Intermediate Week Eight

This week was one of many happy events, some related to my birthday and some just coinciding with my birthday week. My spirits were at an all-time high, broken only temporarily upon discovering that the locker thief struck again, but I digress. Some events I'll address in my summary of the week, but here are a few highlights:

• Marks & Spencer. A classmate from the UK told me on several occasions during my bacon rants that I could probably find real bacon at this British-based store, but I was skeptical and not willing to go out of my way to test her theory until a special gift arrived that made me have to have bacon. After a quick search online for the closest one, I discovered that one was only a 15-minute walk from my studio. It still wasn't on par with Publix or even Bi-Lo, but it did indeed carry bacon--super-salty bacon, but definitely bacon. It also carried prawn cocktail chips (or crisps, I should say)--a flavor that I've been missing since 1997 when I was in Cyprus. As if my joy wasn't complete enough, they bagged my groceries.
• Chipotle. Yes, it exists in Paris and one sits in the mall right outside of Marks & Spencer. I'm not a die-hard Chipotle fan, but it's Mexican food, they have black beans, and as far as I can tell they aren't "Frenchifying" the ingredients--the menu was noticeably lacking eggs. The prices are a good bit higher (e.g., 9,30€ for a burrito bowl vs. $7.20, which at the current exchange rate is about $4.50 more), they don't list white rice as an option, and I'm not sure what they use for sour cream, but it's kind of nice just knowing that it will be there when I need it.
• Coffee Percolator. I have one. In my studio. It's been there since before I moved in back in July. When I came to Paris the only coffee that I could find was the strong stuff served in tiny little cups for a whole lot of money--and without cream, or you can have cream but it costs extra. My first studio had a coffee maker but it didn't look like something that I would want to touch, much less drink from, and not having my favorite Dunkin Donuts coffee anyhow caused me to give up entirely. I used to drink coffee--needed coffee--every morning before work, but life became so crazy in France that the habit disappeared easily; however, the arrival of a sentimental mug this week made me decide to take up the habit again. After searching my cabinets and finding the percolator, watching a few online videos on how to use it, and purchasing a rather nice Christmas blend coffee from M&S, I can't remember how I survived before now. Actually, the habit has gotten worse--I'm making it sometimes twice a day (limited only by the time it takes) and I often find myself daydreaming about my next fix (usually in the middle of class demonstrations).

• G. Detou. I wanted to make something that called for cream of tartar but finding the stuff in Paris is like looking for a needle in a haystack. A Google search clued me into G. Detou (in French it sounds like the expression for "I have everything"). They did indeed have cream of tartar, and although the smallest size was over seven ounces, it was relatively inexpensive--only about six euros. They also carried a huge assortment of nuts and dried fruits, spices, oils, and more specialty items than I had time to take in.

These happy events were only the tip of the iceberg, though...

Monday

This week didn't start out as one to which I was looking forward--the prospect of celebrating my birthday all alone so far away from home felt somewhat akin to The Worst Birthday Ever back in 2005 when all of my family were scattered far and wide, my friends were tied up in the Sunday routine, and my trip to church in the evening was cut short by a fender bender and traffic ticket.

My first class of the day wasn't until 3:30, so I slept in a bit before getting up and puttering around the studio in my pajamas. At 10:00 AM my phone rang, and after some confusing gibberish back and forth in English and French, I figured out that it was the postman with a package. He wanted to know on which floor I was located and when I said, "The second," I heard his footsteps working their way up the stairs. Laying the phone on the table while shouting into it, "Hold on... Attendez!" I quickly changed clothes and abandoned the idea of finding my glasses to answer the door. Squinting curiously at the large box after I signed for it, I ducked back into the apartment and grabbed some scissors.

The first cut released an aroma that can best be described as... fall. More excited now, I tore into the box to find Pumpkin Spice and Harvest-scented Yankee Candles, Cracker Barrel sweet potato pancake mix and apple butter, a giant mug, Burt's Bees hand cream and lip balm, a cute door-hanging pillow, birthday party regalia, a card, and dozens of inspirational quotes and verses hand-written by  two incredible friends. Happy tears sprang into my eyes as I continued sniffing the aromatic candles, their scents all the stronger because their jars had shattered (but they were still perfectly functional). 

The afternoon's pastry practical was to make the chestnut mousse cake from Friday's demonstration. The only challenging part was piping the approximately 3,000 spikes all over the cake surface before spraying it with chocolate, but in the end mine didn't look half bad--as a matter of fact, the chef strongly applauded it. The taste, however, was terrible (because it was a terrible recipe), so I was more than happy to leave it sitting in the winter garden for other students to consume. Upon arriving home a half-hour later and opening the front door, those joyous smells of fall hit me head-on, sending me into another giddy spin.

