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Sauces are stupid. I mean stupide. Or whatever one says in French when having a tantrum.

After many disasters, I am now so paranoid about what can go wrong that I have cursed my own saucepan. But despite my failures, I am intrigued by the art of making sauces.

I love that the taste of your sauce can be traced all the way back to how well you roasted the veal bones for the stock you used. It is about nuance, skill and gut feeling. No wonder the saucier is the master of the French kitchen.

The saucier in me needs to loosen up. The challenge: tournedos de boeuf sauté maître de chai, fillet of beef in the style of the maître de chai, which means cellar master in French. Thus the dish is not so much about the beef as about the wine sauce.

As students at the Cordon Bleu, we must achieve the exact cooking point of the meat - in this case medium rare - without cutting into it. Not only is it unthinkable to serve steak in a restaurant with random incision marks, but puncturing the meat releases its juices, vital to the flavour.

Instead, we are shown how to feel the resistance of the flesh to tell doneness. The firmer the steak, the more well done it is. It takes practice, but also intuition. I may just be trying to elevate my good guess into a "steak sixth sense," but I think I'm pretty accurate.

With the sauce, I relax. I take my time, tasting it and stirring it often enough that it knows I'm paying attention, but I don't obsess. I season it only when I am done reducing it so I won't oversalt it. For once, I am confident that it tastes pretty damn good. And the chef agrees. The final verdict is that the consistency is still a bit thin - the sauce needs to coat the plate more.

It is fascinating to hear your sauce evaluated by the chefs. They taste subtleties that I am learning to pay more attention to - whether you used too much mirepoix (carrots, onion and celery) relative to your beef bits, or if the tomato flavour is balanced with the red wine and other seasonings.

This sauce is enhanced by adding a teaspoon of wine reduction before serving, which I cooked down in a small pan until syrupy. Another common practice is "monter au beurre"- to drop some butter in the sauce just before serving to make it smoother and glossier, and mellow it out a bit.

Although the red wine sauce was a breakthrough, the following attempt brings true sauce triumph. We are trying to make fish quenelles - dumplings of finely chopped meat or seafood (in this case pike) poached in stock or water. Not one of the 10 students can get their pike mousse to hold.

The choux pastry in the mix is supposed to bond everything together. I keep adding more of it until my quenelles look like soggy buns someone has tossed into a duck pond. My classmate Neil looks helplessly into his pot as his quenelles dissolve defiantly into Rorschach inkblot patterns.

But lumpy pike mousse cannot intimidate me today, because I am making a perfect sauce Nantua, a classic crayfish concoction usually served with fish. When I strain it, it is shiny, rich and full of flavour.

I can't wait to plate my malformed main course. For the first time, I am told I have the best sauce in the class. I want to make sauce Nantua my signature dish. I will serve a lot. In large bowls with big spoons.

Having gotten over the sauce hurdle, I still have to face the intermediate evaluation, including a practical worth 45 per cent of our total grade. We are given a list of potential recipes a week beforehand. I'm not as worried about the cooking as I am about the time - speed has never been my strong point. You lose 2 per cent for every minute you present late, and after 10 minutes late you automatically fail.

Ironically, I actually finish slightly early. But I hesitate to put my name on the presentation list (I can't possibly be done, can I?) and suddenly am stuck presenting second-last. As I try to keep everything warm I am left with an over-reduced sauce. I also have enough time to make an unwise decision to add more curry to my leek dish. She who hesitates is lost. Or at least loses marks on her exam. Stupide.

While the basic and intermediate exams are like a more serious version of a practical, in the final exam (superior level), the evaluation is much different. The final evaluation lasts most of the day and includes cooking and setting up all your mise-en-place from scratch. You must prepare an original meal created from a list of ingredients given out in advance.

The superior exam tests your confidence, originality and precision as a cook. Once you pass, you have earned the diploma of cuisine, and most importantly, the tall white hat (an impressive accessory for entertaining at home). I haven't gotten to that level yet, so this remains a future goal.

