Mystery basket menus for final exam

What one knows about cooking is only as good as how well one can apply the knowledge when those 60,000-BTU burners are fired up. That's the left brain-right brain dance that occurs in the kitchen.

Then there's what I call the "third brain," a mystical element that catalyzes the cognitive and the creative in the culinary arts, bringing about magical results that a scientist could explain but whose properties are better left to the imagination.

All the knowledge we have acquired in the last 18 weeks, and all the skill we have built in applying it must come together for magical results on Wednesday in final competency cooking exams in Culinary Foundations III.

First test will be that after fabricating a whole chicken, we will take one breast and make a meal of it, in 45 minutes. More about my plan for that in a blog posting later today.

Second test will be prepping, cooking and plating another meal from a specified menu in one hour, what Chef Dan Fluharty has called "the mystery basket." He revealed mystery basket contents on Friday:

1. Seared and oven-finished breast of duck with sauce bigarade, herbed couscous, seasonal vegetable, garnish.
2. Grilled New York steak with roasted garlic compound butter, pommes duchesse, creamed spinach and garnish.
3. Poached snapper with salmon mousseline, caper beurre blanc, rice pilaf, seasonal vegetable and garnish.
4. Seared and oven-finished rack of lamb with hazelnut crust, mint demi-glace sauce, potatoes croquettes, Brussels sprouts and garnish.
5. Grilled pork chop with sauce chasseur, potatoes anna, sauté of green beans and red bell peppers and garnish.

Before we drew numbers on Friday from Chef's toque blanche to determine who makes which plate, the buzz among the 10 of us was that the highest degree of difficulty is with the poached snapper because of the mousseline. That's a stuffing that must be prepped and piped into the rolled fish fillet.

Perhaps. But every one of the five has its challenges, not only in getting the protein cooked properly, but in the balance between crispness and overdoneness in vegetables, the delicacies of the sauces and the seasoning needed to bring the starches to full flavor.

On Tuesday, I will reveal which of the five I drew and my game plan for it.

Why do chefs wear the tall hats?

¡Que Aprovecho! reader Maria asked:

Why do some chefs where these toques? Is there a reason they're so tall? Do they need to store eggs in them, ala I Love Lucy? I've always wondered about this. Maybe you can shed some light?

Good question, and thanks for submitting it. Your reference to hiding eggs as in I Love Lucy actually has a connection to the history of the toque blanche. Here's an excerpt from the Website www.cheftalk.com:

Chefs as far back as the 16th century are said to have worn toques. During that period artisans of all types (including chefs) were often imprisoned, or even executed, because of their freethinking. To alleviate persecution, some chefs sought refuge in the Orthodox Church and hid amongst the priests of the monasteries. There they wore the same clothes as the priests-including their tall hats and long robes-with the exception of one deviating trait: the chef's clothes were gray and the priest's were black.

It wasn't until the middle 1800's that chef Marie-Antoine Carême redesigned the uniforms. Carême thought the color white more appropriate, that it denoted cleanliness in the kitchen; it was also at this time that he and his staff began to wear double-breasted jackets. Carême also thought that the hats should be different sizes, to distinguish the cooks from the chefs. The chefs wore the tall hats and the younger cooks wore shorter hats, more like a cap. Carême himself supposedly wore a hat that was 18 inches tall! The folded pleats of a toque, which later became an established characteristic of the chef's hat, were first said to have been added to indicate the more than 100 ways in which a chef can cook an egg.

 Every chef at the California Culinary Academy wears a toque in class and around school. Every student is required to wear the small cap, call a commis, along with the full uniform when in class and on campus.