Basic Week FIve

This week I thought that I could start off by sharing some useful words/phrases for anyone considering French culinary school:

• "Terroriste": Same meaning as the English word "terrorist" but usually used as a lighthearted insult.  For example, at the end of a chaotic practicum, the chef will usually dismiss us with, "Go home, terroristes!" and we all laugh.
• "Tok, tok, tok": I can't think of a good English equivalent and I'm not even sure if it's spelled correctly, but the French use "tok" to accompany quick, multi-step actions (but usually done in sets of three).  For example, when showing how to frost the sides of a cake, the act of wiping the frosting off of the spatula onto a cake gets one "tok," the act of sliding the spatula down to smooth the frosting gets a second "tok," and the act of wiping the spatula off on the rim of a bowl gets a third "tok."
• "Oui, Chef": The equivalent "Yes, Chef," probably also applies in any English-speaking culinary school or fine restaurant, but if your chef ever gives an order or offers advice or says your name or asks a yes/no question, "Oui, Chef" is the only appropriate response.  "Yes," "Okay," "Sorry," or simply no response at all is unacceptable.  Even "No, Chef," should be avoided, because there's a good chance that you need to make happen whatever is not happening.  For example, if chef asks, "Are your refrigerators empty?" you respond with "Oui, Chef!" as you immediately empty out your refrigerator.
• "Vite!": "Hurry up!"  Yeah, I hear that... a lot.

It's hard to believe that I'm halfway through my semester in Basic Cuisine and Patisserie - I have only four full weeks of classes remaining followed by a partial week of classes and exams, and then I receive my first certificate (assuming that I pass).

Days are often so full of activity that I will find myself in a 6:30 PM pastry practicum recalling some event from an 8:30 AM cuisine practicum but thinking that it happened a day or two prior rather than just that morning, and yet the weeks are flying by.  Compare this phenomenon to my days in an office job where I would be asking, "Is it Friday yet?" by Tuesday afternoon.  I take this flight of time as a good sign - not that I want time to pass by more quickly, but that I'm no longer staring at the clock or counting down the hours and days until the weekend or my next vacation.

Monday

Bastille Day!  All of Paris was joyously celebrating as crowds clamored to reserve the best seats for fireworks, with many people arriving seven or more hours in advance.  It was also the first holiday of the semester at Le Cordon Bleu and in true old fuddy-duddy fashion, I used my new-found freedom to stay in the studio all day.  I haven't been interested in firework shows for the last few years and I haven't been interested in massive crowds... ever.  My 8:30 AM class on Tuesday was also a good motivation not to stay up all night.

My holiday reclusiveness didn't save me from trouble, though, because a very loud and large party lasted in the courtyard below my building from about 7:00 PM until 2:00 AM.  Even with my windows closed I could make out the words to every song, and the heavy bass beat had every wall and pane of glass vibrating.  At 11:00 PM until midnight when the fireworks began, I was fairly certain that my building was being carpet-bombed, but all that I could see in the patch of sky visible from my terrace were flashes of light similar to heat lightning.  But sleep did finally come.

Tuesday

Each week the school assigns two students from each practical class to be the assistants.  The assistants' responsibilities are to arrive in class twenty minutes early, to get the food supplies from the basement kitchen, and (in the case of cuisine) to make sure that each student's work area is set up with a cutting board and any other items that might be needed but that aren't readily accessible in the classroom.  This week was my first turn as an assistant in our cuisine group and I was a little terrified - as if I don't risk enough deductions in each practicum evaluation, poor preparation can count against the assistants.

Neither I nor the other assistant knew how to work the dumb waiter to get the food from the basement kitchen to the classroom, so we fell behind on the setup and consequently on our practicum.  As soon as we finished I set to work on trussing a chicken, and in my hurry I poked a hole in my left palm with the chef's knife.  Washing my hand and grabbing a band-aid but ignoring the pesky rubber glove, I continued working, immediately poking a hole in my left index finger with the trussing needle.  Two band-aids and now a rubber glove later, I moved on to turning the artichoke which I had practiced at home on Saturday.  I immediately tore up the knuckles on my right hand with the sharp leaves but decided to hide the bleeding from the chef with a paper towel (chefs frown on bleeding on food).

Although I was the last person to finish (again) after my series of unfortunate events, Asian chef said that my final product - roasted chicken au jus and turned artichokes with garden-style vegetables - was good (the veggies were a a little too crisp for his liking but for once I got the quantity of seasoning correct).

