Intermediate Week One

After last week's crybaby fest that once again made me sound like I was going through some sort of medieval torture device call "Paris," I decided that I should throw out a few other things about this city that I actually find kind of cool.

• Flour trucks.  I can't tell you how exciting it was to see flour being blown into a boulangerie on my way to school the other morning.  So much flour...

Eric Kayser getting a fill-up

• Walking. My mile-long walk to and from school can get a little monotonous at times, but on the rare occasions that I have a day off I find it pretty enjoyable just to take a stroll to some area that I haven't yet visited. This past Saturday I made my way down past the Eiffel Tower to the Champs-Elysée via avenue George V. Even someone who hates shopping as much as I do can't resist the thrill of gazing through the windows of places like Givenchy, Cartier, and Yves Saint Laurent, or stealing glances into the lobby of the Prince de Galles Hotel.
• Salted butter.  Yeah, I've already talked about butter probably a dozen times, but then I tried this Grand Fermage with sea salt butter - it actually has big chunks of salt in it - and I'm completely addicted. It's also really, really good with honey.  On a related note, baguettes last only a day around here before going stale.  Although I could eat one baguette per day, I try to limit myself; hence I discovered that you can slice up stale baguettes and saute them in butter (unsalted or clarified).  Of course, you still add the salted butter on top of that and it's merveilleux.

Tuesday

The week got off to a slow start - Monday was the basic students' orientation and we were asked to keep away from the school until Tuesday. Sauntering into Le Cordon Bleu that afternoon with the haughtiness that comes from having obtained veteran status (after only 10 weeks), we picked up new locker numbers, new recipe notebooks, and (for those of us who skipped graduation) our basic certificates and transcripts.

On the plus side, my locker is now located on the lower level and not in front of the door that opens to the Winter Garden, meaning that changing time requires less creativity.  On the down side the locker room is not air conditioned (but only two weeks of summer remain!) and the lockers are stacked three-high rather than two, requiring some strategic shoving and quick door slams to keep everything from tumbling out onto the heads of the two people below me.  Incidentally, it's a good time to remember to keep my knife bag zipped closed.

Chef Tranchant kicked off the new semester with a pastry demonstration, first offering a brief lecture on how we were now intermediate students and thus at a higher expectation level, which in demonstrations translates primarily not to leaving class in order to use the toilet... er, restroom, making it similar to the transition from K-5 to first grade.  He then proceeded to whip up an apricot streusel, almond cake, and Scottish cake.

Almond cake, apricot streusel, and Scottish cake

We proceeded from our pastry demonstration to our cuisine demonstration with Chef Bogen who once again seemed a bit "out of sorts," or as a fellow student put it, "high."  Intermediate cuisine focuses on French regional recipes, so Tuesday's lesson centered on the Basque region whose claim to fame is the Espelette pepper (not to be confused with an espadrille, although I referred to it as such a few times).  Bogen bumbled through salmon and watercress salad, sauteed Basque-style chicken with saffron rice, and a Gascon-style apple tart made from phyllo dough, slightly burned on the outside and not cooked well on the inside.

Sauteed chicken & saffron rice; watercress & salmon salad; apple tart

Wednesday

Our first practicum was in pastry making the streusel and almond cake.  It felt similar to our basic-level courses, or at least to how those courses felt towards the end of the term, but my puff pastry streusel crust was far from looking like I had advanced beyond basic (although it was in keeping with someone who got a 52% on her final exam).  During the down-time of waiting for our pastries to bake, Chef Tranchant had us practice making paper cones and writing/drawing with tempered chocolate on the backs of metal trays - another horrifying exhibition of my bleak artistic talents.

Tranchant is obsessed with a straight pastry line

That afternoon we moved on to our cuisine practicum with the visiting chef from Istanbul who was leaving us on Sunday. Admittedly, I wasn't terribly upset to see him go, but he was very relaxed and more easy-going than in our previous classes and it was almost endearing to hear him casually mention about three times that it was his last time with us before we finally caught on and told him how much he would be missed.

This cuisine practicum wasn't much different than our basic-level courses either - more like starting up where we left off last term. We had two new students in our little group of eight - Dao, a girl from Thailand who had completed her basic level there, and Brian, a boy from China who had finished his basic courses in 2012.  For a while it felt good to be the subject matter expert and help out the new kids, but they still finished before me and with better results.  My sauteed chicken was an unhealthy shade of pink when we cut into it although the chef proclaimed that it wasn't too bad - "I'm French so it would be fine, but an Englishman would send back his plate."  I just crinkled my nose and replied, "As would an American."

