Practic-No's and Velouté Woes

Remember when I gushed about how my boyfriend was 'my rock' and was extra 'supportive'? Not the first day of practicals. In fact, he was a lazy bum and I ended up being five minutes late.

I walked into the class and both Chef Loving and Chef Gabriel were there giving instructions on how we were to start our test. Step one was to set up our mise en place. Then we would:

• Cut the mirepoix and make another stock (apparently our batch spoiled because the refrigerators stopped working that week. I think they used it)

• Take quiz #2 that we were supposed to take a week or two weeks ago.
• Practice knife cuts in a timed manner that would mimic the timed practical the next week.
• Medium and small dice, battonet of potatoes
• Julienne and brunois carrot
• Mince garlic
• Roast a pepper
• Chop parsley
• Julienne an onion
• Do all this in an hour (SURPRISE, they gave us 55 minutes)

• Practice making veloute using their stock and a team effort of roux.
• Learn herbs
• Learn more smallwares

Do you know what we DIDN'T do? Take the actual practical. I'm definitely not complaining, but realize that this is mainly because we didn't have time to learn most of these.

Mirepoix and Standard Sachet

We set up. Mirepoix does not need to be perfect, so I got those out of the way in no time. We got our stock going, and we went to start our quiz.

I didn't study for it because I assumed it would be our herb and spice ID quiz and some other things for the practical, so I studied that instead. I BS'ed on pretty much everything, including what a buerre manie (kneaded butter) and a remouillage (reusing bones and stuff from another stock) was. Some things were pretty easy, but it wasn't the practical, so I'm not extremely nervous about it.

We immediately got back to work in the kitchen. Our timed knife cuts practice was set to start at 11am and end just at lunch. When he said GO, my team (A, L, and M) started on roasting our pepper first, while we worked on our cuts. We reminded each other to turn the pepper, and gave feedback on what our cuts looked like. I peeled everything first (I forgot to peel the garlic. Damn you garlic!).

My approach was to start with the hardest- battonet of potatoes. Then I moved on to the carrots and onion, minced my garlic, finished off my pepper- all while random people were staring at us through the display windows. I was in the process of chopping my parsley when the timer went off! We still had another five minutes, but I have no idea why they stopped early.

Not bad...

Chef Gabriel said I had the idea of the cuts. It was really a generic critique. I basically just need to get my sizes in order and consistency. Of course, the parsley wasn't fine enough, but whatever.

VERY Rough...

Lunch broke up the day. My chicas and I decided to go to Wendy's- the first place we went out together. How sappy! It was cool though, of course they teased me about how messy I am.

After lunch, we added our mirepoix and got to work on Velouté making. The Assistant J scooped us gelatinous globs of stock and said 'I'll give you a little extra because I like you." Giggle. We cooked the stock to a liquid, made our clarified butter, and gathered flour to start our roux. Remember, Velouté is just pale roux and stock.

I make a nice roux and M says she'd hire me to work in her kitchen. Yeah right. I'M going to be the one with the restaurant kitchen, ha! When it came to Velouté making… eh…

My Velouté was way too thick, I figured that much. It did taste pretty good, though. I had no idea what I was doing wrong because it kept reducing into nothing. For my practical, I knew I couldn't mess up and I swore I would find out what happened.

After the stocks finished, they were strained. Mine was a little cloudy, but the flavor was amazing.

It was clean up time, and that's when J, the assistant, reminded us the importance of being a team. Everyone helps out in the kitchen and no one leaves until everyone can. We were family in a manner of speaking.

After clean-up, Chef Gabriel took us through more smallwares and dismissed us.

Adrenaline kicked in at the oddest of times. I felt ready to take on the world… I felt ready to take one of the most important exams of my life.

One. More. Week.

Could I handle it?