Last week was my week of exams which culminated in the four-hour practical test on Friday morning. We had to be at the other side of town at 7:30 am with all our cooking gear. The event was held at the Lycee Hotelier which is a high school where kids train for a career in the hotel and restaurant business.
There were about forty of us taking the exam that day, with a majority of adults. We were given numbers to identify us and were separated into two large kitchens where each of us had a full post with our own oven, burners, pots and pans and sink. It was a change from the small kitchen from my school, where we work in groups of five to seven, the other group rotating on theory. I was surrounded by people from another school I didn’t know.
Throughout the week I had been reviewing the exams from the past years; for the practical, you are asked to produce two dishes (plus side dishes), a first course and a main course or a main and a dessert. I noticed that there had been a lot of tarts (there are no pies in French classical cuisine with the exception of the Pithiviers which is a puff pastry pie filled with almond cream and only served during the Epiphany or Three King’s Day in January) so I practiced my crust all week. The two courses that made me nervous was the rabbit, since we had not seen it in class, and also trussing a chicken, which I had no idea of how to do (I tried to do it on my own with the help of the manual but it was a catastrophe).
Sure enough, when I saw the instructions laid out on the table alongside my identification number, there was a tart for dessert and a chicken dish for the main course. I immediately gained confidence since these were dishes I was familiar with. We were required to produce the following: Fricassee de volaille, champignons a blanc, riz pilaf et flan de carotte (Chicken fricassee with mushrooms, pilaf rice and carotte flan) et Tarte Alsacienne ( an apple tart with a flan filling). Being in an exam situation surrounded by chefs walking around observing you and taking notes is a nerve-racking experience. I did my best to keep my cool as I had heard of horror stories of candidates unable to perform because of the stress of the situation. I had to remind myself that this exam was normally taken at the end of a comprehensive two-year course, and that I had only been through two months of class and two months of interning in a professional kitchen. Still, reading over the recipes, my mind couldn’t help but racing with all the blood rushing to it, organizing the steps of my production, which I had to serve to the jury at the required temperature in time for lunch.
The crust
I knew without hesitating that the first thing I wanted to get done was the pie crust. Crusts have to rest to get firm and in some cases need to rest again once they are placed in the pan (I don’t know these technical terms in English, will need to look them up at some point). In certain cases, they also need to be baked empty and cooled before being filled. So I proceeded with my crust. Though I was confident overall, the pressure of the situation visibly clouded my senses, making me hesitate over things I normally wouldn’t. For example, it took me a while to decide whether to make the crust in a bowl or directly on the marble. I mentally performed a rapid scan of all the crusts made in class and in the restaurants and also the techniques described in the manual, which is our Bible. I opted for the bowl, a bit annoyed of wasting precious time on such a minute decision. Though the proctors advised us to focus on our work and not pay attention to what the others were doing, I couldn’t help but glancing around. That’s when I saw that everyone was chopping up their chicken! I was the only one doing my crust. This made me a bit nervous and undermined my self-confidence, so I read the two recipes over again. Yes, there was a chicken stock to make, but the clear chicken stock required in the dish only needed to cook for one hour (cooking times were not indicated in the exam recipes, we had to memorize them), this I remembered clearly as it struck me as rather short. So I continued what I was doing, a little destabilized. Like I said, I had done crust after crust over the past few weeks since this is one basic notion that comes up again and again and that we should know how to do by heart and blindfolded. As I started crumbling the butter into the flour with my finger tips, I realized how tense I was… almost to the point of shaking. It was the most tedious crust I have ever made, with each pressure of the still hard butter between my thumb and the rest of my fingers demanding seemingly the strength from my entire body. And this only a few minutes after the start of the exam! After a tremendous amount of effort, my crust came together. What a relief it was to put it away and start my chicken.
The stock
Stock is one of the most basic elements in the French kitchen (alongside pie crust!) and I managed to completely mess it up. First when I started carving the chicken, I couldn’t find the little fleshy part at the top of the leg (le sot-l’y-laisse) which is presumably one of the tastiest parts of the bird and which needs to be carefully carved away from the bone and attached to the leg. So here I was panicking, feeling the chicken up and down, not finding the damn thing, which is the size of a quarter! Till now I am still not sure I was able to find it and cut it correctly. Nevertheless I managed to cut off the legs and breast quite nicely, but it all went downwards after that. For some reason, I knew I needed to chop up the carcass (it was indicated in the recipe!) but I didn’t. I plopped it in the vat after only cutting off the wings. Then, I proceeded to chop the onion and the carrot. One of the inspectors was looking at me and I knew I had done something wrong (there is nothing worse than chopping something while someone with a notepad is staring at you and taking down notes; there were about half a dozen inspectors going around the kitchen observing us). That’s when I realized –the onion goes in whole with the clove stuck in it. I also forgot to add the leeks… in other words, my stock was not according to the book. I wonder how many points I lost for that.
Funny how when you’re in a stressful situation you can read a sheet of paper over and over and not take anything in. I didn’t know what to do next… should I start the flan or the rice? They both need to come out hot and it was still very early… I knew at least that I would do the chicken and the sauce last minute. So I continued with my tart.
