Intermediate Week Five

I have a confession to make: I don't really care for French cuisine. This realization hit me this week while looking back over all of the dishes that we've made so far. Not that I find everything to be repulsive--it's what I've been living on for four months--but given the choice I might order maybe one or two of the items in a restaurant, and more likely avoid the restaurant all together if those were the only menu options. French pastry and I get along a little better although the spongy, somewhat bland cakes covered in various forms of cream can get a little boring (they have no concept of cream cheese frosting). The French have admittedly got some things right, such as the liberal use of butter and fried eggs, and their bread is always amazing, but I'm beginning to understand why French cuisine hasn't taken off in the States where so many others have succeeded.

That's not to say that this whole experience has been a waste of time or that I plan on subjugating the rest of my life to making food that I don't love. The most important thing that I'm learning is technique, and the proper fusion of French with southern cuisine could prove amazing... just as long as that fusion doesn't involve fish mousse or aspic jellies.

Monday

The week began at 8:30 AM with Chef Poupard making marinated sardine fillets as the appetizer, lamb fillet  and peppermint jus with potato "noisettes" and a vegetable tian (cooked spinach, tomatoes, and onions) as the main course, and a Parisian-style frozen nougat for dessert. To say that I was excited that we'd be making real vegetables (as opposed to potatoes) for a change would be an understatement.

Marinated sardine fillets (with Poupard's signature right angle);
Lamb fillet with vegetable tian;
Parisian-style frozen nougat

The practicum to make the lamb fillet followed after lunch. It was quite possibly the best dish that we've made so far--one that I truly liked. Aside from the tasty vegetables, the meat was great--and that's saying a lot because the only meats that tend to excite me are hamburgers and barbecue. The dish was also incredibly quick and simple to prepare--the meat had only to be cut off the bone and the potatoes were formed with a melon baller--meaning that we shouldn't expect to do this one on the final exam. It lacks the fun technical stuff like cleaning an animal or turning a vegetable.

Tuesday

The morning cuisine demonstration with Chef Caals centered on the central Berry region. Like the rest of France, it has the puzzling propensity for making dishes with forcemeat, so Chef began with the Easter pâté--a pie filled with pork jowl, fatback, and veal. The more exciting dish was the the coq en barbouille, more commonly known as coq au vin. We had to settle for chicken rather than rooster and chef mercifully thickened the sauce with potato starch rather than pig blood as the recipe called for. He finished the demonstration with a pear and walnut tart. The addition of black peppercorns to the pears seemed a bit odd, but the end result was amazing.

Easter pâté; Coq en barbouille; Pear & walnut tart

The semester's Intermediate Cuisine and Grand Diplome lunch followed the demonstration at Le Petit Bordelais. Remembering my sadly casual attire that stuck out like a sore thumb at the Basic lunch, I had set out a dress and heels at my studio to change into beforehand, but we didn't get out of class until 11:30.  The instructions were to be at the restaurant no later than 12:00 because we would begin eating "promptly" at 12:30. Most students had brought their clothes to the school to change into, so I booked it home and threw on my dress before running to the metro.

By 12:15 I arrived at the address only to find a locked door and no other students anywhere in sight. The street was a small one, so I walked all the way up it and back down, thinking that maybe I had the wrong building number (I couldn't remember the name of the restaurant) or that I had been shut out for being late. The lunch was a requirement, so I broke into a sweat of panic (plus it was kind of hot) as I realized that I didn't have any phone numbers for the school or my classmates. Walking the length of the street again, I turned around to head home when I recognized three classmates approaching the locked door. As it turns out, I was the first person to arrive--before any other students, any of our hosting chefs, and any student service organizers--because in Paris 15 minutes late is still too early.

The rest of the group slowly trickled in while I got to know my other early-arrival table mates--two of the only French students that I've met at the school and a nineteen-year-old kid from the States whose whole family became expats to France. We had the "tasting menu" which consisted of cod with guacamole, turbot with tomato confit, celery root puree, and tonka beans, Bresse chicken with carrots, and a Napoleon mille-feuille for dessert. The meal began with an aperitif and each course came with a different wine so that by the time dessert arrived I was the only sober person in the room. The meal was disappointing--not as good as our basic lunch on the Seine River boat--but the three bones that I found in my Turbot fillet made me feel a little better about the number that I tend to miss in my practicums.

