Intermediate Week Seven

A few times this week I had to answer the question, "How do you feel that you're doing in school?" Usually my verbal reply is something like, "Getting by," or "Not too badly, I hope" while the first phrases in my head are things like, "In over my head," or "Out of my league." I never expected to be the best and a while ago I abandoned the idea of "really good"--right now I'm hanging my hopes on "good enough to pass" or "finish without being the person about whom the chefs will tell threatening stories to their students for years to come," but after this week I wondered if even that was aiming too high.

Monday

Such plans I had for my Monday off--maybe a day trip to Strasbourg to see if I could find any fall color or a visit to Normandy to visit Omaha Beach finally--but a late night of FaceTime with a friend coupled with the perpetual feeling of being too exhausted to have fun kept me holed up in my studio all day. The only thing that inspired me to change out of my pajamas was a minor emergency: my newest favorite meal is fried eggs served over baguette slices soaked and fried in salted butter (French culture has grown me to love runny egg yolks spilling all over my food--pizzas, sandwiches, toast, etc.), so when I realized that I wouldn't have a baguette for breakfast the next morning I threw on my "workout" clothes and  hightailed it across the street to Eric Kayser.

Tuesday

After waking up blissfully late and leisurely enjoying my fried eggs and baguette breakfast, I headed to school to make the Mediterranean Scorpion fish and John Dory fillet Provençal stew (bouillabaisse) from Saturday's demonstration. For 16 weeks I have managed to keep my uniform jackets and aprons stain-free--everything has washed out of them--but apparently the black filth contained inside of a scorpion fish is impenetrable... and it splatters a lot. This fish also had sharp fins--after class I counted about seven puncture wounds (some may have been attributable to my fillet knife). The John Dory, however, though kind of large and unattractive, was probably the easiest fish that I've prepared so far--it practically divides itself into 6 beautiful fillets. Chef thought that my soup lacked enough saffron and she was worried about my timing (I barely finished on time and this dish is in our final exam list), but I wasn't too concerned--I figured out where I could rearrange my order of preparation and buy myself several more minutes. As a matter of fact, this is one dish that I hope to get in the exam.

Changing into a clean jacket, I joined the pastry students for our demonstration with Chef Tranchant on wild strawberry and vanilla treasure and pistachio dacquoise. It followed the stereotypical French pastry formula: sponge cake + mousse + pastry cream. The strawberry mousse was quite nice, though, and possibly for the first time I actually liked the taste of the cake by itself (and it wasn't even imbibed with syrup!). The pistachio dacquoise was under-impressive--just a cake covered in, naturally, pistachio cream.

Wild strawberry vanilla "treasure"; Pistachio dacquoise

Wednesday

Our only class of the day was a morning practicum to make the wild strawberry cake. It started off with a hiccup--we ran out of ground almonds just as I was ready to use them and I had to wait about five minutes for the class assistant to bring more (he was busy finishing his dacquoise)--but I managed to catch up by the time that we were ready to add the mousse and I was actually one of the first people to finish my cream layer. For the decoration we had to sprinkle the cakes with sugar and then caramelize it with a blow torch. If I had looked back at the picture from the demonstration I would have remembered that the chef's cake was hardly colored, but instead I attacked my cream with vigor, nearly blackening half of it and almost catching the cake on fire. A little glaze and several berries later it looked almost decent, and the chef didn't act as if it were too bad. My mound also appeared a bit lopsided and wider than the other cakes, but even that didn't seem to phase him (although Tranchant tends to be secretive with his evaluation marks).

My slightly-blackened, giant-mounded cake

Thursday

The morning demonstration was one that I had been excitedly anticipating--Toulouse cassoulet, a sort of white bean stew with tomatoes, lamb, duck, and sausages. For one thing, we had never done anything with beans before and I absolutely love beans (especially black beans, but I can probably abandon any hope of finding them on a French menu). Cassoulets also have the reputation as being a fabulous dish, and I liked the idea of making something that didn't require cleaning fish or birds. Chef was focusing on the southern coastal Languedoc region of France, so the starter was a salted cod purée with garlic and parsley cream and tapenade gressini. This was one fish purée that I actually enjoyed--it sort of had a creamy tuna salad feel. For dessert he made a tasty apricot and fig gratin. Another food that I've come to appreciate since coming to France is the fig, particularly fig preserves with whatever baguette slices aren't covered in egg yolk.