Chestnut mousse cakes

Practice making chocolate cigarettes while waiting for our cakes to freeze

Tuesday

Although classes didn't begin until 12:30, I woke up rather early and quite excited to begin the day or, more specifically, to eat breakfast. My sweet potato pancake with a dollop of apple butter turned out perfectly as did the scrambled eggs that I threw in for a boost of protein, but something was missing, namely grits, bacon, sawmill gravy, and a good, steaming cup of coffee. The grits and gravy I could do without (not that I don't love grits, mind you), but my new mission became one to acquire the bacon and coffee. The coffee urge was also rooted in the new mug from my care package--I grow sentimental attachments to mugs, like the blue and white one that my parents sent to me in Wisconsin on my birthday, or the one from Alaska that a friend in grad school gave me, or the half-dozen or so mugs from our Swihart family reunions--and I was already attached to this one. I recalled seeing a strange contraption in the cabinet above the stove when I first moved in, so climbing up on a chair I pulled it down and disassembled it, thinking that it was some sort of teapot. The word "percolator" came into my head like some weird suppressed memory, and a few Google images later I knew that I was holding something life-changing, or at least morning-changing. Alas, I had not yet purchased coffee grounds so I proceeded on to school.

Our first class was a cuisine demonstration on the Périgord region, famous for its foie gras and truffles. The new chef, Mr. Touchy-Feely from our practicum last week, was struggling a bit with his first demonstration so Chef Lesourd, who was teaching next door, would duck in and out to assist. Things were a bit of a mess (not that I'm criticizing--for a first demonstration it wasn't as bad as say, I would do), but he managed to crank out pan-fried duck foie gras with roasted apples and a cider and walnut sauce for the starter, pan-fried steak with celery flan, Madeira and diced truffle sauce, and potatoes cooked in goose fat for the main course, and a caramelized walnut and pine nut galette for dessert. Because we ended so late and a pastry demonstration followed, I couldn't stay for the entire tasting and managed only to grab a bite of foie gras on my way out.

Duck foie gras with apples; Steak, celery flan, and potatoes;
Walnut and pine nut galette

Chef Tranchant led the next demonstration on Entremets Passionata, a raspberry and passion fruit cream cake. It started with a "cigarette" batter which gets its name from being used most commonly to make crisp, thin cookies rolled into the shape of a cigarette. In this recipe, though, Tranchant thinly spread out the batter in red and yellow stripes on a baking sheet before covering it in a biscuit sponge batter. Once baked, he used the striped cake to line a ring mold, placing a coconut dacquoise cake bottom in its center. A passion fruit cream center followed, and the cake was finished with a raspberry mousse layer and raspberry glaze over wild strawberries. In addition to the cakes, Tranchant made shaped pear jellies. Although I wasn't a fan of these candies, I do love orange slice candy and wondered if I had just figured out a way to make them from scratch (if successful I may be elevated to Favorite Child status because my dad is an even bigger fan).

Entremets Passionata; Shaped pear jelly

Wednesday

The morning began with a cuisine practicum to make the steak, flan, and potatoes. The fact that we were going to be making steaks had everyone pretty excited--beef had noticeably been lacking from the practicums in Intermediate. Some annoying mental block caused me once again to forget to degrease the bones before making the stock, and I spent much of the class trying various creative ways to get rid of the grease. In the end my meat was bleu instead of rare as the chef requested, my potatoes,though cooked well, were not uniformly turned, and my flan was okay although not very attractive. The sauce was actually the only perfect part of the dish.

We finished class before 11:00 AM and I set out on my quest for all items needed for a perfect Thursday morning birthday breakfast. Somewhere along the way I decided that I also needed no-bake cookies--cream and mousse cake on my birthday just wasn't appropriate--and I added oats and peanut butter to my shopping list of elusive grocery items in France. Between Marks & Spencer and Monoprix I found everything that I needed (I had to settle on a little box of Quaker oats and a tiny jar of something called Sun-Pat peanut butter that was priced about three times more than Nutella per gram). The last item on the list was half-and-half for my coffee. When you look for milk or creamers in France, don't go to the refrigerated section--these dairy products are contained in Tetra Paks and don't need refrigeration until they're opened.

