Food in Provence (and elsewhere)

And I’ll be very pleased never to have to wear the uncomfortable things again. I’ve enjoyed my time here (and also at Gastronomicom), but I’m not going to be cooking in a kitchen where they are required again. No more 3-month cooking courses for me!

Anyway, how did the exam go? The day started well with my focaccia in to bake just after 7 which gave me plenty of time between it coming out of the oven and 8:15 when I needed to turn up for the pre-practical formalities. And it was another good focaccia; I enjoyed it for lunch so I hope the examiners did too.

Garry handled the initial formalities, whisking the focaccia to my station, pointing out where I could choose the plates for presenting, taking the menu sheets for the tasters marks, showing me where I could find ingredients and starting me off. As I expected, the convenient oven on my station had been labelled for someone else (my neighbour in Pennywort as it happened!); somewhat annoyingly it wasn’t actually used at all whilst I was in the kitchen. Anyway, there was one spare oven for my bread, shortbread and soufflés and another one I could use temporarily to roast the peppers and then share for warming plates.

Sorting the ovens out was the first step on my order of work and after that I pretty much followed it step by step. There were some unexpected complications—like many people I expected the ingredients I’d listed to be provided but only key items (like my steak) were waiting on our bench, we had to collect the rest from the weigh-up area or the larder. Fortunately these places weren’t as busy as they are in a normal days cooking but it did mean my salad plans to accompany the starter were thrown out of kilter.

I’ve been mentioning orders of work a fair bit over the past few weeks, so here’s the one for today so you can see what I mean. This one is a little more detailed than usual (spot the comments on things I have got wrong making various of the dishes in the past), but it did mean that I barely needed to refer to the recipes, just this one sheet. (We had to hand in our orders of work; how well we prepared these was part of the exam. So it’s lucky mine is legible!)

The major thing that went wrong was that my soufflés took longer to cook than they did when I tested in the cottage, most likely some difference between the ovens. That was a little annoying as it meant the ice cream was melting when everything was ready to taste—but I did get a metaphorical pat on the back from Leo for presenting all three dishes at once rather than one by one.

So, how did they look? Well, I was whisked off from the station smartish as soon as I said I’d finished so there’s no picture of the soufflé (or the somewhat overdressed salad), but luckily I did take pictures of the main course and dessert whilst waiting for the soufflé.

Although we were told we wouldn’t get any feedback from the tasters some people apparently did. Not me, though, so I have nothing more than a couple of “well done”s and the satisfaction of finishing within the allotted time. Garry, though, liked both the Nyons olives and the olive oil so there’s some hope…

I got to eat some of the steak and the pepper salad for lunch and then found that Rory had put out some Bleu de Gex on the cheeseboard for lunch! (I’m assuming of course, that it’s because he found the piece too large, not because he didn’t like it…).

The afternoon was spent finishing off writing up and filing my notes and my index to the various recipes we’ve been given so the printer that J. mocked me for bringing has seen good service for things other than ensuring legible orders of work. It’s not yet packed away, but it is turned off. Nothing, in fact, is yet packed away but there are piles of things in readiness to be packed—it’s useful to have the full day tomorrow for packing but there’s the risk packing will be less than sufficiently efficient to allow me enough time to revise for Friday. And there’s also the bike ride to Youghal for lunch that’s whispering in my ear…