CHAPTER 11
FINAL EXAM: BASIC
LESSON HIGHLIGHTS: STUFFED CHICKEN LEGS, BAD GNOCCHI, DUCK À L’ORANGE, BASIC CUISINE FINAL EXAM
Chef Savard seems like he’s going through the motions of the jambonette de volaille. As he scrapes the meat from the bones, he systematically peels back the skin as if he’s turning a sweater inside out. He stuffs the legs with a mixture of ground chicken and sausage and then sews up the ends with a trussing needle and string. Once stuffed, the leg appears as if it is still intact.
Thus the final week of Basic Cuisine begins. The air feels like it does at the end of a school year. The smell of a fresh March day wafts through a window of the second-floor demonstration room. Students bored by yet another demonstration on how to bone a piece of chicken itch restlessly in their kitchen whites. Sitting next to me, Diego looks up long enough from a travel magazine to see Chef spooning meat into the empty leg cavities and goes back to photos of women in bikinis.
Then, Chef grabs at carrots on the stove. “Les carottes sont cuites,” he says, dryly. The carrots are cooked. Some students laugh.
“What’s funny?” I ask LizKat.
“It’s a French idiom,” she says dully, not moving her chin off her hand. “‘The carrots are cooked’ means it’s about to end badly, or you’ve had it. Like you Americans would say, ‘Your goose is cooked.’”
Kim gets up in the middle of class to phone her nanny. Of the students, only L.P. sits straight, as usual, taking detailed notes on her legal pad.
The afternoon’s practical is uneventful, save that it has the same bittersweet end-of-an-era feeling that school years often bring. Of B4, I know that at least four of us will not return after Basic. I look around, watching Anna-Clare joshing with Kim and LizKat flirting with Chef Savard as she presents her plate. It’s so calm and pleasant.
The next day, we study duck à l’orange in our last lesson before our exam the following day.
Then it all goes wrong.
Ramona and I are class assistants again this week. Prepping for exams and preparing to change crews, the usually efficient downstairs crew has set up incomplete baskets all week. We have enough duck breasts for just eight, only four oranges, and there’s no veal stock in sight. We’re making gnocchi today also, although it was demonstrated three weeks ago, yet there are no potatoes. We finally get the ingredients assembled, and it’s an enormous lot of stuff; the dumbwaiter sags under the weight.
Everyone’s set up when Ramona and I enter the room. An odd feeling permeates the kitchen.
“Who’s the chef?” I ask.
Anna-Clare looks at me and shakes her head and just then in walks Chef Gaillard. He’s in a palpably bad mood. No one talks, and everyone goes right to work.
I start with the magret, scoring the back to allow the fat to release when it’s cooked. I slice the orange peel fine. Using a hand juicer, I make fresh orange juice. This I reduce by half and then combine it with the orange peel and veal stock. Starting late, I remain a half step behind the others in the class. Just then, I hear a growl behind me.
“Où est la liqueur pour la sauce?” Chef is standing fewer than four inches behind me. He’s dripping out the words as a taunt.
“Ugh, je suis désolée, Chef. Je vais la chercher au sous-sol,” I respond, wiping my hands on my side towel. Damn, damn, damn, I think, trotting quickly down the stairs to search for the orange liqueur. This will put me even further behind.
At first, I can’t find Le Maestro. The assistants don’t have the key to the liquor cabinets. They send me to the pastry kitchen. I run up three flights to find him leaning on the industrial mixer. Le Maestro waves away my breathless and ill-formed French request for Cointreau. Expensive alcohol goes only to the chefs, he says dismissively, and Chef Gaillard knows that. I run downstairs, practicing my response in French for Chef. On my arrival, he scowls at me, a bottle of the liqueur in his hands.
I return to my station. A few minutes later, I hear another growl.
“Où sont les oeufs et le fromage pour les gnocchis?” I turn around. He’s sniffing with fury like a taunted bull.
Oh, shit. I apologize and run downstairs. After hauling three dozen eggs and a three-pound package of Gruyère into the dumbwaiter, I head back upstairs. I unload it and head directly to my station. I remove my cutting board, clear away all knives, and toss flour onto the marble. Then, I take a deep breath.
