Today was our first exam day. Made up of two separate exams – a practical and a theory exam. I was a bit nervous because I was unsure of what to expect, but I think that overall it went pretty well. In addition to the exams, we also had to turn in our notebooks for the first time. Chef Francois will go through each students notebook and check our recipes.
The practical exam focused mostly on techniques. We had to make a variety of dishes/items, show our knife skill abilities and show our ability tourne potatoes (sorry I can’t give away too many details or the exam!). A tourne potato is a potato shaped like a football with 7 sides. It is a hard task, but it gets easier the more you do it. Here is a picture to give you a better idea of what the potato should look like.
Picture was taken from a blog called Seasoned with Love, that also explains the process of how to tourne a potato.
My potatoes turned out great! Chef told me that he was impressed 
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Since we are such a large group, we were split into two groups. There were only 13 of us in the kitchen for the practical exam, which made the kitchen very calm and quiet. That is not usually the case with 23 students. I enjoyed the clam, it made it enjoyable and allowed me to focus on my tasks without being nervous.
I think I did pretty well on the theory exam as well – fingers crossed. Over the last few days, some of us spent a lot of time reviewing after school with the Teaching Assistant and I did quite a bit of studying on my own. But to be honest,the thing that prepared me the most was paying attending and working hard in the kitchen each day, as well as going home to write the recipes. Fingers crossed I actually did well!
Stay tuned for a week in review post later this week – I promise to include more photos!
