Success!

My first term at Le Cordon Bleu is over. I have almost graduated, and although I don't know my final mark, I do know that my exam dish was awarded 77.5%. Yes!

The ticket I picked was the roast beef, which was the easiest of the three, and being my first exam where beef has ever featured, I did pretty well. My only downfall was being so terrified of over cooking the meat that it came out very, very pink, rather than the medium-rare I was going for. But the chefs comments were great, everything tasted lovely and the only additional comment they had was that the beans were presented slightly over the inner rim of the plate. And luckily I can live with that.

Looking back over the past term, I really have come a long way. In the first practical I was slightly stressed out by cutting lots of vegetables, with a time pressure, and surrounded by nine other people who might be going faster than me. And now... Well, I'm not Gordon Ramsay, but I'm so much better than I was, and looking forward to my Patisserie course that starts in two weeks.

And in the meantime, I'll share a little of what I learnt in my next post.

Time to get serious

9 weeks into my 10 week Basic Cuisine course, and it's gone by so fast! We've learnt so much, and my cooking's massively improved, from being daunted by, well, most things really, to being comfortable cooking meat, fish, veg, pastry, and in the Cordon Bleu style, happily adding butter and cream whenever I can!

But now come the exams - not the chicken and lamb exams that counted but didn't really matter. For Wednesdays exams I not only have to learn 3 dishes, but we also have a written exam that could cover anything from methods, ingredients and recipes, to French terms for cutting vegetables and methods like separating eggs (clarifier, or so I think...). If you fail, then you need to take the whole course again (and pay again too). And apparently people do fail. And I really don't want to fail - the graduation with champagne reception at the Emirates Stadium just wouldn't be the same if I'd flunked for the first time ever.

And of course I haven't revised. I have started cooking the exam dishes to prepare. Last night I bought 4 whole lemon sole, filleted and skinned them, and turned them almost successfully into braised lemon sole with duxelle mushrooms, spinach and potato that I mashed rather than piping it onto the plate and browning it in the oven - I had been working in the restaurant from 8am, back at 6pm to start cooking a dinner that was only ready at about 9pm, with a little help from my guest, so I thought a few shortcuts were very necessary.

Lemon sole with mushroom duxelle, duchesse potato border and spinach

Tonight I'm practising roast beef with turned potatoes, turned, glazed carrots, and green beans with a beef jus. The only flaw is that I have lost the recipe, but I'm sure I'll find it somewhere.

And the third dish that I might be examined on is guinea fowl, half made into a herby mousse, with the other half filleted and rolled around the mousse, then wrapped in clingfilm and poached with tomato coulis and courgette spaghetti. I'm trying my best to convince myself I don't need to practise that one too!

Guinea fowl with Provence herbs, tomato butter and courgette spaghetti