Wednesday

The coq au vin practicum began at 8:30 AM and finished by 10:30 AM--of all our dishes it required the least amount of preparation because the chicken was pre-cut and sitting in the marinade for the past 24 hours. Mid-semester evaluations with the chef were at 12:30, so I took my food home for a quick brunch before heading back to school.

Most of my group decided to skip evaluations altogether, and when I arrived at the school only two people were ahead of me. Unfortunately, one of those people was Brian. Brian is a nice kid from China who did his basic certificate about two years ago before coming back this semester. His problem is that he asks more questions than a three-year-old child to the point that chefs and translators roll their eyes and students audibly groan and develop almost a mob-like mentality whenever he raises his hand. The questions aren't necessarily dumb, but usually they're irrelevant and time-consuming.

Brian went into the meeting immediately before me as I stood outside and waited... 30 minutes. A normal meeting takes five minutes. When he finally left and I went in, both Chef Poupard and the translator were laughing and shaking their heads. My grade was less hilarious--3.31 out of 5--passing, but below the class average of 3.33. Poupard pointed out my weakest areas of presentation and organization, but when I replied, "Yes, I'm always last," he just shrugged and said, "Someone is always last and someone is always first--you shouldn't let that bother you."

I still had over two hours before my next class. I again made the trip home and back before going to our pastry demonstration on milk chocolates. Chef Cotte showed us the art of tempering the chocolate and used it to make muscadines, rochers, pralinés, and mendiants. Except for the mendiants, all of the candy fillings were some combination of mostly chocolate and hazelnut praliné (similar to Nutella), but the rochers were my favorite--they contained crispy feuilletine made from crushed Gavotte crepes. Anyone who's had Ferrero Rocher will understand.

Muscadine; Rochers; Pralinés; Mendiants

In the pastry practicum that followed we were making only the muscadine and praliné chocolates. While we waited outside the kitchen classroom Chef Jordan (a.k.a., mean chef) walked by and we all exchanged looks that said, "Oh, please, no." The last thing that anyone wanted to attempt with Jordan was chocolate tempering, so when sweet old Chef Walter came up a minute later he actually received some applause and I had to resist the urge to hug him. He ended up doing most of the work for me by "helping" with everything, and my chocolate come out perfectly. I also finished really early. Perhaps I should have been insulted when a classmate sounded overly surprised as she exclaimed, "You're finished so early!" or when Chef declared my chocolates to be the prettiest and people gasped and clapped, but I kind of beamed the whole way home. Chef's doing or not, the grade could only help the terrifying mid-semester evaluation in pastry next week.

My (slightly chef-assisted) muscadines and pralinés

Thursday

Chef Poupard began our morning by making asparagus in a puff pastry with a mushroom flan. He followed it with braised lamb chops and leek cannelloni (leek stuffed with mashed potatoes), ending with chocolate fondant and pistachio ice cream for dessert. Surprising us all, he spent no time talking about the Île-de-France region, probably because we were living in it and its cuisine tends to be a melange of all of French regions. The asparagus was wonderful--just the smell of it cooking had my mouth watering all through class.

Asparagus puff pastry and mushroom flan
Lamb chops and leek cannelloni
Chocolate fondant and pistachio ice cream

Our next class was the cuisine practicum but it didn't being until 6:30 PM. I used my free afternoon to visit Dehillerin and buy long tweezers (good for the delicate placement of food on a plate), a triangle scraper (good for tabling chocolate), and kitchen scissors after someone took mine earlier in the week (the school sold them for 22€; Dehillerin had some for less than 6€). Back at the school, we got through the lamb chops in practicum quickly--another dish far too easy to be on the final exam.

Friday

The next morning we had our pastry practicum with Chef Olivier, back from his vacation in India and acting unusually chipper. He cranked out six Douceur Chocolat (Heavenly Chocolate) cakes--a hazelnut dacquoise sponge cake covered in the crispy rocher filling and then topped with chocolate mousse, a milk chocolate disk, more chocolate mousse, and another chocolate disk. It had well earned its name.