That afternoon I returned to the school for a demonstration on meringues led by Chef Tranchant.  Meringues are generally just a mixture of egg whites and sugar, but they are quite a popular item in French patisseries.  We learned that there are three types - French, Swiss, and Italian - differing primarily by the temperature of the sugar or eggs when whisking.  They also serve as a base for many other pastries, often used in cake batters (e.g., German chocolate cake) and buttercream frosting.

Variations of meringues and a Dacquoise cake

We had our pastry practicum immediately following the demonstration, where we learned that meringues also require whisking - lots and lots of whisking.  Even though I had in the past made meringues at home using an electric hand or stand mixer, I had no idea how hard it would be without those heaven-sent inventions.  I at least felt good about my time and organization, and I ended up finishing the cake batter quickly.

Chef Pascal (formerly Mean Chef) was feeling incredibly generous that evening.  He actually praised my cake batter beyond the standard "C'est bien," telling me that it was very nice with a good texture, and then he made some comment to the effect that I should be proud of myself (I think that's what he was trying to convey).  It was kind even though it had the undertone of a parent praising his idiot child for not screwing something up ("Kerry - You didn't stick any crayons up your nose today!  Good job!").

The buttercream frosting was also a success, although by now my whisking arm was shot and the heartier, younger students had pulled ahead, leaving me once more straggling in the rear.  My piping bag skills had improved even more and I was able to decorate the cake fairly quickly until it came time to make marzipan roses.  I cringe whenever the chefs introduce us to a new decorating technique, and combined with the wilting heat in the classroom my flower merited a "Go study some real roses" suggestion from the chef.

My Dacquoise (yes, the white thing is a rose)

Wednesday

Chef Caals started our morning with mustard-crusted pork tenderloins, grilled salmon, potatoes, and ice cream with chocolate sauce and Chantilly cream.  Although the cuisine courses are growing in intensity, I appreciate the fact that we're starting to do more well-balanced meals (of course ice cream is a part of a well-balanced diet).  The addition of side dishes to the leftovers that I bring home is particularly nice (we don't usually make the desserts in our actual cuisine practicum, but I think that I'm covered).

We had an hour lunch break before the cuisine practicum which allowed the other assistant and me plenty of time to prepare for class, and our newly acquired experience with the dumb waiter got us off to a much faster start.  It was our first practicum with this chef (I really need to start finding out their names), an older man who had little to say.  We were making only the grilled salmon, spinach, and potatoes, but we had two sauces to prepare as well - a lemon-butter sauce for the fish and a mornay sauce for the potatoes - and I was confusing the ingredients between the two as well as what went into the puréed potatoes.  Fortunately my error caused me only to double the eggs in the mornay, but as far as I could tell the chef didn't notice.

What he probably did notice, though, was that I was still cooking my potatoes long after most of the class had already puréed theirs.  In demonstration Chef Caals boiled the potatoes whole for 50 minutes, but apparently I was the only person in the class who didn't hear him tell us to cut up our potatoes in practicum for faster cooking.  Actually, I thought that he told us just the opposite because they would absorb too much water.  I had probably even written somewhere in my copious notes, "Do NOT cut up the potatoes."  So when Jade, the girl from the UK, walked by my stove and gasped ominously, "Oh, you didn't cut your potatoes!" only after they were almost finished cooking, the mystery of why I was behind this time became clear (and in case you're wondering why I didn't question the other eight students cutting up their potatoes, it's because I didn't actually witness it - as the assistant I was out of the room getting something that the chef requested).

To add to the confusion and frenetic chaos of the class, I was sweating profusely with all four of my stove-tops in action along with the grill for the salmon.  The weather had also taken a much warmer turn that day from the cooler, milder temperatures during the prior few weeks, and the air conditioning was quickly losing it's cooling abilities.  Profuse sweating makes me extremely agitated.

I managed to catch up to the slower two or three students in the class (there were enough things to keep me occupied while waiting for the potatoes to boil), and Chef of Few Words actually liked my salmon and slow-cooked potatoes with the over-eggy mornay sauce. My sautéed spinach was fine as well, but the lemon-butter sauce was, in his words, "terrible" - too heavy on the lemon and too light on the salt.  Most of the rest of the class received a similar critique, though, because we had simply used the amount of lemon juice for which the recipe called.  Therein lies the difference between cuisine and pastry - the latter is always precise while the former relies very little on measurement and very much on on the five senses (although I personally liked the lemon flavor on my fish).

