As the Intermediate Cuisine term approached its end, some of my friends and I got a little bit anxious about the exams. There was quite a bit of information to retain regarding France and its products, its agriculture, and its preparations. We decided to go through the material before our exam while enjoying a great cheese platter from different corners of the Hégaxone. Unfortunately for us, we did not do as brilliantly as we would have wanted to perform in our written tests. Maybe our foodie study group method was not good enough. However, what we did know was that we had to nail the practical exam if we wanted to pass our Certificate with flying colors. So, without further ado my dear friend Ashley and I decided to cook ourselves our way through the 10 recipes we were going to blindly choose from on exam day.
If I had to summarize the experience in as few sentences as possible, I would say it was an effort that included 2 cooks, 2 critics, 2 chickens, 1 duck, 2 guinea fowls, 2 red mullets, 2 rabbits, 1 monkfish tail, 4 trout, and a rack of lamb, a whole bunch of veggies, herbs, garlic, oil, cheese, cream, and about 1 kilo of butter. It also required 3 grocery shopping trips to the one which very easily became my now favorite market in Paris (Marché de Passy), and about 30 hours of cooking in about a week and a half. Thankfully, neither a lot of burns nor a lot of cuts happened during what I ended up calling our “10-Dish Challenge”, and the best of all is that we got to have two or three spectacular buffets for dinner at home, but we also had a chance to really reflect on what we wanted to achieve with each preparation, and how to plate them.
On a first round, we separately worked the trout and rabbits. However, for the 8 remaining dishes we thought it would be better and way more cost-effective to do some teamwork and treat ourselves after the hard work of each session to a home cooked restaurant quality dinner.
Now we were surely ready for the exam. We knew everything by heart and were sure that the allotted time was enough for us to prepare good food. The best of it all, no one needed neither Tums nor Alka-Seltzer after what might some even would have considered the banquet dinners served at the Très Petit Château.
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