Exam Fun

This week is my last week of meat cookery. Hoo-ray! It has been a loooong six weeks.

Monday night was our written final. We all arrived at 5:30 pm for class and Chef Instructor graciously gave us an hour long review. Then he dismissed us until 9 for a dinner/study break. Score! Extra study time for me, the nerd, is always appreciated. As we are filing out of the classroom he says:

“Now don’t do anything stupid like go home and get high or drunk. I don’t want anyone standing out in the parking lot taking a few puffs and then coming in to take the test. I’ve seen too many people fail the exam by doing stupid shit like that.”

Man, does he know our class, or does he know our class?!?!

I don’t know how many people actually showed up high or drunk for the exam because I was too busy checking and rechecking all of my answers. Nerd alert!

Tonight was our practical exam. We were each assigned two different proteins and two different vegetables. We could prepare them anyway we like and serve them with any starch we desired. I was assigned pork loin, shrimp, spinach and eggplant. With these, I came up with the following dishes:

Roasted Pork Loin stuffed with cherries, finished with a white wine veal stock reduction and garnished with candied cherries and pecans
Fried Eggplant Coins
Potatoes Noisette

And

Broiled Shrimp with Lemon Butter Sauce
Sauteed Spinach
Potatoes Anna

I was proud of both dishes. I used molds to make fancy shapes and added spiffy garnishes. My pork was horribly overdone, despite my taking it out of the oven at the proper temperature. That resulted in a 65. However, I sorta redeemed myself with a perfect score on my Potatoes Anna, which Chef Instructor called “sexy.”

Overall, I ended the night with an 87 average on my practical exam. It isn’t an A. I guess I’ll have to deal.