Basic Week Nine

Summer officially has about one month left, but all of the back-to-school hubbub on top of the mildly cool Paris weather makes it seem over.  Speaking of back-to-school, two things that you won't find in any section of school supplies in French stores are college-ruled notebook paper and pencils.  Instead, students take their notes on something akin to graph paper (because who doesn't want vertical lines running through all of their writing?) and use only pens (pencil is hard to read, particularly on graph paper, and they provide students an excuse to make errors).

Anyhow, this winding down of summer leaves me feeling a bit nostalgic or like something important has passed me by, and at times I even find myself in tears while browsing through such sites as Facebook.  Don't misunderstand me - I love seeing the photos of everyone's summer fun, but they do make me get a little lump in my throat.  It's ironic because I hate to be hot and sweaty and I spend most summers greatly anticipating the fall, but I've always loved living in a city that has four seasons.  One often appreciates simple pleasures only when they are no longer available, such as:

• Cookouts.  Outdoor grilling is forbidden in France, remember?  Hamburgers, hot dogs, s'mores, potato salad, coleslaw, watermelon, chips, sweet tea, lemonade - they're all better when eaten outside while sitting on a lawn chair and trying to balance a flimsy paper plate and Dixie cup on your knees as you shoo away the flies.  Better yet is the time spent just idly chatting in the shade as you watch the kids, admirably resilient to the heat and humidity, endlessly playing until the sun goes down and the fireflies light up the night to a chorus of crickets, cicadas, and bullfrogs.  [Which reminds me: After I previously bemoaned  the lack of fireflies here, a friend sent me a video of her yard at night with the fireflies and evening "songs," and I watched it probably a dozen times.  As I showed it to a British girl at school who had never heard of fireflies, she asked, "What's all that noise?  How do you sleep through that?" I could only answer with, "How do you sleep without it?"]
• Pools, lakes, beaches, and water parks. I may not love to swim but nothing beats the smell of coconut sunscreen lotion or the feeling of plunging into cool water just as you feel your body reach its melting point.  Tubing lazily through Helen, Georgia, taking long rides on a pontoon boat, watching the nieces and nephews doing underwater handstands, cannonballs, Marco-Polo, and all of the stuff that you enjoyed as a kid, catching that first salty, fishy whiff in the air as you approach the beach, being mesmerized by your feet sinking deep into the sand as the ocean waves lap around your legs, and taking the best nap ever after your post-swim shower in a room cooled by a glorious invention known as "air conditioning" - these are a few of my favorite things.
• Baseball.  True, I spend maybe 10% of my time watching the game (if it's a really good one) and the rest of my time chatting with friends or buying the obligatory hot dog and ice cream in a baseball cap bowl (or in more recent years it was Chick-fil-A Ice Dream in a cup with chocolate syrup), but I would always snap to attention for "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Sweet Caroline," and, of course, "Y-M-C-A."  Staying until the end of a game was the exception, not the rule, because who goes for the game?
• Family vacation.  Every summer of my life included at least one big trip either with family or to see family, and most often it included both.  Sure, eight to twenty-four hours straight in a car or a week in a hotel or cabin with your loved ones can have its challenges, but I wouldn't trade the memories that each of those times brings for anything.

Monday

My second "opportunity" as a basic cuisine class assistant was this week.  My first week we had only two practicums, but this week we had five, with four of them being at 8:30 in the morning.  Being an assistant isn't rocket science, but it does require that you come to class 20 minutes early to make sure that all of the ingredients are ready, running out of class if something is missing or runs out, and staying afterwards to make sure that the room is clean and the leftovers are put away.  Not a big deal, of course, because I'm always the last one out anyhow, but those interruptions tend to make me... last-er.

We began our week bright and early Monday morning in a cuisine practicum with a substitute chef, Chef Strill, who had recently retired after 12 years of teaching at Le Cordon Bleu but who was willing to step in for the many other chefs still on vacation.  He was the gentlest, sweetest, most patient chef that we had to date, and I instantly liked him and regretted that we'd have him for only a short period of time.  What I haven't figured out is if I do better with chefs that I like more, or if I like chefs more when I do better; nonetheless my pork medallions, mustard sauce, and pommes Dauphines all turned out well - for once my meat was cooked just right (although leaving pork with pink in it went against everything that I had ever learned).

