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| Monday through Saturday with classrooms down the left side; three-hour class buckets across the top Green = Cuisine; Orange = Pastry |
Monday
Classes were squeezed into four days this week giving us a free day on Monday. It was providential timing because John and Suzie Lehman from my church back home were returning from Lebanon with a 20-hour layover in Paris. At 2:00 PM I met them at the airport to help them find their hotel and give them the whirlwind-version tour of Paris. The weather couldn't have been more beautiful which made the eight or so miles that we walked all the more enjoyable. Starting from Notre Dame Cathedral we made our way down to the Louvre, through the Tuileries Garden, past the Place de la Concorde (where I was very excited to recognize the fountain from one of my favorite paintings that my pastor did), and all the way down Avenue Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe (the Lehman's are cycling fans--it was kind of a mecca for them). We completed our tour with an obligatory stop by the Eiffel Tower in time to catch the sparkly light show before heading to dinner. We rounded out the evening with gelato at Amorino's before the Lehmans braved their first trip on the Metro back to the hotel.
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| John and Suzie Lehman at the Place de la Concorde fountain |
As impressive as Paris is, my favorite part of the day was just being with this couple. While smiling at strangers in this city may be, well, frowned upon, I don't think that the two of them ever stopped, and observing John was particularly enjoyable--every runner that passed us got a wave and shout of, "Good job!" causing some of them to almost stumble with surprise, at least half a dozen people received assistance in getting group shots, and the waiter at the restaurant got more compliments on the food and service than he probably ever heard or deserved. The whole time I was thinking, "Whom does John remind me of?" until it finally hit me later that evening: Buddy the Elf (the less goofy and better dressed version, of course). Those of you who know me well know that I mean that as only the highest form of compliment because I would totally want to hang out with Buddy if he ever came to Paris. That would make a great sequel, as a matter of fact: Elf in Paris (I'm going to call copyright on that idea... if that's how one copyrights ideas). Afterwards I thought, "I should be more like that with people!" but my resolve quickly died by probably my next visit to the grocery store.
Tuesday
Like the croissant pastry lesson in basic, Croquembouche needed two entire pastry classes in a row. The Croquembouche is a traditional French wedding cake composed of a caramel nougatine base--a sort of almond brittle-- topped with cream-filled choux pastries and decorated with more nougatine and white frosting similar to what one might use in decorating a gingerbread house. Pastry classes tend to be a little more slow-paced than cuisine classes, but this one was tortuous. Watching the chef make a couple of choux pastries is one thing, but watching him make about 100 and then observing him dipping each one into caramel and arranging them into two towers was really, really... long. Things got interesting again around hour four when he showed us pulled sugar, a sort of bonus and a task with which we'll become more familiar in superior pastry, but even that became painful to watch after an hour or so. I spent much of the six hours thinking of ways that I could sneak coffee into class in the future.
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| The result of 6 hours' work: Croquembouche and pulled sugar designs |
At 3:30 we joined Chef Poupard for a cuisine demonstration on "fantasy" of smoked and fresh salmon (no, I don't know why it's called that, but it was pretty good), sea bass in a salt crust served with a vegetable tart puff pastry (because the French can't leave perfectly good and healthy zucchini, eggplant, and tomato alone), and chestnut cake with caramel ice cream. While the pace was much faster than in the pastry demonstration, I decided that I never want nine hours of demonstrations in one day again. I also discovered that if one hangs around class a little while after it's finished, a lot of dessert is left over because a good number of students leave before we even reach the dessert tasting. I won't say how many unclaimed dishes of caramel ice cream I rescued, but it was so good.
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| Sea bass baked in a salt crust; Vegetable tarts, Salmon rillettes; Chestnut cake with caramel ice cream |
Wednesday
Despite a week of classes squeezed into four days, our only class Wednesday was our cuisine practicum at 3:30 to make the sea bass and vegetable tart. It was my week to be the assistant again and Caals wanted us to make the salt crust for everyone (or at least weigh out the ingredients in the mixer for him). My fellow assistant showed up only after I got all of our food from the basement, so I suggested that he measure out the salt crust ingredients while I retrieved the puff pastry sheets from the third floor kitchen. When I came back he was at his station sharpening his utensils and the bowl for the salt crust was still empty. Asking him again if he could take care of it while I went next door to get flour, I came back and he was chopping his vegetables for his sauce. Seeing this was a battle that I would not win, I finally did it myself.
