Basic Week Six

This week was the fullest one by far as class schedules go, so I'll just dive right into it:

Monday

It felt a bit like a holiday with only one class at 3:30 in the afternoon.  We rounded out last week's lessons on forcemeat by making stuffed chicken breasts au jus with turned mushrooms.  Stuffing chicken with chicken feels a bit presumptuous, but after pureeing the latter chicken with eggs and cream it created quite the tasty concoction.  Mushroom turning was disastrous (apparently mastering the technique requires more than watching a YouTube video or observing Asian chef), my chicken was slightly under-cooked, and, as usual, my sauce needed more reduction.

Tuesday

The morning began with Chef Pascal whipping up several types of tartelettes, little pies that can be filled with all sorts of goodness from fruits to creams to chocolate and everything in between.  Lemon was my favorite, tasting almost like a lemon meringue pie, but I couldn't complain about the other varieties.

Lemon, orange, apricot, chocolate,
almond cream, and pear tartelettes

After a brief break we went straight to our cuisine demonstration on rabbits and led by Chef Lesourd.  Our expressions must have revealed the slight horror that accompanies cutting up rabbits, particularly when the heads are still on (rabbit meat must be sold with the head to verify that it is indeed a rabbit as opposed to, say, a cat).  The fact that they were already skinned with the ears chopped off took away from the cuteness factor, but they had incredibly large, terrifying eyes.

Lesourd took a moment to explain that as heads of the food chain (as he put it), we shouldn't shy away from any meat.  Some animals are raised solely for consumption and would not have existed otherwise.  Rabbit farms provide a way of living for a lot of people, and even the controversial method of making foie gras keeps an entire village in business.  His speech didn't make the prospect of cutting up a rabbit any more appealing, but at least it removed some of the guilt factor.  For kicks he threw in a few flavored custards that, sadly, we ran out of time to sample.

Rabbit with potatoes and mustard sauce, mixed
vegetables, and custard with Lesourd's "personal touch"

The strangest element of the demonstration was the translator.  He was the only male one that we had ever had, and he hailed from Great Britain.  He said "wabbit" instead of "rabbit" all during class.  At first I felt sorry for him, thinking that it was a speech impediment until I noticed that he didn't have trouble with any other "r" words; after that it was just annoying.  He also seemed to have some form of Tourettes that caused him to shout out quotes from movies in really bad impersonations.

Our cuisine practicum immediately followed the demonstration, and Chef Lesourd was in charge of our group.  Cutting the rabbit was surprisingly simple as if its body were made for meat cuts, but somewhere along the way I still fell behind everyone but one other girl.  Then I proceeded to make a near-fatal error.

The class shared one blender that chef wanted us to use for finishing the sauce, so when the other six students ahead of me finished with it I began to move my ingredients - the reduced rabbit stock, mustard, and whipped cream - toward the blender.  Forgetting something, I left the station for a minute and then returned and dumped everything into the canister.  The eighth student suddenly popped up by my side asking, "What are you doing?!?"  When I had turned away she had poured her rabbit stock into the blender before going to get her other ingredients, but because the canister was already dirty from previous uses, I never even noticed that it wasn't empty.

For a brief moment we just stared at each other, dumbfounded, before I began profusely to apologize.  She tried to be cool about it although I could sense her irritation, and I couldn't blame her.  Finally I told her just to dump the rest of her ingredients in with mine.  The final result was far too runny; whether my stock or her stock was the culprit hardly mattered.  Chef had warned us against reducing the sauce after it was mixed because mustard shouldn't be boiled, but we had no other choice.

I split the sauce into multiple pots to speed up the reduction because now we were really far behind, and when one of them began to boil she took it to her own stove to complete.  Chef reprimanded us for boiling the mustard as he walked by our stoves and pointed out the time again saying, "You're behind!  Your plate had better be very, very good!"

Finally I got the meal plated, centering the prettiest cut of rabbit in a neat circle of sautéed potatoes and spooning the sauce around it.  Lesourd tested the potatoes and said that they were good, then said that the rabbit was good, and even the rabbit gizzards skewered on a rosemary twig that I remembered to cook at the last second were done well.  Finally he took a spoon and tested the sauce directly from the pot.  He said, "Did you taste your sauce?"  I thought I had, so I feebly replied, "Yes?" and he said, "And what did you think?"  I took my spoon and took another taste before responding, "Not bad... Too salty?"

Chef slapped me on the shoulder and said, "No, it's very good!"  Then he announced to the class, "THIS is what the sauce should taste like!  Come try it so that you will know next time," and the whole class filed by my station to taste my sauce.  He praised the other girl's sauce as well so that in the end her annoyance with me was replaced with a high-five and "Way to go!  We did it!"

