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March 24, 2005

FINAL EXAMS ARE OVER!

I am home and exams are over.

The ServSafe exam, the actual grades should be posted on the website in 10 days or so.

The Concepts test and my Knife Cuts Practical... he didn't tell us what we made, so I'm still waiting.

The Management test today wasn't anywhere near as bad as I had anticipated. Our mid-term was a horrible test that basically covered every topic in the book that she DIDNT tell us to study. The last question on our exam was "What did you think about this test?" and I blatantly stated that "at least this one covered the material on the possible exam topics list you gave us last week.

My Practical Exam tonight... and yes, darn it I forgot the camera again! The class was divided into two groups, chefs and gophers. We all couldn't take the exam at the same time because there isn't enough stove space. Tonight, Chef M. picked the groups by going in REVERSE alphabetical order. That meant I was in the "chefs" group first. The gopher group spent the first 3 hours of class running
around getting stuff we needed and cleaning up after us. We had to make two plates, presenting one entree, 2 veggies & a starch, and then we had to make one bowl of soup.

Chef created Four menus and we had to draw numbers out of a hat. Then he gave us a hotel pan with all of our ingredients and said "get cooking." My menu consisted of Chicken Saute with Onion Tomato and Basil, Maple Glazed Carrots, Brussel Sprouts with Pecan Butter, and Lyonnaise Potatoes and Puree of Split Pea Soup. Once we were finished, we plated up our creations and presented them to the Chef. He graded our menus right there so we had immediate feedback
and grades!

94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94 94!

And, where did the other 6 points go?, as my mother would ask... I missed two points on three different points...

• He said my Puree of Split Pea Soup was a little thick, could have been thinned out a little more with chicken stock.
• One of the big things about plating is that if the food is hot, your plates are supposed to be hot also... and I didn't realize it, but the plates I put in the salamander to heat up must have had water droplets on them because they kinda scorched and made water rings on the plate .. so my presentation wasn't as clean as it could have been.
• And my Lyonnaise potatoes... (Fried Potatoes and Onions for the country folk).. we didn't have any clarified butter and I didn't want to use oil, I wanted the butter flavor... BUT .. when cooked at high temperatures, un-clarified butter, tends to burn and my onions were a little over caramelized. They weren't bad, just a little extra brown.

I was pretty proud of my 94. I have always known that I wanted to be a chef, and coming to culinary school and finishing final exams with the possibility of pulling out a 4.0 just proves my point that I am finally right where I should be.

I am exhausted and I'm headed to bed. I will post an entire list of recipes tomorrow, I may even see if I can figure out how to start a recipe database for my readers to pull from. That sounds like a cool COMPUTER GEEKy project to work on for spring break.

Posted by FutureFoodTVStar at March 24, 2005 10:51 PM

Comments

Posted by: Jeff Vachon at March 26, 2005 09:43 AM

Posted by: Nessa at March 28, 2005 10:28 AM

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