Did I tell you about the guy....?

There's a guy in our class who's taking it for the second time, having failed the first time around. He's both clueless (he asked Andy if he could use his quarter teaspoon three times, for a recipe that called for 3/4 teaspoon...) and bossy ("That pizza sauce was made with no love. You can taste it." Andy said, "You're talking about my friends there. Better watch it."). And apparently he gets on Chef Lorriann's last nerve, as well. Chef told him that if he presented her three "perfectly plated" desserts by Friday, he wouldn't have to attend the last week of class. Then she excused him, telling him to go to the library and "do research." As he packed up his knife bag, he announced, "I'm going to make a savory dessert. There's no law that says that dessert has to be sweet. A great chef is someone who can put together something that sounds totally disgusting and make people want to eat it."

That's not my definition of a great chef.

After he finally left the kitchen, Chef Lorriann came in and urged us to finish our projects and clean up. "I'm sick of you people today. I want you to go home." Said with a smile, of course.

First thing this morning, we practiced some competencies, things we should know before we graduate: making little cones out of parchment paper (12 per full sheet, for piping), making a "cartouche" (a circle of parchment paper, folded and torn, to line a baking pan), and piping chocolate: "Happy Birthday" and our name, and the alphabet. Andrea won the contest for neatness. Chef encouraged us to make the cartouche by folding and tearing the paper, not (as many of us do) by drawing a circle and cutting it out. "Whether you know it or not, people are watching you. Your friends are watching you. Your chef is definitely watching you. If you do it this way, you look like somebody who knows what you are doing." When she caught Jason tracing around a cake pan later in the morning, she said, "That's the wrong method. That's the method of the person who missed the lecture."

Before being urged to leave, I spent the morning tempering chocolate and making garnishes for my triple chocolate mousses. Today, I plated the conical ones, "Madonna Mousse" as Derrick called them. The mousse, turned out of the silicon liner and propped up on the cake layer, looked pretty damn dismal, but once I got finished garnishing, I'd turned the proverbial pig's ear into a silk purse. It was appetizing enough for a Careme Room guest to order it served at the start of her meal, before her appetizer.