Before I even applied to Ferrandi, I had been reading ex students blog and none of them mentioned anything about a challenge. Art class yes, final exam yes, visit to Rungis and study trip yes. So it came as a surprise to me... and when this challenge was revealed to us, I remember I thought to myself ohhhh masterchef invention challenge!!! How exciting... but then when further details about what we needed to prepare was revealed... Eeekkk there was way more expected of us than just preparing tarts and babas.
So yes, the challenge was that we had to firstly choose a combination of 2 ingredients and create a tart, and individual sized baba. Sound simple enough right ? but actually there were things to consider... because we had to also choose other fruits, nuts, chocolates, alcohol etc that we would like to use, also the shape of the tarts and the babas, write our recipes and consider also how we were going to decorate it...
Plus for this challenge we also had to prepare some sort of presentation for the juries, we had to draw our design, explain the elements, introduce our logo, describe the product. Honestly in the end, because I consecrated hours of my sleeping time for art class homework, I sped through doing the sketch for this project... I don't know whether it was because I was getting better due to intensive practice thanks to said homework maybe?? because I think my drawing and water colour skill went from nil to acceptable.
After the mid term break suddenly it became the season of creativity challenge. In class firstly we had to tell our chef what 2 ingredients we would choose. I spent a lot of time thinking about this... but I was like ummm maybe this and that or this and that... I like this and that as well hmmmm. Just like when I buy clothes, I won't buy it if I think hmmm it's ok but I'm not sure. It has to be oh, I love this.. straight away, and I know then c'est le bon. Ok so in the end, by serendipity I saw something on instagram... an attractive jar of jam that caught my eyes straight away, it says Carotte Vanille Passion and I knew straight away that's me to the T 100%.
Then the next step was that during class we were called one by one to sit with our chef and discussed a little bit what we had in mind, what shape, what mould, again the 2 ingredients we want to use... whether he thought it would work or not. Then we had to submit our preliminary recipes to our chef for him to check, again to see whether they would work or not. We also then had to submit our list of ingredients we need for the challenge, and also the final recipes.
In the beginning, I was crazy wanting to put this layer and that layer in a tart... luckily my good friend Bhupar always reminded me that it's a tart and not a gateau not an entremets. So in the end I pared it down to just something very simple that I was WORRIED that I would seem to not try hard enough. As for the baba, I think I was more sure that it was just going to be a simple one, and that I wanted it to look like a snow man with a carrot tip nose, carrot baba passion syrup creme chantilly a la vanille stop. But then again I thought they were going to think I didn't put any thought into this and so added a little mirepoix of carrot some raw some cooked in syrup. Anywho long story short, let's cut straight to the creativity challenge week because I need to go to sleep.
We started on Monday, where we picked up our fresh ingredients .. actually let me tell you some of my friends combinations that I could remember : pomegranate and pumpkin, red bean and matcha, fennel and yuzu, basil and balsamic, chilli and mint, mango and jasmin, olive oil and cinnamon, bacon and maple, passion fruit and banana, rose and yoghurt, sesame and lotus seed. On the first three days we were free to test our recipes and prepare whatever elements for Thursday big day!
Time flew by, five hours were nothing on the first day I did a few elements and were ok happy about it. I felt a bit too relax I think, then on Tuesday.... when chef said that he would like us to bring our tarts to our TA class later that afternoon so that we could all taste and comment I started to get a bit nervous... especially when I compared my tart (flat top) with other people's tarts (tall and generous looking). Nicolas also came to taste, we all tasted everybody's tarts and chef and Nicolas gave their feedback. Mine got tasted towards the end, I was ummm not confident... but SURPRISE! both said it was ok, don't change anything... perhaps change the tempered chocolate from milk to dark otherwise c'est bon. I said REALLY??? He said yes, FOR ONCE I said que c'est bon. Ummm ok, thank you.
On Wednesday everybody was quite frantic, chef also was running around fetching us this and that from different labs.. from time to time he would come and check on us one by one and asked whether we were ok... otherwise we were left working by ourselves but no one was playing around everybody was focused. Came Thursday, I arrived on time and I saw that it was quite something! Especially since the TV crew came again to cover our group. We were given an hour and a half to finish off whatever we needed to finish and then present our tarts and babas to the judges... in French. My chef was not around much because he was in the next lab introducing the students to the judges and played interpreter, but luckily we had Serge and Nicolas to help us with anything we needed help with. I have to say again how great our group is/was... everyone was helping and supporting each other.
My turn came and so I went into the boulangerie lab next door with some help carrying my tarts and babas. I noticed that one of the judge wasn't there so I said let's wait for him. It gave me time to check out who they were... there were 5, and I had met 3 of them. So I started to introduce myself bla bla bla and my 2 ingredients are bla and bla because bla bla bla. Then the drawings and my presentation thingy got passed around and they all had a look... some asked questions... why the top of the tart on the drawing is white whilst in reality it's dark ? They had a taste and I got ok feed back I asked them one by one for their opinion, they said a simple tart is good because otherwise it's too much and I honestly said to them that I too wanted to put this and that but then decided to abandon most of them. One of the chef said, the diced carrots in the baba were not fine enough... what else... I can't remember and that's why it's killing me that we haven't been given our feedback on this challenge!!!!! I saw that they all had a marking sheet and maybe some had comments that I would've liked to know!!
After that challenge I didn't feel like eating and so many of us saved our tarts and babas for the following day because we were to have a group lunch in the lab. That day ended on a high, everyone was excited to mingle with some big name chefs and we took heaps of photos. But no matter which celebrity chefs were around my favourite chef is still my chef so here is my favourite photo from that day.
Friday we cleaned and cleaned and prepared lunch and ate lunch together. The last supper as I called it. Ah and I did try my tart, the baba was ok BUT my tart... I found the texture of the passion fruit cremeux was not nice and too thick!!!! and so I am even more dying to know if any of the judges commented on it and what they really thought about it... because they were all really nice and politely said it was good but then on paper they might put meh right? and I want to know if it was because the tart was no longer freshhhhh or because I overcooked the bloody cremeux ... the one chef tried on Tuesday the texture was nice because I also tried.... but Arghhh I am not sure at all if the cremeux that the judges tasted was as pastey as how I thought it was the day after. I threw it out before anybody could taste, it was THAT bad... for me at least but I am very very very harsh on myself so I really hope that actually it wasn't THAT bad.
Photo of me cleaning... on the very Last Friday at school. Next time I will write about our final exam and the school trip.
Good night for now. Ciao!
Melinda x
