Basic Week FIve

This week I thought that I could start off by sharing some useful words/phrases for anyone considering French culinary school:

• "Terroriste": Same meaning as the English word "terrorist" but usually used as a lighthearted insult.  For example, at the end of a chaotic practicum, the chef will usually dismiss us with, "Go home, terroristes!" and we all laugh.
• "Tok, tok, tok": I can't think of a good English equivalent and I'm not even sure if it's spelled correctly, but the French use "tok" to accompany quick, multi-step actions (but usually done in sets of three).  For example, when showing how to frost the sides of a cake, the act of wiping the frosting off of the spatula onto a cake gets one "tok," the act of sliding the spatula down to smooth the frosting gets a second "tok," and the act of wiping the spatula off on the rim of a bowl gets a third "tok."
• "Oui, Chef": The equivalent "Yes, Chef," probably also applies in any English-speaking culinary school or fine restaurant, but if your chef ever gives an order or offers advice or says your name or asks a yes/no question, "Oui, Chef" is the only appropriate response.  "Yes," "Okay," "Sorry," or simply no response at all is unacceptable.  Even "No, Chef," should be avoided, because there's a good chance that you need to make happen whatever is not happening.  For example, if chef asks, "Are your refrigerators empty?" you respond with "Oui, Chef!" as you immediately empty out your refrigerator.
• "Vite!": "Hurry up!"  Yeah, I hear that... a lot.

It's hard to believe that I'm halfway through my semester in Basic Cuisine and Patisserie - I have only four full weeks of classes remaining followed by a partial week of classes and exams, and then I receive my first certificate (assuming that I pass).

Days are often so full of activity that I will find myself in a 6:30 PM pastry practicum recalling some event from an 8:30 AM cuisine practicum but thinking that it happened a day or two prior rather than just that morning, and yet the weeks are flying by.  Compare this phenomenon to my days in an office job where I would be asking, "Is it Friday yet?" by Tuesday afternoon.  I take this flight of time as a good sign - not that I want time to pass by more quickly, but that I'm no longer staring at the clock or counting down the hours and days until the weekend or my next vacation.

Monday

Bastille Day!  All of Paris was joyously celebrating as crowds clamored to reserve the best seats for fireworks, with many people arriving seven or more hours in advance.  It was also the first holiday of the semester at Le Cordon Bleu and in true old fuddy-duddy fashion, I used my new-found freedom to stay in the studio all day.  I haven't been interested in firework shows for the last few years and I haven't been interested in massive crowds... ever.  My 8:30 AM class on Tuesday was also a good motivation not to stay up all night.

My holiday reclusiveness didn't save me from trouble, though, because a very loud and large party lasted in the courtyard below my building from about 7:00 PM until 2:00 AM.  Even with my windows closed I could make out the words to every song, and the heavy bass beat had every wall and pane of glass vibrating.  At 11:00 PM until midnight when the fireworks began, I was fairly certain that my building was being carpet-bombed, but all that I could see in the patch of sky visible from my terrace were flashes of light similar to heat lightning.  But sleep did finally come.

Tuesday

Each week the school assigns two students from each practical class to be the assistants.  The assistants' responsibilities are to arrive in class twenty minutes early, to get the food supplies from the basement kitchen, and (in the case of cuisine) to make sure that each student's work area is set up with a cutting board and any other items that might be needed but that aren't readily accessible in the classroom.  This week was my first turn as an assistant in our cuisine group and I was a little terrified - as if I don't risk enough deductions in each practicum evaluation, poor preparation can count against the assistants.

Neither I nor the other assistant knew how to work the dumb waiter to get the food from the basement kitchen to the classroom, so we fell behind on the setup and consequently on our practicum.  As soon as we finished I set to work on trussing a chicken, and in my hurry I poked a hole in my left palm with the chef's knife.  Washing my hand and grabbing a band-aid but ignoring the pesky rubber glove, I continued working, immediately poking a hole in my left index finger with the trussing needle.  Two band-aids and now a rubber glove later, I moved on to turning the artichoke which I had practiced at home on Saturday.  I immediately tore up the knuckles on my right hand with the sharp leaves but decided to hide the bleeding from the chef with a paper towel (chefs frown on bleeding on food).

Although I was the last person to finish (again) after my series of unfortunate events, Asian chef said that my final product - roasted chicken au jus and turned artichokes with garden-style vegetables - was good (the veggies were a a little too crisp for his liking but for once I got the quantity of seasoning correct).

That afternoon I returned to the school for a demonstration on meringues led by Chef Tranchant.  Meringues are generally just a mixture of egg whites and sugar, but they are quite a popular item in French patisseries.  We learned that there are three types - French, Swiss, and Italian - differing primarily by the temperature of the sugar or eggs when whisking.  They also serve as a base for many other pastries, often used in cake batters (e.g., German chocolate cake) and buttercream frosting.

Variations of meringues and a Dacquoise cake

We had our pastry practicum immediately following the demonstration, where we learned that meringues also require whisking - lots and lots of whisking.  Even though I had in the past made meringues at home using an electric hand or stand mixer, I had no idea how hard it would be without those heaven-sent inventions.  I at least felt good about my time and organization, and I ended up finishing the cake batter quickly.

Chef Pascal (formerly Mean Chef) was feeling incredibly generous that evening.  He actually praised my cake batter beyond the standard "C'est bien," telling me that it was very nice with a good texture, and then he made some comment to the effect that I should be proud of myself (I think that's what he was trying to convey).  It was kind even though it had the undertone of a parent praising his idiot child for not screwing something up ("Kerry - You didn't stick any crayons up your nose today!  Good job!").

The buttercream frosting was also a success, although by now my whisking arm was shot and the heartier, younger students had pulled ahead, leaving me once more straggling in the rear.  My piping bag skills had improved even more and I was able to decorate the cake fairly quickly until it came time to make marzipan roses.  I cringe whenever the chefs introduce us to a new decorating technique, and combined with the wilting heat in the classroom my flower merited a "Go study some real roses" suggestion from the chef.

My Dacquoise (yes, the white thing is a rose)

Wednesday

Chef Caals started our morning with mustard-crusted pork tenderloins, grilled salmon, potatoes, and ice cream with chocolate sauce and Chantilly cream.  Although the cuisine courses are growing in intensity, I appreciate the fact that we're starting to do more well-balanced meals (of course ice cream is a part of a well-balanced diet).  The addition of side dishes to the leftovers that I bring home is particularly nice (we don't usually make the desserts in our actual cuisine practicum, but I think that I'm covered).

We had an hour lunch break before the cuisine practicum which allowed the other assistant and me plenty of time to prepare for class, and our newly acquired experience with the dumb waiter got us off to a much faster start.  It was our first practicum with this chef (I really need to start finding out their names), an older man who had little to say.  We were making only the grilled salmon, spinach, and potatoes, but we had two sauces to prepare as well - a lemon-butter sauce for the fish and a mornay sauce for the potatoes - and I was confusing the ingredients between the two as well as what went into the puréed potatoes.  Fortunately my error caused me only to double the eggs in the mornay, but as far as I could tell the chef didn't notice.