The tart
All those tarts made at home really paid off because I rolled out my two shells (we had two to make in different pans) turned out beautifully. I was the first to pop them in the ovens and have them done, only to be told by my neighbor that they were meant to be eaten warm… I stand by my decision to serve them room temp to the jury and hope they agree.
The rice
The first time we made what they call rice pilaf in class I was appalled by the amount of butter that went in it. So I knew, I would put a ton of butter in this rice, as that is how the Gods of French Gastronomy like it. I kept thinking to myself, I have never, nor will I ever make rice like this at home! I followed the recipe to the letter, cutting out a wax paper circle to go over it, making a bouquet garni of leeks, thyme, and laurel to pop in it, and finishing it in the oven. It had to be all dente, salty and full of butter, nothing to do with rice in the Philippines…
The carrot flan
We made these little timbales of molded vegetable puree, eggs and milk in class and I thought they were the sorriest side dishes ever, bland and soft like hospital food. But here they were in my exam, and I knew how to do them. What I completely blanked out on, was how to kick off my bain-marie… I wanted to boil the water before pouring into the cooking dish and into the oven, but one of the inspectors was staring at me and made me so nervous that I just popped the damn thing in the oven with cold water. Sure enough, it took the longest time to cook, and my issues with my oven temperature did nothing to help.
The mushrooms
I am a big fan of one-pot cooking at home (everything cooks together, like in a curry or a chili con carne), but most of the garnishes in the recipes we do in class are cooked separately, which means if you have three different garnishes in your stew (say carrots, radishes and pearl onions), you need four different pots. Not the most energy efficient if you ask me, but that’s how it’s done. As this was a white dish, the mushrooms had to be white. So I scalloped them as per the recipe (cut in quarters diagonally) and then cooked them with lemon and butter. The result was appalling; they cooked unevenly and ended up browning in spite of the lemon. In French cuisine sauce classification is a big deal; it almost reminds me of United Nations Human Resources rules in its rigidity and detail. Let’s just say that in my case, my white sauce was very, very tanned.
The oven
Another thing I never did at home was to finish cooking my food in the oven. That’s how stuff is done here – whether it be duck breast, rice, chicken parts, what have you, it’s finished off in the oven. Thank god that in only four months of intensive cooking, my sensitivity to heat has greatly diminished. One hour into the exam I was overheating but that was normal. But what happened next really surprised me and it was both not so pleasant and very pleasant at the same time.
By the time my carrot flan and rice were in my oven (the tarts were in a separate pastry oven at the far end of the kitchen) I noticed that it didn’t feel hot (the oven, that is!). Normally when you open a professional oven you get a gush of hot air in your face which is unmistakable. I asked one of the proctors to check it and sure enough it was not heating well. He had to fiddle with it several times to finally end up setting it on full blast to get a semblance of a result. In the meantime, I had to take three of my dishes, the rice, the flans in the water bath and the chicken with the stock, in and out of the damn thing time and again to check them for doneness but most of all rearrange to fit everything inside. Now the oven was not enough to get things going but it was certainly hot enough so that all the pots inside were burning hot. After checking my chicken for the Nth time, meaning to say placing the burning pot on top of the stove, then back in the oven, then back on top, my arms were literally shaking. At one point I was so overheated, exhausted and exasperated that I took out the pot without carefully wrapping the handles with a rag… I immediately felt a searing sensation on my hands but I knew if I wavered the whole thing would end up on the floor, so with my arms shaking and my hand burning I managed to place the burning pot on top of the stove.
Now this act which happened in about a split second seems completely meaningless but meant a great deal to me. To put things into context, six months ago I had no idea I would be doing this and even less taking this national exam. For me cooking, at least professionally, was my mother’s territory. I loved cooking at home and entertaining but never thought of doing it as a job. When I visited my mom’s kitchen, there were three things I feared: the walk-in refrigerator, since I don’t like the cold and had nightmares of getting locked in there for hours, nobody knowing where I was, the deep-fryer, and the oven. I coiled from contact with extreme temperatures. And now, lo and behold, I could lift a burning pot out of the oven filled with chicken and stock and just tell myself, hey this is really hot. I feel like I’ve come a long way in the kitchen.
The girl next to me (who had destabilized me by saying that the tart had to be served warm) burned her arm and one of the proctors was attending to her with some white cream. As I ran cold water over my burning fingertips I realized that I needed them to cook and so could not ask for first aid myself. Funny how mind can overcome physical pain in certain circumstances. I still had a lot to do and so could not focus on the pain in my hand.
In the end I was the second person to serve my dishes at the correct time. My white sauce was brown, my tart was room temperature, my stock was leek and clove free… but overall I think I did okay. Two days later my body is still sore from the event, as if I had run a marathon. My hand doesn’t hurt so much so it must not have been such a bad burn after all. But in the midst of Friday’s chaos, I was able to pause and tell myself that there was no other place in the world I would have rather been, and no other thing I would have rather done at the time. With my sore hand and my greasy rice, I couldn’t help indulge in a moment of unadulterated cheesiness and smile, out of pure love for it all.
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