#92 - It eventually goes away...

For better or for worse...
Cuisine final is over and I am still recovering.  15 of us going into the kitchen - they had people going in 2 by 2 (opposite sides of the kitchen) and I was second to last - had to wait almost an hour before I got to go in and set up my station.  There was last minute panic in the hallway, a few questions for the Patisserie chefs who were walking past as they set up for their tasting from Group C and a few nervous trips to the bathroom.  At least it was before and not during the exam...


There have been sporadic instances this week where I just wanted to curl up in a little ball on the floor and have a nervous breakdown.  But we don't do that - we're chefs and we deal with it.  Or as one of my friends told me when I told her I just wanted to die, "do it after the exam."  As you can tell, we're a sympathetic lot.  The bright side is that the feeling does go away - eventually - and there are 4 of us from my cuisine group who will be repeating this experience on Friday morning in staggered starts.  The enthusiasm with which we look forward to Friday is as palpable as that which might accompany a doctor's appointment which involves taking off your clothes and being put in positions you normally wouldn't engage in with someone who isn't your spouse / lover / [insert word of your choice here].  It has also reduced even those of us with pretty extensive vocabularies to mostly 4-letter words which you wouldn't say in front of the very young or the extremely elderly, especially when something boils away.  You will note that I have not said "boiled over" - I stopped doing that last Thursday.


The exam...
I didn't take in my time plan because I figured if I had to check it too often I'd been in deep s#$* and looking at it wouldn't fix matters whereas looking at my mise en place told me where to go next.  It was a busy but not horrific 4 hours and if it hadn't been for the couple of things which went wrong (and if I had had another couple of pots and burners) I think I could have done it in a little less time.


Things were pretty on track in terms of timing right up until I had to plate my starter.  Of course that's when things start to go pear shaped.  I recovered from burning my carrots (had to scoop out a couple more, but luckily I had a whole extra carrot so that was no drama) and burning away my wine (for the Hollandaise) twice.  Then...as I was starting plating, disaster struck - my egg broke and the backup wasn't usable because it looked awful.  So I had to poach another egg.  This then threw off my hollandaise schedule a little bit and it was cold by the time I had to plate it - so I tried to recover it with a little hot water - hopefully it didn't split but it started to look thin although it went over the egg fine.  This time I remembered the lemon and the salt so although the tartlet didn't look as pretty as during the mock exam (and I didn't make a spare) hopefully it will taste better.  Also - I presented 2 minutes early!  I suppose I could have used those 2 minutes to try to fix the hollandaise a bit more, but really, I wasn't in the mood to mess with it any more than I already had.


Then the main...everything on track again except for a minor hiccup with the mousse which I will tell you about after the debrief on Monday.  I also dropped the bowl which had my pigeon legs marinating in it, so I had to clean up the floor and wash the legs (I was going to do that anyway).  I don't know how that affects the hygiene marks - I didn't have any spare pigeons and I had to make the legs so since they were going to cook in gently boiling oil for about an hour or so, I figured any bugs would be long since cooked away.  The dish ended up looking quite nice - I think everything was there, including the parsley chiffonade.  And finally the pigeon was cooked, but it's possible one of them was slightly over - ugh, will it never go right???  Time - 2 minutes over because I had to clear my station down so that I could plate - and there were a lot of components:  glazed vegetables, cutting the bottom off the braised and stuffed lettuce, the sauce, the chiffonade, the potatos fondant, the confit pigeon legs where we have to debone the thigh, then pan fry to get the skin crispy (and which took forever), the glaze for the stuffed/braised lettuce and the sauce.  Think one pot or something similar for each of those things which then has to go on 2 very hot plates.


My station was a shambles.  It seemed like crap was proliferating everywhere, but never the stuff I needed.  Another small pot would have been nice (we had an extra one during the mock exam so it was a real nuisance not to have one today).  Also, they said we could trade our used pots for clean ones, but there weren't any in the washup area for the first hour of my time so I either washed my own or I had to do other stuff while waiting for my pots to get cleaned - I can tell you where my 2 minutes went.  In the meantime, there was quite a bit of "hot pan!" and "mind your backs" but otherwise, it was intensely quiet in the kitchen except for the sound of pots going on stoves and oven doors opening.  Oh, ridiculous - I couldn't open my oven unless I used both hands, which meant a little bit of juggling.  Small in the grand scheme of things, but awful when seconds count.


