Midterm or Bust

This Friday, August 7th 2009, we will have our Midterm at FCI. At the end of Level 3, the halfway point of the program, we come to class and will have our 8 recipes [see my earlier Escoffier post] narrowed down to 4. The board in the front of class will read something like, "Section A: Consomme and Grand Mere and Section B: Skate and Apple Tart." Any of the 8 recipes we have been working on may appear on the board . The only thing we know are the pairings, garde manger (appetizer) and saucier (meat or poultry) will be together and poissoiner (fish) and patissier (pastry) will be together. Then each student will reach into a pot filled with papers and will pick one out. This will assign you to either section A or B and will also assign you a time to have both dishes done by. On our mock midterm a few weeks back, I choose A1 which meant I was doing consomme, 4 plates to be presented at 8:37pm and the grand mere chicken, 4 plates to be presented at 9:12pm(or something like that). Once we are ready to present, we put all four plates on a tray and they are presented to Chef Jason, our lead instructor, and two recent graduates of the culinary program of the school.

The possible dishes that may be on the midterm are Garde Manger: Beef Consomme or Poached Eggs with Hollandaise Sauce on a bed of diced vegetables; Poissonnier: Sauteed Skate Wing with a lemon and caper brown butter and croutons or Fillet of Barramundi in White Wine Sauce with Mussels and Shrimp; Saucier: Roasted Chicken Grand Mere style or Sauteed Pork Chop with a Green Peppercorn Sauce, Watercress Salad and Pommes Darphin; Patissier: Apple Tart with whipped cream or Lemon Tart with Rasberry Coulis.

If a student does not pass the midterm, they may be allowed to take it once again, but if you fail, you have to repeat Level 3. Gulp! Let's hope my next post bears good news!

The Barramundi

The lemon tart

 

The pork chop