything fancy because I know my hands will be shaking by the time I get to plating the dessert and wobbly hands don't do good piping or other fine, delicate work.

JB has been a very good sport and tasted each of the components I made today - a bit of a feat given he was trying to eat dinner and go out while I was plying him with the Anglaise (he wanted to know what it was.  I could only explain it by saying it's kind of like a custard), the coulis and tuile.  He declined the white chocolate - probably just as well, I need the twirls after all so that I can try a couple of more alternative platings.

Dinner

Then it was time for dinner.  I was really craving the goat's cheese and the baby beets I bought last night.  Also the mac 'n cheese.  And I bought some chicken today - baked it wrapped in Serrano ham.  It sounded good in theory but not good in practice.  The bottom part of the chicken  / ham roll kind got steamed / boiled so it wasn't crispy like I had thought it would.  Super classy dinner, non?  I think the best part of dinner was the salad though - the chicken was boring and the mac 'n cheese stopped being nice right around when the breadcrumbs started to go a bit soggy.

Tempering is really taking it out of me.  Somehow managed to get the white chocolate twirls done but my hand has started to peel.  Have decided that I will not cook again before finals after I've turned in my portfolio (well, except to cook dinner or something).  I want to rest everything as much as possible for the big days.

Anyway, it's time to go to sleep.  I've been sitting here trying to formulate a sentence for quite a while now and am afraid I have said something silly further up.  Thank goodness for artistic friends who can make a judgment call as to whether something is pretty or not.  Or clean looking or not.  So until next time, may the suggestions you get from your friends be as good and useful as the ones I have received from mine.