Douceur Chocolat

I looked forward to the practicum afterwards to prove to myself that I could temper chocolate without the help of the chef. We had Chef Pascal--someone who terrified me the first time that I had him but then kind of grew on me later--for the first time since we were in basic pastry. My half of the room, usually the slower ones, got a head start when the other half of the room discovered that someone had poured salt into their bowl of sugar and they all had to remake their dacquoise. The chocolate tempering went well, too--mine wasn't as shiny as Chef Olivier's--but Pascal's only critique of my cake was that the disk layers were too thick. The rocher filling was by far the best part. I saved what I had left over and another student gave me hers, and then I ate it for breakfast the next morning with a spoon. Vive la France!

My thick-disk Douceur Chocolat

After the practicum we joined the other cuisine students in a demonstration with Chef Caals on the Champagne region. While I absolutely loved the leek and Chaource cheese tart starter, the main course combined two of the things that I hate the most about French cuisine (after aspic jelly): vegetable flans and fish mousseline. The sole fillet was stuffed with pureed whiting fillet and the flan was made of oyster mushrooms, creating something that had a nasty texture, disgusting color, and bland flavor. The madeleines for dessert were nice and the Champagne sorbet finished too late for the tasting.

Leek and Chaource cheese tart;
Sole fillet and whiting mousseline paupiettes with mushroom flan;
Champagne sorbet and madeleines

Saturday

Our cuisine practicum was the only class of the day but didn't begin until 6:30 PM. Chef had three practicums that day and was as anxious as we were to get out quickly. I was the cuisine assistant all week which up to this point hadn't been too difficult. When I picked up our class food trays from the basement kitchen, however, I noticed that we were missing the whiting fillet, we had turbot fish instead of sole, and the principal sauce ingredient, Champagne, was missing. The basement kitchen chef said that our chef had it, but when I ran up the three flights of stairs to the classroom, our chef insisted that I needed to recheck the refrigerator in the basement.

Meanwhile, our chef managed to switch out the turbot for cod, splitting it with the class next door who was doing the same dish and having the same issues of missing ingredients. Returning to the basement, I searched in vain for the missing box of ingredients until both chefs from upstairs joined me and found it in another refrigerator (to which students don't have access). Running up the stairs again I finally joined the rest of my group, but when I went to get my cod, they were all gone. Our chef had miscounted and given mine to the class next door. Some classmates offered to share some of their fillets, but this recipe is an exam dish and I knew that if I didn't practice filleting the fish myself I would definitely pull it on exam day. For the third time in the first half-hour I made the trip down to the basement and back up again, cod in hand.

Fortunately I was able to clean my fish in record time--Chef Caals showed us a nifty little trick for quickly ripping off all of the skin by hand--and I finished everything last as usual, but not as far behind as I thought that I would. It helped that we shared the preparation of the flan and mousseline--as we do with most recipes that involve using the classroom's one food processor or blender--although the other assistant threw away all of the leftover flans before I plated. The flans were terrible anyhow--overcooked in addition to being just a gross recipe--and nobody wanted to take them home, so someone whom the chef had just evaluated handed me her flan to finish my plate.

That evening while most Parisians that I passed on my way home were bundled in jackets and scarves and the outdoor seating areas were empty, I wore a t-shirt and savored the lovely breeze from the cold front blowing in, a beautiful relief from the steamy, sweaty kitchen. Sunday morning dawned cold and cloudy, and on my walk from the metro station to the church I caught a scent for the first time--fall. Saint-Denis has more trees than Paris, and the sidewalks were littered with damp, rotting leaves. It was... lovely.

Intermediate Week Four

Only four weeks into the new term the exhaustion has been hitting hard, but Monday was class-free--the perfect opportunity to take a day trip to some place like Omaha Beach or Strasbourg and enjoy the beautiful weather; however, by the time that I got out of bed my plans had changed to staying in my pajamas, catching up on some reading, and organizing class notes and recipes. I reasoned with myself that it was the best thing for my budget. Yeah, that's it--not laziness.  The metro was also under some sort of ISIS bomb threat, although I didn't learn of this until Friday (should I feel insulted that no family or friends sent me overly-panicked messages warning me to stay away from the metro?).

