Day thirty-eight: Where I am complimented on my rack
Posted on | September 10, 2009
Yes, everyone agreed I had a wonderful rack: Beautiful, succulent, and very, very tasty.
Rack of lamb, that is.
But instead of telling you how to make a rack of lamb, I’m going to show you.
“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
~ Luciano Pavarotti
There are only three things of note today.
First, everyone is all in a panic about tomorrow. See, tomorrow is the first of two days of finals. Tomorrow morning, we have our written final exam in the classroom. Then, tomorrow afternoon, we have our production exam in the kitchen. Then, the day after, we have product ID in the morning, then another production exam in the afternoon.
Now, the production exams consist of two tests: Practical and black box (on one day, half the class is taking the practical exam while the other half does black box, then, on the next day, we switch).
In the practical test, we are given a list of tasks to achieve, from cutting mirepoix to making whipped cream. In the black box test we are given a bunch of surprise ingredients and have to make a three course meal out of them (salad; entree with protein, starch, two vegetables, and a sauce; and a dessert with whipped cream, a sweet, and another sauce).
Of all of these the black box scares me the most. See, the chef instructors tell us they will give us something we’ve worked with this semester. But, by “we’ve worked with,” they mean anyone in the classroom. For the most part, we get three recipes a day per team. Usually, one person per team makes one recipe. Leaving two recipes we know nothing about.
But, wait, it gets even scarier than that.
Some days, different teams of students get different ingredients. For example, today we got the boar. Another team got venison. And yet another team got something else.
There is just no time to watch every other person and learn what they did. Meaning my knowledge is limited to the less than one third of all recipes I actually made. Or, at least, the ones of those I remember!
So what did I do? I volunteered to do the black box tomorrow.
I figured it would be wiser to get it over with so I can get at least one good night of sleep this week.
“Eggs Benedict is genius. It’s eggs covered in eggs. I mean, come on, that person should be the president.”
~ Wylie Dufresne
Second, the male students in the class had a bet going that they would only talk in the third person; the first person who used the first person pronoun would have to buy the other three a pitcher of beer. Here’s a snippet:
“Mr. Big would like to know what is on the test tomorrow,” said Mr. Big.
“Asian Guy agrees,” said Asian Guy.
“Gawky Guy is worried about the test,” said Gawky Guy.
“Other Guy is worried about the test, too,” said Other Guy.
This went on for about an hour. And then …
“Asian Guy says he wants to know if it will include eggs, too,” says Asian Guy.
“Gawky Guy says we covered eggs in the first half of this term and it was so long ago he does not remember how to make ‘em,” says Gawky Guy.
“Mr. Big wants to know if we have to do eggs in the practical, which ones will we be required to make?” says Mr. Big.
“Yeah. I want to know if we have to do poached eggs, too,” says Other Guy.
At which point everyone laughed because Other Guy lost yet another bet. But then …
“Chef says he heard other betting students use the first person pronoun, too,” says Chef Ewok. “Chef says you need to listen more closely.”
“How do they taste? They taste like more.”
~ H.L. Mencken
And, third, the details for my third, and final, term have been announced.
Now, for this term, the school does, yet again, what they did for the second term. Namely, they throw the names of all the students who are entering the third term into a hat and redistribute them into two, new groups. So I might be working with students I have not seen since first term. Or I might be working with students I am currently working with. Or I might be working with students I have yet to work with.
It’s a crap shoot.
Now, of these two, new groups, one half will be working in the school restaurant while the other half will be working much as we do now: Part production and part classroom. Then, for the second half of our last term, the two groups will switch.
I’m in the part production / part classroom group.
And there are two bits of news with this.
First, I go from my current starting class time of 9:00 am to a new starting class time of 7:30 am. Buh bye sleep.
Second, on the bright (very bright) side, I had found out earlier this term that Mr. Big, who is constantly telling me and half the class what to do, is transferring to the night class. Yeah! But, on the dark (very dark) side, I found out today he is only doing that for the second half of the third term. In the first half, which starts this Tuesday, he’s in my half of the class.
Bother.
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,’ said Piglet at last, ‘what’s the first thing you say to yourself?’ ‘What’s for breakfast?’ said Pooh. ‘What do you say, Piglet?’ ‘I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?’ said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s the same thing,’ he said.”
~ A. A. Milne, ‘The House at Pooh Corner’
Finally, as for that rack of lamb, here are the instructions as I wrote them in my notes today. I hope you can decipher the drawings! Oh, and if you make lamb, let me know how it turns out.
I’d like to know if you have a beautiful rack, too.
Comments
One Response to “Day thirty-eight: Where I am complimented on my rack”
Leave a Reply
September 10th, 2009 @ 5:43 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cooking Student, Cooking Student and Jason. Cooking Student said: Pssst: Wanna see my rack? I scanned it for you: http://bit.ly/MP4pY [...]