Monthly Archives: April 2007

I’m done with my classes for the year (you know, in academic years which begins again in September.) This marks the end of my freshmen course load. I’ll start again next year as a sophomore in more advanced classes.

Stocks, sauces, and soups finished up pretty well. For our practical exam, we had to make one sauce which was determined by chance on the day of the practical (i.e. we had to remember how to make all of the sauces because we didn’t know what we were going to get.) My prayers were answered when I got bechamel sauce rather than the dreaded hollandaise for my morning practical.

I’m used to making this sauce (in various forms) at home, so I was comfortable making a roux, tempering in hot milk, and bringing it to a boil to create a creamy, thick white sauce. I also had to make a derivative sauce from the bechamel — I chose sauce mornay (gryuere, parmesan, and heavy cream are added into the bechamel at the end.)

I was very comfortable making bechamel and as such I got a perfect score on this part of the practical which turned out to be a good thing.

In the afternoon, I had to make a soup. I was pretty sure we’d have to make a thick soup as the group making soup in the morning got a thin soup. I was really hoping for cream of carrot. Instead, we got cream of celery (what the heck? who eats cream of celery soup!?) I was a little thrown off on this one. I had no clue really what cream of celery soup should taste like — celery for sure, but I didn’t know what other spices to put in it.

I went ahead and made the soup making a veloute sauce (which is chicken stock thickened with roux and seasoned — chef said, “Should taste like the colonel’s gravy.”) I sweated celery and onions until they were soft. And then when the veloute was thick (although, I was dissappointed it wasn’t thick enough), I added the softened celery and onion mixture and whizzed it up with an immersion blender. I tempered in some heavy cream, and added white pepper.

Apparently the taste was flat. When I asked what would have helped, he suggested sugar! I would have never guessed to use sugar in a celery soup.

Then I did my knife cuts — the last and final part of the exam. I’m bad at knife cuts. I always make cuts too big. That’s where I lost most of my points. It’s really dumb because I have a ruler on the side of my knife, but some reason, I can’t translate the ruler to the actual cut.

I still made about an 89% on my practical which is by far a great grade (although, the nerd that I am really hates to see anything below a 90!)

After class, I went out for drinks at a local dive bar and had a great time with my classmates. Because I kind of started in the middle of the year last year and took a lot of classes out of order, I have a different mix of people in all of my classes. Sometimes, I get really bummed about this because after four weeks and I’m finally bonding with some people, I have to move on.

But, I realized last night that in a lot of ways I’m lucky. I’m getting to know a lot of the students in the weekend culinary program — and I’m meeting all sorts of people that I wouldn’t meet otherwise. It’s kind of fun.

For now, I’m off until September and am going to enjoy every Sunday that I can sleep in!