At least it made for a good lunch!

Despite feeling like I had just been scalded by the steam from a train engine right before it ran over me, I was actually quite excited as I left the practicum at 3:30 PM.  Our next class wasn't until Friday morning, and I was mulling over ideas of what I would do with the first non-Bastille Day, non-Sunday day off in almost five weeks.  Then, as I passed by a demonstration room to return some items to the basement kitchen, Chef Pascal suddenly popped out of the doorway shouting my name.  I turned around, wondering if I had done something wrong, but he was smiling and waving and yelling something unintelligible (i.e., in French) and then asked, "Is better now?"  I'll never know what he was talking about, but I was happy to see that we were now "buddies" so I just smiled and waved back and replied, "Oui, Chef!  Merci!"

After chucking every part of my uniform from the socks up to my hat into the wash when I got home, I pulled up FaceTime to chat with my mom.  Much to my surprise and joy, my sweet little nephew Declan, who turned four that day, was at my parents' house with my niece Briannah.  Wishing him a happy birthday "face to face" and having a delightful conversation with the kids made me feel a bit like crying.  If my joy weren't full enough, my Aunt Mary arrived at the house with her two grandsons and two of my sister's boys who were visiting from Georgia.  It was only in the last couple of weeks that I figured out that I could still FaceTime with my iPhone as long as I had WiFi, and it was the first conversation with any family besides my parents in over six weeks.  Thank the Lord for modern technology!

That evening I began researching ideas for a day trip, even considering Disneyland Paris, when suddenly I remembered the one thing that my mom and I had talked about wanting to do for years: visit Claude Monet's home and gardens.  A quick search on Google maps showed me that it was only an hour away (for some reason I thought that it was much farther).  Even the discomfort of trying to drift off to sleep in a stuffy, hot room that night could do little to dampen my spirits.

Thursday

In order to reach Monet's house, my best option was to take the Metro to the Saint-Lazare train station in Paris, buy a ticket to Vernon, and take a bus from Vernon to Giverny.  On the bus to Giverny I noticed how charming the landscape was and decided that I would have to ditch the bus on the way back to Vernon and walk the 2.5 miles if I wanted to take in all of it.

The sun was in full force and the heat wave was on the rise, sitting at around 85 degrees by the time that I got into the hour-long line to the house with very little shade.  Tourists were everywhere like swarms of flies, but once I finally made it to the garden it hardly mattered. I had imagined something like the Biltmore House gardens with vast expanses of neatly arranged flowerbeds, but it was more like a very large yard with random scatterings of flower - dozens and dozens of every kind of flower imaginable in one location.  I rushed through it a bit, because it was lacking any shade and I had reached the "profusely sweating" stage.

Monet's Garden from an upstairs house window

Following the signs to the Lily Pond, though, I came upon what is the most breathtaking part of the estate.  Little bridges and walkways led around a narrow stream to a Japanese bridge facing a vast pond covered in pink and white-flowered lily pads and shaded by giant weeping willow trees.  Monet created a collection of around 250 paintings of this pond in his lifetime, and many other artists have also attempted to capture its beauty.  I felt a little nostalgic and teary-eyed wishing that my mom were standing next to me.  Such experiences are always better shared, particularly with someone who could appreciate it as much (if not more) than me.

Upon entering the pathway to the Lily Pond I had to laugh, though.  An American woman in front of me was exclaiming to her husband how they were standing on a famous bridge depicted in hundreds of paintings while he was snapping photos... except that it was only a little unassuming footbridge near the entrance before the pond actually became visible.  I'm sure that they eventually figured it out.

Lily Pond and THE famous bridge

More painting subjects 

Monet's house was, of course, crowded and hot, so I did a quick run-through, taking in the brightly-painted rooms and the bizarre wall-to-wall collections of Japanese (mostly Geisha girl) drawings.  From there I exited to the gift shop, grabbed up a few souvenirs and postcards, and headed to the Impressionism museum just a short distance down the road. I took my time wandering from room to room, enjoying the art and most importantly, the air conditioning. Only one of Monet's paintings is contained in this museum, but its lower level features a collection of paintings of his garden and lily pond as portrayed by other artists.

