Week Two is over and classes are just flying by.

It is hard to believe how fast five hours of class can go.

There is actually not that much new to prep this morning. Heck, no knife work is necessary at all. We all get fresh corn meal, mascarpone, butter, and milk. The major effort is in pulling all of our stored goods from previous days, such as our bechamel and bolognese sauces.

First thing, we construct, in teams of two, our lasagnas. Interestingly enough, though it takes a fair amount of effort, our results won't be presented or tasted. Fine by me ... I'm happy to bring back half of a major lasagna for home consumption. Actually, that is a nice bonus with regard to culinary school. Unless your production is needed for a later class or another course entirely, you can take the food home after it has been presented. Nice.

After our lasagnas are in the ovens, we gather around the chef's station for a demo of hard and soft polenta. Unfortunately, we have to gather, which isn't the best way to watch the demo. Normally, we are supposed to watch the demo via a very nice closed circuit camera system, with LCD screens at every station. It actually works fairly well, sort of like a live cooking show. However, since Wednesday, the camera system has been down, so we are forced to crowd around the chef's station.

Speaking of television shows, the demos operate very much like a television cooking show, without the commercial breaks. Most of the techniques are demonstrated straight up, but sometimes, when a particular step is fairly lengthy, Chef Perez will say "through the magic of television" and pull out the next step in the dish, already prepared ahead of time.

After the polentas are in progress, the hard polenta in the lowboy refrigerator setting up and the soft polenta keeping warm on the stovetop, we get a demonstration of handmade ravioli. I've made ravioli before, but using a mold; my hand cut ones come out looking misshapen. Now, however, I have a better idea of how to operate.

The goal for the ravioli is a new one. Instead of a single plate, we are to make two identical plates with three ravioli each. This is to practice consistent plating. We are also given carte blanc on how we plate both the ravioli and fried polenta cakes. The soft polenta basically just sits there.

I turn my traditional polenta triangles into an abstract insect with bolognese sun and moon. My ravioli I place in a column topped with bolognese and cheese and flanked by two columns of very finely chiffonaded basil. Both get "awesome" from Chef Perez, who gives additional praise for both the bolognese and ravioli filling.

But I'm not the only one doing well. At the end of class Chef Perez says that he has given out more A's today than he ever has and that he gave out no C's. Not too bad.

Cleanup takes an all out effort today, however, and we were still 10 minutes late, but we did pretty good nonetheless ... some form of organized chaos, I think.