Slightly pink pork, pommes Dauphine, and mustard sauce

That afternoon Chef Strill led the demonstration on cutting and sautéeing chicken, making homemade gnocchi, and poaching fruit.  Perhaps it's because the only "vegetables" that we ever make seem to be potatoes, but the side of Italian-style vegetables containing zucchini, eggplant, red peppers, and onions was probably my favorite dish that we've made so far.  Now if they could just discover broccoli...

Sautéed tarragon chicken with Italian-style vegetables;
gnocchi; Italian meringue with poached fruit

Because I was free after 3:30 and I would be in classes from 8:30 AM until 9:30 PM for the next two days, I took the rest of the afternoon to do a little necessary shopping up in the ninth arrondissement.  While there I passed a store that caught my eye, Maison du Miel ("House of Honey").  Any store with pretty little jars lining every shelf and display window will catch my eye.  Several months ago I listened to my mom and aunts talk about their favorite types of honey (e.g., clover vs. orange blossom), but up to that point I thought that all honeys were created equal, or at least tasted the same.   Boy, was I wrong - one taste of the lavender honey and I wasn't sure that I could ever go back to old grocery store versions again.  To top it off, the very friendly cashier gave me a piece of honey candy as I checked out - a hard outside that dissolved into a soft, sweet center.  Oh, la la!

Lavender honey, just perfect atop leftover brioche

Tuesday

The day began with Chef Strill again in the cuisine practicum.  My tarragon chicken needed to be a little crispier and the Italian vegetables were okay, but I was back to the old problem of a poorly reduced sauce.  Being the nice man that he was, Strill just smiled and said, "But not too bad!"  Our basic cuisine written exam was at 12:30 so I used my lunch hour to eat some of the not-too-bad meal while I studied.

This exam felt a little easier than the pastry written exam, although I still found myself scratching my head on several questions such as "With what meat would you associate a Bordelaise sauce?"  I can't complain about the written tests, though, because they are translated in both French and English which means that they have to be a million times harder for the Asian students and other nationalities.  Even with my French language background I'm not sure that I could have succeeded if the tests had been only in French.

Chef Vaca led the 3:30 demonstration on hot fish terrine, scrambled eggs, and Bavarian cream.  While terrines are growing on me, fish terrines are still somewhat repulsive.  What sane person would come up with the idea of making a mousse out of fish?  Except for the dessert, this demonstration was probably the least appetizing (although I did come away with some good egg-scrambling techniques).

Hot fish terrine; Scrambled eggs & smoked salmon; Bavarian cream

That evening we made the Pithiviers (Three Kings' Cake) and Sacristains (twists made from leftover puff pastry dough) from Friday's demonstration.  Puff pastries are not particularly difficult, but they do require that the dough and butter stay at just the right temperature of coolness.  At home this wouldn't be a problem - one could make the dough and do a turn or two, chill it for a few hours, come back and do another turn or two, chill it again for a couple of hours or overnight, and then roll out the pastry.  In the span of a class period, though, where your pastry has to be in the oven within an hour and you're working in a warm kitchen, it's almost impossible.  Somehow everyone's cake turned out okay, though, and Chef Tranchant seemed pleased overall.

Chef Tranchant insists that our final products be put in a straight line;
my Pithiviers and Sacristains

Wednesday

Morning came too soon, and it was definitely too early in the day to be making fish terrines.  The practicum seemed like it would be easy because it was our only dish (aside from the accompanying sauce).  The Istanbul chef showed up, though, and I went into automatic "uh-oh" mode.  He's a yeller, but unlike Chef Cotte he's not the makes-you-laugh kind of yeller because he never cracks a smile.  His face is perpetually a dark shade of red that makes him appear constantly angry (although it does tend to go purple when he gets really mad), and his eyes are deeply bloodshot, like his whole head is about to explode.  I can't say that I'm sorry that he'll be with us for only a month.

Because I took care of sending up the food from the basement, the other class assistant took over the job of dividing the spinach leaves for lining the terrine into seven bowls, which would have been fine... except that we had eight students.  I only discovered the mistake because I was the eighth person to reach the point where we needed the spinach.  Feeling bad about his error, the assistant grabbed a bowl and walked around the counter, grabbing spinach from everyone else's bowls despite some protests (practicums can bring out a lot of possessiveness).  Still, my bowl ended up containing just a pithy amount of spinach and few leaves large enough to line a mold well.

