Biting Off More Than I Could Chew?

So here is my big chance to show off everything I knew or what I thought I knew about cooking. I had this idea in my head that this cooking competition would be just like what I had seen on the Food Network. The clock would run out and Alton Brown would put my arm up in the air and declare me the winner of this culinary war. I couldn't have been more wrong because as you might have guessed real life cooking is not as glamorous as Giada De Laurentiis makes it look.

A month or so before the competition I received a packet in the mail of everything I needed to know how to prepare and ingredients for each dish. I was also given a time limit that each task had to be done in, and this made more apprehensive than anything else I had been asked to do. All the contestants  had  to prepare an appetizer of shrimp cocktail and an entree. For my entree, I had to work with chicken as my protein, rice pilaf was my first side and broccoli saute was the second side. Here's the fun part-- the chicken was pretty much my own creation with some basic guidelines. I had to create a sauce for the chicken and the rules said that we could use what we had prepped from the knife skills portion of the contest. So here is what I had to use for the sauce: extra virgin olive oil, clarified butter, heavy cream, demi glace, white or red wine, dijon mustard, thyme, rosemary, mushrooms, diced onions, tomato concasse and chopped parsley. I did many experiments but my final sauce consisted of heavy cream, sauteed mushrooms, dijon mustard and a small amount of tomato concasse which I thought tasted amazing!

At this point in my culinary career I had no idea what demi glace even was so I did not attempt to use that or the wine.  So, I practiced this meal and played with the sauce for my chicken about 6 or more times before the big day. Lets just say my family did not want to eat chicken and rice for a very long time after that. I thought I had everything down and it was a few days before the competition. My nerves got the best of me, and I was so panicked, the idea of food was haunting me in my dreams. I kept running over the strategy in my head and trying to remember the order of how I was going to prep, cook, plate and garnish everything in the short amount of allotted time.

The big day was just around the corner. I could smell it coming like the smell of burnt toast. I had this bad feeling in my gut and I was not feeling at all like the Best Teen Chef.