Friends: A little earlier this afternoon I found out that I passed my final exam!
<insert rockstar howl here!>
Yesterday's exam was a pressure cooker. Three and a quarter hours to plate appetizers and mains for two doesn't sound that hard, but with an original menu, a crowded kitchen, mandatory ingredients and techniques and the accumulated pressure, it was hard. Very hard.
When I submitted my recipes nearly two weeks ago, I was pretty confident that I'd chosen well - the ingredients, while not my favourites, were easy enough, and I was sure that I knew my techniques well enough that it would be fine.
On my menu: salmon and shrimp mousse napoleon with wilted spinach, sauce hollandaise and red pepper sauce. A replay on something similar I had done on the white box exercise a few weeks ago. The main was chicken ballotine stuffed with chicken liver farce a gratin with apple and shiitake mushrooms, herbed spaetzle, beet puree, a "breadstick" made with pate a choux, and a little salad of parsley and yellow summer squash with mushroom infused oil. Nothing difficult about any of these techniques.
I had nearly two weeks to fuss with my recipes and did I ever! I timed things, second-guessed things, re-ordered everything. While I was nervous, I was nowhere as freaked out as I was before the Intermediate exam where I had to have memorized nearly a dozen dishes from class. This was my stuff - what could go wrong?
Well.... a lot, actually.
The other group of Superior students did their exam on Monday afternoon, and by most accounts it was a bit of a shit show. Pots on fire, a shattered blender, and a good deal of angst. The problem, as I came to understand it, is that most people spent too much time on their appetizers, and then scrambled to finish their mains in the remaining time. And when each minute late costs you two percent of your exam mark, this is a very bad thing.
But even with that knowledge under my hat I still had similar problems on the exam. By luck of the draw I was cursed with one of the most annoying stations in the kitchen - the one where I would have to share an oven with someone, where I would have to bump someone out of the way each time I wanted to open my fridge, and where I was in the furthest possible place from a sink, a garbage can, the dishpit, and any shared tools.
When I finally walked into the room on Tuesday afternoon I was anxious, but optimistic. The first half an hour passed in a flash, with a little humour even.
I had packed every tool I could think of from my kitchen that might help me: grater, ramekins, parchment paper, plastic wrap, etc. Chef 3 was slightly amused.
"Did you bring your entire kitchen with you Sarah?"
"Yes I did Chef!"
The rest of the exam was a blur. I tried to keep focussed on making sure the mise en place was coming along for the main even though I had to get the appetizer done first. I knew that if I didn't have my chicken ballotine poached and resting by the time the appetizer was on the plate, I would be screwed. And I kept to that schedule, and it seemed to be working.
Yikes - the rest of my main plate? The spaetzle, beet puree, etc? I didn't keep on top of those as well as I should have. I started to freak out a little in the last half hour.
Somehow, I got it all on the plate. It didn't exactly look the way I had envisioned and I cut more than a few corners. I might have been one or two minutes late plating my main, but I'm really not sure. But food was on plates, I think it was edible, and I was exhausted.
And then the waiting began. In typical Cordon Bleu style, we had to wait for an email from the school telling us we passed. A phone call was a bad thing. I slept reasonably well last night (though I did wake up at 4:30 in the morning after a freaky dream about carrots), but I started driving myself quietly crazy by mid-morning.
Shortly after noon I had to get out of the house before I started chewing the furniture, so I set about doing some busywork errands like picking up cleaning supplies from Canadian Tire and some groceries at the store nearby.
It was while I was in the grocery store that I got the email. I think I let out a sound somewhere between a primal scream and a gagging noise and nearly walked into a display of dried pasta. I PASSED!
Since then I have been absolutely overwhelmed by all the congratulations. I called and texted a few of my closest friends and family right away, but I let most other people know via that very 21st century tool: Facebook. Since then I have had more than 50 "Likes" and lots of comments from friends all over the world, many of whom I never knew were interested in my little adventure. I'm so grateful and so very happy.
There's a whole lot more to say, but I'll save it for a few days. Stay tuned... it's not over!
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