Tuesday

The warning light in my head went off when I saw that our cuisine demonstration and practicum were going to involve lobster. While the live crabs in basic cuisine may have taken me by surprise, I was just familiar enough with lobster to know that it's generally served very fresh--seafood restaurants don't keep those large tanks in public view simply for decoration. Chef Caals showed us two methods for preparation: tie up the live lobster and drop it into the boiling cooking liquid or shove a knife through its head and end things quickly. Neither option sounded particularly appealing, but I was leaning towards the latter. Caals additionally prepared a tomato and fennel tart, rice pilaf with raisins, and a fabulous chocolate cream soufflé with orange ice cream.

Tomato & fennel tart; Lobster & rice pilaf with raisins;
Chocolate cream soufflé & orange ice cream

Practicum followed after lunch. Korean lady chef had gone into the room next door while we began to select our victims. Using my tongs, I carefully picked up my lobster. Although the claws were shut with rubber bands, it suddenly arched its back and hit my arm with its flailing tail and arms, causing me to emit a scream that sent two chefs running into the room. My preferred method of slaughter didn't matter in the end, either, because our chef wanted us to tie up the lobster, rip out its claws, and plunge its squirming torso into the boiling water. The chef only shook her head as I closed my eyes and twisted off each arm, apologizing profusely in the process.

The lobster ended up being the only thing that was done well--the rice was undercooked and I forgot to add the raisins, and my sauce had too much coral and tomalley (green stuff that you scrape out of the lobster's head and use as a thickening agent). It was, however, one of the faster and simpler dishes that we had prepared and I found myself hoping that I would get it on the final exam.

Wednesday

Our cuisine demonstration was the first of a two-part lesson on making consommé and aspic jelly. Chef Poupard began by making an aspic-coated chicken terrine with pan-fried foie gras. He moved on to the dish that we would be making in our practicum that evening--a chicken ballotine. It involved deboning a chicken but leaving all of its skin in one piece with the meat still attached, and then filling that chicken with a blend of pork fatback, pork shoulder, diced ham, pistachios, and foie gras mousse before rolling it up into a thick log and poaching it in a court bouillon. He finished the demo by making white sausage... because the French can't get enough of blended and poached meats. It was the only dish that we actually sampled--the other two would be served cold the next day.

White sausage with apples

Chef Cotte prepared three-chocolate Bavarois in the next demonstration. The bottom consisted of a ladyfinger sponge cake imbibed with chocolate syrup. The next four layers were dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate Bavarian cream topped with dark chocolate ganache. Like the Opéra cake, we would have to draw some designs on our finished product (only with white chocolate). The cake was delicious, it seemed straightforward, and I was feeling more confident in my cornet drawing skills. It was my week to be the class assistant in pastry but even that didn't appear to be too worrisome for this recipe.

Chef's Bavarois

We calculated that we should be out of our cuisine practicum early that evening because we were preparing only the one item--the chicken ballotine--but when we reached the classroom the group before us was still frantically laboring. Even with me in the group we're one of the faster ones, though, so we weren't worried. As it turns out, deboning a chicken while keeping its skin all in one piece is much harder than it sounds, as is rolling up the ballotine. All of them were poaching after about 90 minutes, though, and we used the wait time to practice making Hollandaise sauce, the technical part of our intermediate cuisine final exam. At least some of us made Hollandaise--the school ran completely out of eggs.

After about an 45 minutes of poaching our ballotines the chef told us to take them off the stove and strain the cooking liquid. The internal temperatures were supposed to be 65°C but most of ours were around 45°C. We were also supposed to leave them refrigerated in the strained cooking liquid until our next practicum, but all of the kitchen refrigerators felt more like ovens thanks to the previous class's hot pots of ballotines. Grabbing both their pots and ours we began transferring them to the refrigerators next door where we collided with irate pastry students hurrying to finish their Bavarois. We did at least manage to finish a half-hour earlier than the first group.