I’ve never made gnocchi, small dumplings whose name means “lumps” in Italian. Although I took notes, I don’t remember the demonstration well. Sometimes, this happens at Le Cordon Bleu. The chefs sense some spare time in a demonstration and add in an extra lesson. I follow my notes, which I’ve taken to putting into plastic sleeves to protect them from the dirt and grime of the kitchen.
While the results seem gnocchi-like, meaning they look like lumps of potatoes and dough, I cook one by itself and taste. Tasteless. We aren’t making a sauce for the gnocchi, and Chef suggests that we sauté them. I do it, hoping a brief hot-butter bath will add some flavor.
I nurse my orange sauce. It’s sweet, but it has a good, almost velvety consistency. I’ve caught up to the rest of the class, although some students are presenting their plates.
It isn’t pretty.
On every plate, Chef complains the sauce is too sweet. At Kim, he decries her duck as so overcooked it’s criminal. He picks up a piece of Amit’s gnocchi, tastes it, and throws it back onto his plate. Amit begins to protest, and Chef holds up his hand.
After four too-sweet sauces, he’s agitated. Loudly, he advises the rest of us to finish the sauce with a bit of vinegar. I grab an almost-empty bottle on the table.
“Don’t use it all, I need some,” says Anna-Clare. “Mine is really sweet, too.”
I add two drops and taste. Too sweet. Two more drops, no changes. Four drops. Better. Another couple drops . . . and I detect a hint of vinegar. Do I make it less sweet or risk having it taste like vinegar? Do I use the rest? No. I hand the bottle to Anna-Clare.
I slice my duck, fan it out, then drizzle a spoonful of the dark sauce in a crescent around the meat and arrange five of the still-warm gnocchi in a fan shape on the other side. They look like naked little rolls of flesh, but then so do everyone else’s.
I’m the eighth person to present my plate. Perhaps it’s just bad timing, perhaps it’s me. But the moment he tastes my sauce, his face contorts into a grotesque gesture and turns visibly red.
“C’EST HORRIBLE!” he screams. The clattering noise of the training kitchen fades in the background.
Being yelled at by someone is unpleasant enough; it is worse when you’re not sure what that person is saying.
“Vous ne pourriez pas servir ceci!”
My mind rushes to translate. You . . . not . . . serve this.
“Pourquoi vous me donnez cette assiette.” Why . . . you . . . give me this plate?
“Vous n’avez pas honte?” You . . . shit, what is he saying?
I’m stunned by the tirade—so much that I can’t speak. I stand in a daze. To punctuate a point, he slams his fist against the counter and accidentally touches the edge of my plate. It spins hard, skidding across the surface.
By now, nothing else is happening in the kitchen. Everyone stands frozen, watching. After what seems like a lifetime, he just stops, nearly breathless. Everyone stares at me. I can almost hear their hearts beat. What will I say to defend myself?
My mind is blank for a response. I open my mouth. Nothing.
Chef sighs and turns away. Disappointed, he asks LizKat to translate as he stares at me, shaking and breathless.
“He wants to know if you think what you presented was acceptable,” she says stiffly. “He said if this were the exam, you would have failed.” Then, more casually, she adds, “Evidently, he thinks that you ignored his request to put in vinegar, and that you didn’t taste it.”
“Of course I tasted my sauce. It was sweet, I used vinegar, and it seemed to tone it down. Anna-Clare watched me do it.” Anna-Clare nods. “I tasted it about a half-dozen times.” She chats to him some more in French, explaining my response.
“Tell him I’m sorry about my French,” I add. “I couldn’t . . . think of anything to say.” She nods sympathetically.
I hear her offer my apology. “Elle est désolée pour son français, mais elle comprend. . . .” He waves LizKat away. People begin to move around in the kitchen, my humiliation seemingly complete. He gestures to a horrified Tai Xing to come forward with her plate. As I turn away, I hear one last assault.
“Vous perdez votre temps!”