When I got back to school that evening the locker room was slammed--some classes had just gotten out and others were getting ready to start--and I practically had to crawl over the two girls with lockers below mine to get my uniform and knife kit. Hurrying to get out I noticed that my tennis shoes were still lying on the ground, so I dug the key from my pocket and shoved the shoes into my locker before running off to class.

Chef Daniel, one of the newer chefs, was supervising our Entremets Passionata. We made the cigarette and biscuit sponge batters together in groups of four because we needed only one strip per person, so the cake was moving along quickly. Both the passion fruit cream and raspberry mousse contained whipped cream, and Chef Tranchant had suggested that we whip all of our cream at once to save time. Making my passion fruit cream base first, I pulled out the 240 ml of  cream that I had whipped and, in case you haven't already guessed, I used all of it rather than the 65 ml that the recipe called for. It wasn't until I was making my raspberry mousse that I realized my error, though, because the chef had checked my passion fruit cream and said that it was perfect (I did briefly wonder why it was so much more lightly colored and thicker than my classmates'). In order to make the mousse I needed to whip up more cream but I was afraid that in doing so I would clue the chef in to my mistake. Stealthily whipping cream in a metal bowl with a metal whisk is no easy task, but if chef figured it out he never let on--his final evaluation was that my cake was very nice. There are occasionally advantages to the chefs not cutting into or tasting our cakes.

Entremets passionata, heavy on the cream

When I got back to my locker my heart sank when I noticed that the lock wasn't on it. I exclaimed, "Oh no! I forgot to lock my locker!" to which a classmate a few lockers down from me replied, "So did I but there's nothing in there worth stealing." Opening the door I saw my lock lying inside with the key still in it, something that I may have done, and although nothing looked unusual I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. One quick look confirmed my fears: my cash had been reduced from 80 euros down to 60. My pre-birthday high hit an all-time low--was this locker thief checking my locker during every class? In a world of women who forget to lock up was I the only one getting robbed?

My thoughts during the disgruntled walk home that night swirled around plans for entrapment. Throughout this ordeal I've kicked myself many times for making stupid mistakes, but the money getting stolen is not my fault--the only person to blame is the thief and she needs to be stopped. Yes, putting on my lock correctly and actually locking it would be wise, but it doesn't solve the problem because there will probably be more times that I forget or someone else will become a victim. It's possible that I've been watching too many British crime dramas, but if Lewis, Hathaway, and Morse can solve the daily murders at Oxford then I certainly should be able to catch a locker thief. As with the other thefts, though, the Lord took care of this one with a special birthday gift that evening. Actually, these thefts have just about turned a profit for me from some philanthropic friends and family (but I still want to catch the crook).

Thursday

With my first and only class of the day not starting until 12:30 I had plenty of time to prepare my birthday breakfast (I also woke up early--couldn't sleep well with my brain scheming). The afternoon before I had done a test run on the percolator with great success, but when I opened up the cabinet to get out the coffee I saw my little box of cream as well--I had absentmindedly stuck it back in the cabinet on Wednesday after using it. While I can drink coffee black in an emergency, I was not about to be so easily defeated. Quickly changing out of my pajamas, donning my glasses, and giving the mirror a quick check to make sure that I didn't have anything like streaks of drool on my face, I ran to the little store down the street and found just what I needed. Rounding out my meal with a bit of ambiance thanks to the cigarette lighter that I had purchased the day before, I was finally able to sit down to the best breakfast--the first real breakfast--that I've had in almost five months.

Just waiting for the waitress to come refill my coffee

It was still early by the time that I finished and I decided to make my birthday cookies right then. Back in the olden' days when I had a real job at an office, birthdays were synonymous with office treats. It would be the first time in twelve years that coworkers wouldn't be bringing me goodies, so my only option was to turn the tables. Not having any measuring cups or scales, I used the studio's whiskey glasses and made rough approximations. The no-bakes turned out quite nicely in the end--a little flat, but every bit as tasty as I remembered them. Reserving only four to keep at home (not counting the one or two that I had already eaten), I bagged up the rest to share among my classmates.

Once at school I began freely passing out cookies, even giving one to a French visitor who was curiously eyeing my bag while waiting to go into our cuisine demonstration. She seemed to enjoy the cookies but puzzled over them, unable to identify the "secret" ingredients of oats and peanut butter, two totally foreign concepts in French desserts. I couldn't remember the French word for either one so I was never sure if she managed to figure out the mystery.

