The Final Exam: Good Luck Charms and Rack of Pork

I woke up this morning just before 6AM.  That’s a little early for me but, as you all know, today was the day of my final exam.

As I had predicted, I had my freak out on Sunday evening, then a night of fitful sleep on Sunday night.  Lots of weird dreams about having an oven that won’t light, and some strange thing about the new Pope, North Korea and a reenactment of the Spanish Inquisition.  I should not watch TV before bed.

But I spent Monday quietly reviewing my notes, washing and ironing my uniform, and giving my knives a sharpening.  Then around 11PM I decided that enough was enough and I wandered off to bed.

This morning I checked my knife kit, carefully folded my uniform, gulped down an extra cup of coffee, and assembled a few good luck charms.

I’m not normally superstitious, but stress brings out a little OCD in my personality.  I put on my lucky socks.

And I put on my lucky underwear (sorry boys… no pics of my undies… a girl must keep a few secrets!) and just as I was about to walk out the door, I grabbed one of the pieces of gum Chef 3 gave me last week and slipped it into the pocket of my uniform.  One more charm couldn’t hurt.

I got to school, and quietly waited for the exam to start.

The first part of the exam was the bon d’economat.  Essentially, it’s an order form for ingredients.  I had to, to the best of my memory, recall and write out the ingredients and quantities for a recipe selected by the Chefs.  I drew the braised rack of pork with olives.  I know I forgot a couple of things, but I was neat and fairly organized.  That counts, apparently.

Then the fateful draw – which recipe for the practical exam?  I tried to keep a sober and poker face as I chose and opened my envelope (#10) from Chef 3’s table.  I didn’t want the Chefs to see any stress on my face, or really any reaction. 

Guess what?  Braised rack of pork with olives…. Again!  What’s the chances of that?

I set my knife kit down at my appointed place in the kitchen, walked to the sink to wash my hands, then gathered cutting boards, serving dishes, and other tools.  I knew from Basic that the Chefs were grading us very specifically on hygiene and organization.  Since I was one of the two first in the room, I knew they were watching me carefully.

I don’t totally recall everything that happened over the next two and a half hours.  All the stress chemicals in my brain kicked in as I opened my fridge and saw my ingredients. As the other students gradually filled the kitchen, the Chefs began to wander around, peering in pots and lifting foil coverings. Few responses from them – just a nod and they would walk away.

Here’s where I know I had problems.  I really struggled to do the butchery of the pork.  Chef 2 wandered past and whispered – “Not that way.”  My mind and hands started to seize up a bit – WTF was I doing?  He looked at me like I was a slow-witted child, and took my cleaver and gave the bone a whack.  Ah yes…. Ugh…. Probably a few points off for that.  The rest of the butchery work seemed to go okay though.

I forgot/stumbled a few other times, but probably nothing that will really kill me.  I would have liked to give my side dish of ratatouille a little more time in the oven, but I think it was enough.  Oddly, the kitchen was out of eggplant, so it was an eggplant-less ratatouille - but it's not like I can be blamed for that - that's the production kitchen's fault, not mine.  Most annoying were my “papillottes”, the little parchment decorations for the ends of my bones.  Every time I would be working on them, I would turn around for a second and a breeze would blow them off my cutting board onto the floor, so I had to trash them and start again.  Then they wouldn’t glue together.  As the last seconds ticked down I said “Fuck this” and gave up on them. And, to be fair, the Chef who did that demo for that dish weeks ago didn't have them on his dish either. But my bones were pretty clean and I’d kept them wrapped in foil, so they weren’t too ugly.

I tasted my food all the way along and I plated it on time (ie, at the very last second), so no points off for being late. I washed my hands constantly, tried to keep everything clean, and made sure to give my meat time to rest.

At the appointed time, I washed up my knives, packed my bag, gave the steward/dishwasher a whispered “thank you!” and got the hell out of there as quickly as I could.

As I hauled my stuff out of the school, I saw Chef 2 having a smoke by the receiving entrance.  He nodded to me and said, “Very good.”  I stopped to chat for a minute and he told me he couldn’t say if I had passed or not – that was up to the panel of outside judges, but he did say “Very good Intermediate semester.”  It felt really good to hear that.

If you know me, you know I’m not much of a crier.  But as soon as I got home today and the door closed behind me, I could feel my eyes welling up a bit, both from doubts and relief. Could I have done better?  I don’t know.  I think I did my best, or at least the best I had in me today.

The second group of students is doing their exam this afternoon, and I expect by around 3:00 or so the text messages will be flying.  How do you think you did?  What dish did you get?  Did you study enough?  Did you lose your shit? 

And now we wait.  If we pass, we’ll know in the next day or so.  I’m off to (try to) take a nap, then going to meet up with some people later this evening.  My phone won’t be far from my reach, and I’m hoping for some sweet dreams.