Good night...
The next time you hear from me, hopefully the Patisserie will also be finished and I will be able to tell you that it felt good.  Until then, may you have enough pots and pans (or whatever) to do what you need to do.  And may you beat the clock...

#86 - Finals Practice Day 2 - Free Interpretation Plated Dessert

Well, it's Day 2 of the finals practice runs and there is some recipe rewriting to be done.  It seems everyone else is finished with their portfolio but I was stuck in a quandary of where to start.  I think it's one of those things that was so overwhelming that only the impetus of knowing I had to execute today made me rewrite today's recipes on my computer rather than having scraps of recipes and various different versions in my notebooks (sometimes starting from the back).

Compulsory Elements

Certain elements are required but we get to choose between options for those elements.  However, other requirements (i.e. the dessert has to be at least 50% encased in something) do mean that our desserts are going to have certain things in common.  I think a lot of people are encasing in oval or round cylinders, although I saw a lovely elliptical one with pointy ends (ladies - think Marquis cut).  They all have to have a jelly in the middle (you can see it in the cross section after it got destroyed in the tasting).  It has to have a glacage that's a different flavor from the jelly in the middle of the mousse/bavarois/chibouste (basically the filling has to have some sort of whipped cream mixture component).  We all have to have tuiles, although my poppyseeds got somewhat lost and a tempered chocolate decoration and a couple of sauces, one of which I managed to get completely lumpy.  It's not supposed to be.

I had done components of the dessert, but not all of them together so today was an interesting run through.  It's amazing how much you forget in a short period of time so thank goodness I wrote my notes with a view to what I might need to know a few years from now.  They don't need to be as detailed when you do it for so many days on end but it's inconvenient when your brain prunes various neurons which encode the information you deem vital but they think are superfluous.  I suppose knowing what the joconde biscuit ought to look like isn't a survival imperative, but it is if you want to pass Patisserie!

The last 3 hours of our final

Anyway - so it kind of seemed like things were on track and then it kind of felt like they weren't.  For instance, I didn't make back ups of my piped chocolate decorations so when I knocked one over, that kind of sucked.  Luckily I had enough time and I still had chocolate in my bowls, so I quickly warmed up the chocolate and piped it again.

We were meant to keep track of how long it took to do what, but other than things like baking times, I didn't do a very good job of it at all.  I wrote the times of a couple of things, then got lost in just making stuff.  There was a little bit of "and then what?" going on, but I think I'm just going to do a big checklist on the day so that I can cross things off my list as I do them.

Chef GB didn't like the decorations because he said they were too fussy (below left) and the hearts were too old fashioned (he didn't say that to the other person who had hearts on her plate - what's up with that?).  Something was wrong with my coulis so it messed up his plating (below centre).  I'm still fighting with knowing that my plating is not pretty and since I don't have a Kitchen Aid at home (nor the right puree) I don't intend to try this again before the exam.  Perhaps you can weigh in with your preferences or any suggestions you may have:

It was so hot in the kitchen that I came home with a migraine for the second day in a row.  I'm not sure how we ever made it in the kitchens at the old school.  I heard a couple of girls in the locker room complaining about the heat and thought, "They have no idea."  Our kitchens are air conditiioned!  Made it to the osteo who put me to rights (to the accompaniment of cracks and winces) and finally it's to bed and getting ready for tomorrow.  I'm still waiting to hear whether I have to take the theory exams again (please no!  I already took them and I don't have my notes anymore) - the trouble is the first theory exam is tomorrow so if I find out that I do have to take the exam, it will be with just a couple of hours' notice.  It almost seems premature - perhaps they ought to wait until 5 minutes before the exam.

On the other hand, if they let me know earlier, maybe I can take a dance class in the afternoon to make up for eating the white chocolate after I piped a message to V...because after dinner, just for fun and to make up for that bleeding raspberry white chocolate mousse from last Sunday, I decided to have a little piping practice...