The new chef had his act together a little more for this demonstration although it was still slightly convoluted (though not much worse than what we used to get from Bogen whom, I recently found out, was given the boot). This preparation was focused on Lyon which is well-known for its cuisine, so it was a little surprising that the meal was completely the opposite of extraordinary. The starter was Lyon-style sausage with potatoes, but the sausage casing burst while it was poaching, creating a rather unattractive presentation. I really liked the potatoes, though--they were covered in a vinaigrette that was heavy on the vinegar just the way that I like it. The main course was pike perch dumplings--pike perch mousseline combined with a choux pastry batter and then poached--covered in crayfish (or crawdad for y'all back home) sauce. The crayfish were unfortunately alive prior to cooking them--something to look forward to in practicum. For dessert he made Mardi-Gras fritters, little fried pastries reminiscent of sopapillas only denser and without the accompaniment of honey and cliff divers (Casa Bonita fans--anyone?).

Sausage and potatoes; Pike perch dumplings with crayfish sauce;
Mardi-Gras fritters

Friday was going to be a full day of classes and I really wanted my cream of tartar--I was attempting to make a substitute for corn syrup so that I could make peanut brittle because 1) corn syrup is hard to find over here and 2) it's supposed to be really bad for you. As it turns out, you still need it to make really good microwave peanut brittle... Anyhow, a chef advised me to try Bon Marché which was indeed a really huge, fabulous store--almost more like a mall--but they didn't sell cream of tartar. They did, however, have three sections labelled as "USA" containing all foods that France equates with Americans for about three times the price: Cheez Whiz, Heinz hot dog relish, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Grandma's Molasses, and yes, even Karo corn syrup (I didn't buy any since my mind was set on making the substitution). I did manage to score some Arm & Hammer baking soda at least.

Friday

Our pastry written exam began at 8:30 AM. I spent an hour or two studying for it the night before, but my motivation was low--as we learned from basic, the written exam counts for only 10% of the overall grade, but the overall grade is meaningless--the only way to pass intermediate is to get over 50% on both the practicums and the final exam. As we also knew from basic, many questions would border on ridiculous--passing remarks that chefs might have made in demonstrations. No, I didn't know the name of the man who first made Baba au Rhum nor did I know what the other ingredient (besides sodium bicarbonate) in baking soda was... or that there even was another ingredient. My confidence was pretty good for probably over half of the questions, though, and within 30 minutes I was back to running around Paris looking for cream of tartar, this time heading straight for G. Detou. Because most of the pastry and cooking stores are located in the same neighborhood, I took the opportunity to stop in at at Bovida and buy a piping tip to replenish one that I had lost.

After taking an early lunch back at the studio, I joined my classmates to make the pike perch dumplings. Our fist task was to prepare the crayfish by first grasping the middle fan on their tails and pulling out their intestines. Unfortunately that was only enough to torture them but not to kill them, and they would become extremely agitated, flapping their tails and grabbing at us with their claws. To finish them off we threw them into a pan of hot oil where they took approximately five minute to finish dying. If you ever want to witness something unusual, walk into a classroom of eight students all apologizing or sadly yelling, "Hurry up and die!" to large pans of crayfish.

Once the crayfish finally finished cooking to death, we twisted the tails off from the torso, throwing the latter back into the pan for the sauce where we proceeded to smash them to bits with a rolling pin. After peeling the tails to get out the rather paltry amount of meat that remained, we moved on to the pike perch mousseline. Someone had already filleted the fish for us and we needed to remove only the pin bones and skin. Going back to my knife kit to get my fish tweezers, I discovered that not only were they missing, but so was my pastry crimper that had been nested inside of the fish tweezers. That was the last proverbial straw--invading my wallet to get out money was one thing, but pulling out my knife kit and selecting utensils was somehow in my mind far worse. The school doesn't provide fish tweezers in our knife kit, but the chefs do expect us to have a pair and I made a special trip out to Dehillerin in basic to get some--they were a lifesaver when I pulled the sea bream fillets on my final exam.

My dish turned out mediocre--the dumplings were cooked well but my sauce was too bland--but I hardly cared. Sitting in the next cuisine demonstration class my mind mulled over more schemes about how to catch the thief. We had a guest chef to start the class--an MOF (Meilleur Ouvrier de France or Best Craftsman in France) butcher was there to demonstrate how to cut up a lamb. He was the most interesting-looking man--almost cartoonish or how one might draw a caricature of a stereotypical Frenchman--but he was an amazing craftsman, making the process look incredibly easy and completing it in about 90 minutes. He also had beautiful hands and manicured nails, a feature that struck me as odd because I was actually checking to see if he was missing any fingertips.