Not to toot my own horn because it was all completely a fluke or a miracle, but Chef said that you can know a great sauce when you see the customer using his bread to mop up the rest.  I have been buying baguettes to eat with the leftover rabbit solely for that purpose (eating sauce with a spoon or licking the plate feels inappropriate).

Backing up a little, one sad note to the week occurred at the start of our cuisine demonstration.  A Student Services representative interrupted the class to notify us that one of the demonstration assistants, a Chinese girl who just graduated last semester, was killed on Wednesday when a Metro train hit her after she slipped and fell onto the tracks.  I didn't know the girl personally and had seen her only in two or three demos, but the news shook up everyone in the room.

For the rest of the week I thought about that girl - about how she, like most students, probably had big plans for her future with a prestigious diploma fresh in hand.  As I age I become more aware of my own mortality, far more when I was in my teens and twenties, and yet I still fall into the trap of assuming that I have at least x amount of time to live.

Yes, I should still work towards future goals, but how much more should I work towards making each present moment count towards eternity?  Martin Luther said, "Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree," but he also stated that,"There are two days in my calendar: This day and that Day," the latter referring to the day that we will all stand before God.

Wednesday

It was the first 12-hour class day for the Grand Diplome students - two three-hour demonstrations sandwiched between two three-hour practicums.  Our second such day would occur on Friday.  We remind ourselves often that if we were working in a restaurant we would expect just as many hours and much harder work, although I'm not sure that it makes us feel any better.

Chef Tranchant was waiting for us bright and early in the morning to begin our tartelettes.  We were making only two types, the orange and chocolate ganache, and we were to do the latter recipe in pairs of two.  It was the first "team effort" recipe, and I was happy to end up with M.J., a woman from New York who is close to my age and who works at about my same level and pace, if you know what I mean.

Although I had rolled out my dough too thickly and broke one of my shells, the tartelettes turned out quite tasty and M.J. and I worked well together.  I did learn that if you ever have to flamber (torch) anything, such as the top of an orange tartelette in order to caramelize the sugar, you shouldn't do it on top of parchment paper.  Fortunately I managed to snuff out the flames and dispose of the paper while the chef's back was turned and before any smoke alarms went off.

Five of my tartelettes (fortunately the presentation
board didn't hold room for #6).

A pastry theory class followed the practicum at 12:30, and Chef Pascal taught us everything that we could possibly ever hope or want to know about flour and yeast.  He mercifully finished in 90 minutes, leaving enough time before our next class for some people to run out and grab a late lunch.  I decided that it wasn't worth the effort to change out of my uniform and instead read a Kindle book until our 3:30 class.  Have I mentioned my love for modern technology - how I can at any given time pull my phone out of my pocket and have a library book right at my fingertips?

Chef Lesourd walked the cuisine students through fish poaching, hollandaise sauce, and "cocquette" turned vegetables.  "Fish" and "turning" are two words that now make me cringe, and I'm coming to the point where I almost hate fish.  Aside from an unsatisfying flavor, the splinter-like bones that I am never able to remove entirely are quite upsetting.  I have flashbacks to my life in Cyprus when Loula, my landlady/housemate, would boil fish at least once a week.  The effort to eat an entire fish involved pulverizing each bite inside of my mouth with my tongue for several minutes before swallowing to ensure that I wouldn't catch a splinter in my throat.  Some folks say that I tend to eat quickly (or everyone else just eats really slowly), so fish night was particularly maddening.

Hake steak with Hollandaise sauce
and turned vegetables; grilled trout

Filipino chef led our practicum after the demo and my food was just okay.  I tried some of it myself and agreed, ruefully pulling a bone from my mouth.  Batter-dipped deep-fried fish, though - now THAT is something that I could get excited about.

Thursday

After the prior full day, Thursday was quite relaxed with only a demonstration in the morning.  Chef Pascal made caramelized pear and almond tarts with a meringue top, and he used the rest of of the dough to make little "boats" filled with caramel and almonds.

Pear tart; Caramel-almond boats

Although the latter dessert looked pretty nice, the thought struck me that I never see pecans in French pastries - almonds are almost always the go-to nut.  Finally I decided to ask chef the reason and he explained that it's simply a matter of cost - pecans are considered a "high" nut and would be used only in fancy or expensive pastries.  Right then and there I knew why I could never live in France permanently: How could I even consider moving away from my hometown where pecans are so abundant that they lie rotting in the streets?  What would life be without pecan pie, butter pecan ice cream, pecan pancakes, pecan pralines...

The only event scheduled for the afternoon was a mid-term update of our grades for Basic Patisserie.  Two of the groups were in this time slot for a total of 28 students, and we each waited in the winter garden as one student at a time was summoned upstairs to meet with Chef Pascal and a translator to go over the results.  The names were in alphabetical order by first names which meant that most of the Asians were last because their names tend to start with either X, Y, or Z.  K got me fourth place in line.  I wasn't exactly nervous, although the four flights of stairs to the unairconditioned meeting room left me breathless and sweaty.

