Culinary School Blog

Final Exam & Graduation

Well the culinary school adventure is finally complete.  I had my final written and practical exam yesterday and all went well; everyone, as expected, passed and some did outstanding work under the pressure.   The day started with a brief written exam.  It was really just a formality and I am sure that Chef Pascal made it easy to get everyone into the kitchen in the right frame of mind.  After the written exam, we all drew numbers out of a hat (actually an ice bucket from the restaurant) that would determine our recipes for the final and the service times for those plates.  Each person would get 2 recipes for the final; there could be an appetizer paired with a meat/poultry dish or fish paired with a dessert.  Four servings of each are required.  There were 16 recipes in total and the different combinations would be prepared by the class; 4 appetizer/4 meat + 4 fish/4 dessert.  They were:

Appetizers

• Warm Shrimp & Charred Squid
• Tuna & Scallop Ceviche
• Asparagus & Leeks in Puff Pastry
• Rose-hued Chicken Consommé

Fish

• Fillet of Red Snapper with Mussels and Chorizo
• Cod & Smoked Salmon Wallet
• Fish Stew with Garlic Mayonnaise
• Sautéed Sea Bass with Glazed Belgian Endive

Meat/Poultry

• Sautéed Breast of Duckling
• Broiled Lamb Chops
• Braised Blade of Beef
• Beef Tournedos with Artichokes, Mushrooms, and Marrow

Desserts

• Tea Flan and Madeleines
• Warm Chocolate Cake with Apricot-Cognac Sauce
• Individual Caramelized Pear Tart
• Panna Cotta with Strawberry and Rhubarb Compote

I drew the Red Snapper with Mussels and Chorizo and the Pear Tart with service times of 1:42 PM and 2:38 PM.  The dishes were one of the easier combinations but the services times sucked because it meant I was one of the last to go out.   This was bad because there was TOO much time to get ready, it allows you to second guess yourself and that the judges are tired and full by the time they got to my dishes.   

I had tried to think out the possible combinations during my study/prep for the exam and knew that if I drew the tart I should start the ice cream that is served with it first.  That went well.  I then got my puff pastry dough ready and cut it into the pear shape that it needed to be in and then started poaching the pears.  Once the pears were started, I switched back to the fish. 

The snapper itself really requires no time at all to cook.  It is pan sautéed at the last minute but the other ingredients take some time to prep.   The mussels have to soak for a while in salt water then they are steamed in fish fumet and white wine until they open. The steaming liquid is reserved as the base for the soup/sauce on that dish.  The potatoes had to be cut and pan sautéed to golden brown (my favorite color for the past few months) and then reheated at service time.  Then sweat some cabbage, onions and garlic, bacon lardons and that is it.  As you can probably tell, there is too much time for this.  The potential problems will come at plating and service time. 

We had been coached by Chef Pascal for weeks that we should start our plating early even at the risk of the plated food being served a little cold.  Well, I thought that I started early enough but I was sending my plates out right under the wire.  I was so rushed that I forgot to put the potatoes on the plate.  I did not know this until 10 minutes later when Chef Pascal come back into the pastry kitchen where I was working on the pear tart, and asked me if I forgot anything - he then told me about the missing potatoes.  I thought that it would be a huge deal and was bummed, until I saw my grades.  It apparently was no big deal to the judges, since in their words, everything else was cooked “perfectly”. 

After we are finished serving and cleaning up our area we get a few minutes to change into a clean chef’s jacket and then back into the restaurant to hear the judge's critique. There are 3 panels of judges with 4 judges each.  The judges are other chef’s that have volunteered to judge the final exam.  It is pretty darn hard to sit in front of this panel with 7 – 8 of your classmates and have the judges pick apart your dishes.  Even for those who got good reviews the judges had to make some “constructive” comments.   

As soon as the critiques were delivered, we took a class picture and then marched upstairs to the auditorium for the graduation ceremony.   

There were awards for: 

Best Creative Menu Project – Mark Zitelli, Looney Tunes
Highest GPA - Mark Zitelli. 

Attendance – Beau Harris   

The class had the most students ever graduate with honors ( GPA of 95 or higer).  The Honor Students were: 

Edwin Alderman

Meg Colleran

Jay Devlin

Mark Hallman

Lulu Kalman

Sandy Lee

Mark Zitelli

He's done too!

Yeah - Mark's now graduated!  He also graduated with honors!  We're off to have a celebration dinner at Per Se.......

really funny stuff

The past few weeks, as a diversion from studying for my final, I have taken to reading & exploring the world of food blogs.  To say that there a lot of them out there would be an understatement ... there are thousands.  I have come across a few that are informative and a couple that are just down right hilarious.  Check out some of these sites.

Great writing, photography and technique:

My Blog is Burning

Chocolate & Zucchini

à la cuisine

Just Plain Fun to Read

The Sneeze  Also check out the Steve, don't eat it  section ... way too funny! 

