Well this has been quite the week-and-a-half! It contained ups and
downs like no other, and had by far the most amount of class. Overall, I’m glad
to be done with it. It’s tough when chefs ask you to restart a recipe or when
you get flustered and drop a pot of boiling water or when chefs fight right in
front of you. Each is a stress inducing item and I now have a (hopefully) temporary eye
twitch (it’s très embarrassant).
The food on the other hand…oh, the food was quite wonderful.
Cakes almost every day, and kilos and kilos of butter. This week the intensive
basic pastry students made Moka, Orange and Chocolate Tartelettes, Pear and
Almond Crust Tarts, (chocolate) Croissants (finally!), Brioches, Pear
Charlotte, and Mogador. There was obviously a ton of whisking done, and my right arm is now quite larger than my left (Lady in the Water, anyone?), not to mention the fact that in one class we were whipping cream and the air was so hot all of ours curdled. Our groans quickly made the way for laughter.
Jacob and I are almost done with classes. These next two
weeks feature our final written exam and our final practical exam. Do I feel
like I’ve studied enough for either? Absolutely not. I took the written exam
earlier today and…all I have to say is they could have told us that they wanted
our ingredient lists memorized by today and not just by the practical test! But
overall it went pretty well. The written test quizzes us on culinary terms, ingredient lists, and basic techniques. It is 10% of our final grade. That, however, pales in comparison to next week's practical exam...45% of our grade!
So here’s
to a ton of studying and brushing up on my recipes. Cheers!
~Sarah
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Moka (Mocha) |
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Orange and Chocolate Tartelettes |
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Caramelized pear and crisp almond crust tart (it's really called all that...) |
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Various Brioches |
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Chocolate Croissants! |
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Butter Croissants! |
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Pear Charlotte |
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Mogador |
I can confirm that those pictures are indeed of your food based on that picture of various brioches with that little clubbed thumb poking in!
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