What he probably did notice, though, was that I was still cooking my potatoes long after most of the class had already puréed theirs.  In demonstration Chef Caals boiled the potatoes whole for 50 minutes, but apparently I was the only person in the class who didn't hear him tell us to cut up our potatoes in practicum for faster cooking.  Actually, I thought that he told us just the opposite because they would absorb too much water.  I had probably even written somewhere in my copious notes, "Do NOT cut up the potatoes."  So when Jade, the girl from the UK, walked by my stove and gasped ominously, "Oh, you didn't cut your potatoes!" only after they were almost finished cooking, the mystery of why I was behind this time became clear (and in case you're wondering why I didn't question the other eight students cutting up their potatoes, it's because I didn't actually witness it - as the assistant I was out of the room getting something that the chef requested).

To add to the confusion and frenetic chaos of the class, I was sweating profusely with all four of my stove-tops in action along with the grill for the salmon.  The weather had also taken a much warmer turn that day from the cooler, milder temperatures during the prior few weeks, and the air conditioning was quickly losing it's cooling abilities.  Profuse sweating makes me extremely agitated.

I managed to catch up to the slower two or three students in the class (there were enough things to keep me occupied while waiting for the potatoes to boil), and Chef of Few Words actually liked my salmon and slow-cooked potatoes with the over-eggy mornay sauce. My sautéed spinach was fine as well, but the lemon-butter sauce was, in his words, "terrible" - too heavy on the lemon and too light on the salt.  Most of the rest of the class received a similar critique, though, because we had simply used the amount of lemon juice for which the recipe called.  Therein lies the difference between cuisine and pastry - the latter is always precise while the former relies very little on measurement and very much on on the five senses (although I personally liked the lemon flavor on my fish).

At least it made for a good lunch!

Despite feeling like I had just been scalded by the steam from a train engine right before it ran over me, I was actually quite excited as I left the practicum at 3:30 PM.  Our next class wasn't until Friday morning, and I was mulling over ideas of what I would do with the first non-Bastille Day, non-Sunday day off in almost five weeks.  Then, as I passed by a demonstration room to return some items to the basement kitchen, Chef Pascal suddenly popped out of the doorway shouting my name.  I turned around, wondering if I had done something wrong, but he was smiling and waving and yelling something unintelligible (i.e., in French) and then asked, "Is better now?"  I'll never know what he was talking about, but I was happy to see that we were now "buddies" so I just smiled and waved back and replied, "Oui, Chef!  Merci!"

After chucking every part of my uniform from the socks up to my hat into the wash when I got home, I pulled up FaceTime to chat with my mom.  Much to my surprise and joy, my sweet little nephew Declan, who turned four that day, was at my parents' house with my niece Briannah.  Wishing him a happy birthday "face to face" and having a delightful conversation with the kids made me feel a bit like crying.  If my joy weren't full enough, my Aunt Mary arrived at the house with her two grandsons and two of my sister's boys who were visiting from Georgia.  It was only in the last couple of weeks that I figured out that I could still FaceTime with my iPhone as long as I had WiFi, and it was the first conversation with any family besides my parents in over six weeks.  Thank the Lord for modern technology!

That evening I began researching ideas for a day trip, even considering Disneyland Paris, when suddenly I remembered the one thing that my mom and I had talked about wanting to do for years: visit Claude Monet's home and gardens.  A quick search on Google maps showed me that it was only an hour away (for some reason I thought that it was much farther).  Even the discomfort of trying to drift off to sleep in a stuffy, hot room that night could do little to dampen my spirits.

Thursday

In order to reach Monet's house, my best option was to take the Metro to the Saint-Lazare train station in Paris, buy a ticket to Vernon, and take a bus from Vernon to Giverny.  On the bus to Giverny I noticed how charming the landscape was and decided that I would have to ditch the bus on the way back to Vernon and walk the 2.5 miles if I wanted to take in all of it.

The sun was in full force and the heat wave was on the rise, sitting at around 85 degrees by the time that I got into the hour-long line to the house with very little shade.  Tourists were everywhere like swarms of flies, but once I finally made it to the garden it hardly mattered. I had imagined something like the Biltmore House gardens with vast expanses of neatly arranged flowerbeds, but it was more like a very large yard with random scatterings of flower - dozens and dozens of every kind of flower imaginable in one location.  I rushed through it a bit, because it was lacking any shade and I had reached the "profusely sweating" stage.

Monet's Garden from an upstairs house window

Following the signs to the Lily Pond, though, I came upon what is the most breathtaking part of the estate.  Little bridges and walkways led around a narrow stream to a Japanese bridge facing a vast pond covered in pink and white-flowered lily pads and shaded by giant weeping willow trees.  Monet created a collection of around 250 paintings of this pond in his lifetime, and many other artists have also attempted to capture its beauty.  I felt a little nostalgic and teary-eyed wishing that my mom were standing next to me.  Such experiences are always better shared, particularly with someone who could appreciate it as much (if not more) than me.

Upon entering the pathway to the Lily Pond I had to laugh, though.  An American woman in front of me was exclaiming to her husband how they were standing on a famous bridge depicted in hundreds of paintings while he was snapping photos... except that it was only a little unassuming footbridge near the entrance before the pond actually became visible.  I'm sure that they eventually figured it out.

Lily Pond and THE famous bridge

More painting subjects 

Monet's house was, of course, crowded and hot, so I did a quick run-through, taking in the brightly-painted rooms and the bizarre wall-to-wall collections of Japanese (mostly Geisha girl) drawings.  From there I exited to the gift shop, grabbed up a few souvenirs and postcards, and headed to the Impressionism museum just a short distance down the road. I took my time wandering from room to room, enjoying the art and most importantly, the air conditioning. Only one of Monet's paintings is contained in this museum, but its lower level features a collection of paintings of his garden and lily pond as portrayed by other artists.

The time had come to begin my trek back towards Vernon.  From reading the website about Monet's house I knew that there was a pedestrian-friendly route back; I just hadn't bothered to find it.  My Garmin was set to pedestrian mode, though, and the journey started out okay.  I stopped occasionally to snap some photos of Monet's burial site as well as some charming little French homes and hotels along the way.  Soon, though, rue Claude Monet ended and I found myself on a highway of sorts - nothing resembling a pedestrian path - with my diabolical Garmin instructing me to continue walking two more miles. So I did.

The shoulder of the road that I was walking on was knee-high with weeds and bordered by acres of farmland, separated by a large ditch.  My one little bottle of water that I had been carrying all day was almost dry (I was desperately trying to conserve it like a person staggering across the desert with only one canteen) and I dropped my flimsy bag of souvenirs at one point, scattering postcards down the ditch incline.

