I can't believe it's only been one week! I got the results of my first test, which covered units 1 through 7. Less than a week later, we had another exam on units 8 through 11. The material that we're covering is getting more packed and intense. Next week, we have an exam on Tuesday covering units 12-14, and an exam on Friday covering 15-17. There's just one unit after that, and then we take the Level One Comprehensive and move on to Level Two!
I was disappointed that I had made a silly mistake on the first exam, which left me 4 points shy of a perfect score. I mixed up two of the tournage cuts on a match-the-number-to-the-letter question, so my one mixup resulted in 2 wrong answers. I was determined to get a perfect score on the next exam, but ended up losing a point for being a smart-ass. I had answered a question correctly and would have received full credit if I'd stopped while I was ahead. I'm not that smart. Instead, I went on to elaborate with misinformation the cost me a point, quite deservedly. We'll have to wait and see if I've learned my lesson.
The first seven units introduced us to the basics: knife skills and stocks, and got us started on the Mother Sauces and emulsified sauces. I thought I was pretty familiar with most of this stuff, but each lesson introduced that little bit that I had been missing. Still, it was mostly familiar territory, with appreciated corrections.
The past week we've been able to dive into making actual STUFF from the basics. From our stocks, we made soups and consommés and learned about the two basic types of soups: potage clairs, which are clear, and potages liés, which are "bound" (thickened). Then we went into food preservation, where we got to make gravadlax, jardiniére pickles, brandade, duck confit, preserved lemons, and codfish fritters. We revisited some of our knive skills on the salads unit, making a macédoine vegetable salad, Salade Niçoise, and some vinaigrette. During the potato unit, we puréed, sliced, sautéed and fried until potatoes were coming out of our ears. In all, we prepared 8 different potato dishes including the classic Pommes Pont-neuf (basically a fat french fry), Pommes Gaufrette, a potato basket that becomes ubiquitous in the presentation of other dishes, Pommes Anna, which I failed at miserably because mine stuck to the pan, and Pommes Darphin, which we had to cut by hand and came out beautifully. Eventually we combined all of this into a lovely lunch that allowed us to forgo Family Meal:
I was disappointed that I had made a silly mistake on the first exam, which left me 4 points shy of a perfect score. I mixed up two of the tournage cuts on a match-the-number-to-the-letter question, so my one mixup resulted in 2 wrong answers. I was determined to get a perfect score on the next exam, but ended up losing a point for being a smart-ass. I had answered a question correctly and would have received full credit if I'd stopped while I was ahead. I'm not that smart. Instead, I went on to elaborate with misinformation the cost me a point, quite deservedly. We'll have to wait and see if I've learned my lesson.
The first seven units introduced us to the basics: knife skills and stocks, and got us started on the Mother Sauces and emulsified sauces. I thought I was pretty familiar with most of this stuff, but each lesson introduced that little bit that I had been missing. Still, it was mostly familiar territory, with appreciated corrections.
The past week we've been able to dive into making actual STUFF from the basics. From our stocks, we made soups and consommés and learned about the two basic types of soups: potage clairs, which are clear, and potages liés, which are "bound" (thickened). Then we went into food preservation, where we got to make gravadlax, jardiniére pickles, brandade, duck confit, preserved lemons, and codfish fritters. We revisited some of our knive skills on the salads unit, making a macédoine vegetable salad, Salade Niçoise, and some vinaigrette. During the potato unit, we puréed, sliced, sautéed and fried until potatoes were coming out of our ears. In all, we prepared 8 different potato dishes including the classic Pommes Pont-neuf (basically a fat french fry), Pommes Gaufrette, a potato basket that becomes ubiquitous in the presentation of other dishes, Pommes Anna, which I failed at miserably because mine stuck to the pan, and Pommes Darphin, which we had to cut by hand and came out beautifully. Eventually we combined all of this into a lovely lunch that allowed us to forgo Family Meal:
The rest of the week was spent on POISSON, both flat and round. We cleaned and deboned trout, branzino, and flounder and made poisson en pappillote, truite à la Grenobloise (basically Trout Meuniere), goujonettes (aka fishsticks) and a filet de limand bonne femme. We'll finish up with seafood on Monday with a bit of lobster, mussels, and scallops before we return to the land for our units on poultry, beef, pork, and lamb.