180 Minutes, 12 Courses, 6 Hungry Women

One thing I adore about the women in my class is that like me, they love to eat. I mean really, really, really eat. For the first time in my life, I've been surrounded everyday by women who eat, and eat, and eat simply because it tastes too good to stop. I've already explained what a danger this is to the size of my body; praise the kitchen gods who made it so a chef must work on his or her feet, as quickly as possible, in extreme heat.

Like their appetite, my female peers' enthusiasm for competitive cooking is also healthy. This made the six of us an unstoppable force in the infamous Twelve Course Tasting Menu Challenge.

We were directed to serve three canapes, a soup, a fish dish (using lobster), a granite, a meat course (using lamb tenderloin), a cheese course (using goat cheese), dessert (using pears) and three mignardise. Mignardise are similar to canapes, but come after the meal and leave your diner with a final impression.

We had 24 hours to plan a menu and 3 hours to cook enough to serve 6 guests. The menu was served course by course, alongside the boys' dishes to a table of two award winning food critics, two James Beard award winning chefs, The Head of Everything and The Chef.

This is what we cooked up:
Canapes
Duck Pate Mousse, Fried Potato Spiral and Granny Smith Apple
Smoked Salmon, Pickled Fennel and Herbed Cheese
Watermelon, Fried Feta, Honey and Fresh Mint
Soup
Tomato Bisque, Grilled Cheddar and Dill Crouton
Fish Course
Butter Poached Lobster alongside Scallop, Roe and Tarragon Mousse, Beets two Ways and Orange Buerre Fondue
Granite
Pomegranate and Lavender Granite
Meat Course
Lamb Tenderloin Medallion, Sauteed Wild Mushrooms, Sweet Pea Puree
Cheese Course
Goat Cheese Timbale
Dessert
Pear Tart, Pear Ice Cream and Cranberry Coulis
Mignardise "Napoleon"
Vanilla Bavarian Cream Puff
Chocolate Almond Biscotti Bites
Strawberry Shortcake Tart

I was responsible for the canapes and the lobster course. The lobster was a challenge. Its not a protein we had worked with in class and I'm most familiar and frankly quite content with just steaming the damn thing. This was one of the most difficult dishes I've had to conceptualize and execute at school.

I was shocked how many people were concerned about the crustacean's "slow death." Seriously?! Its a f**king LOBSTER! To get everyone to shut up, I agreed to spear their skulls with my chef's knife before boiling them.

If you boil a lobster for about 1 minute, the meat remains uncooked but peels away from the shell. This way the meat can be removed, cleaned and prepped for poaching, searing or whatever. I poached the meat in butter, an Orange Beurre Fondue to be exact. Beurre Fondue is an emulsified butter sauce, which is a pain in the ass to make, but creamy, delicious and totally worth it. I infused mine with orange zest and poached the lobster tails in the sauce over a double bain marie. It took about 20-30 minutes to cook the tail, which is very slow by poaching standards, but necessary as the sauce must be held only warm to keep it from breaking.

I served a piece of the poached tail over a paper thin slice of golden beet, alongside a cylinder shaped piece of scallop, tarragon and lobster roe mousse. (I shaped the mousse into a log using plastic wrap and poached the entire thing. Once the mousse was cooked and firm, I cut it into pieces. When the pieces are turned so one of the flat ends is down, they look like cylinders.) It was topped with fried red beets (cut into thinner-than-angel-hair noodles using a Rouet machine), orange zest and a spoonful of the Orange Beurre Fondue.

I knew the canapes were delicious and well executed; it was the lobster dish I was worried about. A wave of relief washed over me as the judges tasted my dish and offered only three comments:

"The mousse is a little salty."
"The sauce is out of this world."
"Zhee lubstuher es pearfictlhee kooked."

I can certainly live with salty mousse.

After the food was consumed and the points were tallied, the girls came out on top - by a whopping eleven points! It was one of the most exciting moments I've had at school to date. Never mess with 6 hungry women.