#48 - Happy Halloween!

Midterms already (again)
We just started our restaurant dessert module today.  Tutorial comments - I have lost most marks because I am not organized and must push myself more.  And to get that brain turned on (not that the chefs said so, but I got the drift).  Apparently the laid back island attitude isn't going to get things done.  Right - must work on organization - time to start a list. 

Today's schedule was one which students find less than ideal:  an 8am class, then a 6pm class.  Tomorrow:  more of the same.  I find it a bit of a mixed bag.  It's good because I can do things in the day (i.e. osteo, pick up dry cleaning) but bad because we get out of class so late and I don't feel like going at 6pm.  Of course then I think of the chefs - Chef M has this schedule for the next few days and he's in on Saturday.

We have Chef M for our Tea Party.  Things can either go really well or really badly, I think.  Luckily for us, the Tea Party items are already set, so we are paired up, then assigned 2 desserts to a pair.  It saves us on having to come up with plating ideas or recipes or anything because those are already set.  This is quite a test of making sure you produce the requisite number of items and having them be identical and be of an acceptable standard.  I remember seeing these desserts 3 months ago and 6 months ago.  I can't believe that we have learned enough to start to put these impressive looking things together.

If only I had known then what I know now
Oh, and the part that makes me want to die - my mousseline would have been all right if I had torched it just a bit more during the Intermediate final.  I torched it a bit but was afraid of melting it.  Of course it would have been more useful if it had split during class so I could bring it back instead of it happening during the exam.  Crap!  So I spent the last 30 minutes of class this morning kicking myself in the butt, then did it for real at ballet class.  Then I spent the 2nd class today experimenting - if things go wrong, the Chef can tell me when/where/why.

Tonight's session was mostly for decorative work.  Unfortunately it was very hot in the Patisserie (about 30C, which I think is somewhere in the 80sF) and we had to work a bit to get the chocolate tempered.  The temperature also meant that we had to wait quite a bit for the chocolate to set because the ambient temperature was not conducive to a fast chocolate set.  The good thing is we know that we can get it to set in a hot room and hopefully we will get quick enough that we can deal with a cold room which gives us much less time to work.  At least today we had a little more time - which wasn't helpful when I wrapped my mousse in the chocolate which went on crooked (and once it's on you can't take it off and put it back on again).  Thank goodness we get to have one more little try tomorrow - I need to work on those blasted twirls, cigarettes and the 2-tone casing which looks so cool if you do it right and is oh-so-wrong if you do it wrong.

Drama, drama, drama
By the way, if you thought cooking school wasn't dramatic, this morning there was an incident at the end of our class.  Some guy from Basic had kind of pushed his way into the elevator because he was mad that we had been holding it - we were all running things down to the blast chiller in the production kitchen from the Patisserie and back up.  Anyway, one of the guys in my class took exception to this other fellow (Spanish?) having made one of the girl from our class have to walk up to the 3rd floor from the basement (remember that in the UK, the ground floor is not the 1st floor) and they got into it - all the posturing and yetlling, etc.  Chef M interposed himself between the two of them.  I had to go downstairs to get changed, but I heard from one of the other girls that it went far enough that Chef M had to restrain one of the guys and Chef GB had to restrain the other.  By the by, the Basic guy already had a shiner and what looked like a split lip.  Looks like he had a hell of a weekend!

Are we nearing full moon or is it just Halloween?

Photos for today's work forthcoming as today was end of parts I & II.  Tomorrow night we do more decorations and presentation of the 2 desserts we did today (a vanilla brulee encased in chocolate mousse and a Mirabelle plum tart).