A little taste of stress...

Ok, so compared to a working chef school is a cakewalk, but: I think today we came somewhat close to having some stress.
We first continued learning about vegetable cuts. This time "tournage"...that's when you take a carrot, turnip, potato or whatever else you might have lying around and turn it into little football-shaped cuts. This is PRETTY HARD! They're supposed to be even. If you have 20 little potato footballs they all must be the same size.
Well, they weren't. Not in the beginning at least.
Then it came time to cook the stuff - mind you everything had to be done at the same time. Here's what we cooked.

- carrots
- turnips
- artichoke
- string beans
- peas
- potatoes
- pearl onions

I couldn't believe it myself but everything ended up on the plate at the same time. However, not everything was done to perfection and while my plate looked beautiful not everything tasted quite the way it should have.
But it looked nice. And it tasted good. But just not quite perfect. Next time.

Just before class was over we got a little surprise written test. 10 questions 10 minutes. What do you call a pan with straight edges? Sautoir. What temperature range is considered the "danger zone" when it comes to bacteria? 40 - 140 F. We'll know on Saturday if I got them all right or not.

Now I'm going to crash. Hard. More tomorrow.

This article is very interesting... http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/ehc/nytimes.html