I turn on my heel to look at him. My mind races to translate.
You’re wasting your time.
I turn back to my oven. I slam my unwashed knives loosely into my canvas bag. I throw all of my food into the trash. I can’t get out of the kitchen fast enough. I begin to cry, and I hate myself for it. Anna-Clare has been watching me.
She puts her arm around my waist. “Kat, I’ll clean your station,” she whispers soothingly. “You should just go.”
I collect myself and walk out of the kitchen in obvious tears. I run down to the basement locker room. I lock myself into a bathroom and collapse onto the toilet in a heap. My body shakes as I gulp down my tears.
What a disaster. I’ve spent my adult life thinking that I was a good cook. What about all those ambitious dinner parties? I’m struggling through Basic Cuisine, and according to one chef I’m wasting my time. I feel as if I am failing at the one thing that I’d always loved.
After ten minutes, I get up to wash my face. As the cold water hits me, I remember: I am a class assistant. I pull myself together and go into the locker room, now filling with students returning from classes. Ramona finds me.
“Don’t worry about the kitchen, I put everything away,” she says in her heavy Mexican accent. She embraces me. “I have to go, but you call my mobile if you are sad, yes?”
I get my phone to dial Mike. Once I hear his voice, I start crying again. I huddle against my locker.
“Come right home,” he says. I rush to dress, bumping into everyone around me in the cramped room. On the way out, I run into LizKat, her eyes heavy with sympathy.
“That was thoroughly appalling,” she says in her crisp English accent. She tugs off her necktie. “I mean, everyone’s sauce was too sweet. I told him that after you left. He kept saying he thought you hadn’t tasted it.”
“But I did,” I protest, “I tasted it over and over as I added vinegar.”
“I know, I know,” she said, holding her hands up in the air in surrender. “That chef is so unpredictable. He is just a man of gray moods.”
On the Métro, I can think of plenty of responses to the chef, now that it doesn’t matter. It’s a long way to the top of the sixth floor, what will be our home for another ten days. Mike hears me on the stairs and greets me with a long hug.
“It’s better to make your mistakes before the exam,” he says. He pulls me inside. He’s drawn a bubble bath, lit candles, and poured me a glass of cold Chablis. He rubs my neck in the bath and tries to bolster my confidence. But the words keep coming back to me:
“You’re wasting your time.”
I can’t sleep. All I can think about are percentages. I have no idea about my grades so far. The final test makes up nearly half of the overall grade for the course. Fail the final, and I will not pass Basic Cuisine, dropping me out of the diploma program.
At 6:00 a.m., I give up and leave Mike in the warm bed. I study the recipes for the exam in the living room until it’s time to leave for school. We have a final demonstration at 12:30, followed by our exam at 3:30.
As Chef Bertrand goes through preparation of rack of lamb and baked Alaska, I can’t focus on any of it, consumed as I am with dread and exhaustion.
We assemble outside the kitchen door at 3:25. Chef Colville doesn’t let us enter until nearly 3:45. He hands each of us a slip of paper with the name of a dish. Damn. I have drawn the horrid hake steaks with hollandaise sauce. The other five students have been assigned the chicken fricassée with tarragon, a straightforward stew.
Amit offers a hug. “Don’t think about yesterday. You’re going to do fine.”
I collect the basket the assistants set up for me. I store the hake and a duo of hazy-eyed whitefish in my fridge. My hands are shaking.
I go through the routine of the court bouillon, clumsily cut up the hake, and then start on the sauce. My hollandaise breaks, and I have to start over. Both test recipes call for turning thirty-six vegetables as garnishes. L.P. asks Chef Colville if we need to present all the vegetables.
“Bien sûr,” he replies and waves a warning finger to all of us, “and no less.”
Despite all my practice, it takes me a long time just to turn so many vegetables. I start to get anxious.
And then, a final blow.
“Une demi heure, a half hour,” the chef warns, to a wave of protests. That’s 6:00 p.m. But we started late, we argue. We should finish at 6:15 p.m. No discussion, he says.
I steady myself. I am forty minutes away from finishing.
