How to Survive Your Own Cooking: The Final

[mistressofblack.livejournal.com]

Lulu's smile was, perhaps, a little bit smirk-ier than normal, as the class entered the home ec room. "Good afternoon," she said, as she leaned back against her desk. "Today is your final. All the ingredients you may require -- any many that you wish to use beyond that -- are available to you, although none of them have been prepared for you in advance. You have three options before you today. Each one will suffice as your examination, but each one has its advantages and disadvantages.

"The first option is to prepare lasagne al forno. This has the advantage of being a somewhat easier recipe, but has the disadvantage that your maximum possible grade is only 75%.

"The second option, for which the maximum possible grade is a full 100%, is to make a ham and cheese soufflé.

"The third option is to make chicken cordon in phyllo pastry, the most difficult recipe here today. Because of this, your potential maximum grade on your final exam then becomes 150%."

Lulu's smiled widened. "Choose wisely," she said. "There are a range of possibilities here. Consider that a spectacular failure may yet net you more points than a somewhat less spectacular success." She waved to the stations.

"Your time begins now. You have one hour."

[ZOMG, I finally remembered to post the night before. OCD is up! will be up in a few. Yes, Lulu is cruel. Very cruel. But aren't you hungry now? ;)]

Comments

Re: Your Final!

[iseewhatyoumean.livejournal.com]

Taking Lulu's "spectacular disaster" advice to heart, Cassandra picked the chicken and phyllo. She turned out to have a surprising level of skill with the dough-making process and somehow she managed to get all the way to the final cutting stage before she realized she had no idea what the "desired size" was. She'd... uh... come back to that later.

The sauce should have been easy, and at first it was, but Cassandra kept getting distracted and managed to scorch it. Oops.

Not knowing what was involved in pounding chicken breast to 1/8 inch thick, Cassandra just skipped that part. She managed to pre-cook them properly but quickly found that full-sized chicken breasts are hard to roll around the fillings.

By the time she got back to the dough it had been sitting out for nearly half an hour with predictably brittle results.

Still, in the end, she had some chicken and some sauce and some dough that was all roughly edible. Just... not combined quite as it was supposed to be.