Late yesterday afternoon the ingredient list for our Black Box Exam landed with a crash in my inbox. I nearly fell out of my chair - I wasn't expecting this! According the original term schedule (the one that's still posted in the student lounge, by the way!) we were supposed to receive the list on May 31. But now we have to create our menu, recipes and bon d'economat by this Thursday at 3:30 PM.
Holy. Shit.
The list itself (shown below) is actually pretty good. Mandatory ingredients are 100g of chicken liver, 200g of shiitake mushrooms, 2 chicken legs, 150g of shrimp, and 50ml of calvados. Three techniques (of which I must pick at least two) are farce a gratin, farce fine, and hollandaise. Theme? Business menu for two.
The best part? No rack of anything to debone, no artichokes (YAY!) and lots of colorful produce available - spinach, red peppers, apples, beet root, carrots, etc.
My mind immediately jumped into overdrive and started spraying shitty ideas all over the place like out-of-control food poisoning. I had to give myself a time-out to get my focus back.
Once my reason returned I reminded myself of the lessons from the White Box that I just yesterday afternoon wrote about on this blog - maximize the easy points, focus on technique not ingredients, focus on my strengths, and keep in mind that mise-en-place is what's going to make or break me.
Do I have it figured out yet? No way. I'm going to try to use all three techniques if I can, and make sure I've got more color on my plates this time. I'd like to avoid stuffing the chicken legs with a liver farce a gratin if I can avoid it (because that's so obvious that it's what EVERYONE is going to do) and I know I'm going to need to choose either the salmon or the clams to supplement the small amount of shrimp, and if I want to have a farce fine, it's going to have to be with the seafood. And then I need to make sure I'm using some of the other techniques that Chef 2 has been showing us this term as my side dishes - things with vegetables, starches, etc. And given that there will be next to no bones and trimmings and there is no veal or chicken stock on the list, my sauces are going to have to come from somewhere else - the hollandaise is a gimme with the seafood, but for the chicken? Hmmmmm...
While this all still sounds like drivel, it's at least focussed drivel and proof that that other important "Black Box" (my mind) is working properly. I'm hoping I can get through my class this evening, come up with a draft menu before bed, sleep on it, and then pull it all together tomorrow afternoon after class.
Wish me luck because it all comes down to this!
Good luck Sarah!
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