Day forty: Term one ends not with a bang, but with a whimper

Posted on | April 8, 2009

Today was the last day of my first term at culinary school. I’ve been lied to, insulted, yelled at twice, and ended up doing work I am not pleased with.

Actually, the insulting does not bother me so much. After all, I’ve been at culinary school for almost two months. I’m used to being insulted.

But, so far, no one has lied before. Which is good. Because there are few things I loathe more than a liar.

Unless it is a liar who justifies the lie with an insult. Which is precisely what happened this week.

You haven’t really heard much about my week, so let’s start with Monday and work our way forward. Go get something scrumptious to eat and a comfy chair to collapse in. I’ll wait …

Monday: It goes downhill from here
This was the last of the two menus I prepared for our four days of practicals. We cooked pork chops stuffed with blue cheese and minced shallots with garlic frites and a chateaubriand sauce as well as grilled lemon and rosemary chicken breast with roasted fingerling potatoes and a marchand de vin sauce. And, of course, we also cooked six vegetables, three per plate.

Everything was fine. But, of all the dishes we made, my favorite was my Spanish onion dish. This is so insanely easy, I can tell you what I did in one paragraph.

Recipe for Savory French Spanish Onion Relish
Peel and quarter two or three Spanish onions (these are the big red ones) and put them into a saucepan with a lid. Add about two ounces of butter, a teaspoon each of minced, fresh thyme and rosemary, and a teaspoon of dried lavender. Put the lid on, put it on a medium heat, and stir every five minutes or so. Give it at least twenty minutes. You’ll know it is ready when the onions are soft and have significantly caramelized (look for that deep brown color). Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with pork or chicken or even on a sandwich.

The Nepal Chef took me aside and told me he makes something like this at home. I was delighted!

Monday: Nasty surprise #1
Poor Grandpa Chef was home with the flu. So we had Motorcycle Chef, instead, for our lecture. She gave us a surprise math quiz (which I did very well on) then told us what was going to be on our final exam. Then she let us leave half an hour early. I walked outside and was totally blinded by the sunlight.

I had been in the kitchen at 6:30 am.

Monday: Nasty surprise #2
I got home nice and early; exchanged my chef’s jacket for a gray t-shirt, exchanged my chef’s pants for my jeans, and sat, cross-legged, at my desk chair.

I decided to write a long post, a funny one, all about cooking on no sleep.

Three hours later, it was done and it was perfect. Three hours and one minute later, WordPress, as you know, ate it.

When my post disappeared into that magical kingdom known as the Internet, I was in no mood to do it all over again. Besides, I didn’t have the time. I had (obviously) technical issues to deal with.

So that’s what I did Monday night: Dealt with technical problems. I had finished my homework and my final was not for two days, so I could take the time away from my studies.

I am nothing if not time efficient.

Tuesday: The fun is just starting
The morning practical consisted of two recipes: Chicken picatta, which turned out wonderfully well, and pork stew, which was good if you like pork. I, as you know, do not. Still, glad as I was that everything turned out okay, it was a difficult morning for me. See, of the four days of practicals, I did the menus for the first two days and 98 Pound Girl did the menus for the second two. Which meant her first menu was today.

Now, my menus were typed and came with ingredient lists and firing times and a prep list and, of course, complete recipes for all items, including emergency recipes if we had to substitute. Her menus consisted of handwritten recipes scrawled with pencil on loose leaf paper ripped from her binder. There were no prep lists. There were no ingredient lists. There were no firing times. And that was okay. But what was not okay was there were only recipes for the meat dishes; starches, sauces, and vegetables we were going to have to wing. In the kitchen. When we were on deadline. And getting graded.

And the other thing that drove me nuts is we both agreed to get to the kitchen at 6:30 every day so we could have our sauces started and our mise done by the time our class started at 8:00.

And every day we did get there early. Only, while I was doing sauces and mise, she was catching up on homework she hadn’t done earlier.