Tomorrow is another day and as always, there's a ton of stuff to be done.  It's getting close to my bed time so I will say good night for now.  And until next time, may your dreams be sweet but not filled with white chocolate mousse.

#84 - Sebastian the Lobster, Interactive dining and the Little Mermaid

But first - a lobster, half a beetroot and some ratatouille
Friday was our lobster and ratatouille practical.  For some reason, people seem to dislike beetroot, sometimes before they've even tried it.  I was guilty of this particular dislike until a few years ago.  I had always been put off by the color and the fact that beetroot seems to stain everything it touches so I'm not sure what possessed me to try it that nameless day sometime in the distant past, but try it I did.  It was love at first bite.  It has a firm, but soft texture if that's possible, similar to eating a skillfully cooked turnip but much sweeter.


So the dish was a pan fried lobster, but only at the last minute.  We had to (mostly) cook it in the shell so that we could remove the shell first, to use to make something almost like a bisque - cooking off the shells and making a bouillon, then clarifying it with beets and egg whites.  Somehow getting the lobster out of its shell was a lot harder than I remember and this one had a ton of eggs.  It was actually kind of disgusting because they got everywhere and I kept having to clean my board, knives and work surface.  Plus I accidentally cut through the meat on one of the claws and completely mashed the other one.  Sebastian (yes, I know it's a boy's name) got some of her own back when one of her knuckles twisted in my hand while I was deshelling her - so there is a puncture on my left thumb and a slice on my right thumb (no idea how I got it).


I have yet to have a practical class in Cuisine where I haven't boiled something over - on Friday, it was the court bouillon to cook the lobster.  The clarification was quite nice although I had to discard some egg white part way through because it looked like there was too much egg.  Not enough sauce left to make an emulsion foam at the end, but the dish finished on time and the beetroot consomme was surprisingly good.  The ratatouille was pretty yummy, but we ran out of olive oil so I thought it was missing something.  I tried it at home after adding a little olive oil and it made a huge difference - part of the reason why I don't cook with extra virgin olive oil unless I am looking for the flavor.  It also took a little while longer than I would have liked to cut all the vegetables because I had to spend so much time trimming.  It's easier to get even cuts if you cut off the top and the bottom of the bell peppers and since none of the veggies had flat sides, you had to trim off and discard quite a bit.  Chef EB didn't say anything about them but I bet if I hadn't gotten them pretty similar sized, he would have noticed and said something.  As it was, he could tell I hadn't added the basil chiffonade at the right time.


Lobster was followed by a trek down to the pub, a fine after-class tradition which is not quite as regular as back when we were in Marylebone Lane.  A definite must though, after a Friday class.


Minor rejoicing
And finally, the biometric scan for my finger works!  I've forgotten, but one of the gates works to let me in and a different one (and those ones only) work to let me out when I scan my finger.  Suffice it to say that the working finger is not the middle one.  And it finally worked at the cafe so my prediction that the scanner will never work during my time at LCB will not stay true.  The new ID card is a different story and I'm still not sure that I will learn everyone's name in my group before the exams.  We're still working on remembering who's actually in the group.


Practicing...and bloody pigeons

Saturday was a practice session with JE.  We met at Borough Market because we needed some ingredients (pigeons, baby onions, a few other bits and pieces).  And of course, we both got a delicious toasted cheese sandwich.  JE was actually going to get something else, but a look at the steam rising in the air from a bitten corner of the sandwich and a tiny little bite convinced her that she wanted one of her own.  I remember ages ago when LM and I went to get one, we shared it and I thought it was so delicious that I could eat a whole one by myself.  Well, no, as it turns out.  I got most of the way through but the cheese was so rich (and I'm pretty sure there were lashings of butter on it) that I was defeated before I got to the end.

Spent part of the time practicing turning turnips.  I remembered that I wasted a little time during the mock exam doing extra ones (obviously losing some time there) but reminded myself that there would only be a couple of backups during the actual exam so some time should get picked up there, as well as the vegetable cooking.

