Practical (Last 3 Minutes is a Beeotch)

I crashed and burned on today's practical exam, and it was the most fun I've had in school yet. The task was thus: one sauteed supreme of chicken with pan sauce, 1 potato side any style, and 1 vegetable side, featuring one vegetable chosen at random.

The night before I went through my recipe cards from the first two mods, pulling a recipe for every vegetable on the list of 8 possibilities. I also wrote a card for the stir-fry method, which would be good for most veg except maybe spinach and artichokes. For potatoes, I pulled the pomme maxim, thin rounds of potato arranged in an overlapping circle.

In the morning, I received....haricotes vertes. Cool -- a perfect stir fry veg. Out of 13 students, I went second -- we all started in 5 minute intervals, and all had to present exactly 1 hour and 45 minutes later. I thought it would be too much time, so I went slow and precise with my mise. Trimmed the beans, made some carrots matchsticks for color, some mushroom slices for texture. Crushed garlic, crushed ginger, some peanut oil, rice wine, and soy sauce on hand, some stock for a steam. The potatoes were made into cylinders and sliced thin on the mandolin, some garlic, ginger and scallions chopped up to add an Asian flair. The chicken came off the carcass easy, legs defleshed and chopped for the supreme. Once the mise was done, everything kind of fell apart, and my mistakes would make me a full 8 minutes late...

First was my potato recipe -- I pulled the pommes maxim recipe, but I was thinking of the pommes anna. The first is a single layer fried in oil, the second is several layers with aromatics in the middle baked with lots of oil on them. To throw some aromatics on a thin frying layer just burns and turns bitter. On top of that, the ring was falling apart when I tried to flip it, due to too hot oil. So what I came out with was simply half moons of potato chips.

Seasoned the meat. Chicken got on the fire, peanut oil on the pan, while I struggled with trying to get one good presentable potato out. Flipped the chicken and into the oven to finish. Heated up the wok, through in some peanut oil, started a pan sauce separately because I realized I spent too much time on the potatoes -- time was growing thin. Scallions and garlic in the oil to soft, deglaze with Chinese rice wine, a little salt then a load of chicken stock. My bad -- never season a pan sauce until it reduces, as the salt will concentrate. I was rushing.

Stir frying is a fast method. Took out the chicken to rest, got a hot presentation plate out of the convection oven. Sauce boiling off furiously. Crushed garlic and ginger in the wok for a minute, then remove. Through in carrots for a minute, then beans, mushrooms, scallions. Tossed stock over and covered -- I grabbed the pitcher of stock for the sauce instead of the 4oz mise cup for the stir fry. When I uncovered the vegetables, they were not steamed -- they were boiling in the stock!! Rushing, I through in my sesame oil and soy sauce to finish, then drained it, drying off with a towel. Looked right. Plated the veg, plated the 4 pieces of potato that didn't have burnt black bits of garlic and scallion. Quickly sliced the chicken that looked decent, a tad on the dry side but not ridiculous. Another stupid mistake -- I did not taste anything because of time. As the old culinary cliche goes, most great dishes are ruined in the last 3 minutes.

I presented a full 8 minutes late. The potatoes were standing too long and were greasy, as I failed to remember to pat them with paper toweling. The vegetables had no seasoning -- I had washed away all the salt when I poured off the stock WITH the soy and sesame oil. My pan sauce had reduced too far and while looked glossy and thick with nice contrast of shallots and scallions, it tasted way too salty. The chicken was nicely browned and not too dry. Chef K was nice about it, but if I was in a restaurant, I definitely would of sent the dish back for sucking.

This test had something school had been missing up to this point -- pressure, a sense of urgency, doing things with constrained time, no chance to do it over again. I can stir fry damn vegetables near perfect, I can saute a wonderful juicy piece of chicken, I can make tender and crisp deliciously flavorful potatoes....in the calm of my home kitchen on my own schedule for me and my forgiving family and friends. Now give me a small space, people shouting around me cooking other shiz, tell me what to cook instead of letting me choose and tell me when exactly it has to be served regardless of the different amount of prep and cook time for each item, if I can do THAT, then I'm the friggin' man. I am not the man....yet.

Tomorrow, a new mod and a new chef. Diabetes be damn, the next 20 lessons are pastry.

ADDENDA:

Got my mod 2 report card today, which is a mirror image of mod 1 -- A in everything except performance, which was A-. 3.81 GPA so far, 1 absence total. Ahhh, if only it meant something.

Fellow student Natasha gave me a card for a free smoothie from Jamba Juice, where he worked until recently. Having joined the smoothie-band wagon myself, thought I'd give it a try, especially with the green-tea "smoosie" I had at the Japanese demo the other day.

I got a "small" 16 ounce green tea smoothie. It had frozen yogurt, sorbet and soy milk in. When confronted with the 'free boost' conundrum, I randomly chose 'immunity'. The actual drink was mild, very sweet, and relatively tasty. The first sip was the tastiest, but as I got through 1/3 of it, it got sweeter and sweeter, and it tasted less and less of green tea and more and more of vanilla and a boring sweetness. It tasted more like an ice cream shake than a smoothie.

They had a book binder tied to the wall with all the nutritional info of every product, it took me a minute to find the green tea thing. My drink was 340 calories and SIXTY SEVEN grams of sugar....but no fat. They did not list the ingredients of the yogurt and sorbet, which is where all the sugar came in. My 'boost' was mostly ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and inulin - 500% of the daily recommended vitamin C.

At least on their website you can take a piece of virtual chalk and scribble all over the page...

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, smoothie, hunger 3/5, 1 bowl

The good milk, yogurts and banana, cherries and blueberries, kiwi, flax and a dash of sea salt.

AM TASTINGS: 10:15am, sauteed chicken breast, thin fried potatoes, a spoonful of potato gratin, .5 bowl

It's fun when you can eat your mistakes, even if I don't usually eat chicken.

PM SNACK/MEAL: 4pm, Jamba Juice green tea smoothie thing, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
Ugg. At least it was free. It would of been an insult to pay for that crap.

PM SNACK: 6:15pm, 3 pieces shortbread, water, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
I guess this will be my last homemade sweets for a while.

DINNER: 8pm, school-made pasta with wild boar ragu, water, 3 pieces of shortbread with good peanut butter, 1.5 bowl, hunger 4/5