Chef was actually understanding about the lack of spinach and told me to continue on with what I had.  For one rare moment we even had some downtime in our cuisine class as we waited for our terrines to finish baking and the atmosphere was almost relaxed.  I finished my sauce, got my plate warmed and cleaned, organized my tools to be able to plate immediately, and waited, happy not to be rushing for once. Finally students began removing their terrines from their ovens and molds for the final presentation.  Mine was the last to finish but I tested it for doneness and all seemed well... until I flipped it out of the mold.

The contents of the mold splayed across my cutting board, a mound of mushy white fish mousse with the two strips of salmon jiggling sadly on top.  I considered trying to plate it anyhow, perhaps make my own genius invention and call it "hot fish pudding," but gave up the idea after about one second of contemplation.  Chef was evaluating another plate and had not yet noticed me although the other students were saying helpful things like, "Oh, no!" and "What did you do?"  One girl whose plate had already been evaluated did whisper, "Would you like to use my terrine? He's going to fail you!"  I was touched by the gesture although it felt slightly unethical so I turned her down (not that I didn't consider it for a second, although I wasn't sure how I would hide the hideous mass covering my cutting board).  I put my hot, clean plate back in the cabinet and said, "Um, Chef?  I'm ready."

Istanbul chef was pretty calm about the whole thing and still tasted it and my sauce.  He decided that the problem was probably that I hadn't used enough egg whites.  He ended the class congratulating everyone on successful terrines ("... with the exception of one," pointing in my direction) and dropping the warning to "respect the recipe."  Normally that rule applies only to pastry - using exact measurements and ingredients - but this dish was an exception in cuisine.  Except that I had respected the recipe, measuring out the whites to the exact milliliter.  Often I have the problem of respecting the recipe too much in cuisine (I feel like there's a Rodney Dangerfield punchline in here somewhere).

The other class assistant had put away the leftover food in the basement kitchen after class for the past couple of days because he always finished first, but Istanbul chef wouldn't let anyone leave the class early; therefore, I volunteered to put the food away.  The usual basement kitchen chef, the Filipino one, directed me just to set the bowl of fish and salmon in the fridge when I asked what to do with it.  Walking into the fridge, I unloaded the butter, egg whites, fish, and leftover herbs like we always do and turned to leave when Chef Bogen walked in (the chef who lectured me on dish rags and how to properly store my knife).  He began frenetically grabbing and dropping items on the shelf saying, "You need to organize this, wrap the herbs properly, and clean, wrap and label the fish.  Just because you didn't make the mess doesn't mean you should ignore it."  I was at a loss for words for a moment, not realizing that there was a mess to begin with - it looked exactly like it always did.

I brought the fish and herbs out, uncertain of what I should do with them.  He grabbed some parsley, shaking it in my face and saying, "See? You wrap the top with the ends exposed and put them in the water."  Simple enough.  I then looked for a place to wrap fish that wasn't in the way of the people preparing lunch for the staff.  Finally finding an empty counter, I pulled out some plastic wrap before Bogen popped back in, saying, "Move - I'm working in that space."  Carrying the fish around on the cling wrap I wandered awkwardly around the kitchen, looking for another open space that wasn't occupied by people preparing lunch for the staff.  My final location was atop a cardboard box, or rather inside the box because it didn't have a lid.  Having succeeded in wrapping the fish and herbs properly, I walked back into the fridge and studied the shelves, trying once again to guess what Bogen wanted me to do.  Finally I arranged all of the blocks of butter and bottles of egg whites into perfectly neat and stacked rows that would be decimated before the 12:30 practicums began and snuck out of the basement, avoiding running into Bogen again after having broken some record for the longest class assistant post-practicum duty ever.

Disgruntled, I spent my lunch hour reading rather than eating (my fish terrine was in the trash) before heading to Chef Vaca's demonstration on filleting and sautéeing sea bream, braising guinea fowl, and deep-frying puff pastry (yes, please!).  He made the guinea fowl into some sort of wonderful concoction layered with sausage, "bacon," carrots, onions, and cabbage - nice comfort food after a rough morning.

Sea bream fillets with fennel; guinea fowl; deep-fried pear puffs

The pastry demonstration afterwards was with Chef Tranchant.  He made bûche pistache-chocolat, a Christmas "log" pistachio sponge cake with layers of chocolate ganache and a hard chocolate coating, followed by a Genoa cake, an almond sponge cake covered in almonds (what else?) and powdered sugar for a sort of Christmas in August feel.