Thursday

What was different from our basic level is that we didn't ease into the new semester, with Thursday being the first 12-hour class day.  We began the morning with Chef Caals, back from his month-long vacation and, as one of the other chefs awkwardly put it, looking tan and fit.  He gave us a brief lecture on expectations for intermediate students as well which again emphasized not visiting the toilet in the middle of class. This demo was one of the few that was not region-specific and consisted of a shellfish soup with garlic glaze, Savoy cabbage stuffed with salmon, and wild strawberry gratin.  It wasn't one of my favorite dishes but appeared easy enough to prepare (always famous last words).

Stuffed Savoy cabbage; shellfish soup; strawberry gratin

Our cuisine practicum followed lunch.  Most of the time centered on chopping carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, and ham into a fine brunoise and thinly slicing cabbage, but after that it was just a matter of wrapping up salmon and the stuffing in cabbage leaves before dropping them into some boiling water for about ten minutes. Unfortunately I forgot about this last step and didn't have boiling water ready, adding about another ten minutes to my time as I waited, but chef instructed us to boil only one of the two cabbages to save time.

As the last person to plate my dish, I finally called to Caals to come check it.  He cut open my cabbage and the salmon was raw - he didn't even bother tasting it. Confused as to how it could have been so under-cooked, I began packing away my food, grabbing the second cabbage to put in a box.  It was surprisingly hot for being uncooked, but then like Sherlock Holmes the realization dawned upon me that I had plated the wrong cabbage.  Calling the chef back over, I sheepishly explained my error. He returned with a smirk on his face, testing the cooked salmon and stating that it was okay but giving me a look that said I was quite possibly the biggest idiot in the school's history.

That afternoon we joined Chef Olivier, the one who likes to say, "If this were the exam you would fail," a lot (and almost did fail me on the exam), for a demonstration on passion fruit and raspberry tarts and lemon tarts.  The latter was actually one of my favorite pastries to date but not, unfortunately, one that we would be repeating in our practicum.

Lemon tart and the less enjoyable passion fruit & raspberry tart

In the evening we had our pastry practicum with Olivier again.  I was doing quite well until I messed up my tart crust while transferring it to the ring mold, which meant that I had to reshape it and stick it back into the freezer to harden up while the rest of the class proceeded with their tarts.  In the end it didn't matter, though, because the assistants had brought up raspberry jam instead of raspberry purée, and in a purely basic-level move all 14 of us ignorantly used it to make our raspberry coulis.  Olivier, bordering on a complete meltdown, ordered everyone to throw out their coulis and start over as he scribbled down the assistants' names while saying menacingly, "I want to remember you."

I actually found the situation to be quite humorous, possibly because it caught me up to the rest of the class, and Olivier eventually calmed down although he kept repeating, "Never in all my life has such a thing happened," and "You see the big bucket with 'raspberry jam' on it and you just use it without questioning?!?"  He threw in several, oh la las as well and when I asked, "But won't this make a good story to tell at home tonight?" he just rolled his eyes, replying, "I hope never to remember again."

Friday

As a reprieve from the previous day, Friday contained only one cuisine demonstration in the morning before we were finished with classes for the week.  Chef Poupard, the "map" chef, talked to us about the Normandy region for the first half hour of class (but not before a warning that as intermediate students we were not to leave class to use the toilet).  Just as he prepared to start making the food, a student raised her hand and said that Chef Bogen never gave us a regional talk in Tuesday's demo. Poupard, always delighted to discuss French regional cuisine, gave another half-hour talk on the Basque region while the rest of us shot death glares at the offending student.

Poupard, upon realizing that we were now over an hour into the class, began hurriedly throwing together fish stew, pan-roasted guinea fowl, and an apple tart with creamy caramel sauce.  The crayfish for the soup were alive which created a bit of trauma when the chef cooked them to death after pulling out their intestines by the tail (no, we won't be making these in practicum), and the demonstration was slightly chaotic and rushed, ending about an hour late, but he created an excellent meal. The apple tarts were especially amazing, making the wait quite worth it.

Pan-roasted guinea fowl; fish stew with dry cider; apple tart with creamy caramel

One positive outcome from this week is that I regained some of the old excitement from the first semester.  It started around the time that we received our recipe notebooks and I started flipping through the table of contents, or more specifically when I saw that we would be making baguettes and macaroons this term.  All of the recipes fill me with happy anticipation, though, even if the reality is that most of them will be a challenge and at times a catastrophe.  Sure, I still cringe a little when I see that we'll be cleaning a chicken or a fish but, to use a dental analogy, it's now more like a cavity filling than a root canal, and I sense/hope/pray that by November it will be more like brushing my teeth.