Essential Skills 2 - The Final: Vegetables, Potatoes, Grains and Pasta

I was ready. I had all my recipes down. I practiced them over the weekend and decided how I was going to present and created my time line. Despite all my efforts to prepare, I was still up most of the night with crazy food dreams.

These were the dishes I had to prepare.

1 portion of Rice Pilaf.
4 portions of Duchesse
1 portion Roesti Potatoes
1 portion of Roasted Tomato, Onion and Goat Cheese Frittatini
1 Grilled Portobella Mushroom
1 portion of Deep Fried potatoes of my choice.
1 portion of Beer Battered Onion Rings.

I had about 2 1/2 hours. Let the games begin.

Sharing the grill, and deep fryer got a little tricky. I opted to wait until the very end to fry and was the lastt to use the grill. I wanted my mushroom to marinate as long as possible.
I followed my time line pretty well and presented my dishes as I finished them. I really had fun. I served the grilled Portobella over some simple greens tossed with olive oil , salt and pepper and a drizzle of reduced balsamic over the top. My Frittatini was served over greens as well but I used a basil vinaigrette. I had roasted some extra tomato rounds and used them for a garnish. Both dishes turned out nice. My pilaf was perfect. I garnished it with a few toasted almonds. The Roesti went slow. It was hard to get the flame right with the fans going so browning evenly was challenging. My Duchesse potatoes looked like cousins instead of identical twins so I got a point taken off. I made shoestring potatoes (yes, hand cut,) that came out great and finally my onion rings that could of used another minute in the deep fryer. Another point taken off. I guess I got a little excited to finish and got impatient. All in all I was quite happy with my points and comments.
48 out of 50.
Not bad.
Chef is going to Las Vegas to judge a food competition for three day so tomorrow we will have a substitute to star us off with Meat Cookery!
I am definitely ready for some protein.

Goodnight.