My relief upon seeing some houses and gravelly walkways crop up on the other side of the road was lessened when one of the residents pulled up in front of his home and started asking me something that I couldn't quite understand, so I smiled and said, "Non."  His reply was something to the effect of, "But my house is right here," as he swept out his arm towards it in a welcoming gesture, which made me think that he was either inviting me inside or offering me water.  As tempted as I was to find out if it was the latter, self-preservation made me reply with, "I don't speak French."  He simply snapped his fingers in the universal "too bad" motion and went inside.

During this awkward conversation I noticed bicycles passing behind his house on some pathway through the trees, and a little farther up the road I finally found an entrance to this path - the non-auto road that I should have been walking.  I finished the journey back to Vernon, stopping at a little shop to get an ice cream cone and resisting the urge to rub it all over my face.  Proceeding to the station, I boarded the train and struggled to stay awake for the 45-minute ride to Paris.

Ancient bridge and house in Vernon

Unable to face another night of sleeping in the heat, I stopped off at Monoprix to buy a table fan for the studio which was about 85 degrees inside by the time that I arrived home.  Much to my chagrin, the fan was broken when I opened the box to assemble it and I spent another uncomfortable evening trying to make as little contact between my skin and the bed as possible, but my exhaustion eventually won out over the discomfort.

Friday

The day's forecast called for temperatures in the low- to mid-nineties, but we were at least spared any practicums - the day held only pastry and cuisine demonstrations.  Chef Pascal made the famous French Moka, a coffee-flavored cake that would again require a lot of hand-whipping for both the batter and the buttercream frosting in addition to some serious decorating skills, but it was not a complex cake.

Chef Pascal's Mokas - the man has skills

I used the four-hour break between the morning and afternoon demonstrations to exchange the fan.  Even more than then irritation of walking the big, bulky box the quarter-mile between my studio and Monoprix in the blazing heat and humidity was the fear that they wouldn't allow me to return or exchange it and I wouldn't have the ability to intelligently debate them en français.  Much to my surprise, the sales clerk was unusually nice about it and I soon had a new big, bulky box with a fan to lug back home.

That afternoon we had our first lesson on forcemeat stuffing.  Chef Poupard made some fabulous paupiettes (veal rolls stuffed with forcemeat) with baby onions and turned carrots, and he began a foie gras terrine (although after hearing the explanation of how foie gras is made, I think that I might now be morally opposed to it).  Chef Poupard is known as the "Map Chef" because he likes to talk about where all French food originated, often pulling out a map as a visual aid.

Paupiettes with glazed onions and turned carrots

Saturday

We had our first female chef in practicum Saturday morning - a Korean woman whose diminutive size and youthful appearance didn't make her any less tough than her male peers.  She was very helpful, though - I burned my finger badly on the oven and she made me stop to put cream on it after running it under cold water for two minutes, and when I returned to my station she was peeling all of my baby onions for me.  She did not, unfortunately, turn my carrots.  I'd like to blame my blistered middle finger for the woeful job that I did turning them, but the more likely explanation is that I had no idea what I was doing.  Rather than having the "barrel" shape when I finished, they kind of looked like I had just gnawed them down to size.  On my way home for my break before the 3:30 PM class, I stopped off at the epicerie and bought a lot of carrots in preparation for some weekend fun.

Good paupiettes, bad carrots

For the afternoon cuisine demonstration, Chef Bogen was finishing the foie gras terrine from Friday in addition to making forcemeat-stuffed chicken breasts and turned mushrooms.  My feelings for turned vegetables are at least shared - when chef mentioned the word "turned," a collective groan went up from the room.  So much work just for appearance...

Forcemeat stuffed chicken with turned mushrooms; Foie gras

Before class began, the translator made a PSA that all translators would be cracking down on talking in class from that point forward - the first person talking would be sent out of the room for five minutes, and anyone talking after that would be dismissed from the rest of the class period.  It seemed an effective warning at first, but the Brazilians were soon chatting away with no reprimand except from the group of girls who sit together up front and say, "Shh!" a lot.

A student from Jordan approached the translator and asked if he could keep his phone out during class to take any calls from his family due to the ongoing Middle East crisis.  The translator asked the chef who simply replied, "No," and then the chef and translator began a sort of debate.  Turning back to the student, the translator said, "Chef says he's sorry, but you need to put your phone away.  What you are doing here is more important."  Walking back to his seat, the student called out loudly over his shoulder, "Okay, but I don't agree with the chef!"  Oh, boy...

Chef Bogen launched into a speech about being adults and learning self-discipline and about how we need to focus on what we're studying - to concentrate on why we're at the school and not on things that we can't do anything about.  We received the "Oui, Chef" reminder again and a warning never, ever, under any circumstance, to contradict or talk back to a chef either at the school or in any future career.  Twenty minutes later he began our demonstration.  At first it sounded harsh, but he made sense to me even though I'm not sure that his lecture clicked in the minds of the younger students who needed to hear it the most.

We finished late and the Grand Diplome group rushed off to our pastry practicum to join the other students who had already started their Mokas.  I whipped up my cake batter rather quickly and started on my buttercream frosting.  Apart from the flavoring, it was identical to the frosting for the Dacquoise which I had managed quite well, but something went terribly wrong this evening.

Chef Mahut often insists on checking certain stages of our recipes before allowing us to proceed to the next step, and in this instance he wanted to check our frosting before we added the butter and then again before we frosted our cakes.  He gave me the go-ahead for the butter and I whisked my arm off until the frosting appeared to be a good consistency, but Mahut stopped me short of frosting the cake.  He worked with the frosting for a while, and when I asked what the problem was he said, "I don't know."  He handed it back to me and said to whisk it over an ice bath again.  By the time that he came back to my station, everyone else was halfway through icing their cakes and he allowed me to begin mine.  The frosting wouldn't firm up, though, making it impossible to smooth the surface.  By now students were starting their piping decorations, but chef stuck my cake in the freezer and told me to whisk my frosting again on an ice bath.

The end of class was fast approaching and chef was throwing out warnings about giving everyone who was late a zero.  I'm not sure if that included me, but I finally began my piping decorations with frosting that had the consistency of softened butter.  When it came time to have him evaluate my cake, Chef Stater of the Obvious simply said, "If this were the final exam, that frosting would have made you fail."  Good to know.

Boxing up my sad cake, I began my trudge down the stairs when my greasy-bottomed shoes slipped out from under me and I took the next four or five steps down on my rear while my cake box tumbled to the bottom, noisily bouncing across every step on the way.  Fortunately, about four students were behind me to witness the humiliation and offer up, "Are you okay?" as I brushed off my bruised tailbone and picked up the blasted Moka which at least had the grace to stay contained in the box through the entire ordeal.  To console myself I went home and had a 10:00 PM dinner consisting only of the rest of the Dacquoise cake and a big blob of Moka.

Before and after the fall

Sunday

A youth group from Friendship Baptist Church in Raleigh, NC visited the church that morning and their leader delivered the sermon in English with a French translator.  As the pastor stated, "We're getting all of the Carolinas here!" (Foreigners have trouble differentiating between North Carolina and South Carolina.  I try not to get offended.)

