OLD-FASHIONED BLANQUETTE DE VEAU, RASPBERRY ZABAIONE
When he gets back from Caracas, where he attended the World Social Forum in April 2006 (he isn’t especially impressed by Chávez), Mauro announces that he’s decided to take the professional cook’s CAP exam. The people around him are baffled, they don’t understand: Why on earth would he choose the CAP (Certificate of Professional Aptitude)? In other words, why would he want the kind of diploma usually taken by the dregs of the national education system—people who will end up as manual workers, engineers, people who will never go to college—when he himself has spent years in further education and even holds a master’s in economics? Seriously, if he does this, then what was the point of the Erasmus and all that stuff? His parents, anticonformist to the last, support him, happy that their son has found his path, but they make it clear that as far as they’re concerned, this is his last year of subsidized study. Sometimes the specter of a loss of status rears its head, concealed under commonsense remarks: You’re too old, Mauro, you’d be better off working, learning on the job. But Mauro holds firm: in reality, not only is the CAP a gauge of credibility in a professional world that is wary of slackers, dilettantes, middle-class shirkers fascinated by the culinary arts, it is also a symbolic gauge, the sign that he is willing to put in the hard yards, to accept the physical, technical, and prescriptive aspects of being a cook, to knuckle under its disciplinary requirements, to enter the tiled, metal-strewn backstage areas of the grand theater of French gastronomy—cultural heritage and national pride—and join the anonymous, invisible ranks of those who work in the shadows for its conservation, its expansion, its glory.
One year later, Mauro takes the exam as an unaffiliated candidate. That day, he puts on the chef’s uniform that he must wear for the practical tests, an outfit purchased at Monsieur Veste for sixty-eight euros: white trousers and jacket, special loafers, chef’s apron (down to his knees), and cap—he walks across the small garden, silent, the apron tied tight around his narrow torso, his long, thin arms hanging, and gives me a doubtful look: Is this okay? Do I look like a clown or what? I smile: he looks fine, completely credible. You look wonderful. After that, he gathers the utensils that he’ll need for the test, an impressive array of gear that he inventories in front of me, picking up each object one after another and stating its name, a bit like a magician presenting his hat, his wand, and his assistant to the audience before performing his first trick: whisk, carver, peeler, scraper, zester, scissors, spaghetti tongs, meat tongs, fork, pastry bag with a variety of tips, rubber spatulas, an Exoglass spatula and a flat patisserie spatula, a ladle, several soup- and teaspoons, a melon baller, an electric scale (he checks the batteries), and a series of knives chosen after a great deal of research (the steel blades are laid flat in the black case, all pointing the same way—boning knives, butcher’s knives, slicing knife, and paring knife, the sharpening steel). Mauro repeats their names, like a litany of weapons, finding it strange to be so heavily armed.
The day of the exam, he is one of four unaffiliated candidates to turn up at the technical lycée in the eighteenth arrondissement. Apart from Mauro, there are two men his own age and a woman in her thirties. The exam room is large, tiled: the slightest sound creates an echo, but for now it is bathed in the singular silence of an empty school.
Having already dispensed with the basic tests—math and French—Mauro has crammed for the two other written exams: the PSE (Workplace Health) and cooking theory. The first is a general-question exam, about different contracts, the ability to implement a budget, or to react to an accident; the second verifies the student’s knowledge of basic cooking techniques, of sanitary risks, the rules of hygiene, the organization of a kitchen, and so on. Mauro races through them.
The practical exam worries him more: each candidate has four hours and thirty minutes to plan and then prepare two meals (starter and entrée, or entrée and dessert) for four to eight people, to present them, and then to tidy up, while examiners observe his actions, note his techniques, assess the results. Mauro bites his lip and his cap slips down his forehead a little when he discovers the subject written on the board: old-fashioned blanquette de veau, raspberry zabaione. Meals he has rarely cooked; deceptively simple meals—the blanquette in particular is tricky, the success of the dish being entirely dependent on the velvety texture of the sauce. The countdown begins. He rubs his chin. Determined not to rush, he goes over to his workstation and begins to set up. The two other guys are also concentrating, appropriating their spaces, organizing the ingredients and utensils. The older woman, on the other hand, panics as she inventories her food—Monsieur, I don’t have any carrots!—and one of the men gestures with his chin to a crate at the back of the room, without even uncrossing his arms. Mauro thinks, working out a plan of attack whose steps he writes down briefly in a notebook: the blanquette will simmer for three hours; during this time he will cook the mushrooms, blanch and sauté the pearl onions, and make the zabaione, which takes about twenty minutes. The sauce will be made later, with the broth from the meat. Mauro wonders for a moment how to deal with the raspberries and the cream between the meat and the mushrooms, imagining a raspberry blanquette and a mushroom zabaione, thinking that maybe they wouldn’t be too bad, then he smiles, picks up the meat, places it at the bottom of the Dutch oven, and pours water over it. And that’s it, he’s on his way.
The four and a half hours of the test are incredibly rich and intense: the room is filled with movements and sounds—the lapping of the simmering sauce, the gurgling of the boiling water, the moist breath of the whisk in the cream, the rat-tat-tat of the knife blade chopping turnips, mincing carrots—and the silence is strained with breathing, exclamations, remarks, curses, and those encouraging little phrases you mutter to yourself to stay focused, to hang in there—Come on, that’s it, come on! the young woman with the lopsided French twist exhorts herself in a whisper—so that the overall impression is of frantic agitation. The examiners keep their backs straight and crane their necks to peer at the workstations. From time to time, they question the students: Why aren’t you turning down the heat? Why the Dutch oven rather than the stew pot? How well-done do you want it to be? Mauro gives the right answers, without losing sight of what he’s supposed to be doing. He organizes his time as he breaks down the operations, crossing out each line one by one in his notebook, but somehow forgets to add flour to the sauce, which is too liquid on the spoon and messes up the presentation of his zabaione, damaging the raspberries so that their delicate shape is lost, their flesh torn, the cream stained with pink smears—Damn, it looks like a fucking fruit puree! When the time comes, he presents his dishes to the judges, who examine them before tasting them. Mauro waits impatiently, feeling wiped out and pessimistic. A beam of sunlight illuminates the freshly cleaned room; everything sparkles and shines. He is accepted.