French Practical Tonight

The second practical exam for my World Cuisine class is tonight, covering our studies of France. As with our Italian practical, we will draw dishes at random and have a certain amount of time to complete and serve them to the chef. Here are the possible dishes for tonight:

Beef Bourgiugnon
Pommes Dauphinoise
Brie en Croute
Carrot Jus Lie (one of chef's creations)
Chicken Pate
Salad Nicoise
Ratatouille
Chicken Nouvelle (there's a lot more freedom with this one, we just need to display the characteristics of nouvelle cuisine)

The bourguignon and pate take hours to make so I'm not sure exactly how that will work out. If he gives us the full class time, 4.5-5 hours, then no prob. We'll see how he wants it. A couple of the dishes are simple, like brie en croute and ratatouille. If we draw one of the easy/quick ones then we might also have to cook another dish to accompany it, or we might have to get all Thomas Keller on it (like the ratatouille made in the movie by the same name, it was designed and created by Keller) and really try to impress the chef.

Color

My eyes are stained red from lack of sleep; time enough for it in the grave but people have made comments. I almost always drink a full bottle of wine, and more, when I drink wine now. It's getting expensive. My dog still craps in the house on a regular basis, but according to my wife she's "gotten better about it." I don't iron my shirts for work anymore and I wear my slip-resistant kitchen shoes to the office, but I don't think anybody cares or has noticed - yet. If I keep this pace up, I will graduate culinary in 16 months. Might be better to kick back my class schedule, switch to mornings, quit my job with the credit union, and get into a kitchen somewhere. Right now I'd much rather be prepping veg than to fund another freaking loan. This way I'd have several certifications and a good amount of real world experience under my toque by the time I'm done, but I wouldn't be able to keep all my lovely corporate benefits up until graduation. We shall see, we shall see...

Blood

While macerating a bunch of garlic last night I let my attention wander to the person next to me who was telling me how they do it differently. When I looked back I found that my left index finger was missing a good portion of its fingernail and I was about to get blood all over the garlic. I grabbed a paper towel, wrapped my finger up tight and then finished the garlic. I got a bandaid for it later but I wanted to be sure the garlic was ready when chef asked for it. It's kind of funny looking and only really hurt when I went to shampoo my hair in the shower. I'll take a picture and post it, with pictures from the dinner I made Sunday night. I promise, pics are coming.