strangelove: A Look Back (Levels 1 & 2)

Well I am happy to report that I passed the midterm. After taking our written exam, which was to write the ingredients and procedure to make beef consomme, I reached in and chose a piece of paper which assigned me to make the consomme and present it at 8:45pm and roast chicken grandmother style at 9:27pm. I'm not going to sugar coat it, it was really tough (I have a few burns and cuts to prove it). Even with the extra 45 minutes we had because we started class at 5:00 pm instead of the usual 5:45pm, it was still a struggle to get everything done. But I did my best. Across the hall from our class in the bread kitchen, 9 graduates from our program sat and drank wine and awaited our presentation.It was a little intimidating, to say the least. After we were all finished presenting, each student stood before the 3 judges who tried their food and were critiqued. Sound familiar? Anyway, when all was said and done it was an interesting, scary, tense, challenging experience. And I am very, very happy its over. My grade was an 87. Level 4, which includes charcuterie, production (stocks, doughs), large volume a la carte preparations, and family meal begins on Monday.

Since I started this blog during Level 3, and now Level 3 is over, I wanted to go back to cover some of the terms, recipes, dishes, ingredients, techniques and such that were covered in Levels 1 & 2. As I have mentioned before, during the first two levels at FCI, each student has a partner to work with. Each class, for the most part, a new topic, ingredient or technique is covered. On the first day of class, we learned how to cut vegetables (julienne, jardinere, macedoine, emincer, ciseler, brunoise etc) and how to cook them, a l'anglaise (in heavily salted boiling water) or l'etuvee (in just a little water with salt and butter). We had a shellfish day, egg day, pasta day, salad day, cheese day (where we made our own ricotta and mozzarella), and a few weeks of pastry. We sauteed, grilled, fried, roasted and poached. We fileted fish. We butchered chickens. Below are a few pictures from things we've done. I hope to go over the best, the most important and the most delicious of them in future posts.

Potatoes rissoler