The time had come to begin my trek back towards Vernon.  From reading the website about Monet's house I knew that there was a pedestrian-friendly route back; I just hadn't bothered to find it.  My Garmin was set to pedestrian mode, though, and the journey started out okay.  I stopped occasionally to snap some photos of Monet's burial site as well as some charming little French homes and hotels along the way.  Soon, though, rue Claude Monet ended and I found myself on a highway of sorts - nothing resembling a pedestrian path - with my diabolical Garmin instructing me to continue walking two more miles. So I did.

The shoulder of the road that I was walking on was knee-high with weeds and bordered by acres of farmland, separated by a large ditch.  My one little bottle of water that I had been carrying all day was almost dry (I was desperately trying to conserve it like a person staggering across the desert with only one canteen) and I dropped my flimsy bag of souvenirs at one point, scattering postcards down the ditch incline.

My relief upon seeing some houses and gravelly walkways crop up on the other side of the road was lessened when one of the residents pulled up in front of his home and started asking me something that I couldn't quite understand, so I smiled and said, "Non."  His reply was something to the effect of, "But my house is right here," as he swept out his arm towards it in a welcoming gesture, which made me think that he was either inviting me inside or offering me water.  As tempted as I was to find out if it was the latter, self-preservation made me reply with, "I don't speak French."  He simply snapped his fingers in the universal "too bad" motion and went inside.

During this awkward conversation I noticed bicycles passing behind his house on some pathway through the trees, and a little farther up the road I finally found an entrance to this path - the non-auto road that I should have been walking.  I finished the journey back to Vernon, stopping at a little shop to get an ice cream cone and resisting the urge to rub it all over my face.  Proceeding to the station, I boarded the train and struggled to stay awake for the 45-minute ride to Paris.

Ancient bridge and house in Vernon

Unable to face another night of sleeping in the heat, I stopped off at Monoprix to buy a table fan for the studio which was about 85 degrees inside by the time that I arrived home.  Much to my chagrin, the fan was broken when I opened the box to assemble it and I spent another uncomfortable evening trying to make as little contact between my skin and the bed as possible, but my exhaustion eventually won out over the discomfort.

Friday

The day's forecast called for temperatures in the low- to mid-nineties, but we were at least spared any practicums - the day held only pastry and cuisine demonstrations.  Chef Pascal made the famous French Moka, a coffee-flavored cake that would again require a lot of hand-whipping for both the batter and the buttercream frosting in addition to some serious decorating skills, but it was not a complex cake.

Chef Pascal's Mokas - the man has skills

I used the four-hour break between the morning and afternoon demonstrations to exchange the fan.  Even more than then irritation of walking the big, bulky box the quarter-mile between my studio and Monoprix in the blazing heat and humidity was the fear that they wouldn't allow me to return or exchange it and I wouldn't have the ability to intelligently debate them en français.  Much to my surprise, the sales clerk was unusually nice about it and I soon had a new big, bulky box with a fan to lug back home.

That afternoon we had our first lesson on forcemeat stuffing.  Chef Poupard made some fabulous paupiettes (veal rolls stuffed with forcemeat) with baby onions and turned carrots, and he began a foie gras terrine (although after hearing the explanation of how foie gras is made, I think that I might now be morally opposed to it).  Chef Poupard is known as the "Map Chef" because he likes to talk about where all French food originated, often pulling out a map as a visual aid.

Paupiettes with glazed onions and turned carrots

Saturday

We had our first female chef in practicum Saturday morning - a Korean woman whose diminutive size and youthful appearance didn't make her any less tough than her male peers.  She was very helpful, though - I burned my finger badly on the oven and she made me stop to put cream on it after running it under cold water for two minutes, and when I returned to my station she was peeling all of my baby onions for me.  She did not, unfortunately, turn my carrots.  I'd like to blame my blistered middle finger for the woeful job that I did turning them, but the more likely explanation is that I had no idea what I was doing.  Rather than having the "barrel" shape when I finished, they kind of looked like I had just gnawed them down to size.  On my way home for my break before the 3:30 PM class, I stopped off at the epicerie and bought a lot of carrots in preparation for some weekend fun.

Good paupiettes, bad carrots

For the afternoon cuisine demonstration, Chef Bogen was finishing the foie gras terrine from Friday in addition to making forcemeat-stuffed chicken breasts and turned mushrooms.  My feelings for turned vegetables are at least shared - when chef mentioned the word "turned," a collective groan went up from the room.  So much work just for appearance...