Bûches; Genoa cakes

Practicum with Tranchant followed immediately afterwards and our only assignment was to make the bûche.  Still on a roll from the morning's cuisine practicum, I somehow lost "respect" for this recipe and ended up running out of ganache for my cake layers, and I still needed some extra reserved for the decorations (I suspect that I accidentally used the measurements for the imbibing syrup which were less than half those of the ganache). It didn't seem like a big deal, though - I would just have thin layers and I could borrow some ganache for the decorations from students who had used the correct measurements.  I carefully slid a couple of spatulas under my log to take it to the chocolate coating station set up in the middle of the counter... and promptly dropped it on the floor.

I let out a sort of scream that caused several students to jump and Tranchant to raise an eyebrow.  Miraculously my cake appeared undamaged (we had them in the freezer prior to coating to firm them up), so after a moment of reflection (my internal conversation went something like this: "Am I supposed to throw it out?  Trim some edges? Start over?  I can't lose another recipe today... not on my watch!") I reached down, picked it up off of the floor, and continued to the chocolate station (oh, yes I did!).  It looked perfect with the smooth coating covering it, so once again using my two spatulas, I carefully picked it up off of the wire rack and swiveled to place it on the presentation board.

Poor Yin-Li.  She had a long day as well and had the misfortune of being situated next to the very busy chocolate station, so I couldn't get mad when she simultaneously backed up into me, knocking my cake off of the spatulas and top-side down onto the counter.  I managed not to scream this time and soon a couple of other girls were helping me get the cake back onto the coating rack to add some additional coverage before Chef Tranchant noticed.  Meanwhile, Yin-Li was apologizing profusely and awkwardly flailing her arms in an attempt to help me as I tried to reassure that it was okay.

Working to get all of our bûches in a row; my (slightly soiled) bûche

And it was - my cake looked and tasted decent in the end (yes, I ate it after it fell on the floor.  Don't judge - see previous posts about lowered hygiene standards).  I'll probably never know how Tranchant evaluated me unless they give us a breakdown of our final grade, but I actually found the class quite enjoyable. We have a good camaraderie in our group, and although Tranchant can be hard to read, I like him a lot and, as it turns out, he has a sense of humor.

Jade, M.J., Tranchant, and me; Tranchant decided to switch roles

Thursday

The female Korean chef was in charge of our fourth 8:30 AM cuisine practicum that week.  I went into class feeling good about this one because I had typed up and reviewed all of my directions the night before and printed them out at school that morning.  It turned out to be an effort in futility, but at least it revealed that my cuisine struggles aren't simply a result of disorganization.  It wasn't the worst practicum ever (and a far cry from the day before), but I still finished last, my fish was overcooked, and my sauce had too much cream (at least my fennel was done well).

Packing up my stuff after class I tapped my pocket to feel for my little flash drive that I had used to print out my recipe.  The patting became a little more frantic when I didn't find it and I realized that I must have left it in the USB port.  Running down to the computer lab I blanched when I noticed that it was no longer in the computer, so I bee-lined downstairs to the receptionist desk to ask if anyone had turned it in.  Nobody had.

As I began remembering everything that was on it a sick feeling grew in the pit of my stomach and my palms began to sweat - photocopies of my driver's license and passport, all of the registration documents and letters for the school, several years of tax returns, a list of my passwords to things such as email, bank, and credit card accounts, and photos - years and years of photos.  I spent the rest of my lunch hour on the school's agonizingly slow computer, changing as many passwords as I could think of, starting with the most detrimental ones first.

The time came to go to my last class of the day.  I sat through Istanbul chef's demonstration on goat cheese and vinaigrette salad, wiener schnitzel, homemade pasta with tomato concassée, and chocolate and orange mousse, but I could hardly concentrate as my mind churned over everything else that might be on that flash drive.  It wasn't backed up because it was my back up from the last computer that I got rid of.  For a moment I thought that I was going to get physically sick and all that I wanted to do was run home to continue securing all of my online accounts.

Still had the presence of mind to take a photo: Wiener schitzel with pasta and
tomato concassée, goat cheese salad, chocolate mousse, and orange salad

That is exactly what I did as soon as class dismissed.  It was, thankfully, the last class of the day, so after checking the computer lab and receptionist desk one last time, I ran home and spent the next two hours changing every password that I knew was on the flash drive and several that probably were not. I began to calm down a little when I finished and felt that nothing had been compromised yet, but I spent the rest of the evening mourning the loss of my photos and praying that somehow I could recover everything.