After church I came home and spent a good portion of my afternoon turning carrots and practicing paper cornets.  Though still not perfect, it began to feel at least a little more natural.  I wanted to turn some mushrooms as well, but of course no stores that sell mushrooms were open anywhere near me.  The weather had cooled considerably, though - into the low 70's - and I was able to unwind from a rather hectic week without even turning on my new fan.

Practice makes perfect... I hope.

I'm not going to lie - things will be heating up next week at school with 42 hours of classes and what I believe is a mid-semester advisory meeting, and I'm just a little concerned about my progress or lack thereof.  Sometimes I wish that I could have a one-on-one personal trainer who would just spend a few days intensely developing my weak areas, a sort chef version of Mr. Miyagi (and no, that would not be the equivalent of Arnold from Happy Days).  For now, though, I'm going to find some mushrooms.

Basic Week Four

It's another cold and rainy Sunday afternoon here in Paris.  I enjoy Sunday afternoons in this city, though - it sort of forces people to take a day of rest because apart from restaurants, almost all businesses are closed.  The streets are quieter in the less-touristy areas such as mine, particularly when I'm boarding the Metro to head to church at 9:30 AM, and I can read in peace for the half-hour ride to Saint-Denis... except between the stops where a "musician" decides  to hop the train.  At least the one today was singing a cappella rather than hauling an accordion, loud speakers, and a CD Walkman with him.

I learned a few new things about this city as well this week.

• Grilling is forbidden by law.  That made me a little sad because I had high hopes of getting a little grill for the terrace.  Actually, all fires in Paris are forbidden, even in homes with functioning fireplaces.  Something about fires potentially destroying the city and killing hundreds, blah, blah, blah...
• If you serve a meat with sauce in France, the sauce can go either on the plate first with the meat on top, or it can be served on the side.  Sauce is not allowed to be served on top of the meat... again by law (I assume that they don't monitor this practice in homes, though).
• Paris residents are required to clean up after their dogs, but nobody does it, or at least I've witnessed it happening only twice.

Monday

The week began with a 12:30 AM patisserie demonstration led by the formidable Chef Quéré who shall henceforth be called Chef Pascal, because that is how he is better known (also formerly referred to as “the mean one”).  He was working on choux pastries again, this time delving into the world of such heavenly creations as éclairs and cream puffs.

The many faces of choux pastries: Salambos, cream puffs, acorns, éclairs, and chouquettes

Pascal was in rare form that day, or maybe it’s his regular form and the angry chef that we witnessed on our first day with him was just his special way of laying down the law… or he’s schizophrenic.  Whatever the reason, he was teasing the translator and cracking jokes while former students and chefs sporadically dropped into the demonstration simply to give him a handshake or hug and yuck it up in French, like one of their weird variety shows.  I began to think that if so many people like him then he might not be half as bad as we initially thought.

From that class we moved into Chef Bogen’s demonstration on soups, focusing on cream soups, veloutés, bisques, and consommé.  It was a roller-coaster ride of techniques that left a good majority of the class walking out with a “What just happened?” expression and a few choice words.  Chef had four different preparations going at once and at one point I counted about ten pots on the stove.  He’d jump from describing cuts of beef to preparing a chicken to cooking crabs to cutting vegetables (each soup had its own cut) to proper consistency.  Keeping up with which step went with which recipe became almost impossible, but questions ceased when he answered one student with, “I already answered that.  Only good questions, please!”

Asparagus velouté, cream of cauliflower soup, and crab bisque

Tuesday

Walking into the cuisine practicum Tuesday morning we were greeted by Chef Caals (or as one of my classmates calls him, “the fit one” – the one every girl has a crush on) who told us to commence with our puff pastry dough, and then he left the room.  In an unusual turn of events, I was the only student not taken off guard.  I had actually noticed that we would be making the dough again in class even though it wasn’t covered in the last demonstration, and I brought the recipe from Lesson 5 along with the soup recipe.  Much to everyone’s relief, chef remained out of the room while I managed to shout ingredients and instructions to the rest of the group.  Our doughs were completed by the time that he returned.

Our next task was to prepare the crab bisque; thus began the horror.  I enjoy most shellfish as long as it’s been removed from the shell and prepared in some unrecognizable form from when it was alive, so while after the demo I had come to terms with the fact that we would have to chop up some crabs, the cry from one girl of “They’re alive!” froze me in my tracks.  Sure enough, the large pile of crabs before us was moving, and Caals was yelling, “Hurry up and divide the crabs among seven people!  Use them all!  Vite! Vite!”

While the rest of us stood aside grimacing, one brave student grabbed seven bowls and boldly stepped forward to begin plucking out the crabs, quickly withdrawing his hand with an “Ouch!” each time one would pinch his fingers.  In another unusual moment of clarity, I grabbed two large slotted spoons and handing one to him, we began to scoop them out, counting about ten crabs per person.

In demonstration, Bogen had quickly chopped each crab into four parts, telling us that we would be doing the same in practicum although seasoned chefs used faster methods.  Watching the braver students hacking their crabs to death made me a little nauseated, but Caals stopped us short and said to use the faster method and put them in the heated oil whole.  While I was relieved that now I wouldn’t have to touch any of them, watching them slowly fry to death was equally disturbing, so I frantically kept stirring the pot to move the living crabs on top down to the bottom and speed up their death, whispering, "I'm sorry!" with each turn.

After all of the crabs appeared to be dead and were nicely “risoled” (red), we took wooden rolling pins and began violently to smash the crabs in order to release the meat.  My uniform was spattered and I could feel pieces of crab hitting me in the face, but it finally ended and I was able to add the vegetables and cover up the carnage in liquid before bringing it to a boil.

The frustrating part of this demonstration was that I actually felt ahead of the game, or at least I was keeping up with my classmates up to this point, but as my soup completed its 40 minutes of simmering I noticed that everyone else had already strained and reduced theirs, and soon Caals was tapping his watch-less wrist shouting, “Hurry up, Kerry!”  I rushed through the last preparations, not allowing it to reduce as much as it should because Caals told us to stop.  When he tested my bisque he said, “Not enough crab flavor – you probably didn’t risoler the crabs long enough.  And you need to watch the time.”  I didn’t point out that it was still half an hour before the “official” end of class, nor did I sneak in a remark about being the only student who came prepared for the puff pastry dough.

We had about four hours to kill before our pastry practicum, so I went home to clean the crab off of my face and unwind from the morning’s trauma, recognizing that it could have been worse and most likely will be eventually (the stories about rabbit preparation have already begun).  When I returned at 3:30 PM we had our first practicum with Chef Mahut.  He’s another good chef for the slow ones among us because he prefers to work together on each stage.  Unfortunately, his English is also very limited.  He insisted that we measure out our choux pastry ingredients and then wait for him to make a batch before we began ours, an instruction that got lost in translation on a few students and resulted in a somewhat irate chef.

To make matters worse, because I was standing next to Mahut he asked me to measure out his ingredients along with mine, although I misunderstood his instructions and measured out only mine.  God bless my classmates – after he pointed out my error and said that I had five minutes to get his ingredients, three of the girls close by began measuring things out for me and we finished well within his time frame.

