'You're only as good as your last plate'

Short attention spans and impatience seem to be driving forces in a good bit of society, and they are the driver in restaurants, where one mediocre or bad meal or a bad experience with service will send someone away permanently. Thus, they also drive the assessment agenda in culinary school.

"You're only as good as your last plate," Chef Dan Fluharty said Wednesday, just after applauding my classmates and me for what we prepped, cooked and plated. Then he moved on to discuss what's next.

That will be two plates, actually, on Friday. Preliminary menu calls for plate No. 1 to be a beef fillet with Madeira sauce and an artichoke and plate No. 2 to be a grilled skirt steak with green beans, a bearnaise sauce and - yum! -- French fries.

My "last plate" was turkey scaloppine, accompanied by a shiitake mushroom pan sauce, potato croquettes and a mixed greens salad with hand-made mustard vinaigrette. It was good, Chef Dan Fluharty said, giving it a high grade. He specifically mentioned the sauce and its seasoning. The assessment was confirmed later at home where I rewarmed and served the leftovers.

(I got away with one on that "last plate." My shiitake mushroom sauce lacked shiitakes; it had what was available, white button mushrooms, which I used after my shiitakes burned in the pan when I left them too long while talking to Chef about my previous "last plate." If he noticed the sauce had other than shiitakes, he didn't comment. That's a shiitake above, a less flavorful white button mushrooms below.)

Making the old switcheroo work

Minutes before the start of our cooking competency exercise today, Chef Dan Fluharty did a rundown with us of the production timeline, to make sure everyone was on the right track after Monday's near disaster.

He mentioned the need to get the duck leg in the oven first thing. Gulp! That's not what my carefully-put-together timeline called for. I tuned in to listen for his reasoning. It was, he said, that the duck leg could take much longer to cook than any of us might anticipate.

So, I started by searing the duck and putting it in the oven, and that automatically moved the plating of the duck dish to first on my timeline. The turkey scaloppine, with a much quicker turnaround time, would come second.

Nervous about switching at the last minute, I nevertheless hit the mark on both plates, getting everything done on time and with good flavors and the right amount of cooking. Just a couple of shortcomings: less taste than desired in my vinaigrette, because the oil and mustard separated; a bit of sticky sweetness in my gastrique, a sweet-sour orange-juice-based sauce for the duck.

Elsewise, it was a good cooking day and a good confidence builder via shuffling things around and doing so with success.

(Photo shows turkey cutlets with mushroom sauce at upper left, duck leg at right, potatoes croquettes at bottom.)

Redemption comes on the wings of a ... turkey

Another cooking skills challenge is in the offing on Wednesday at culinary school, and I will seek redemption for my mediocre performance of Monday.

Two plated meals are on the menu, and we prepared the mise en place for them today.

First will be turkey scaloppine, dredged in egg and coated with bread crumbs before a quick sauté. Accompanying it will be a basic pan sauce of oil and butter, white wine, shallot, shitake mushroom caps and, as needed, chicken stock. The starch is potato croquettes, which essentially are balls of breaded mashed potatoes which then are deep fried. A mixed green salad will be garnished with a hand-made mustard vinaigrette. i already made the vinairette, and it is pretty tasty.

Second plate will be duck confit, with a sweet bigarade sauce. That is a sauce of caramelized sugar, lemon and orange juices and a little demi-glace, which is reduced veal stock. The starch will be rice pilaf confetti, with the confetti for color being celery. Root vegetables -- rutabaga, carrots, turnip -- will be blanched and then put in a sauté of butter. I plan to garnish with a parsley and thyme compound butter, made by classmate Richard Johnson.

I will spend the morning putting together my production plan and timeline and the afternoon cooking to fulfill this ambitious assignment.