End of the first semester

I made it!  In a rush to get out the door and off to class, I left my cell phone on the kitchen counter and was alone with my thoughts for the 40+ mile drive to school. Typically I distract myself with phone calls, but today my strategy for the knife skills portion of our exam kept running through my head.

Running late had me talking to myself to keep from freaking out because I was certain that everyone would already be taking the written exam; thank goodness I arrived at school in plenty of time.  Chef had us all spread out and we completed the written test (I scored 93), and then we were off to the kitchen for our knife skills test and the cooking test.  We had to julianne a potato, brunoise a carrot and small chop an onion, in 5 minutes and I did okay with the exception of cutting that darn potato into french fries instead of a julianne cut.  OMG! I practiced this at home!

Next up was the fabrication of a chicken which I was not worried about because I fabed out 2 chickens this morning in record time.  I'll admit it...I'm bossy and refuse to let someone on my 'table' negatively impact my score by doing something incorrectly. Yes, there was the incident were the fellow used the wrong potato for the potato leek soup and I just let it go, but basically I'll be all over someone if they don't do it right. But in a good way.

I took the chicken, made the cuts to the back, took out the spine and then split the breast so we had 2 halves. Everyone on our table had to have their hands on the bird so it was expected of me to back off and let someone else cut parts of the chicken. Really?   Ugh.  Thank God for the guy across from me because he took half of the bird, I passed the other half to the student on my right and with an eagle eye was watching her.  For crying out loud.  I was cringing and had to stop her before she mauled the poor bird.  Okay, look at the the fat lines and follow them...no, don't saw or use too much force. Let the bird do the work....
We got everything taken care of, quickly I might add, and then Chef told us that if we could fab out another chicken in less than 4 minutes we would get extra credit.

Done.   3:55.  And I must say it looked darn good.

Next was the lab portion. Glazed carrots, sauteed mushrooms (present at the same time), white rice and rice pilaf (present together), macaroni and cheese ( with a bechemel sauce), and then the chicken: 1 roasted bone in with skin breast; braise 2 thighs; pan sear 1 boneless/skinless breast; fry 2 wings; grill 2 marinated chicken legs.  All finished and presented to Chef at the same time.

We finished. That's all I'm going to say; some people do more, some do less.  Unfortunately for some, their grade is impacted by the lack of participation by others.  Fortunately for some, their grade is impacted by the hard work of others.

Pastry classes begin on January11th and that means Tuesday evenings from 5:30 till 10:30pm.  I'm going to learn so much!