I hate pigeon - the meat actually smells kind of vile.  After we thought it was cooked, I poked the meat when we roasted the crown and one felt pretty close to medium while the other one still felt really rare.  When I carved my pigeons, the parts that felt medium were medium, but the part close to the bone was still not cooked and even though it didn't bleed (much) when I carved it, blood got in the sauce when I put the sauce on the plate.  I'm not sure how I'll get the whole pigeon crown to medium at this stage because it looks like if the part by the bone is cooked, the rest of the breast might be overdone.  It's not quite as serious to be slightly under with the pigeon as it is with chicken (they want the pigeon medium, chicken has to be cooked through) but it can't be good if I can't roast the stupid thing.

We did manage to get the braising liquid from the lettuce sufficiently reduced to get a glaze and plate most of 2 plates.  No second lettuce and we skipped the chicken mousse because it's a component which is hard to mess up once you learn the tricks of the trade.  However, not particularly happy with the result of our practice and have to remind myself that conditions at home are very different from te ones at school.  For one thing, I'm not sure anyone has 7 pots at home and we spent part of our 4 hours washing up.  We did mark time for when we expected to be doing other elements during the exam (i.e. the chicken mousse for the lettuce, the poached eggs, spinach and Hollandaise sauce) but all in all it didn't turn out too badly, other than the pigeon which is still causing me problems.  Perhaps a longer sear - I'll have to ask the chef because the whole bleeding on the plate thing doesn't work for me.  The picture on the right above looks like one of those find the difference games they have for you when you're a child, the purpose being that the plates presented during the exam ought to be identical.   JE was unhappy with the sauce but I thought it was pretty good, taking into account we used the wrong stock (we didn't have veal and I haven't been able to find it) and the wrong wine (we didn't want to open a nice bottle of red wine and we had only gotten white wine from when we did the Hollandaise earlier in the week.

Made the tartlet but not the eggs, spinach or the Hollandaise.  For one thing, we ran out of pots and pans - they were all in use for the various components of the pigeon dish.  For another, JE had a little trouble with her dough and we don't know why.  And the moulds we used yesterday were a bit bigger than the ones we use for the exam so this was actually meant for practice lining and baking the tartlets anyway.  Not necessarily perfect (we don't know why the potatoes tasted better the last time we did them) but we learned quite a bit so it was definitely not a wasted day.

Dinner

There's this restaurant on Regent Street that I've passed by quite a few times and each time it seemed like one I would like to try.  Luckily one of my friends here had heard from someone that it was good so he booked 4 of us in.  It had interactive tables so we all had fun playing with it - it's pretty much like having a video screen of a computer screen on your table via projector and you can order food, drinks, ask for service, there's a Chef Cam which I thought was really cool (a bit blurry but watching the kitchen was kind of fun), each pair sitting across from each other played Battleship, you can flag down a waiter and change the decor on your table, to name just a few highlights.  I was going to take photos but the boys pooh-poohed the idea.  Well, they said boys don't take photos and I didn't want to embarrass them.  Food on the whole was good but my miso fish wasn't - couldn't taste the miso if there was any (really - but there was plenty of Thai sweet red chili sauce) and it was dry and super overcooked, so a little disappointing.  The fun factor pretty much made up for it though and we had a lot of laughs discussing whether it was a good idea or a bad one for a first date - consensus being it could be either one, depending on the date.

The restaurant had been described as a "funky Asian fusion" place so I put on pretty shoes to go out.  They were fine when I first put them on, but have come to the conclusion that they are more of the "sit there and look pretty" variety than "run down the street in high heels" kind.  We stopped by a bar on the way home, saw some wild gyrating in the direction of a hen's night (bachelorette party, for those of us not from the UK or Australia), then walked home.  By the time we got home, my feet were hurting.  Maybe it's just being out of practice walking in heels, but I suspect not.  I did think that perhaps this was the Little Mermaid's problem (the Hans Christian Andersen version, not the Disney one - where the price for being human was the loss of her voice and feeling like she was walking on knives while she followed her heart to her Prince and her death) - I bet she was wearing pretty but uncomfortable shoes.

Next on the agenda - writing out my recipes for the Patisserie exam runs this week and working on the portfolio.  I wanted to go to ballet this morning but am not sure whether my feet have forgiven me for subjecting them to high heels for an entire evening after weeks of sneakers, soft boots and kitchen shoes.

So until next time may your endeavors be more successful than our adventures have been thus far.