That's it. It's over. It is now the official end of the semester. Holy crap. Three and half months of braising, baking, boiling, putting gelatin in things that should never know what gelatin is and getting yelled at in Italian. Not exactly a thorough summation, but you get the gist.
As you may have guessed, the final exam at a culinary school is not 50 true/false questions and an essay on the merits of stainless steel (quite a metal it is though). No, the last big bang at Apicius is the Restaurant Simulation.
We spend most of the semester building up to it: choosing the dishes, designing the menus, pairing wines, rethinking plating, etc. We pretty much have free reign, but there are some ground rules. Briefly, here's how it works.
- Everything has to be Italian food (no bangers and mash, no sashimi).
- Everything has to fit within a food budget (we scrapped the lobster stuffed with foie gras and truffles, served on a bed of caviar at the last minute).
- We have to have five courses:
- Aperitivi: Basically little finger foods to munch on with pre-dinner cocktails.
- Antipasti: You know, stuff before the pasta.
- Primi: The first course composed of pasta, risottos, or soups.
- Secondi: Main course with little side dish dishes.
- Dessert: You know what the hell dessert is.
- In all of the courses (except aperitivi) we had to provide a fish option, a meaty option, and a vegetarian option (not vegan, though, because we are still in Italy).
- And finally, everything has to be served a la carte, no tasting menu shortcuts like they let the intermediate classes do.
- Oh right, I forgot. Everything has to be made in ONE day. Prep starts at 8:30am with service starting at 8pm, everything from scratch, nothing prepared in advance. Wee!
The guest list is composed of about 50 Italian folk: investors in the school, local chefs, peeps from important wine families, and others of similar ilk. The school would really rather we not suck, not just for our sake but also because this is supposed to be impressive and titillating, not awkward and kind of gross.
So what did we make for this entourage of finicky gastronomes (gastro-gnomes)? Lots and lots of delicious things that youâll probably never get to have, and the knowledge of this gaping void in your culinary ensemble will keep you up nights sweating and perpetually unsatisfied. Well possibly not, but it was pretty delicious.
We started with four different aperitivi. First, there were crostini with veal liver mousse and a spicy cauliflower coulis. Next was smoked salmon and capered robiola cheese served on Belgian endive- crispy, salty, creamy, a touch of bitter. The most unusual offering was a crostini of preserved quail yolks, white bean puree and fried red cabbage. The yolks are cured using a bit of molecular gastronomy that we jacked from some Italian guy. Basically, you marinate them in salt, sugar and bean paste. They firm up on the outside, but the very center remains deliciously yolky. Strange but yummy.
Finally, we stuffed dates with almonds and wrapped them in pancetta. They got baked and came out all sweet, salty and gooey, but for some reason never got served. Maybe we pissed off one of the waiters because the trays ended up just sitting in the baking room all night. Oh well.
Enter the antipasti. Lightest was a shrimp tartar with pink peppercorns and tarragon. It had a nice little chicory salad on top and a side of citrus foam. The turf to that surf was a warm salad of rabbit confit with peperonata and black olive tapenade. The rabbit turned out perfectly, highlighting its tender juiciness.
The most popular starter was our Cheese Three Ways. It consisted of a parmesan creme brulee with balsamic sauce, grilled pecorino with pepper jelly, and gorgonzola mousse with caramelized pears and walnuts. All in all, not a bad little trio. Not the best dish but certainly the most cheese packed.
The primi were two pastas and a soup. The first was pici (kind of like thick spaghetti) with pistachio sauce and confit tomatoes infused with thyme and garlic. Somehow in all the sauce tossing I missed getting a picture of this one :(
Next we served venison and baked apple ravioli with chestnut sauce. We added a little acid with a red wine reduction. The whole mess was rich, nutty, and a little gamey- mmmwah!
The non-pasta, otherwise known as soup, was cacciuco, a variation on a costal Tuscan dish with sea bass, red mullet and clams. Definitely fisholicious.
The most successful dishes of the evening were probably the secondi. We had been struggling to iron out all of their details for the last few weeks. We ended up changing at least one thing on all of the dishes the day of the simulation. But if it works it works.
Meat-wise, we served pork fillet grilled in lardo with a side of chickpea puree and braised artichokes with mint sauce. Yum. Props to Fiona (one of my 4 compatriots) for making some of the best artichokes Iâve had.
On the seafood front, we served monkfish with saffron sauce, sunchoke gratin and brussels sprouts. The flavors all worked great together and the color of the saffron sauce really gave everything a nice pop.
The veggie dish was cabbage involtini stuffed with roasted root vegetables- beets, pumpkin, and celery root to be exact- and served with fried polenta. For some reason this dish was crazy popular. I mean, it was awesomely tasty, but we almost sold out of them before we even plated any of the other dishes. Odd but true because Tuscans certainly arenât renowned for their dearth of meat loving.
Everything went smoothly up to this point. Dishes looked nice, things went out on time, everyone knew his or her job and then, then we got to dessert. It wasnât exactly a catastrophe and truth be told the food that went out to the diners all scored well on the delectability scale. Itâs just that we had a few problems.
First, we had an order for the apple tart tatin with five-spice gelato. No trouble with the tart, but when someone returned with the bowl of gelato holding it upside down, I figured we may have a small issue. I tapped the ice cream and found it to be a similar texture to the steel bowl that it was in.
Turns out that somebody left it in the flash freezer for most of the day. Whoops. A small chisel and some cunning work with a hand mixer later, we had what passed for gelato-ish texture. At least it tasted good.
As I was finishing up with the frozen dairy debacle, I rounded the corner to find two of the guys helping us, plating what appeared to be a large amount of chocolate sauce. Unfortunately, we weren't serving any chocolate sauce.
"I don't care how much of a hurry you're in you have to cook the f@#%ing cakes!" Yes, in their exuberance to be timely they had decided to serve the rosemary chocolate cake with orange caramel sauce in an avant garde batter style. After five minutes in the oven in addition to a bit of explanatory strangulation, these too turned out quite nice.
The last desert, a panna cotta with vin santo sauce and cantucci crumbles, didn't really give us any trouble. Once we coaxed them out of their molds they were quite pretty and even more popular. Florentines love their solidified cream.
And basically that was it. We finished service, cleaned up and went out drinking until about four in the morning. We all felt very chefy. When we come back next semester hopefully we'll find out that all of the diners liked eating it as much as we liked making it. For now though, I'm off to eat southern Italy, the Mezzogiorno.
Ooh, ooh! Time for a bit of bragging post script. In addition to all of the cooking and whatnot, I have a fun little food photography class. One of the shots I took (just goofing around really) made its way into the hands of the folks over at Florence University of the Arts and they used it on their catalog cover, promotional posters, and invitations for their big end of the year art show. Go Pants go.
-L.Pants