Thursday

The pastry practicum to make the Bavarois was first thing in the morning. My fellow assistant Dao and I arrived early to begin gathering the ingredients but the chef was missing and the supply closet was locked. The one ingredient that we could get, the eggs, were still out of stock because the morning shipment had not yet arrived. We found just enough for everyone to do their ladyfinger sponge. About three minutes before the start of class Chef Jordan arrived. My stomach twisted in a knot--we had him only for one or two demonstrations and a theory class in basic, but we heard horror stories from other students who had him in practicals.

While Dao and I went with the chef to get ingredients the other students began their ladyfinger sponge. We were finally able to join them but before I could even measure out my ingredients the chef told me that the eggs had arrived and sent me to get them right then... from the basement kitchen. We were on the third floor (or fourth floor for my American friends). I descended the four flights of stairs two steps at a time, grabbed the first box that I saw, and ascended a little more slowly. Panting, I finally began my batter by the time that most of the class had finished with the chef yelling at me to hurry up and get mine into the oven. Things went only downhill from there.

In demonstration, Cotte instructed us to melt the three chocolates simply by pouring the hot Bavarian cream mixture over them. Because he was working with about four times the recipe, though, it worked quite well for him. The small amount of cream that we were using hardly warmed the chocolate. We were soon jockeying for positions at the stoves to heat up our bowls. Jordan stood by with his notepad, jotting notes and yelling at us to hurry because we were already late.

When it came time to add the last layer of ganache I knew that I was in trouble. Only after I began to pour it over the top did I realize that it was too thick and not heated enough--it began to coagulate before it spread evenly to the edges and my attempts to smooth it out only made it look worse. Out of my peripheral vision I could see Jordan staring at me, but I finally gave up and moved on to my white chocolate decoration. Everyone was finished and lining up to show him his or her cake, so I just did some quick shaky swirls knowing full-well that it didn't matter because my ganache looked so horrendous.

I stood at the back of the line of students and listened to him harshly critique each one, so when my turn finally came I preempted his remarks by saying, "My ganache is screwed up--it wasn't warm enough." He agreed, pointed out some other problems with my cake, and then gathered the whole group together. He began his speech with, "Everyone today failed--I gave you all zeros--except him. He's the only one who passed." He pointed to the rather boyish girl on his right as little whispers of "she" went around the room, although nobody dared to correct him out loud.

He then proceeded to tell us that our first mistake was not melting our chocolate before adding the cream even if the chef didn't do it in demonstration. He made a few other points that might have been helpful while we were actually in the process of making our cakes but he insisted that the fault for not knowing was ours because we don't ask questions during the demonstration. Not that he was in the demonstration ("I know--I've been in the demos before and you don't ask questions!") and not that we knew what questions to ask.

The majority of cakes looked really good to me (except mine) and while I appreciate discipline and honest assessments in the classroom I couldn't for the life of me figure out how every other cake but one was deserving of failure. My panic level rose when he boasted that he failed three intermediate students on the final exam last semester over that cake--a frightening statistic when you consider that only about seven students would have received that recipe. We left class a little shell-shocked with one Asian girl completely in tears and me praying that I don't get that cake or Chef Jordan on the exam.

Dao and I grabbed a quick lunch at a cheap Chinese place and returned to our afternoon cuisine demonstration with Chef Vaca. He unmolded Chef Poupard's terrine from Friday, sliced up the ballotine, clarified the cooking liquid, and made a sea bream and tomato jelly terrine... because who doesn't like jellified meats, fish, and vegetables? The final dishes were quite pretty, though, demonstrating once again that presentation is often more important than taste in French cuisine.

Ballotine on chicken jelly; Aspic-coated chicken terrine;
Sea bream terrine

Friday

Intermediate cuisine focuses heavily on chocolates, which might sound like a good thing but is actually quite stressful. A few chefs had already given demonstrations on tempering chocolates but up to this point we had never actually done it ourselves. To perfectly temper dark chocolate--get it to the stage where it dries with a glossy, smooth surface--one must melt it to a temperature of 45°-50°C, bring it down to a temperature of 27°C (we were to use the tabling method--spreading it out thinly on a counter), and bring it back up to 31°-32°C. Milk and white chocolates have a whole different set of rules. Chef Cotte made truffles, coffee creams, candied oranges, and mendiants (mixed fruit and nut chocolates); we would have to make only the first two.