My biggest hurdle in the pastry classes has been mastering the piping bags.  Besides a severe lack of artistic skill, my coordination is terrible (although the two are probably related) – it’s the reason that I was always a benchwarmer in sports and eventually quit participating.  Each baking sheet was to be shared by two students, and I ended up with Chris, a super-nice Japanese kid who, after watching me try to pipe my éclairs before scraping them back off the sheet and starting over, showed me how to hold the bag.  Then showed me again.  Then again. Around the third time it finally clicked, and if I ever succeed in a patisserie career I will forever accredit it to that boy.

As the éclairs baked we piped our chouquettes, a much easier task with my new-found mastery, then whipped up the chocolate cream to fill the éclairs.  The last step was to dip them in chocolate fondant.  I missed the part where we were supposed to stir the fondant quickly between each dip to remove the top film, so the only éclair that turned out pretty was the one that chef did for me after he watched me struggle through the first five.

My sad éclairs and okay chouquettes

At some point in the middle of class I also “lost” my plastic scraper which meant that I had to buy another one from the school.  In truth, someone took my scraper, a frequent problem even in small classes if you don’t keep tabs on all of your items or label them well (I had to buy new magnets the week before).  Overall, though, I really like my classmates and we’re forming a good bond, not the “I like you so I’ll kill you last” kind of bond but the kind where we’re quick to help each other out and offer words of encouragement or praise.

Wednesday

I had the glorious privilege of sleeping in on Wednesday because the first patisserie demonstration didn’t begin until 12:30 PM, although a nine-hour block of classes awaited me.  Chef Tranchant showed us petits-fours meringues and biscuits (or as we in America call them, cookies).  My fear over piped pastries had greatly decreased over the last 24 hours and I was actually looking forward to the prospect of making them.

Macarons, raisin biscuits, "cigarettes," and Marshal's batons

From there we went to a cuisine demonstration with Chef Lesourd, a funny and friendly little man that bares an amazing resemblance to Mr. Bean.  Although it was my first class with him, I recognized him from practicums where he would pop into class and walk around the room, asking students from where they came or making little jokes about what they were doing.  He kept the atmosphere lively as he showed us how to make a Marseillaise fish soup and clarify the consommé from Monday’s demonstration for use in such wonderful things as French onion soup.  His demonstration was less tense and much easier to follow than Bogen’s, but I was grateful to know that we wouldn’t be making the fish soup in our practicum.  It involved too much familiarity with several kinds of fish, and although not as intimidating live crabs, I decided that tasting eel was preferable to cutting it up.

Consommé with vegetable brunoise, French onion soup, and Fish soup

We went straight from the demonstration to the practicum with the Filipino-looking chef (I’ll just refer to him as Chef Phil until I can figure out his real name).  I wasn’t sure what I thought about Chef Phil up to this point because I had very little interaction with him during our egg poaching practicum – mostly the chef-in-training had helped me.  He’s extremely quiet and reserved and unwilling to do demonstration classes because he doesn’t like standing in front of a room full of students.  By the end of class, though, I decided that I liked him.  He didn’t try to make us laugh, but it was kind of nice being able to make him laugh occasionally, and once the boys got him talking about the World Cup he almost became animated.

We finished our puff pastry dough from Tuesday morning in order to make cheese straws with them at the end of class, then went to work on the consommé clarification.  Although the brunoise cut of my vegetables was too big and they weren’t cooked quite well enough, I finished in a timely manner and we were able to get out shortly before 9:00 PM.

Boxing up my consommé to take home and freeze for some possible future use (or for the garbage when I move out) and wrapping up the cheese straws because I didn't think to bring another container for them, I went outside to be greeted by cold rain and wind.  My purse was strapped across my shoulder, I had a bag of dirty uniform parts and my umbrella on one arm, and in the other arm I carried my loosely wrapped pile of cheese straws atop a giant box of hot consommé.  The walk home is about 15 minutes, and about five minutes into it I began to notice cheese straws slipping loose from the foil as I kept shifting the box of consommé into a more “comfortable” position.  By the time I got home I had a very happy trail of pigeons following me.

"Feed the birds. Tuppence a bag..."

Thursday

Although he seemed to have lightened up a little, the appearance of Chef Pascal in our 8:30 AM patisserie practicum still brought slight groans and nervous glances among the students.  We cranked out our raisin biscuits and Marshal’s batons with very little yelling though, and even the students who had to start the meringue batter over for the latter because they over-beat their ingredients were treated fairly respectably.  I got another c’est bien on my work and we were done with the school day by 10:30 AM.

The school had scheduled a student party for that evening at a place called the Jane Club, but for one thing I’m not a “clubber” and for another thing, even if it had been anywhere else, the prospect of having to wash and fix my hair that afternoon and change into something dressy for a cold, rainy evening sucked out any vestige of desire in me.  Yes, I am that pathetic.

Instead I picked up some Chinese food from a place that I passed daily and that caused me to stare wistfully in the windows as I breathed in the aromas.  The egg rolls were good as was the rice, but the chicken left much to be desired (read about Friday to find out why).  Then I spent most of the rest of the day trying to fix an issue with an application that I had installed to allow me to access American websites where I could finally do such things as listen to Pandora or watch shows like Endeavour or The Incredible Hulk (circa 1978 – I had almost forgotten how bad the special effects were).

[The American shows part is important only because I started back on T-Tapp exercises, which are sustainable only if I have something to keep from dying of boredom in the process.]

Friday

I had been looking forward to this day ever since we got our school schedule four weeks ago.  There weren’t any classes, but instead the morning began with a market tour led by Chef Poupard and his translator.  Poupard took us to some of his favorite locations, telling us to be sure that we greeted each shop owner with “Bonjour,” that we keep a smile on our face, and that we never touch anything.  The “Bonjour” I knew about and the "no touching" was a given, but the smile was a new concept.  He explained that Paris isn’t known for hospitality, but he thinks that cordiality should be universal.  I like Poupard.

We arrived at the boucherie first just as they were opening and had a quick lesson on how to identify good butchers and cuts of meat.  Next came the fromagerie, where my piping bag hero, Chris, stood back with his nose pinched and declared that he hated all cheese (watching the Asians react to cheese and sweets is often entertaining), so chef purchased a large quantity of several types of cheese and made Chris carry the bag.

Charcuterie, poissonerie, and fromagerie

The poissonerie that chef chose was an outdoor stand with more types of fish than I ever realized existed (at least for eating), all displayed neatly across mounds of ice.  Poupard gave us the fish quality test – clear eyes, red gills, and a non-fishy smell are three signs of a good fish.  He purchased some ready-to-eat shrimp and prawns before we proceeded to the charcuterie which carried all sorts of questionable animal parts, the boulangerie where chef bought several types of bread including an amazing brioche and a cheese bread, a goat cheese stand for more cheese, a patisserie, a vegetable stand where we purchased nothing (of course), and finally back to the boucherie for chef to make another large quantity of purchases.  We made it back to the school by 11:00 AM and took our purchases up to a practicum classroom for the tasting.