Forcemeat stuffed chicken with turned mushrooms; Foie gras

Before class began, the translator made a PSA that all translators would be cracking down on talking in class from that point forward - the first person talking would be sent out of the room for five minutes, and anyone talking after that would be dismissed from the rest of the class period.  It seemed an effective warning at first, but the Brazilians were soon chatting away with no reprimand except from the group of girls who sit together up front and say, "Shh!" a lot.

A student from Jordan approached the translator and asked if he could keep his phone out during class to take any calls from his family due to the ongoing Middle East crisis.  The translator asked the chef who simply replied, "No," and then the chef and translator began a sort of debate.  Turning back to the student, the translator said, "Chef says he's sorry, but you need to put your phone away.  What you are doing here is more important."  Walking back to his seat, the student called out loudly over his shoulder, "Okay, but I don't agree with the chef!"  Oh, boy...

Chef Bogen launched into a speech about being adults and learning self-discipline and about how we need to focus on what we're studying - to concentrate on why we're at the school and not on things that we can't do anything about.  We received the "Oui, Chef" reminder again and a warning never, ever, under any circumstance, to contradict or talk back to a chef either at the school or in any future career.  Twenty minutes later he began our demonstration.  At first it sounded harsh, but he made sense to me even though I'm not sure that his lecture clicked in the minds of the younger students who needed to hear it the most.

We finished late and the Grand Diplome group rushed off to our pastry practicum to join the other students who had already started their Mokas.  I whipped up my cake batter rather quickly and started on my buttercream frosting.  Apart from the flavoring, it was identical to the frosting for the Dacquoise which I had managed quite well, but something went terribly wrong this evening.

Chef Mahut often insists on checking certain stages of our recipes before allowing us to proceed to the next step, and in this instance he wanted to check our frosting before we added the butter and then again before we frosted our cakes.  He gave me the go-ahead for the butter and I whisked my arm off until the frosting appeared to be a good consistency, but Mahut stopped me short of frosting the cake.  He worked with the frosting for a while, and when I asked what the problem was he said, "I don't know."  He handed it back to me and said to whisk it over an ice bath again.  By the time that he came back to my station, everyone else was halfway through icing their cakes and he allowed me to begin mine.  The frosting wouldn't firm up, though, making it impossible to smooth the surface.  By now students were starting their piping decorations, but chef stuck my cake in the freezer and told me to whisk my frosting again on an ice bath.

The end of class was fast approaching and chef was throwing out warnings about giving everyone who was late a zero.  I'm not sure if that included me, but I finally began my piping decorations with frosting that had the consistency of softened butter.  When it came time to have him evaluate my cake, Chef Stater of the Obvious simply said, "If this were the final exam, that frosting would have made you fail."  Good to know.

Boxing up my sad cake, I began my trudge down the stairs when my greasy-bottomed shoes slipped out from under me and I took the next four or five steps down on my rear while my cake box tumbled to the bottom, noisily bouncing across every step on the way.  Fortunately, about four students were behind me to witness the humiliation and offer up, "Are you okay?" as I brushed off my bruised tailbone and picked up the blasted Moka which at least had the grace to stay contained in the box through the entire ordeal.  To console myself I went home and had a 10:00 PM dinner consisting only of the rest of the Dacquoise cake and a big blob of Moka.

Before and after the fall

Sunday

A youth group from Friendship Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC visited the church that morning and their leader delivered the sermon in English with a French translator.  As the pastor stated, "We're getting all of the Carolinas here!" (Foreigners have trouble differentiating between North Carolina and South Carolina.  I try not to get offended.)

After church I came home and spent a good portion of my afternoon turning carrots and practicing paper cornets.  Though still not perfect, it began to feel at least a little more natural.  I wanted to turn some mushrooms as well, but of course no stores that sell mushrooms were open anywhere near me.  The weather had cooled considerably, though - into the low 70's - and I was able to unwind from a rather hectic week without even turning on my new fan.

Practice makes perfect... I hope.

I'm not going to lie - things will be heating up next week at school with 42 hours of classes and what I believe is a mid-semester advisory meeting, and I'm just a little concerned about my progress or lack thereof.  Sometimes I wish that I could have a one-on-one personal trainer who would just spend a few days intensely developing my weak areas, a sort chef version of Mr. Miyagi (and no, that would not be the equivalent of Arnold from Happy Days).  For now, though, I'm going to find some mushrooms.