Pascal slipped the paper in front of me showing that I had a 3.359 out of 5 possible points.  2.5 is passing, so I might have been a little less deflated if the class average weren't 3.459.  Below average... What a daunting thought.  The next paper showed the evaluation grade for each practicum, and as I suspected, the infamous Moka was my downfall (no pun intended), with a grade of only 2 but a weight above several other practicums. In an effort to make me feel better, chef said that we had an exceptional group because the other class averages were around 3.1.  In other words, I would be at the top of the class in the more deplorable groups.  He threw in one last kind word, though, saying that for all of the classes in which he had worked with me, he thought that I was doing a very good job.  Pascal has really grown on me.

That afternoon I visited Bouygues, the telecom store from which I bought my six-month prepaid phone card, to find out why my card had expired after only one month.  My natural guilt complex made me fairly certain that I had done something wrong and that I would have to throw out another large sum of money to fix it.  The first guy discussed it with another guy who discussed it with some woman who appeared to be their manager.  They finally all agreed that I ran out of minutes.

"No," I explained again in my best French, "I received a message saying that my account would expire on the 22nd.  I had €38 left on my account until the 23rd, and then it dropped to €0."

Girl: "Yes, if you used all of your minutes then it would expire."  [She walks away.]

Me to guy still standing there: "But I didn't use them. It expired first; then my balance dropped to zero" [showing him my text message warning stating the expiration date].

Guy: "Did you use the rest of your minutes?  That would make it expire."

Me:  "No.  I had a €38 balance remaining until 11:59 PM on the 22nd.  At 12:00 AM on the 23rd I had €0.  I didn't use all €38 in that time."

Just at the point where I was fairly certain that I had lost the battle, they suddenly began communicating with me in English, and finally the guy got on the phone with their customer service.  I sat reading my Kindle book for half an hour while he listened to hold music.  Finally, a voice came on the other line, they exchanged a few words, and just like that my minutes returned.  Being good French people they never actually apologized or stated that it was their error, but I was so happy that I thanked them profusely (and probably apologized to them).

Upon returning to my apartment and looking up my account online, I saw that the expiration date had been pushed to... October 21, only four months from the time that I purchased the card rather than six months, but I figured that one battle per day was all that I could handle for now (plus there's a good possibility that I'll use up my minutes before then anyhow).

Friday

This 12-hour class day consisted of two practicums sandwiched between two demonstrations.  The first demonstration was a sort of continuation of the theme from Tuesday, with Chef Bogen showing us three new fish preparations.  Like one of our earliest practicums, we would be filleting a flat fish in addition to turning more potatoes.  Hooray.

Brill fillet with turned potatoes and lemon sauce; salmon; sole

After a brief lunch break we headed into our pastry practicum with Chef Olivier (formerly referred to as Chef Mahut) to make the caramelized pear tarts.  Except for in the first couple of practicums where chefs were trying to learn our names, we don't have assigned stations in the kitchen.  After the first few classes students tend to pick out their permanent spots, though, kind of like a church pew, so you can imagine the tension when the Ukrainian girl found an Asian girl in "her spot" across from me that afternoon.

My guess is that after the Asian girl (AG) got her evaluation grade, she thought that a more ideal location in the kitchen might help improve her performance.  The Ukrainian girl (UG) said, "This is my spot!" to which AG replied, "I here now."  Nonplussed, UG responded with, "But I have been here all the time! After five week you move into my spot?" AG, without breaking stride in her preparation, just repeated, "I here now."  UG stood blinking at her for a moment before taking up the now vacant location next to me.

Despite the turf wars, the class went well and Olivier praised us for good organization and teamwork (apparently he missed the little quibble at the beginning).  Because we finished relatively early, he gathered us around to talk about the final exam.  We'll all have to make the same pastry tart recipe, and in addition to that we will be drawing one of ten possible recipes from previous practicums right before the exam.  It will consist only of the ingredients, so we must pull the method of preparation from our memory.  The more worrisome part is finishing in under 2.5 hours - every minute over the time limit is a two-point deduction (the final is 100 points).

Lots o' tarts

We jumped straight from the pastry practicum to the cuisine practicum with a visiting chef who works at Le Cordon Bleu in Istanbul.  Many of the chefs are taking a three to four-week vacation in August with the rest of Paris, meaning that we will be seeing some new faces around the school.  This chef was on the slightly scary side, but I kind of liked him. He would roll his eyes and yell a lot, and he chewed up and spit out one of the younger boys who has trouble controlling his tongue and attitude, but he was very blunt in a helpful sort of way.

