I was in a crap mood last night, which didn't help my focus for the final. I had a what am I doing with my life moment right before we had to make the mayonnaise - if you're going to have a minor existential crisis, don't do it right as you're whipping up an emulsion; whisking oil is an existential crisis in its own respect.
Anyhoo I got over it and did good on my mayo, one of my friends who is an amazing cook could not get her's to form and she turned in an oil slick that smelled like lemon.
He let us loose after the goddamn mayonnaise, and we built caesar dressing, french style croutons, red pepper coulis, and a vicchysoise (sp?). The coulis and the vicchyssoise have a similar process, kinda - in that garde manger classroom the tables aren't right by the burners, which also merits a little angst because you're running back and forth further than normal. In the other kitchens, burners are only a pivot away.
Basically I'm just trying to create an excuse for burning my croutons the first time - which I totally did.
In the end I got great grades on my vishyschwaze and my caesar (19s), a good grade (17) on my mayo, and a 15 on my coulis - docked me 5 points because there were a couple black flecks of blistered red pepper skin in my coulis, and he said that can bitter it up.
The written final was gnarly. Just gnarly. 2/3 of the class finished in 10 minutes - they gave up and bailed. Me and three others stayed and grinded that damn thing out. Probably not going to get me a scholarship to CIA based on that performance, but at least I didn't give up. And I know they gave up because they were turning in some blank-ass pieces of paper, probably ready to hit the bar.
Hell yeah its the weekend. I cleaned out the garage this morning and put all Marcel's stuff front and center so he and his homeboys can have air hockey tournaments this summer.
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