Long ago when I first decided to come to Le Cordon Bleu, I made the decision that I could never turn up my nose to any food.  I wasn't a very picky eater to begin with, but there were certain foods that I had avoided my whole life.  A few of those foods had already crossed my palate since my arrival (e.g., anchovies), and several more were spread out before me at that moment.  Blood sausage, foie gras, terrine, animelles, and stinky cheese covered in ash would have given me pause in my past, but as a testament to my developing taste buds I tried everything and in most cases, actually enjoyed it (I can do without the blood sausage and animelles, though).  And if you ever have the opportunity to try foie gras terrine with gingerbread, don’t hesitate – just eat it.  You will never regret that decision.

Cheese, more cheese, terrines, blood sausage, and so much more

From there we rushed over to the Eiffel Tower to join the rest of the basic cuisine and patisserie students on a boat cruise on the Seine for a lunch that the school was hosting.  I had not thought to bring a change of clothes because I thought that I would have time to change after the market tour, although I wore what seemed to be an “appropriate” outfit for the lunch just in case (the directions specified only that we weren't to wear jeans or tennis shoes).  Everyone was dressed to the nines, with several men in sports jackets and women in shiny patent leather heels and formal dresses.  I had on navy capris, a gray t-shirt, a casual cardigan, and grey dock shoes.  I searched for someone – anyone – equally dressed down as I was but to no avail.  C’est Paris.

I tucked myself as inconspicuously as possible into the far end of a table with some of my fellow patisserie students.  Free champagne and wine were flowing all around, but not being a drinker I just enjoyed a wonderful meal of foie gras de canard with truffle sauce and asparagus, veal with au jus sauce and buttery mashed potatoes, and pavlova, a sort of vanilla and strawberry ice cream on top of a meringue and covered in whipped cream.  Having already made a huge faux pas, I decided that asking the waiter for butter to go with my dinner roll wouldn’t hurt.  He replied that butter was for breakfast, then grudgingly brought me some saying, “It’s fat!  Lots of fat!”

Foie gras, potatoes, veal, butter!, and pavlova

My table mates on either side of me were feeling the effects of the alcohol a little more quickly than others, and soon the Russian was talking about how she wanted to kiss someone and the American was relaying her life story in tears.  Across from us sat another American and Russian and a woman from Egypt.  We began swapping stories about how we came to Le Cordon Bleu which now had the American on my left crying more and the Russian on my right exclaiming how wonderful it all was.  That part of the conversation was actually quite lovely, though – it revealed a common thread among us that is lacking from the younger students whose parents are footing the bill and who are simply there as an extension of their education.  We each knew and understood the sacrifice, hard work, and inner desire that brought us there.

The "old women" table

I opted to walk back home after lunch rather than take the Metro in order to work off some portion of the food that I had consumed that day.  When I reached my street, I decided for the first time to stop in a few shops to look for some skirts or dresses, feeling the need to prepare for such future lunches and other events.  Every store was having a sale – French law dictates when sales can occur and this one was lasting from mid-June until the end of July.  In true American form, I purchased two skirts at the Gap for a great price by Paris standards – it was the cheapest store on the street and they took my American credit card.

That evening I kicked back on the terrace with my leftover Chinese food from Thursday night.  It was only then that I realized why the chicken wasn't very good… because it was actually fish.  Sometimes I worry about my career in the culinary field.  Of course, I didn’t say that my taste buds were fully developed yet – just getting there.

Saturday

Chef Caals led Saturday morning’s cuisine demonstration on omelets and roasted chicken.  The omelet was more of a side note – something to occupy our time while the chicken was roasting.  We once again learned to truss a chicken, although this one was different in that it was only a month old and had tender bones, so it had to be handled more carefully.  We finally delved into the world of side dishes as well, and Caals turned an artichoke for us before combining it with cooked carrots, green beans, daikon radish, and celery root, all cut into perfectly uniform sticks.

Herb omelet and chicken (served on top of sauce) with a turned artichoke and garden vegetables

I love artichokes, but I had never actually worked with one and I knew that it could cause me trouble in Tuesday’s practicum.  I also had a lot of time on my hands with no classes again until that Tuesday, so I stopped by the grocer’s on the way home and picked up the vegetable ingredients along with some really wonderful peaches.  I even considered buying a chicken to roast until I remembered that I had no oven.  My final product turned out okay for a first try, and I had the added benefit of eating a good portion of vegetables for the first time in weeks.

Sunday

Because I was getting to know a few of the folks in church a little better, I took the opportunity this Sunday to bring one of the American families a bag of leftover Marshal’s batons with the promise of many, many more pastries to come.  Maybe I will get through this experience without gaining 100 pounds after all!  A French girl in the church also invited me to hang out after she returned from vacation next week.  We know just enough of each other’s language to get by, and I can look forward to practicing my French in addition to making new friends.

Basic Week Three

Last week I promised to come up with some more "Paris Pros" to counteract last week's negativity, or as I like to call it, "constructive criticism" (because really, if they would only try real bacon then Parisians might finally be willing to admit that they got something wrong).

• Flowers.  They seem so much bigger and heartier and more colorful here, possibly because of a good amount of rainfall and lower summer temperatures.

Hydrangeas on steroids

• Bugs, or the lack thereof.  The French inability to understand window screens is forgivable because I can leave my windows open all day or night and although I occasionally get a fly, I don't have to worry about Palmetto bugs, wasps, or spiders invading everything (pigeons, on the other hand...).  My only run-in with creepy-crawlies was on Thursday when I swept leaves off of the drain on the terrace and several beetles of some sort began spewing forth like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark, but they seemed content to stay near the drain and all was well.  Even mosquitoes aren't bad -- I had my first and only bite of the summer yesterday.  I do, however, miss lightning bugs.
• Weather.  Since I arrived here a month ago, the temperatures have exceeded 80 degrees maybe five days.  As someone who hates to sweat, the small amount of air conditioning in Paris had me greatly concerned, but so far I haven't even bothered to buy a fan.  I hear that August can be a bit toasty, but Paris "toasty" and South Carolina "toasty" are two entirely different concepts.

Forecast for the 2nd week of July

• Stuff like this:

Handicap parking sign: "Save - If you take my place, take my disability."

• Clothing.  While not everyone dresses up in Paris, the only yoga pants or running shoes that you'll ever find are on people who are actually in the act of doing yoga or running.  Just to take the ten-minute walk down to my old studio to clean it before check-out tomorrow, I felt obligated to change out of my exercise capris and t-shirt (although if I had run the entire way to and from the studio it would have been okay). Children are especially well-dressed and coiffed, with little girls usually in dresses and little boys sporting neatly pressed shorts and polo shirts.  There's just something refreshing about going into a grocery store and not seeing children in their fresh-out-of-bed hair and pajamas (or adults, for that matter).
• Butter.  Seriously - how has America missed the boat on this one??  I no longer buy butter as a condiment to my bread; I buy bread as a vessel for my butter.