Of course I was the last person to finish our dish, and I had to keep my facial expression in check when chef came to my station asking me why my fish was the only one not yet in the oven. Caals also assigns us stations in the classroom and two burners didn't work on my stove nor did my oven function properly--the tarts that were supposed to bake in 20 minutes were not even brown after 40 minutes. Caals finally gave everything a cursory check without bothering to taste anything (except the sauce) or waiting for me to plate before he took off. It worked somewhat in my favor, though--only after enveloping the sea bass in the salt crust did I realize that I had forgotten to add any seasoning or herbs into its stomach cavity.
Thursday
We began our day with Caals doing a demonstration on marinated sea bass and shellfish with aromatic vegetables, roasted veal tenderloin cooked pink with creamy risotto, asparagus coulis, and mushroom duxelles in Mornay sauce, and mango poached in vanilla-passion fruit syrup with strawberry granita and meringue fingers. The veal was our last dish on the final exam list--an unusual but desirable choice because while it has several components, it requires very little technique. I should probably not get my hopes up about pulling that one from the hat...
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| Seas bass and shellfish; Poached mango with strawberry granita and meringue fingers; Veal tenderloin with creamy risotto, mushroom Mornay sauce, and asparagus coulis |
After lunch we again met up with Caals in our practicum for the veal tenderloin. Once more I had to play the sole assistant only this time it was because the other assistant was late to the previous demonstration which meant that he was marked absent and not allowed to attend the practicum. The problem was that he had already hit his maximum six absences, meaning that he was automatically disqualified from graduating. He wasn't going down without a fight, though, so while student services, the executive chef, and our chef were off somewhere having a little meeting with him I was trying to hunt down chicken stock. In the end, they gave him a reprieve and he joined the rest of our class looking relieved and a little embarrassed, although probably not as much as he should have. Honestly, I like the kid (he's actually 22), but I have very little pity for a student who uses up every absence because he overslept... sometimes through classes that started 12:30, 3:30, or even 6:30 in the afternoon or evening. It's also fairly easy to identify which students have sacrificed everything to come to school here and which ones are being supported financially by their parents or a scholarship. These are the thoughts that I pondered while running down to the basement for the third time to get missing ingredients.
My performance seems to vary with the chef--with some chefs I do consistently well and with others I screw up a lot of things. Caals has experienced more of my screw-ups than anyone, but despite the delays this dish actually turned out really well. His only complaint was that my meat wasn't pink enough, but my jus, asparagus, asparagus coulis, risotto, and mornay and mushroom duxelles sauce were all quite nice. We finished about an hour early, too--I really, really want to pull this dish on the exam.
The next class didn't begin for over three hours, so after returning to the studio I spent the rest of my free time catching up on some recipes that I had not yet typed up. That evening we had Caals for the third time that day, this time doing a demonstration on the Flanders region of France: warm skate and leek salad, pan-fried cod steak with Flemish-style red cabbage (cabbage cooked with onions, apples, and red wine) and fried onion rings, and a rhubarb tart. Rhubarb pie is one of my favorite desserts, and even though it would've been better with vanilla ice cream, I stuck around after class to help "clean up" some of the extra tart.
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| Skate and leek salad; Cod steak with Flemish-style red cabbage and onion rings; Rhubarb tart |
Friday
The Croquembouche began promptly at 8:30 in the morning. By now we were all old pros with choux pastries and caramel was becoming more familiar, so the basic techniques weren't difficult. The issue came from working with food that was approximately the same consistency as napalm. We had to roll out, line a cake mold with, and cut shapes in the nougatine while it was hot because it would break as soon as it cooled, which it did very quickly once it was taken out of the pot. To solve this problem we spread the nougatine on baking trays that we would pop in and out of the oven between shapes. Even that didn't make it simple--the trips to the oven were frequent and the nougatine grew darker with each reheating, so speed in working with it was essential.