Friday

Friday was a French bank holiday which meant that we had no classes.  Because I stayed up so late the night before I slept in late and woke up surprisingly refreshed.  A heavy and somewhat ominous feeling that comes with the knowledge that one's privacy has been totally violated still hung over my head, but I decided that worrying about it wasn't going to change anything.  Instead I washed and ironed all of my uniforms and organized more recipes in preparation for final exams next week.

Saturday

Upon arriving at school that morning I once again checked at the receptionist desk and in the computer lab, hoping that someone intended to turn it in for me but simply forgot, perhaps remembering when he or she changed clothes and checked the pockets.  Nothing turned up and I headed to my pasty demonstration where Chef Tranchant made Alhambra for us, a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache layers and a chocolate coating. He used the leftover cake batter and ganache to make a tasty strawberry and raspberry concoction and we had our second lesson on decorative roses.  I set a new personal goal for Monday's practicum to 1) master the marzipan rose and 2) keep my cake off of the ground.

Alhambra; Chef's own invention

We rounded out the week with our fifth cuisine practicum, making the wiener schnitzel, pasta, and tomato concassée with Asian chef.  It was our last time with him which was kind of sad, but he's moving on to become the head chef at a restaurant in Paris.  It was also my last day as the class assistant, a responsibility that I was more than happy to give up.  I loved this dish in theory but struggled with the pasta.  We didn't use the pasta machine as we learned in the demonstration, but instead we rolled it and sliced it all out by hand.  The concept was simple enough - just roll the dough very thin, roll the ends inward like a scroll, slice the "scroll," and unroll the pasta noodles... except that my noodles wouldn't unroll - they just remained stuck together, breaking off as I attempted to unravel them.  Eventually I was painstakingly unrolling one noodle at a time until I had just enough to make one plate serving. I threw the rest of my dough in the trash. 

The tomato concassée had too much tomato paste and the noodles were a bit of a mess, but one out of two of my veal chops turned out okay.  Actually, I had it for a late lunch when I got home and thought that it was quite a tasty dish, technicalities aside.

Sunday

It was a day for reflection after church this morning (well, reflection and washing my bed linens because I didn't have time yesterday). The last full week of classes before exams this semester hit like a freight train.  During some of the rougher patches (and even in the smoother ones) I found myself questioning whether I'm ready to hit repeat in a couple of weeks only at a more intense level - whether I'll even be able to handle the greater challenges ahead.  Even if the final exams don't go well, the probability of passing in both Basic Cuisine and Basic Patisserie is fairly high... it's just that I had imagined the basic level being more of a sprint than a hobble/crawl across the finish line.

Cuisine especially is throwing me for a loop.  Out of 28 practicals so far I can count on one hand how many times I left class feeling like I had done really well, and maybe two of those times felt like a slam dunk.  I don't have enough hands to count how many big mistakes I've made, how many times I finished last, or how often I've watched a chef turn up his or her nose at almost everything on my plate.  The start of each new practical finds me hopeful and excited but usually ends in frustration and confusion about what went wrong.

Ironically, though, I'm doing better grade-wise in cuisine than in pastry even though the latter feels a bit like recess.  I made a 90% on the cuisine written exam and 79% on the pastry, and I learned this week that my fifth-placed mid-term ranking in cuisine wasn't relative to our group of eight but to the entire class of about 50 people.  The news would have been exciting if it were based on my awesome culinary skills, but a lot of the weight comes from perfect attendance (or rather the imperfect attendance of students with better skills).  I wanted my success to come from amazing performances, not from good behavior.

I justify this mindset by telling myself that if this is the field in which I will be earning a living for the rest of my life then I should be really good at it.  While that's true, if I'm really honest with myself then I know that a bigger issue is my pride.  Watching other students get high-fives or even hugs from the chefs and seeing beautiful plates done better than (and long before) mine can stir up some jealousy that's not consoled by thinking, "At least my grade is higher."  It's a little painful and revealing to ask myself the question, "Why am I really disappointed with my progress?"

Not surprisingly, my devotions this week happened into I Corinthians 10:31: "Whether therefore you eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God."  That's been my problem - I'm getting frustrated because I've been working for my own glory.  Just in the simple act of food preparation my motive has been, "Look at me!" rather than "Look at my God!"

Switching that motivation doesn't mean that I'll suddenly become a better chef, but it does mean that my attitude over successes and failures will change.  Maybe that's why I've not been able to do terribly well in the kitchen - God knows that success would only elevate my pride while failures force me to become more introspective and push me closer to Him, and maybe it is in that humbled position that I can have the best influence and testimony to the people around me.