The miracle in this class occurred when I was one of the first people to finish my plate, but instead of feeling excited I kept wondering what important thing I had forgotten.  It apparently came as a shock to other students as well.  Luis, who usually finishes first or second, thought I was just getting a plate out and offered to help.  I said, "No thanks, I already presented." "You're done?" "Yes." "You already showed the chef?" "Yes."  "You mean you presented?" "YES!"

As it turns out, I remembered everything; however, my fish filleting was terrible, which I already knew right from the start when chef pointed it out.  The fillets turned out too tiny and ended up over-baking.  The sauce at least was good, but that only prompted a "Too bad" from the chef.

Turkish chef also pulled us up after class to talk about the cuisine final exam.  Like the pastry final, each student will pull one of ten recipes from a hat to prepare within 2.5 hours.  One interesting difference is that we can't present our plate any more than five minutes early - even if we were to finish in two hours we would have to wait 25 minutes to present, which could cause problems in keeping the food warm.  We aren't allowed to talk to other students during the exam and we can't ask the supervising chef any questions, nor can we bring any notes with us.  To say that I'm a little more concerned about this exam than the pastry one would be an understatement.

The day ended in a cuisine demonstration with Chef Vaca. It started late because of some confusion over which floor we were supposed to be on, and Vaca, who's usually pretty good-natured, was anything but happy.  The translator even came out into the hallway before letting us enter the class to say that we all needed to enter quietly and be on our best behavior.  "It's for your own good," she warned.  The mood lightened up considerably as class got underway, though, and we were treated to some of the tastiest food yet in a cuisine demonstration.  

Braised veal with croutons and a fried egg;
Jumbo fried shrimp; Cherry cake

By the time that I arrived back at the apartment it was almost 10:00 PM.  Even though my next class wasn't until 12:30 on Saturday, I felt so tired that I set my alarm for 10:00 AM as a precaution and crashed into bed after a quick shower.

Saturday

About 15 minutes before my alarm went off I woke up after having slept almost ten hours.  It felt so good.  Back at the school we made jumbo fried shrimp, tartar sauce from homemade mayonnaise, and egg soufflé from a demonstration several weeks ago.  This practicum was unusually relaxed and even enjoyable, probably because both recipes were fairly simple and we had the little Korean lady as our chef.  By the end of class we were just standing around waiting for our soufflés to finish baking as we chatted about different cuisines from our home countries. The Argentinian and Spaniard were expounding the virtues of chipotle peppers which our chef had never heard of.  As if the scarcity of pecans weren't bad enough, the French don't understand chipotle??

Late in the afternoon I met up with Samia, a French lady from my church who lives in Saint-Denis, after some confusion over metro stops due to manifestations (unlawful protests) shutting several down.  Heavily armed policeman were at ever station and lining the streets, but the Parisians hardly gave them a second glance. She gave me a brief little Paris tour to such places as the Église St Paul and a lot of other spots that I was too tired to remember before we stopped for banana and Nutella crepes.  Although Samia knows some English, she stuck to French in an effort to help me learn it better.  I appreciated the effort, although three hours of listening to and talking in French can be mentally exhausting.

St Paul

Sunday

After church I came home and unwittingly took a long nap, a more and more common occurrence these days whenever I sit down.  It was, indeed, a day of rest.

I'll end this post by sharing something that struck a chord with me this past week.  Often I've heard people say that they don't enjoy reading through the bible or that they don't see the value in it when compared to more selective reading, with I and II Chronicles being two books that they most often site as less important because of the genealogies.  But I think that these people are missing some important nuggets of learning hidden in those passages.

Take, for example, something I read in II Chronicles 16 a few days ago.  The story is about a great and godly king in Judah, Asa, who was more zealous for the Lord than many of his forefathers, and the Lord rewarded him richly for his faith.  In his later years, however, he forgot the Lord's past faithfulness and deliverance, and his decision to rely on his own wisdom and the king of Syria rather than on the Lord to deliver him from a difficult situation was his downfall. When a prophet points out his error, Asa just gets angry and locks him in prison.  Finally, he develops a disease in his feet, but "even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians."

This passage highlighted again for me the the importance of constantly reminding myself of God's faithfulness by reflecting on His word and on my own past experiences.  The danger of forgetting happens when we become complacent.  It's often gradual, like I'll be on a spiritual "high" for a while, then it gradually fades, and suddenly I look back with some shock and pinpoint dozens of situations where I cut the Lord out entirely from my decisions.

So going forward this week, I want to remember the Lord's faithfulness.  I don't want to bring in the Lord as an afterthought when I've exhausted all other efforts first.  I don't want to get stressed or anxious over any situation, regardless of the size.  I want every event in my life to be preceded by seeking the Lord's face first so that in every outcome I can recognize His hand.