Mid-Term Exams at Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver

I didn't blog last week as we had our culinary mid-term. It was an intense and interesting process. I did very well on the written exam but the practical was full-on high stress to get about 8 different things completed in under 2.5 hours. For every minute you were late, you were deducted 1% up to a maximum of 10%.

I did fairly well on the practical but wound up being 8 minutes late. I scored 73% (class average was 67%) and was able to redo a few items today to make up some marks. I brought my grade up to 81% for the practical portion which I am pleased with. One girl scored an awesome 94%!

In the 2.5 hours, I had to: make and bake a baguette, make a flaky dough and blind-bake a quiche crust, fill the quiche crust and bake it, make a mayonnaise, a hollandaise, and do 3-1/4 cups of different knife cuts, along with 3 turned zuchinnis. All of this had to be served at the same time, at the proper temperature. You needed to know how to hold your hollandaise sauce so it wouldn't t split on you. So once again, timing comes into play and you have to have a good game plan to get things done.

Knife cuts are an important skill to develop if you want to be in fine dining. It takes a lot of practice to do it well and we were told that this is usually what slows students down during their practical if they haven't been doing their homework in this area.

Here are a few examples of knife cuts. Think about cutting a raw potato into these sizes (it is simpler, due to its softer texture) but try a raw rutabega! I have decided I also don't like carrots anymore for this reason. Kidding!

Brunoise Cut 1-2mm x 1-2mm x 1-2mm (this cut is a cube with all sides around the thickness of a dime)

Julienne Cut 1-2mm x 1-2mm x 2.5-4cm long

Small Dice 3mm x 3mm x 3mm

By mid-term, we should be able to cut a 1/4 (hopefully more) of each cut under 15 minutes. In the industry, it probably takes less than 5 minutes. These are precise cuts that look quite flattering on a plate when presented.

Overall, it was a great experience and now we are kicking it up a notch now that mid-term is over.

Tagged as: [ exams mid-term nwcav ]