Week 16, Day 2: Practicum

After 16 weeks, I’m pleased to report that my classmates and I have successfully made it through to the end of the Culinary Certificate Program. For some, this marks the end of their journey at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, the exams no longer standing in the way of graduation (or wearing taller chef hats). For the majority of us, including yours truly, this marks the academic midpoint of our culinary education with the recent exams serving as our midterms. With these midterms out of the way, we’ll get to enjoy some time away from the school kitchens and have a chance to rest, relax and recharge before picking up our knives again in a few weeks and launching into an intensive study of regional cuisines from around the world. I for one welcome the break… it’s not that I’m not enjoying school, I just feel like I’m ready for a mental break after the last few weeks and especially after preparing for our exams.

So how were the exams, you ask? Well, no matter how much you prepare, exams will never be as much fun as say, enjoying a few tall cold ones on a hot summer day or even having a tooth pulled. Last Tuesday night’s written exam, a combination of true-false, definition, short-answer and longer answer type questions, pretty standard exam stuff, was no exception to that. I studied a lot for the test and went in to it feeling very well prepared. The test took me 90 minutes to complete and in that time I wondered if all of my furious answer-writing would result in my right hand being permanently locked into a claw-like state. Last Wednesday’s exam, the hands-on practicum, began with a few procedural details from Chefs D and S followed by each of us picking up card at random containing the name of a dish that we were on the hook to prepare. My card said something like “dry poach mushroom-filled chicken breast supremes and serve them with a veloute that has been enriched with a liason and a vegetable of your choice”. Each card also listed out all of the ingredients required for the dish; the first task would be to write out a recipe using those ingredients, with explicit details relating to cooking temperatures and techniques. I had never dry poached anything, nor had I made a veloute, but because I had studied so much for the previous night’s written exam, I was very familiar with the techniques and was feeling pretty good about my card selection. Once the recipe had been written, each student would then have to review that with one of the chefs. With their blessing, it was then off to the kitchen to begin preparing the dish.

In addition to writing out my recipe, I also took a few minutes while writing my recipe to plan out a rough outline of what I was going to do and when I was going to do it. In the past couple of weeks, my classmates will tell you that I somehow developed a terrible habit of leaving things unattended on the stove, resulting in countless boiled over pots of reheating stock, burnt caramels and opportunities for ridicule. My intention was never to make a mess of things or make things difficult for myself…I was simply trying to multitask. When I got into problems with multitasking was when I became careless and lost track of things and had no real plan for what I was supposed to be doing. Some of the best preparation I did in the days leading up to the practicum was to replay those missteps and learn from what I did wrong. Today, since I had all the time in the world (6 hours) to prepare my dish, I would work slowly, deliberately and would work from a plan.

Veloute is one of the mother sauces that we covered in detail this semester and is nothing more than a roux (equal parts flour and fat, cooked, used as a thickening agent) and stock. What’s tricky about making a veloute is that it requires a fair amount of time in order to make it well. It must simmer and be skimmed for a lengthy period of time in order to cook out the floury and starchy taste imparted by the roux. The heat must be gentle enough to promote a simmer, yet not too strong so that the sauce burns. It’s not hard to make, it just requires a little bit of extra attention. Since the sauce cooks for a while, some of it will be lost due to evaporation so it’s necessary to add back some moisture in the form of water. It also doesn’t need to be skimmed every minute, just occasionally, so one almost needs to multitask when making a veloute, or else you’re just wasting time waiting to skim it. But turn your back on it for too long and you can get burned and during the practicum, unlike in class, there’d be no do-overs. You burn your sauce during the practicum and you’re SOL. Given all of this and my recent bad habits, having a plan and working deliberately would be necessary in order for me to have a successful day.

In between trips to the pot to skim my sauce, I organized the other components of my dish. I peeled and blanched some asparagus spears to be served alongside the chicken. I assembled, chopped and cooked the components for the mushroom filling. I portioned and cleaned the chicken breasts (a supreme is another name for a boneless, skinless, chicken breast that has been trimmed of fat) and cut small pockets into them for the filling. After about an hour and a half of simmering and skimming, the flour taste was gone from my veloute, leaving a nice, thick, velvety, mild chicken-flavored sauce behind, meaning it was time to contemplate assembling my dish.