One Toque Over the Line

Strange Day

Not really sure what to think or say about today at the FCI.  The normal rotations through all the stations were competed yesterday, and each team was allowed to choose what stations they wanted to work in for the next 4 days.  My team was in the Level 4 Pastry Kitchen making Panna Cotta and Apple Tart Tatin, which we had basically compeleted by 10:30 am.  Pastry duty often works out this way.  You start the day making desserts that you complete to a certain point and then they require a rest or freezing or something else that does not require our constant attention.   Then there is a lot of idle time until the dessert orders start coming in around 1:30.  Some of the recipes will require some last minute prep, but most don't by design.  They are designed this way so we can get large amounts of the same dessert out at the same time, for parties that are often in the restarunat. 

So from about 10:30 am on it really got weird, and I am not sure how much I should even write about so you will just have to take my word for it.  I am sure that the primary cause for the deterioration was that we just had too much time on our hands and the final is only days away.  Most of the stuff was funny but some was just plain weird.  I did not have my camera with me in the morning so I don't have any photos of weirdness either.  I did retrieve it from my locker at lunch to get a picture or two of the recipes we made today.

I tried to escape as much as I could by going into the main kitchen and helping the other teams that were cooking for the restaruant. 

Level 4 Meat Line

apple tart tatin

panna cotta with strawberry-rhubarb compote

New blog site and software

If you are reading this post then you aware that we have changed the look of the blog site.  We are trying out a new service, TypePad,  to host the site.  The hope is that it will allow both Kelly and I simultaneous access to the site and well as more control on the layout.  The layout will be undergoing changes over the next few weeks until we get the look that we want.

The old site will remain up and running and you can access it by clicking on the link on the left hand side of the main page for the "old blog site".

I will redirect the www.markhallman.com domain to this new site in a few days.

One Week Left ...

The day of the final exam is drawing near and we are all commenting on how time has truely passed much quicker than we thought it would 6 months ago.  What will we do when we graduate?  Will we graduate?  (probably everyone in my class will).  Today was the last day for all of us on our standard rotation and the remaing days will be spent on stations of our choice to practice recipes that we need work on for the final exam. 

My team has spent the past week and the Entremetier station.  Here the team is expected to make 3 dishes;  a pasta, salad, and a sandwich.  We are to make these from whatever left overs we have from the other stations from the day before. Sometimes this can be a real challange and other days it can be great. I have my doubts on how many of the orders for these dishes actually make it to the resetatuant but I am sure some due.  Todays efforts included a mushroon raviloi, a portabella vegie sandwhich and a salad. 

My level 4 Team (Mitch, Mark, Meg, and Lulu)

Tomorrow we will go the pastry station to work on the panna cota recipe that will be on the final.  A few of the team missed that day a couple of weeks ago and never had the chance to make the recipe. 

 

Today it was back to our wine class & we learned about the wines from Italy & Spain, in addition to learning a bit about port & sherry. We also did some more food + wine pairings, cheeses, chocolate & pesto with the Italian wines, cheese, chocolates & quince with the Spanish wines . The best combination of the class was an Amarone from the Veneto Region of Italy, with a Stilton cheese. We also tasted a Perial Sheep's Milk Triple Cream Cheese that was lovely - we'll need to try & find some more of that.

We just had dinner - ordered in once again - tried a new Chinese place this time - still searching for that great place that delivers.

Taste of the Florida Keys

At FCI, one of the requirements for graduation is the completion of a creative menu project.  The basic quidelines for the project are that the menu should have some sort of a theme, serve four people, include at least 4 courses, contain photos or drawings of each course and include food costing for the entire menu.  I considered many themes; some better than others.  The one theme that I really thought would be great just turned out to be a much bigger project than I thought wise to try and tackle for this project.  It was a menu that would demostrate all the compoents of taste and the vocabulary that we use to describe those tastes.  I have found it odd that there is really a very limited vocabulary in the culinary world to descibe how a particular dish tastes.  When you think about the thousands of volumes that have been written over the years about wine and how different varitials and vintages taste, you just wonder why there are not similar books on taste.   The closest I can find is a book by Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky titled "Elements of Taste". 

In the end, I chose to go with something that was familiar and special to me ... the Florida Keys.   I created a menu that featured all the foods that I associate with the Florida Keys.  I used recipes that I created myself, as well as recipes that I found in cookbooks or dishes I had in restaurants and modified those to use some of the classical French techniques that I have learned at FCI. 

Amuse-Buche, Stone Crab Claw with Green Mango Sauce

Mangrove Snapper Ceviche

Horseradish Encrusted Mutton Snapper

Spiny Lobster Brasied in Truffle Butter

Key Lime Soufflé

If you care to see/read the entire project you can download a PDF of it by clicking on the following link.  It is a rather large file, so I would suggest only downloading it if you have a broadband internet connection.
Download taste_of_the_keys_final_version.pdf