Cassoulet; Salted cod purée; Apricot and fig gratin

During the three-hour break between the demonstration and our practical, I went home and dutifully typed up my recipe before going back to school. We had one of the newer chefs for the second time--he doesn't speak any English but he's quite helpful... maybe a little too much. While I was sharpening my knife on the steel rod he said, "No, no, no!" and proceeded to stand behind me and take both of my hands in his as we awkwardly sharpened my knife together. Four months ago I might have found it surprising and slightly more embarrassing, but I've learned that it's just the French way--he had an arm around every woman in the class before it was over. Being a fan of classic movies and TV shows, I often mentally place the French male in the 1945 office atmosphere where a man would casually refer to a female secretary as "doll" or "sweetheart" and nobody would blink an eye.

The cassoulet wasn't supposed to be a difficult dish but it's also not something that should be prepared in two-and-a-half hours--the beans should cook slowly for a long time to absorb the flavors and the lamb should cook for hours until it's fall-off-the-bone tender--so we already knew that we weren't making the best cassoulets ever. This chef also wanted us to do things completely differently than the chef in demonstration, causing all of my pre-class organization to fly out the window in a manner of speaking. To make matters worse, I burned my pan of diced tomatoes and onions and could use only about half of them, which weakened the flavor in the already flavorless soup. Instead of plating our cassoulets we were putting them in foil pans so that we could sprinkle the finished product with breadcrumbs and give them a final bake in the pastry oven. After placing down the first layer of beans I turned to retrieve my lamb meat from the stove only to discover that a classmate had thrown it away. It was my fault--she wanted the strainer that I was using and I told her I was through with it, not remembering that the lamb was still inside--but I managed to scrounge a couple of pieces from some classmates. My evaluation, though disappointing, was hardly surprising.

Somewhat bland cassoulet

Friday

Because it was only a four-day class week, Friday was jammed with four back-to-back classes. Chef Poupard started off the morning with a chestnut mousse cake and chestnut barquettes demonstration. The cake was composed of three layers of hazelnut dacquoise cake, chestnut mousse, and candied chestnut pieces. Chef then covered the outside in chestnut cream "spikes" which reminded him of a girl he saw with spiked hair which segued into a talk about the cause and necessity of teenage rebellion (pastry chefs usually have a lot of time to kill when they're doing things like piping a million spikes on four identical cakes). It led me to think that he chose the right profession as opposed to say, psychology. The barquettes were simply sweet pastry dough baked with almond cream and covered in the same chestnut cream. The final step for both pastries (and something that should make Monday's practicum interesting) was spraying them with chocolate using an actual Wagner paint sprayer.

Chestnut mousse cake; Chestnut barquettes

After lunch we joined Chef Vaca in a cuisine demonstration on the region of Brittany. He made roasted langoustines and Brittany artichoke salad for the starter before moving on to the main course of Monkfish wrapped in bacon with braised artichokes and broccoli and cauliflower pannequets (a sort of pancake made with yeast)--naturally the one time that we use broccoli we bury it in batter. For dessert he made prune flans that were actually more similar to souffles and quite delicious. 

Roasted langoustines and artichoke salad; Monkfish wrapped in
bacon served over  pannequets with braised artichokes; Prune flan

At 3:30 we had our pastry theory class on ice creams. After already sitting through six hours of classes that day I was hoping for something that would keep me awake, but the chef spent two hours reading internet printouts on the history and types of ice, ice creams, and sorbets. While I love ice cream, listening to someone lecture on it for that long without so much as a sample felt like some kind of horrible torture. I did learn a few interesting facts, though. For example, did you know that Americans consume 23 gallons of ice cream per year on average? Yes, the French chefs enjoy pointing out our bad eating habits (I may be closer to 50 gallons).