Butcher Thierry Michaud (the striped collar is reserved only for MOF recipients)

Chef Poupard took over the last half of the class to make the main course of lamb fillet stuffed with dates, apricots, and rosemary and couscous with golden raisins, currants, pistachios, and hazelnuts. For dessert he whipped up a frozen catalan cream that I never had the opportunity to taste because our pastry demonstration was beginning. I was, however, quite excited at the prospect of making this delicious meal.

Stuffed lamb fillet & couscous; Catalan cream

The walnut cake was the last recipe on our final exam list. The bottom consisted of a biscuit sponge cake with chopped walnuts--a nice change from the usual almonds, hazelnuts, and pistachios. The main focus of the demonstration, though, was on making caramel. The mousse, imbibing syrup, and glaze for the cake had a caramel base and Cotte was making soft caramel candies as well. Having inherited whatever gene that my mom possesses that craves caramel, I loved this demonstration (the decorative macarons didn't hurt, either). I'm actually a little worried about the consequences of knowing how to make caramel from scratch now.

Walnut mousse cakes; Salted butter and chocolate caramels

Saturday

We began the morning by making the walnut cakes in our practicum. My caramel base came out perfectly on the first attempt and the mousse whipped up beautifully. I didn't have to make the macarons because we were sharing three batches between the entire class, but my cake came together without a hitch and for once I was even pleased with my decorations. At the end as Chef Daniel evaluated it he said, "Good mousse, nice glaze, simple but attractive decoration... Very good work today." Three for three in pastry practicums in one week was some kind of new record for me (even if one of the three was secretly messed up) and for the first time this semester I felt a little optimistic about the final exam in two weeks.

My Walnut cake

The written exam for cuisine was scheduled for 12:30. If my motivation for studying for the pastry exam was low, it was almost non-existent for cuisine. Chef Poupard, a.k.a., Map Chef, had written the exam and we knew that the questions would be almost entirely about the different regions of France. I used the hour-and-a-half between the practicum and the exam to look over my notes, but it felt more like studying for a geography test--I wasn't sure if we should know the capitals of each region, if we should be able to locate them on the map, or if we should study only the foods associated with each one. The last option made the most sense but seemed impossible--the 19 regions covered had scores of meats, produce, principal dishes, desserts, wines, and cheeses listed, many of them overlapping from one region to the next. I tried to pick out what might be the most specialized foods from each region but even that was hard to determine. The test did not disappoint my expectations, either--on the matching sections in particular I was making my selections based primarily on what sounded like a good ordering of the letters A through E. Statistically speaking, though, I figured that I should get at least a 25% (more True/False would have brought that up).

The last order of the day was to make the lamb fillets in our cuisine practicum. A new chef--one who shadowed our practicum class a couple of weeks ago--was in charge and when I asked for some help on how to trim my fillet he ended up doing almost the entire thing for me. That allowed me to get a considerable lead for once to the point that my classmates were asking with a little too much shock in their voice when I began to plate, "You're already finished?" As a matter of fact, I was one of the first to finish and had only to wait for the chef to evaluate the two students who got his attention first before he tested mine. His only critique was that in the presentation I should cut the meat into smaller slices, but he said that it was cooked well, all of the seasoning was good, and my jus was perfect, and he finished with a, "Very good work today." As if the day couldn't get any more bizarre, his final remark as he was evaluating the last student's plate was, "Everyone today made a sauce instead of a jus... every person but one," while pointing to me. Perhaps the collective gasp in the room should have been insulting, but I was quite pleased.

Sunday

Although I think the whole "spring forward, fall back" time change is completely ludicrous, I woke up early feeling quite refreshed and even made myself another "American" breakfast. At church I met the Nutzes who had come to Paris with the rest of the retirees from last weekend but had stayed over longer to visit with their daughter. Mrs. Nutz handed me a bag from Jean Martin explaining that it was a "little" something from both the travel group and my Hampton Park Life Group back home. Jean had told me that some of the retirees wanted to give me their extra unspent euros before they left so I was expecting a few coins, but inside the bag were 240 euros--one person alone that I had only met last Saturday evening had put in 100 euros. I was overwhelmed with gratitude, wondering how I could possibly thank all of these people for their kindness and generosity. The pièce de résistance, though, was the little plate that some of the ladies had found in a gift shop and that automatically achieved the sentimental status usually reserved only for my mugs. I'm not really sure how they even knew what it said:

"I never put my elbows on the table"