Beaucoup Cook-oo: Last Day of Class

Thursday morning I woke up at 7am, got dressed, caught the metro and made it to school by 8am for the last time in a long time. It was our last demonstration of basic cuisine and of course, we were scheduled for the 8:30am time slot.

But, this time, we could just watch and take notes as we pleased because there was no accompanying practical. We would not be re-creating any of these dishes in the kitchen later. The menu was "Gala Dinner" and it was pretty much that exciting:

Herb Crusted Rack of Lamb served with Potatoes Dauphinois, roasted tomatoes filled with a mushroom duxelle, braised gems, honey-glazed carrots, and red currant glazed baby turnips

and for dessert, Baked Alaska

(the chef served it flaming, but the alcohol burned up before we could take pictures)

After class, we tasted (as we do everyday) but today was especially good as everything served was delicious and not coated in an egg yolk/butter emulsion. Plus, the chef popped some bottles of champagne, so the food went down even easier!

It was a little sad in the end because this would be our last demonstration with the Chef. He is the chef in charge of Basic Cuisine and when we return to class in January as Intermediate students, he will be welcoming a new group of eager young chefs instead of teaching us. But, I'm sure we'll still see him around school and every once in a while, maybe he'll be the chef in our practical kitchens.

Most exciting for me though is that when I raised my hand to ask a question at the beginning about a confusion I was having over whether he would be making the potatoes dauphinois (they are my favorite and I would hate it if we didn't get any!) he kind of rolled his eyes and smiled and said in English, "Don't worry Meez El-ee-za, we will make the potatoes." It impressed me that he remembered my name! (Especially since the day before he had yelled at me in the kitchen that I would fail out of school after I burned my béchamel...) There are a lot of us and we rotate through pretty quickly, so often the chefs can't remember our names unless they are looking at our name tags. I can't really blame them.

So, we celebrated and then we left to go our own ways to study more for the upcoming final the next morning. I will right about that experience tomorrow. Good night!