Our first practical of the day finally came at 6:30. Although it had a lot of components, it was a straightforward recipe that shouldn't take too long... which should have been my first warning. We were in the nicest and largest practicum room, too--fitted with 14 oven/stove units, it provided plenty of room for the eight of us. Someone had already removed the head and intestines from the monkfish so we had only to remove the central bone and the skin. My problems began with the jus--it required that we brown the fish trimmings with chicken wings but chef said mine weren't caramelized enough, then I forgot to degrease the pan before deglazing and it ended up too greasy. The artichokes would have been okay except that chef pointed out some tough bits of stem still attached. Only two of my four pannequets survived being flipped over in the skillet (fortunately, I needed only one to plate).

The monkfish appeared to be my last hope, but when chef cut into the medallion it was uncooked in the middle. That was a surprise--after searing the fillets I intentionally left them in the oven longer than the demonstration chef recommended just to be on the safe side. Turning with a sigh to turn off my oven I was even more surprised to see that it wasn't on. The problem wasn't that I had forgotten to turn it on; the problem was that I had turned on the oven next to it. What's more amazing is the fact that the two times I opened the oven door--once to put in the fish and once to pull it out--I didn't wonder why the usual blast of heat didn't hit me in the face. My non-functioning brain went one step further by telling me to explain to the chef why my fish was uncooked... as if that made me seem any less incompetent (the look on her face led me to believe that it did not). The whole thing might have been excusable if I hadn't done something similarly idiotic several weeks ago when I plated the uncooked salmon-stuffed cabbage for Chef Caals instead of the one that I had cooked.

Saturday

Having a free Saturday following my rather stellar performance the day before was an incredible relief. A group of retirees, some who attend my church in Greenville, were visiting Paris and wanted to treat me to dinner and a Seine boat cruise, so after doing laundry, cleaning the studio, and typing up the recipes from Friday's demonstrations, I joined three of the ladies near Pont Saint-Michel. Two of them I had never met before, but I knew Jean Martin well from our Life Group and was absolutely overjoyed to see a familiar face from back home.

Mrs. Martin had to knock a few kids out of the way to get this shot

After an early dinner at a small pizza place we still had over an hour to spare, so we strolled a little farther down the street to find coffee and possibly dessert at some place with the ever-elusive public restroom. Everything was crowded but La Gentilhommière looked like it had some available seating inside. One downside of not having access to cellular data on my phone is that I can't use TripAdvisor--seeing the reviews and 1.5-star rating might have changed our minds. Our waiter was acting overtly annoyed from the beginning although we weren't doing or ordering anything unusual, but I shrugged it off--I had probably experienced worse. Normally servers visit your table only three times in Paris--to take an order, to deliver the order, and to get your payment--so I was surprised to see him approaching our table after we all had our orders. He muttered something in French while pointing down in the direction of the table in front of me. I had my coffee cup cradled in both hands, so I lifted up my arms to look down where he was pointing. He said, "Oui," with a nod and marched off. Right then it hit me--he was telling me to take my elbows off the table.

Now I may not be the leading expert on table etiquette, but I never chew loudly or with my mouth open, I hold my fork and knife correctly, and I never eat with my elbows on the table. This was just casual conversation and coffee in the late afternoon before Paris dinnertime at a mediocre café that was missing the seat on the toilet in the women's restroom. Still, when in Rome... But as I began looking at the tables around us I saw that they were covered in elbows--a girl at the table across from us was laying her head on her elbow on the table. The ladies with me were bordering on livid, brazenly putting their elbows on the table before quickly removing them, and one in particular was rehearsing the piece of her mind that she was going to give the waiter whenever he came back, but I decided to take the initiative instead. After he took our check I asked him in French (he also pretended off and on not to understand English) if putting elbows on the table was bad. He tentatively nodded yes but then looked at me with a stupid "Huh?" expression on his face so I repeated myself, pointing to all of the tables around me saying, "Like that, and that, and that? Is that against the restaurant rules?" He held up his hand and said, "No, it's not serious," as he turned and left right in the middle of my interrogation.

We joined about 15 other people by the Pont Neuf to board our evening boat cruise. There I saw some more familiar faces including the Stevesons who usually sit behind me at Hampton Park and who assured me that they were faithfully saving my pew for me. The evening was beautiful and after some final hugs I strolled the 2.5 miles home with a full heart, reflecting on the blessings and encouragement that God brings into my life and looking forward to my quickly approaching return home.

Cruising down the Seine