All students would have to prepare one serving of their dish, to be presented to a blind panel of two judges. It would be up to the students to sign up for 15 minute blocks of time in which to have their dishes presented. By about 11:15 (hour 2 of the practicum), I informed Chef S of my intention to serve at noon, meaning I’d be the first student to do so. I was in good shape with 30 minutes left before service. I stuffed some of the precooked mushroom filling into the chicken breasts, placed them into a small pyrex dish, seasoned them with salt and laid a buttered piece of parchment paper on top, a requirement for dry poaching. Dry poaching is performed in a hot (400 degrees) oven and is usually a fairly quick cooking method, with the parchment paper in effect preventing the steam and moisture from escaping out of whatever you’re cooking, essentially ‘poaching’ the meat in its own juices. At 11:45, my chicken went into the oven. While the chicken cooked, I added the liason to my veloute. A liason is a mixture of egg yolks and cream that gets tempered into a sauce with the purpose of enriching and adding body to it. Once that was added, I could finally adjust the seasoning of my sauce. With the sauce completed, I reheated my previously blanched asparagus and checked on my chicken. After about 10 minutes in the oven, the chicken breasts felt firm and looked to be free of any pink color. Not wanted to overcook the breasts, I immediately pulled them from the oven and let them rest for a few minutes before cutting into them. I was glad I pulled them when they did…they were moist and juicy when I cut into them almost to the point where if you looked really hard, you could just barely make out just the slightest pinkish hue in the thickest part of the breast.

The final five minutes before service was the single most stressful time for me at school to date, as I worked to put the components of my dish together in an attractive manner, working quickly to make sure that everything was served warm. In my haste, I nearly served my dish without photographing it first. I never forgot to take pictures of my dishes and here I was so meticulous in all of my planning, except I forgot to ‘mise en place’ my camera. I did manage to get a few shots of my dish right before it was presented to judges and I only missed my noon time-slot by a minute or two. Overall, I felt really good about my dish. I was happy that the chicken didn’t overcook, but I wasn’t too happy that the mushroom filling didn’t really stay in the breasts when I sliced into them, making for a tricky presentation, but the filling tasted great, as did my sauce. I felt that the asparagus was just a tad undercooked and underseasoned, but it was too late to do anything about it.

After the judges evaluated my dish, I sat down with Chef S and he reviewed their feedback with me. They actually liked the doneness of the asparagus but also felt it was underseasoned. I didn’t check all of the pieces of chicken that I put on the plate and unfortunately, one of the pieces had a small speck of pink from a blood vessel. That combined with the faintest pinkish hue in the breast meat was enough to turn off one of the tasters, but the other taster thought my chicken was really well cooked, a sentiment echoed by Chefs D, Chef S and my other classmates. I think the tasters also liked my filling and sauce. Chef S also added some of his own comments, and in general, it sounded like he was pleased with my performance. He enjoyed the filling and the sauce, saying that both were well seasoned and worked well with the chicken. I only was ‘dinged’ for a few things here and there…I had a few minor issues with my recipe and while I took the time to evenly and finely mince shallots and onions for the mushroom filling, my mushroom mincing left something to be desired. Plus, I should’ve taken the time to more closely inspect the pieces of chicken that I put on the plate. I kept to my plan of taking the time to organize my schedule for the morning and workstation and tried to make sure that I worked efficiently, kept my cool and kept my station neat, all things that I think were noticed by Chef S. And then like that, I was really officially done.

I’ve never taken any kind of test like this before and I think it was an interesting learning experience. I think the chefs wanted everyone to take it seriously but also have fun with it. I definitely leant towards the serious side…I put on my best poker face right from the get-go and it was only at 12:02 right after I sent my dish out when I think I cracked my first smile. Looking back on the day, I can say had fun but I’d probably feel differently had my dish turned out differently or had I not felt good about what I prepared. Thankfully, all went well this day. I wouldn’t have done anything differently given the chance to do it all again and was quite happy with how things went.