The practical exam worries him more: each candidate has four hours and thirty minutes to plan and then prepare two meals (starter and entrée, or entrée and dessert) for four to eight people, to present them, and then to tidy up, while examiners observe his actions, note his techniques, assess the results. Mauro bites his lip and his cap slips down his forehead a little when he discovers the subject written on the board: old-fashioned blanquette de veau, raspberry zabaione. Meals he has rarely cooked; deceptively simple meals—the blanquette in particular is tricky, the success of the dish being entirely dependent on the velvety texture of the sauce. The countdown begins. He rubs his chin. Determined not to rush, he goes over to his workstation and begins to set up. The two other guys are also concentrating, appropriating their spaces, organizing the ingredients and utensils. The older woman, on the other hand, panics as she inventories her food—Monsieur, I don’t have any carrots!—and one of the men gestures with his chin to a crate at the back of the room, without even uncrossing his arms. Mauro thinks, working out a plan of attack whose steps he writes down briefly in a notebook: the blanquette will simmer for three hours; during this time he will cook the mushrooms, blanch and sauté the pearl onions, and make the zabaione, which takes about twenty minutes. The sauce will be made later, with the broth from the meat. Mauro wonders for a moment how to deal with the raspberries and the cream between the meat and the mushrooms, imagining a raspberry blanquette and a mushroom zabaione, thinking that maybe they wouldn’t be too bad, then he smiles, picks up the meat, places it at the bottom of the Dutch oven, and pours water over it. And that’s it, he’s on his way.