Day 53 of 60 | Bonjour, Paris! 🇫🇷✨
What It Really Takes to Prep a Four-Course Final Exam Menu at École Ducasse
We are officially entering Practice Week - the runway before next week’s big final exam. Three full days of supervised trial runs, repeated drills, and the gentle-but-terrifying gaze of master chefs watching our every chop, sear, and sauté.
The school approved Lori and I working together as a team due to my need to miss the last two days of school next week. I have the honor of officiating a wedding for two very good friends of mine in Phoenix, Arizona next Thursday, so had to come up with something. The only way to move up my exam was to have us work as a team. 💪
Lori and I will be each others head chef and sous chef. Normally, each student in the class has an assistant, and then they switch roles for each other.  As we are the first husband and wife team ever to go through the school. I think the Administrators are curious to see if our marriage will survive the exam. 😆
If cooking is a craft, repetition is the religion. And this week? We’re joining the church.
But first… the ingredient list.
Let me tell you: creating an ingredient list for a four-course menu is not a task, it’s an existential journey. Halfway through, I genuinely questioned whether I was prepping for a culinary exam or opening a small grocery store. At one point I counted 47 ingredients before I stopped counting and started wondering how the school is making a profit on my tuition vs. my grocery list.
Here’s where I landed:
🥧 1. Cold Starter - Brique Tartelette of Mushroom & Onion with Granny Smith, Pine Nuts & Basil Oil
Main ingredients:
• Mushrooms
• White onions
• Granny Smith apple
• Pine nuts
• Fresh basil (for basil oil)
• Chives
• Feuille de brick pastry
A dish that whispers, “I’m simple,” but actually means, “I require monk-level patience and ninja-level knife skills.” Between the slow-cooked onions, the duxelles, and a pastry shell that cracks if you look at it wrong - this one keeps us humble.
🥕 2. Hot Vegetarian Dish - Winter Vegetable Mosaic with Celeriac Purée, Citrus Gel, Herb Vinaigrette & Hempseed Grati
Main ingredients:
• Carrot
• Cauliflower
• Leek
• Turnip or radish
• Celeriac (for the purée)
• Citrus (lemon, lime, orange)
• Fresh herbs (parsley, chives)
• Hemp seeds (for the gratin)
This dish is basically vegetable origami.
Tiny shapes, perfect angles, individual blanching - it’s like assembling stained glass, except the pieces melt if you blink too long.
🐟 3. Hot Fish Dish - Seabass with Soft Onion Purée, Braised Jerusalem Artichoke, 3-Citrus Chimichurri & Potato Mash Purée
Main ingredients:
• Seabass fillet
• White onions (for the soft purée)
• Jerusalem artichokes (braised)
• Potatoes (classic mash)
• Citrus (lemon, lime, orange)
• Fresh herbs (parsley, chive, oregano)
• Chili pepper
Four components, each demanding its moment in the spotlight. Softness, brightness, acidity, heat - and zero room for improvisation unless your dream is to see a French chef raise an eyebrow at 200 decibels.
🦆 4. Hot Meat Dish - Duck Breast with Beet Purée, Beet Reduction, Parsnip Purée (Micro-Gastrique), Duck Jus & Braised Leeks
Main ingredients:
• Duck breast
• Red beets (purée + reduction)
• Parsnips (micro-gastrique purée)
• Leeks (braised)
• Duck bones (for the jus)
• Aromatics: onion, carrot, garlic, thyme, bay leaf
This is classic French technique at its finest. Render the duck fat just right, coax sweetness from roots, reduce beets into a silky sauce, and make a jus so good it could be bottled and sold as cologne. (“Eau de Canard” - coming soon?)
⭐ The Big Picture (of Practice Week)
Four dishes.
Dozens of ingredients.
Multiple cooking techniques.
Precise timing.
Practice.
Repetition.
More practice.
(And then a little more repetition, because apparently that’s how you become a chef and not a person who panics over missing basil.)
This week is not the exam. This week is where excellence is built. Brick by brick. Dish by dish. Mistake by glorious mistake.
Next week we perform. This week? We rehearse like our aprons are on fire. 🔥🇫🇷
Below are photos of our results of our very first practice runs today at dishes 1 & 3. I give us a C+ cause we can do better. Those chips by the way, our deep fried Jerusalem, artichokes of all things! Our first time using a deep fryer to improve our plating!
I am showing it to you so you can see the improvement between now and the final. We are super clear on what we need to do to improve each dish. 
In our defense, we were missing several key ingredients for both dishes that either got hijacked by other classmates in what we all refer to as “ The Hunger Games”, or were never ordered. We will be taking matters into our own hands when it comes to ingredient fulfillment moving forward. There will be no handicapping The Lochtes. We only play to win!!!!😎