And did I mention she was constantly trying to add extra work (“Let’s make biscuits.” “We’re not allowed to do any baking.” “Yeah, but it would be great with the stew.” “Erm, it’s going to take twenty minutes, it won’t earn us any points, and we already have 12 dishes to do in 3 hours so let’s pass, okay?”).

But then, life got worse.

Tuesday: But I don’t like surprises
Like ‘em or not, I got hit with a doozy Tuesday afternoon.

Surprise: We were getting our final, a full 24-hours earlier than we had been promised.

See, Grandpa Chef told us we would have our final exam on the last day of the term: Wednesday. But he was away again. And we had Motorcycle Chef. And she decided we would get our final exam today.

We balked. Understandably.

And the well-considered response from our learned chef instructor? She offered to get us diapers because, clearly, we were a bunch of babies.

I talked with the head chef and explained we had been promised the exam tomorrow, not today. That we were not prepared to take the exam today. That we had not studied.

He made us take the exam.

The school knew we had been promised a later date for our exam and ignored it. Lie. And the only response to this was an offer to supply diapers. Insult.

I was exhausted from battling technical problems, something I would not have done had I know my final exam was today. I was not prepared because I had not studied, something I certainly would have done had I known my exam was today. And I was seething at this behavior, something I would not have been had the school just did what it promised to do.

So you have to know I didn’t do my best work.

And I take it back. The insulting is starting to get to me. I don’t appreciate being talked to in such a sophomoric manner. I can’t imagine why the school condones this non-professional behavior. I wouldn’t.

Wednesday: Welcome to the last day of the term
This morning we had our practical exam. Which meant two more menus from 98 Pound Girl. She had the meat recipes and, miracle of miracles, a barley pilaf recipe. And she decided to use a sauce she had made for her homework. But, oops, she forgot the potato pancake recipe and, erm, a recipe for the other sauce and recipes for the vegetables and for brining the pork. So I took charge of all that.

But it was so disorganized that when the chef asked me what we were making, I am sure I sounded like a complete idiot.

Here’s what we did make: Barley pilaf and three vegetables served with chicken stuffed with bacon and mirepoix and cream and mushrooms. And potato pancakes and three vegetables served with brined pork loin stuffed with cranberries soaked in apple jack and toasted pecans.

Oh wait, nix the pecans; she forgot to order ‘em. She did use some walnuts that were around. But she burnt ‘em. So I toasted some pine nuts. Not ideal, but they were the only nuts I could get.

And this was the menu our final grade was based on.

We got a 93%. One of the things we lost points for was the blue rubber band from the asparagus. I left that out of my compost pile because, erm, it is not compostable. I threw it into the garbage, instead. But I was penalized for leaving it out of my compost pile.

Bother.

Wednesday: Yelling and yelling
And, to really add spice to my day, I was yelled at not once, but twice.

First, Complaining Girl lit into me for interrupting her. And I surely did interrupt her. But it was unintentional and I promptly apologized. But she was not so gracious preferring, instead, to give me the dressing down she thought I so dearly needed.

I did not. And told her as much.

Then, an hour later, Kid Courageous screamed at me in fury when I asked him a question. He screamed for a good five minutes.

Then he told me it was a joke, ha ha, very funny, he was kidding.

I told him it was no joke to me and I did not appreciate being treated like that.

He apologized.

I thank him. But, by then, my blood pressure was through the roof.

And I ask you, since when is fury funny?

Wednesday: Will this day never end?
And into the lecture room we go for the last time for this term. First, Motorcycle Chef is speaking with a student so loudly that Grandpa Chef halted class for, oh, a good twenty minutes, until she was done.

Then our tests were passed out and, as this school likes to do, the students were used to grade each others’ work.

I did fine on the knowledge questions, getting nearly all of them right, but the math, oh, never ask me to do math when I am unprepared and fuming.

And I am not pleased. I can do much, much better work when I am given a fair chance to do so.

Which I was not.

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