My passion for cooking has been burning from an early age. My opportunity to really put it into action, and put it to the test came when a friend of mine was doing a leadership course.
At the time I was enrolled in a cooking course through the local community school. The course was at my friend’s suggestion – I decided to finally invest some real time in my hobby and signed up for it.
Then thanks to a broken down car and work travel I only made the first two lessons. But that was all I needed really – all I needed to believe that I was now an expert in both Moroccan and French cuisine, lessons 1 & 2.
So after my friend told of her plans to host a ‘talent night’ – caught up in the excitement I volunteered both my small apartment for the event and my cooking skills as master chef for the evening. 24 guests in total.
So armed with a rented fridge, an electric stove where one of the elements didn’t work, a knife set from K-Mart, two cooking lessons, and a bucket load of ambition, I set out to cook a full French meal for 24 people.
A Scottish historian once said “I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
...and I certainly wasn’t bored. So thus began my ambitious plan.
The French claim to be the first to come up with the multi-course progressive meal, with an entree, mains, and then dessert. But three courses? So passé! Isn’t that the standard structure of most menus in most restaurants throughout the western world? C’mon Frenchies, only three? What’s a good meal without something to distinguish it from others? And this isn’t just some restaurant, this is my place.
So four courses it is!
The early beginnings of the degustation menu perhaps???
Menu
- Entree – Chicken and Mushroom soup.
- Main no. 1 – Mussels in white wine sauce.
- Main no. 2 – Chicken in red wine sauce.
- Dessert – Apple Clafoutis with custard
Was I worried? Not at all. Though a tinge of doubt entered my mind when I ordered ahead for the mussels at my local seafood supplier. He immediately grabbed the phone and called his supplier for a special order of additional mussels to counter for the shortfall. I’m guessing this doesn’t happen every day.
Then at the supermarket loading up on mushrooms. People started pushing in and grabbing for mushrooms. Just because I was cleaning out most of the tray. Surely the supermarket must have more out the back, shouldn’t they? It felt like the jostling at the local department store over stock-take sale bargains.
Then my family decided to pop over the night before – on my prep night. So why not go out to the pub for the evening?
Thankfully friends came to the rescue.
Before I knew it I had three tables to seat 8 each, 24 chairs (all set with covers and sashes), enough cutlery and plates to go around (provided there was a washup between a couple of the courses) and three other stoves in the nearby suburbs helping me cook up a storm.
But the show’s not over until the chef finishes service for the night.
So I arrive back from the pub on Friday night at 11pm and begin prepping, and keep going on my prep until 4am.
Prep’s not finished so I decide to get 3 hours sleep and get up at 7am and continue. I prep and cook all through the day and everything is ready for service by 5:30pm. Just enough time to dress up in my pressed shirt and bow-tie ready for the talent night. Thankfully my performance expectations are limited to dinner.
The results were up and down.
Personally I loved the mussels in white wine sauce but I learnt an important food lesson that night – not all food is for all people. There were some that passed but others that ate a double helping, so thankfully the quantities worked themselves out.
Then there was the chicken in red-wine sauce. Another important lesson – keep an eye on the stove – burnt at the base of the pan. Recoupable but not my best performance.
Then there was the dessert – a hit! I would have been disappointed otherwise because this dish really was from scratch. I peeled, chopped, and stewed the apples myself and made the baked custard mixture with the raw ingredients and baked each clafoutis individually in my run-down oven.
But the highlight of the night turn out to be the chicken and mushroom soup. I made a major miscalculation when first cooking this soup in my cooking class and subsequently won the vote for the best soup of the night. Not strictly French in the end but very tasty. Recipe coming soon...
What a night. Even though things weren’t ‘perfect’ and I look back now thinking ‘what was I doing?’ and even ‘what was I thinking?’ it was a fantastic experience and one that I would repeat. And that I did.
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