Like I said, it's a love-hate relationship that I have with the city.  In spite of the occasional or even frequent annoyances, I'm finding more things that I will likely miss when I return to the states (though not enough to stay in Paris).  Nine months still remain to swing the opinion pendulum, of course.

Monday

The week started off bright and early in the pastry kitchen making fruit pound cakes and the popular French madeleines from Saturday's demonstration.  Because our last pastry practical class was with the infamous Chef Quéré, the sweet grandfatherly Chef Daniel who led this class was like a breath of fresh air.  As we wrapped things up I whispered to another American student, "I kind of want to go hug him before we leave.  Is that wrong?"

My final product was only so-so.  Pound cakes are difficult to mess up, but a well-made madeleine should have a high lump in its center when it finishes baking, and mine were relatively flat.  Chef said that I probably didn't measure my ingredients correctly and gave me a seven on my evaluation, the first grade that I had seen in any of my classes.  I could only assume that we're being measured on a scale of one to ten, and although 70% would have sent my life spiraling out of control in college, the knowledge that our final grade at Le Cordon Bleu needs only to be above 50% in order to receive the basic certificate tempered the situation.  "Lowered expectations" has become a major theme of this journey.

My fruit pound cakes and flat madeleines

After class ended I had about three hours to kill so I ran back to the old studio to wash the dirty laundry I had left behind and to give the place a good cleaning even though my official check-out date wasn't for another week.  The laundry would need to air dry, so I wasn't completely ready to be eternally rid of the studio yet.

This post was supposed to focus on the positive side of Paris, but they really do have the worst washers and dryers in the world.  The reason detergents here have such a strong odor is because they need to mask the smell of laundry that never truly gets clean.  For example, I can throw a folded sheet into the wash and it will come out still folded.  Some washers, like the one in the old studio, also serve as a dryer, but using that function would be comparable to putting the clothes into an oven set on 100 degrees.

After finishing the cleaning, hanging two loads of wash, and leaving a third one running in the machine, I headed back to the afternoon demonstration on savory puff pastries and quiches.  The only puff pastries that I had ever "made" before came with a Pillsbury label, so I was particularly excited about learning this new skill.

Wild mushroom quiche and quiche lorraine

The puff pastry process involves folding a large square of butter into a large square of dough, and then rolling it flat into a rectangle, tri-folding the dough, rolling it into a rectangle again, and repeating a total of five or six times.  It's not particularly difficult except that the dough and butter both need to be cold and the same relative temperature.  Simple enough, right?

That evening after class I decided to give the Monoprix on my street one more chance to provide me with a pillow after dropping in on the old studio to hang the last load of laundry.  I began my aimless wandering through the store, knowing full well that no sales associate would be available to help me and growing increasingly irritated at the paltry selection of groceries, when suddenly I noticed people descending a staircase.  The store had second floor!

I found the "up" escalator and pushed my way past the lazy "standers" to find a whole new world waiting for me at the top.  Aisles of food spread out in every direction and beyond the food were the household goods.  Sure enough, there appeared before me the rectangular pillows - and I had two kinds from which to choose!  My prize in hand, I headed back towards the registers when there on the shelf before me sat a whole selection of blow dryers!  My ecstasy was overwhelming, so much so that I bought a Monoprix shopping bag and started referring to them as "my" Monoprix.

Tuesday

The only class of the day didn't begin until 6:30 PM, so after piddling around the apartment and, of course, ironing the now-dry parts of my uniform, I headed to school.  The Asian chef (whose name still eludes me) set us to working on our puff pastries immediately.  They weren't quite as easy as I had imagined.  For one thing, I used two eggs instead of one, ruining the dough and forcing me to start over - never a good idea for the slow one in the class.  On top of that, the room was incredibly warm and the butter was growing soft and starting to break through the dough, which can ruin the batch entirely.  The only solution is to chill the dough between turns, but when we have only about an hour to complete that portion of the class even that option isn't always viable.

We weren't using the puff pastries until the next practical class, so we stowed them in the refrigerator and commenced with the quiche lorraine.  The crust was relatively simple but as usual I slaughtered the edge, and after blind baking the shell and pouring in my egg mixture, chef walked by and simply pointed to it while saying, "Not baked enough."  Unable to do anything about it, I shoved the quiche in the oven, suddenly remembering that I forgot to do an egg wash on the crust bottom and bake it again and praying that he didn't notice.

Two other students were sharing the oven that I had preheated (there are enough ovens for everyone but students forget to preheat theirs), so bake time was greatly slowed.  After what seemed like an excruciatingly long time and most of the other students had departed, chef declared that my quiche was finished and we removed it from the oven and from its mold.  He slid it onto a wire rack and lifted it up to check the bottom - too little blind baking had resulted in several raw crusts that evening - and said it looked... just right.  He fingered the top of the quiche and said it looked good, too.

Chef Daniel, the sweet grandfatherly chef, popped into the room from next door and Asian chef pointed out my quiche to him as they discussed it in French.  Chef Daniel ooh'ed and ah'ed before putting his arm around my shoulders and congratulating me on a job well done.  Embarrassed, I tried to say something in French about always being the slow one, but he patted my back and replied with something that I couldn't completely understand but that I knew must be incredibly wise and kind, so I just thanked him and left the room, holding my quiche like a trophy.  In all honesty, my crust probably would have been raw if the bake time had been faster, but I wasn't going to point that out to either chef.

Miracle quiche

Wednesday

One benefit of doing both cuisine and pastry at the same time is that sometimes the lessons overlap and we can learn a skill twice and come into class with a slight edge over the students who are seeing something for the first time... not that this a competition, of course.

Wednesday's pastry class was on sweet puff pastries, which are the exact same dough and process as savory puff pastries except for the filling.  Chef Tranchant used the dough to make apple turnover, palms, raspberry haystacks, and a lovely twist on an apple pie that gave me some ideas for Thanksgiving.  I think that I'm falling in love with puff pastries.

Apple turnovers and Palms

My group headed straight to practical when class dismissed, thinking that we would get Chef Tranchant in there as well.  It's no wonder then that I knew as soon as I started hearing the murmur of curse words from the students around me that Evil Chef Quéré was coming around the corner.  Our faces blanched as the icy grip of death seized our hearts.  You may think that I'm exaggerating, and actually I am, but we were terrified for sure. He yelled out the rules as he entered the classroom ahead of us, "No talking! You measure puff pastry ingredients first!  Then you make dough! Then you put in fridge!  Then you prepare apples!..."

The class filed quietly into the room, nobody daring to talk or make eye contact with anyone else.  We worked like robots, waiting for chef to look away or leave the room before we'd whisper such questions as, "Do you know where the eggs are?"

The one good thing about Chef Quéré is that even the slow ones among us don't get too far behind because he likes the group to work in the different stages together, so the faster students end up trying to look busy while they wait for Chef to give the go-ahead for the next steps.  Of course, when he's ready to move onto the next stage and he starts yelling, "You have five minutes to have the palms cut and on the baking sheet!" then things get a little tense.