At 5:50 p.m., I plate my hake and cover it with plastic wrap as instructed and pour my sauce into a saucier. But although I’ve practiced filleting about eight fish in the past week, I get only halfway through the duo of whitefish when Chef Colville roars, “Arrêtez!” Stop!
All of us are seemingly midtask. We put down our knives. It’s over.
We clean out our lockers. Weighed down with their contents and the unpleasantness of the exam, we gather for drinks at a nearby tabac. We are downbeat and dejected. No one feels good about the test. We feel cheated on time. LizKat orders a Martini blanc, and half of us follow her lead. Amit and Diego order a couple of Stella Artoises. We toast the imminent demise of Chef Colville and Chef Gaillard, “the Gray Chef.”
Just then, another student appears, fresh from her own exam. In her kitchen, Chef Bertrand told them they had to turn just twelve vegetables, and he gave the class fifteen minutes extra at the end. It strikes us as so unfair that we order another round of drinks.
Eventually, we say good-bye to Anna-Clare, LizKat, Kim, and Amit. Anna-Clare must return to her life as an ad exec, while LizKat has been offered a glamorous job with a PR agency working to bring Krispy Kreme doughnuts to Europe. Kim has signed up for cooking lessons with a French woman who teaches in her home; Le Cordon Bleu was too brutal. Amit is heading off to study French boulangerie; for him, the school was not challenging enough.
Just as the group disperses, Mike arrives. He offers to take me to dinner to celebrate. Picking up my bags, he asks me what I want to eat.
“Anything but French,” I reply.
Canard à l’Orange aux Figues
DUCK WITH ORANGE SAUCE AND FIGS
Serves two to three
Fresh ducks can be found in Asian markets or ordered from a good butcher; allow ample time to thaw a frozen bird. Wild or organic ducks cook more quickly, so monitor closely. This recipe uses a roasting technique that we learned at school as described in Le Cordon Bleu at Home, used here with permission from the Paris school. I’ve updated the classic orange sauce by adding sliced figs, tempering the sweetness with balsamic vinegar. Pairs well with a Sauvignon Blanc, or Chablis, or a fruity red such as a Sangiovese or Beaujolais Nouveau. Make two ducks for four to six guests.
ROASTED DUCK
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon + 1 teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 4-to-5-pound (about 2 kg) duck
1 large onion, quartered
1 bay leaf
SAUCE
2 tablespoons water
¼ cup (50 g) sugar
1½ cups (350 ml) fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
2 tablespoons minced shallots or onions
1½ tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 cup (250 ml) brown chicken stock
¼ cup (about six) dried figs, sliced
1 tablespoon orange liqueur, such as Cointreau
1 to 2 tablespoons butter
1/8 teaspoon salt, cracked black pepper
Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C. Mix the butter with the salt, pepper, 1 teaspoon dried thyme, and cumin. Rinse the duck inside and out; pat dry. Cut off the tips of the duck wings and cut off the tail completely, remove two yellow glands underneath. Season cavity with salt and pepper; put in the onion, bay leaf, and remaining thyme and truss tightly. Rub the skin with the seasoned butter, covering the skin completely.
Place the duck on its side in a roasting pan and roast for twenty minutes. Turn the duck to the other side and roast for another twenty minutes. Turn the duck breast-side down and roast the back for twenty minutes. Turn over, breast-side up, and roast until the juices run clear when the thigh is pierced with a knife, about twenty-five to thirty-five more minutes. When done, let the duck rest for fifteen minutes before carving.
After you turn the duck for the final time, start the sauce: Combine the water and sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until darkened and browned like caramel. Take off heat and immediately add the orange juice, orange zest, shallots or onions, and a half tablespoon of the balsamic vinegar. Return to heat and reduce by half, scraping the bottom to loosen caramel. Add stock and figs. Reduce by one third, until it becomes a light syrup. Add the rest of the balsamic vinegar and the Cointreau. Just before serving, whisk in the butter and check seasonings, adding salt and pepper to taste. Carve duck into eight pieces, discarding the cavity seasonings.