Exams

Yesterday was final exam day here in Paris. Before I explain the full situation let me explain how the process works. Three weeks before our exam we are given a list of ten recipes that could be our exam dish, it will be a dish we have already cooked, but this really does not make it any less stressful. On exam day we all head up to our assigned kitchen and are handed one of two colored disks. The colored disk corresponds to a dish. Yesterday the blue disk meant roast duck with glazed onions and turnips and the yellow disk meant sea bream with fennel. We entered the kitchen and found our baskets with our needed ingredients, we have 2.5 hours to cook and plate the dish. After that, our plates are assigned a number and they are taken to a panel of chefs. These are chefs from outside the school, they judge on taste, and presentation. Our chef in the kitchen grades our technique and our knowledge of the recipe. There are obviously no notes or speaking allowed in the kitchen. Very Top Chef/Chopped unh?

Anyway, with that in mind I felt very prepared, I have been studying my butt off for 3 weeks, the only thing I did not want was to have was Chef Franck as my kitchen judge. Chef Franck is your stereotypical arrogant, demeaning, Parisian. Seriously the man does not think his shit stinks. I have dubbed him "devil chef". He actually spit out my friends sauce and gave her zero for a practical. Anyway, with Devil Chef breathing down my neck I had to roast a duck, glaze onions, and turn and glaze turnips.

Let me remind you, the ingredients we receive are not from Whole Foods, they are not ready to cook. For example the duck comes with its feet still on, and yesterday my duck's feet still had duck poop on them! Try figuring out how to keep your space sanitary with poopy duck feet! Anyway the duck feet came off, the extra feathers were flambéed and plucked out, the bird was seasoned and trussed, so far so good. And then comes the garnish, well that was a different story, I burned my onions, I didn't destroy them but it was a low point, I managed to save a few but Devil Chef made note of my screw up. Other than that food comes out ok until Devil Chef informs us we have to de-bone the entire duck. That is when the serious "FUCK MY LIFE" moment happened, I have no idea how to debone a full roasted duck. Let just say for those of you who were at "pre Thanksgiving 2010" it was not as bad as the drunk carving of the turkey but it sure as shit was not pretty.

So far no phone call saying I failed so here's to hoping!

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Location:Rue Saint-Romain,Paris,France