My last week at the Cordon Bleu ends with a hangover and a giant pig's head in a pot - not a good mix, especially when confronted with Chef Franck peeling the face off the pig and watching the skin slip onto the counter. He needs to get access to the skull to split it with a cleaver and scoop out the brain. I must say that cracking the skull seems do-able to me, maybe even popping out the eyeballs, but seeing the rather large tongue extracted and sitting detached on the cutting board is where I draw the line.

We are making fromage de tête, a.k.a. headcheese, which is a pâté created from every part of the pig's head - face, snout, ears, brain and tongue cooked in a brine until soft. Although, as Chef Loic said, "no matter how much you boil them, there'll always be a bit of bite to the pig ear."

Offal, the proper term for secondary cuts of meat (heads, innards, tails and feet) is derived from the phrase "off-fall" as in the pieces that fall off the carcass when it's butchered. The original practice of preparing offal came from economic necessity. In feudal systems where families paid their landlords with whatever provisions came from their farm, the offal was all they were left with. These recipes have now been so well perfected that they are considered delicacies in many countries, and offal is turning up more and more on high-end menus in North America.

But for those of us who think of a cow as an amalgamation of steaks that moo, this type of cuisine can seem off-putting. When sliced, fromage de tête eerily resembles supermarket luncheon meat. But it tastes better. Especially with some hot mustard and cornichons.

I go for seconds. Perhaps it's

an attempt to linger in class, knowing that my time here has come to an end.

I will miss arriving each day, taking covert bites of my Prêt a Manger croissant while scribbling pages of notes, wondering why some people's recipes have only two words written on them. I will miss clanking down the back iron stairwell, from third floor to basement, to get an ingredient we need for a practical.

I'll miss the kitchen where, for 2½ hours, I forget about anything else but whatever creation I'm learning to cook that day, even the change room, which felt like a cozier version of the London dungeon. And I'll miss the relief of cool air as I walk up the street to the pub with my classmates and order a pint from Gary the bartender.

Aside from the classic knowledge of cuisine and cooking, I will miss most the words of wisdom from the chefs. Like discovering from reserved Chef Stuart that when gutting a fish we slice "from the neck to the bum hole." Or Chef Yann's advice for checking if something is cooked through: Insert your knife and then put the blade to your lip: "If there is a puff of smoke, it is done!"

As Julia Child said, "The only stumbling block is fear of failure. With cooking, you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude." And a lot of pots. Vive Chef Franck.

Tarte Tatin

This is a classic French dessert, adapted from the Cordon Bleu, and one of my favourites. Made from only four ingredients, it is delicious and elegant served with a bit of crème fraîche on top.

What you need

100 g butter (in pieces)

100 g sugar

1 kg Braeburn apples (about 12) - peeled, cored and cut in halves

1 block from 397 g pack of thawed puff pastry

200 g crème fraîche for accompaniment

What you do

In a 10-inch, oven-safe sauté pan, melt butter over medium heat, then add sugar and cook until it starts to caramelize.

Add apples, making concentric circles until the pan is filled. You should use enough apples for a snug fit (about 10). Keep apples over medium heat, so the juice is bubbling. As apples shrink, fill in the gaps with fresh pieces. Cook 20-25 minutes or until the juices are thickened and golden. (Occasionally grab the handle and twist pan back and forth to loosen the apples and prevent the caramel from burning.) Place the pan in the middle rack of a 350 F oven and bake 20 minutes or until apples are tender. Remove.

Roll out puff pastry to fit roughly over the pan. Any dough pieces hanging over the edge can be tucked back into the pan. This does not have to be perfect, as it gives a more rustic look. With a fork, make a small steam hole in the centre of the dough. Place pan back into the oven for about 20 minutes or until the pastry has risen and is golden.

Remove from oven and cool 5-10 minutes. Place a serving plate on top of the pan and flip it over. Tap the pan bottom to release any apples before lifting the pan off. Serve warm or cold with a dollop of crème fraîche (or ice cream).

Serves 6-8

Sue Riedl

On globeandmail.com/life

Read parts 1 and 2 of the series. Plus, Sue Riedl gives you an inside glimpse of life at the Cordon Bleu in her audio slideshow.