Test Day

Let me first say, I have a couple (like 10 or 11) days off remaining at work, so I decided that it would be a good idea to use one and practice in the morning. I ran to the supermarket and bought a couple of carrots, some turnips and I already had potatoes. I also bought a whole chicken because chef mentioned he would grade us on how we butchered it (which he didn't). I ran to Duane Reade the day before and picked up a perfect soft rubber ruler, which chef said we could use for our cuts. The taillage has specifications:

Jardeniere - .5cm squared, by 5 cm long. (a long thin rectangular block)
Macedoine - .5cm cubed. Take the above, cut and cube it
Julienne - 1-2mm squared, by 7cm long. (You all know what a julienne looks like)
Brunoise - 1-2mm cubed (cubes cut from the julienne)

We had to do the above with a carrot and a turnip (carrot first two cuts, turnip, second two). Then we had to take one onion, chop it in half, and emincer (slice) one half and ciseler the other (fine dice - the way they showed us). And then we had to turn a potato to 4 cocotte sized footballs, followed by cooking the carrot macedoine a l'anglaise (in really salty water until tender).

The written portion was, a piece of cake. I memorized my stuff, and wrote it down and submitted it. I was nervous about my taillage, even though I practiced. No reason to be. My taillage was pretty damn good. I must say, I did a fantastic job julienning the turnips. Its harder than you think to get 1-2mm slivers from a block of vegetable. Usually one end is too thick or too thin, or your knife cuts the slice before making it all the way down. I did a really good job. And my brunoise were so cute!

THEN.. dun dun dun!! lightening strikes. I was working across from one of the kids in the class who probably deserves to just.. leave the FCI, or at least repeat level 1 until he can get it right. Chef said earlier that we will be using boiling water as teams. And I took that to mean we would share the water, and he took it to mean we share the water and cook the macedoine together. While I was turning cocotte, he combined our macedoine and took it to the water to boil.
What do I do? Do I say no, we're not supposed to do that? He convinced me earlier that we're supposed to do it as a team, but I'm kicking myself in the ass now because that clearly makes no sense. Its a test!! But I went through with it, and we presented together, and besides the fact that they weren't completely tender, he chewed us out for working as a team when obviously you're not supposed to. I could have reserved half of the macedoine and presented them separately, or something, but I didn't. And for that I am fully to blame for my actions, or lack thereof. But HE is just a numbskull and just is not at par with the rest of us. It is students like him that make the FCI look bad when they take their money and pass them.

After kicking myself in the ass for the next few hours, and enduring a semi-interesting refresher course in HACCP (food safety), a few of us went out for drinks. It was a good time, but Friday at work was rough. I didn't get home til 3:30 and I had a long day of data entry type work to complete. FUN! It was the usual 3 of us plus Steve who was cool as shit. We really had a good time, and I recall having a semi-sociological debate with Bret, and we both concluded that we had no answers, but it was fun having an educated debate/conversation.

Oh, I got an A in Level 1. Yessssss. Though my evaluation score remained the same (81), but the combination of all our in class tests and a pretty good practical score, surely hindered by my "partner," had me floating around an A.

L.I-Quality:Intro. to Basic Techniq
Exam 1 - 100.00
Exam 2 - 100.00
Exam 3 - 100.00
Exam 4 - 100.00
Eval 1 - 81.00
Eval 2 - 81.00
Theory Final - 93.00
Practical Final - 88.00

On to level 2!!