my favorite roller coaster ride

It's an amazing experience to be in an educational environment where every single person present is super excited to be there.  Think about it...you may have been wise enough to know what your passion was at the young age of 18 and studied it in college, but you probably had to take a bunch of classes that didn't interest you either.  I didn't follow my bliss until I started culinary school a few weeks ago, so I spent my college years studying because I was supposed to.  This is totally different.  I'm not in culinary school out of obligation or because it is the logical, expected next step in my life (quite the opposite, really).  I'm studying and practicing because I absolutely want to.  And that seems to be the case with my classmates too.  Everyone is there because they want to be.  Heck, most of us show up for class 30 minutes early because we are so eager to get back in the kitchen and learn.

But even with all of this big love for culinary school, I'm still dealing with some serious nervousness.  To be honest, the range of emotions I go through on Monday nights feels like a crazy roller coaster ride.  For example, I walk into school completely giddy with excitement, next enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn take over during lecture, then Chef gives us our tasks and I literally want to cry or vomit from pure nervousness.  I don't think I know how to do what he just asked me to do - did I miss something??? - we just briefly spoke about this thing he is asking me to do and it involves very sharp knives and/or very hot fire.  Do all of my classmates feel confident about the tasks???  (And it is so reassuring to discover that they are feeling a bit intimidated and/or nervous too - it's true, misery adores company.)  Chef is watching, he is evaluating me...I better figure it out fast.  This is where I am for most of the class - unsure, but plowing through.  And then a beautiful thing happens...not only do I learn a million things about cooking, I learn a lot about myself.  I learn that I was able to do that task that Chef asked me to do....or I learn I was completely wrong about the chicken being done and there is beauty in that too.

Last night's class was on Cooking Methods.  Chef gave a lecture and then we had to execute each of them - we did a few as a group, but most of them were individual efforts (see above for how I was feeling about all of this!!!).  We had a lot of items to cook and not a ton of time, so we had to work very efficiently and in concert with our classmates as we are sharing kitchen space and equipment.  We had to present each item to Chef for evaluation.  Below is a complete list on what we cooked and how we cooked it, along with notes on how I did (or how the group did).

• Braise - chicken leg and mirepoix (combination of onions, celery and carrots) - group: My group did really well on this.
• Roast - chicken thigh - group: Remember that undercooked chicken I mentioned above...yup, I was SURE it was done.  Sorry, group...my bad.
• Roast - carrots - group: Those little suckers were beautiful!
• Grill - pork chop - individual: This was my first time to grill anything and I did pretty well.  I need to work on perfecting the grill marks.
• Grill - zucchini - individual: Lovely.
• Deep-fry - chicken tender - individual: I know how to use a deep-fryer and a fry basket now.  And I make a darn, good chicken tender.
• Deep-fry - onion piece - individual: Not bad on the frying...need to do better on the breading.
• Deep-fry - potato - individual:  I undercooked the darn thing.
• Pan-fry - tilapia - individual: I should have changed the oil since it had already been heavily used and had gotten slightly too hot.
• Sear - pork chop - individual: Hockey puck, anyone?  I needed a hotter pan and less cooking time.
• Saute- shrimp - individual: A tasty little morsel.
• Saute - onions - individual: I used a bit too much olive oil, but overall did pretty well.
• Blanch - zucchini - individual: Lovely.
• Steam - shrimp - individual: Slightly overcooked.
• Steam - carrots - individual: Good job.
• Shallow poach - tilapia - individual: I have a lot of growth opportunity with this cooking method.  =)
• Deep poach - egg - individual:  To me, this is the holy grail of cooking methods (probably because I LOVE eggs benedict and it looks so darn complicated).  I have never attempted to poach an egg before.  I did it last night and I did it very well.  Can you hear I proud I am?  And my whole class totally rocked the poached egg!!!  I'm so proud of everyone!!!  So, I will be making homemade eggs benedict this weekend.
• Simmer - potatoes - group: Not a difficult thing to do, but we failed to notice that we had a million different-sized potatoes in our pot...so that was a miss on our part.
• Simmer - rice - group: We did just fine on that one.
• Boil - pasta - group:  Good job!

So, I went from giddy to enthusiastic to very intimidated and nervous to deal with it and determined to proud to a little disappointed to proud again to completely exhausted all within five hours...and I can't wait to ride this crazy ride all over again.