Filling the choux pastries with pastry cream was easier but time-consuming--one of those tasks where every time I would look down at the pile of unfilled pastries I could swear that they were multiplying. The next step was to dip each pastry into boiling caramel--the hotter the better so that the little balls wouldn't stick in the saucepan. The only way to do it was by hand--pinching with two fingers the hole where we had piped in the cream, dipping the top in the caramel, and flipping it onto parchment paper. We quickly learned the necessity of having a bowl of ice water close by for when our fingers inevitably would make contact with the caramel, but after a few cautious dunks I got into a quick rhythm, still getting a little burn here and there but quickly taking care of it before any fingers caramelized.
Chef forced us out the room for our lunch break (given a vote we would have all stayed to finish), but we managed to come back early for the last major step: re-dipping each pastry in the caramel and arranging them into the cone-shaped tower. I was again making good time and perhaps getting careless, because I did finally manage to stick enough of my finger in the caramel that even the immediate ice bath wasn't sufficient to stop a large blister from forming (apparently the amount of hot caramel covering your skin is a factor in how quickly you can stop the burning). Overestimating how many pastries I would need to complete the tower, I made it smaller than necessary and it ended up at an awkward angle, but I was mostly pleased with the final result and Tranchant seemed happy with everyone's work.
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| Class Croquembouches |
Because the second part of the Croquembouche took less than two hours, I was again afforded a nice long afternoon break before returning for the evening practicum on the cod steak, red cabbage, and onion rings. Miraculously the second assistant arrived at school before me and sent all of the food up in the dumb waiter by the time that I got there. Because it was the last practical of Intermediate and not one of the exam dishes, three of the eight students in our class simply decided not to come, figuring that their grades were safe enough by this point. It was, as one student put it, the most "chill" class that we've ever had--almost like making dinner in my own home. Nobody was rushing around because the dish was so simple and there was little to do while waiting for the cabbage to cook, we were experimenting with onion ring batter, the kid that asks too many questions was deep-frying his extra fish just because he had the time (and we had a lot of extra fish), and our chef was out of the room for extended periods of time while we were singing "Fly Me to the Moon" (that did bring the chef next door over to ask jokingly, I think, if we thought we were in singing school or cooking school). My fish ended up slightly overcooked and the cabbage, though quite tasty, wasn't sliced thinly enough, but the onion rings were great (I curdled the milk for the batter with vinegar to make "buttermilk" and added a little cayenne pepper to the flour to American-ize them a bit).
Saturday
One habit that I've had since I got here is to check the local weather forecast each morning on my phone as soon as I wake up, and I always check the forecast for Greenville as well. Imagine my surprise when I saw that back home it was... snowing. Now those of you from places such as, say, Wisconsin might wonder why that's such a big deal (I saw my first snow while living in the UP in October), but when you live in a land where the average number of snow days per year is 0.5, it's significant. Instead of doing anything productive I spent most of my day monitoring the weather app and looking for new snow photos on Facebook, living vicariously through the people back home.
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| The Twilight Zone |
Not that I could complain about the weather in Paris, mind you--it was a gorgeous day--although I am a bit cranky about the shared heat in my building that first came on a couple of weeks ago. Back home in my drafty old house I would set my thermostat to 58 degrees at night and sleep in flannel or fleece pajamas under flannel sheets, a down comforter, and another blanket or two. I love sleeping like that. Now I have no thermostat and the indoor temperature has been perpetually around 75 degrees since the heat came on--I haven't even been able to use my winter pajamas or the blanket that I bought back in August when it was so cold at night. Leaving the terrace doors open cools it down only a little because I still keep the shade down for privacy, but it also invites in a host of fruit flies and mosquitoes. I could try covering the vents, but I think that most of the heat is radiating up from the two floors below me.
Taking advantage of the lovely day, however, I finally decided to pull myself away from the computer and take a stroll down to Marks & Spencer to replenish my bacon supply and grab a few ingredients in order to practice making a Béarnaise sauce for the technical portion of the final exam. It's nothing terribly complicated, but the last time that we made it was in basic cuisine and I figured I could use any practice that I can get. Back at the studio I did my hair and makeup for an astonishing third time that week because Gretchen had an extra ticket to see the famous opera singer Cecilia Bartoli performing at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The performance was fabulous, of course--probably the best voice that I had ever heard live. I mean, my dad has a good voice and I've heard him sing a LOT, but this experience was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things that you don't soon forget.
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| She ended the show in this outfit--I admire her ability not to sweat almost as much as I admire her voice. |
So when did the semester end?
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