When we finally had all of our turnovers and palms in the oven baking and our stations were clean, Chef Quéré, apparently satisfied that we met his deadlines, launched into a speech about what made him a great chef and instructor.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that he became conversational because it was fairly one-sided, but it was without any tension and students were feeding his ego by agreeing profusely with him.  At times he even seemed to have a sense of humor.  For example, when he asked a student to get some cooling racks for the baking sheets as he pulled them from the oven, he yelled, "Take your time!  Go slower!  These aren't very hot!" which of course sent the poor kid running.

My turnovers and palms were mediocre - not the best but not the worst - but the chef's quick glimpse and simple evaluation of, "C'est bien" ("It's good"), felt like a great compliment coming from him, even though he was shooing me away with his free hand as I stood stupidly in front of him waiting for any additional feedback.

Palms and apple turnovers - C'est bien

Thursday

The cuisine demonstration and practical classes for the day were centered on using the puff pastry dough that we made in class Tuesday evening.  Chef Vaca showed us how to roll the dough and cut it into shapes to bake and fill with leeks, poached eggs, and a creamy sauce. Using the extra dough he whipped up a few peach and apricot tarts with almond cream.

Puffed pastries with leeks and poached eggs and a peach tart

Choosing the right seat in a demonstration class is incredibly important.  Early on I gave up vying for a front-row seat because I'm not competitive enough, but choosing the people whom I sit next to it also detrimental.  On this day I made the mistake of sitting next to the Brazilian girls.  They talk constantly, and the one sitting next to me was carrying on a conversation on her phone for about half of the class (she was short and able to hunker down enough to keep out of the chef and translator's view).

As if that weren't distracting enough, I suddenly noticed the chef's assistant (usually a superior-level student in charge of such things as keeping the chef's station clean and preparing his ingredients).  She was standing to the side, stuffing entire leftover peach halves into her mouth like a squirrel or a two-year-old child.  I tried to avert my eyes but instead watched in fascination and horror as she would insert one peach half, then grab another one before the first one was chewed and jam it into her mouth, using her index finger to force it all the way in.  After the first couple of peaches she removed the bowl up onto a shelf, thought about it, took the bowl back down, and stuffed in a few more peaches.  How I longed for the opportunity to shout out, "Hey, assistant!  The orchard called.  They're running out of peaches!"

That evening in the pastry class we had two chefs supervising us - one chef apparently training under the other one.  The pastry shells turned out okay, but then I browned my leeks instead of sweating them, we ran out of chicken stock for the sauce and I over-compensated with cream, and I was falling behind on poaching the eggs.  Chef-in-training was a little too helpful and ended up poaching all four of my eggs for me.  When it came time to assemble our final dish, he chose the "best" egg to top my pastry.  The chef doing the evaluation came to my dish and pointed out that apart from the brown leeks and sauce with too much cream, my egg wasn't cooked enough.  I wasn't sure if I should blame the Brazilians, the chef-in-training, or the girl with the peaches.

Fail

Friday

Independence Day consisted only of a 3:30 PM pastry demonstration class on Gâteau Basque (cream-filled butter cake) and Diplomat Pudding (bread pudding with candied fruit).  This particular class seemed to move incredibly slow without much activity besides dough-rolling, but I sat next to an American from Texas - a fifty-year-old woman with two grown children out of the home, a husband who left her last year, and a big, black cat.  Yes, she was also a talker.

For the past couple of weeks I had been stating how every pastry that we made would be better with ice cream, so much to my delight the chef, running ahead of schedule, whipped up some vanilla ice cream to go with the pudding.  He made the mistake of allowing us to serve ourselves, though, so by the time that the first four rows of Asians were finished I was able to get only about half of a spoonful.

Diplomat Pudding and Gâteau Basque

It was the first time since Monday that I was out of classes before 9:30 PM, so I went home and changed into some blue pants, a red, white, and blue-striped shirt, and red flats before heading out to the 11th arrondissement to meet up with Gretchen for a 4th of July dinner to compensate for all of the cookouts that we were missing out on.  She found a barbecue place that claimed to be "authentic American," Blue's Bar-B-Q. Although I expected some French-ified version, possibly nothing more than ham sandwiches, I was pleasantly surprised.  The meat and sauce were good, the sides were decent, and the service was 100% Parisian - the only barbecue place in the universe where you would expect to wait over an hour for a pulled pork sandwich.

After our 10:00 PM dinner, Gretchen introduced me to the Place des Vosges, built in the early 1600's by Henry IV and the oldest and one of the nicest planned squares in Paris.  Although the shops were all closed, we walked around the entire square, peaking through windows into rooms full of fine art, jewelry, perfumes, teas, chocolates, and other amazing items, all set in ancient backdrops.  As soon as I am able to visit it during the day I will likely be adding it to my list of Paris Pros.

Saturday

Saturday morning was my first time to attempt doing laundry in the new studio. In the old studio I was able to find a manual online for the washer and finally figured it out after some trial and error, but the only manuals that I could find online for this washer required payment of some sort.  Thank you, Whirlpool.

Too stubborn and cheap to buy a manual, I decided just to use good ol' common sense to figure it out.  I was washing sheets and towels only - nothing that needed special care - so I turned the knob to the temperature indicated on the tags and pushed the "Départ" button (I learned that from the microwave).

After a few minutes I realized that the washer had stopped running.  A red light was flashing next to "Arrivée d'eau" - something about the arrival of water.  After struggling and failing to open the lid that was locked tighter than a drum and pondering the situation a moment, I pressed the green light flashing by "Départ" again, the only button that seemed to produce a response.  The washer started up, but as I listened closely it didn't sound like any water was sloshing around inside.  Scrambling through some drawers I finally found a manual in French and managed to deduce that a water valve next to the washer had to be opened, or I was taking dry cleaning to a whole new level.  Voilà.

In our 3:30 class we made the Gâteau Basque with Chef Caals, who doubles as both a pastry and cuisine chef.  This cake was strange in that the dough was more like a batter, so rolling it out and lining the cake mold required chilling the dough and then working very quickly with it, sometimes stopping in between steps to put the dough back in the fridge.  Seeing my opportunity not to be last, I decided to skip the second or third refrigeration and began pressing my dough into the mold.  It reminded me a little of Clouseau's nose during the laughing gas scene in The Pink Panther Strikes Again.  The cake turned out okay but the general consensus that it wasn't that great of a recipe to begin with.  Not all French pastries have to be amazing.

Sunday

I rounded out the week with the church in Saint Denis where a Bob Jones University chorale led by Dr. Bill McCauley was performing a few special numbers.  A young team member preached a message on Philippians 4:6-8, a good reminder that not only should we put off worrying, but that we can't do it in our own strength - we must instead put on prayer and supplication with thanksgiving and the peace of God will replace the worry.  Celebrating communion with other believers was an additional blessing and a reminder that no matter how far we are from home, the message of the gospel is universal and uniting.