Janet wanted more food, less geek. Well, food's over! At 6:30 this morning I woke up slightly dazed to the sound of my phone buzzing. Kyle and I had set up a wake-up buddy system, and while I can't imagine that I was really awoken by a vibrating phone in a cloth bag over two meters away, I must have at least been stirred out of complacency by that fact. I got to school terrifically early and sat there looking at my notes while people trickled in (while I hadn't been the first, I'd been on the early edge).

We had a practical scheduled for the morning, followed by our practical exam immediately afterward. Practical class #29 was comprised of cheese gnocci and magret de canard with sauce à l'orange. Between having screwed up the pâte à choux once (for pommes dauphine, sometime last week), thus getting a set of very particular tips from the chef that day, and also reading somewhere (either on the InterWeb or in one of Michael Ruhlman's books) about the hot-knife trick for cutting the dough out of the piping bag, I felt awesome about the gnocci and pretty good about the canard.

After that was a practical exam, in which we had to (1) filet two fish and leave both the filets and the carcasses for examination and (2) execute a dish from the course with only a fresh ingredients list and no notes. I happened to draw the plate we'd done two days ago, and fared correctly but not spectacularly. Guess I used up all the good karma on Friday, when my dish was deemed excellent.

We had demo #30 afterward, which was pretty much a party. That the menu was spectacular didn't hurt: herb-crusted rack of lamb garnished with saffron rice-stuffed tomatoes and mushroom duxelle-stuffed zucchini. We also had one of the more jovial chefs, Bruno Stril, and between the much more relaxed air and Kyle and Maria's commentary ("That baked Alaska's more flaming than I am!"), it was a fun wrap-up to a great five weeks with white wine afterward. At one point Kyle made me snicker so hard the chef looked up and said, "Sounds like someone wants to help the chef later", Kyle forcefully nominated me, and I got to go up and help imbibe the genoise with sugar-alcohol-syrup for Baked Alaska.

I wrote most of this before graduation, but didn't get to post it. And now I've allotted myself five minutes to get packed and out of the house and to Gare de Lyon to go play ultimate in Nottingham!