Truffles, coffee creams, mendiants, and orangettes

That afternoon we made our consommé clarification/chicken jelly and the white sausage (from Wednesday's demonstration). The clarification went well but I had a rough start to the sausage--the casing slipped off of the piping tip while I was trying to fill it up, creating a pink sea of meat mush all over my work space, but once I got the hang of it the process was almost enjoyable. After tying off the sausage links and dumping it into the poaching liquid I began decorating my chicken jelly as a base for a slice of ballotine. My first attempt at a tomato rose wasn't terrible and I made some semblance of a stem using leeks. The chef wasn't too impressed but he thought that everything tasted fine. When it came time to plate my sausage, though, I found that all of the casings had exploded, leaving me with a pot full only of mushy sausage innards; however, we were running so late and the chef was in such a hurry that I don't think he even realized that he didn't evaluate the sausage.

We had to make a dash from class to the locker rooms to drop off our knife kits, aprons, and hats in order to make it to the next cuisine demonstration on time. Student services were doing a uniform check at the door and, not having time to put on a clean jacket, I held my notebook strategically to cover up the stains from the last practicum. Finding a spot under the air conditioning that was actually working for once, I fanned myself as Chef Singer gave us a demonstration on cuisine from the region of Alsace.

Back in the summer of 2000 while staying in Nice I had made a weekend trip to Strasbourg and found the area to be quite charming. It's as much German as it is French (if not more so) and I looked forward to this lesson. The chef made a Flammenküche (a sort of pizza with cream, onion, and bacon), Alsatian-style sauerkraut with sausages and potatoes, and trout stuffed with mushrooms. Unfortunately, he was running late and I had to request to leave early because I was the assistant in pastry, so I never was able to get photos or, sadly, do the tasting.

A new chef was leading our practicum, an easy-going little man who gained instant popularity simply for not being Jordan. He really was very kind and helpful, though, and we soon had 14 puddles of dark chocolate being smeared all over the tables. The chefs encourage us not to test our chocolate with thermometers but rather to learn by touch. My touch apparently needs a little more practice because I overheated the chocolate, causing the cocoa butter to split. It still technically "worked" but my candies all came out dull with traces of light swirls in them. They worked in the sense that it didn't stop me from eating them.

Saturday

We had only our cuisine practicum in the morning. Chef Cotte took a break from his pastry duties and joined us in the kitchen while we made the stuffed trout. Like the red mullet, we serve this fish whole (i.e., head and tail attached) meaning that we have to remove the bones and innards while keeping the form of the fish. Cutting cleanly down the back to the central bone was a bit difficult, but once I found it the rest was easy. The hardest part was, as always, removing the pin bones with fish tweezers. For some reason it takes me a thousand times longer than my classmates and I still missed several as I would discover at lunch later. Cotte was shouting out reminders that I needed to hurry and that I was the last person, but in the end he declared that my stuffing for the fish was "so good" and gave me a high-five.

Having a cough and runny nose, I stayed home the rest of the day and on into Sunday, opting to listen to SermonAudio rather than go to church. Before I left Greenville to come to Paris, Pastor Conley was in the middle of a series on David. I had really enjoyed those messages and decided to start catching up, beginning with the first message that I missed on June 22--"Distress-Driven to the Lord." The passage was I Samuel 30:1-10 when David triumphantly returns to Ziklag only to discover that the Amalekites had plundered the city and taken all of the inhabitants captive. For the last few chapters we see no indication that David has been asking for the Lord's guidance in any decisions, but now as his own men are ready to turn on him he finally turns to the Lord

Conley makes three points: 1) Let your distress drive you to remember God, 2) let your distress drive you to ask God, and 3) let your distress drive you to obey God. I was for about the millionth time reminded that in every decision, no matter how big or how small it may seem, no matter how sure I feel of how I should respond, my first step should always be to bring it before God. That way, when things don't work out the way that I hoped or expected, when I fail, or when I succeed I can rest in the knowledge that God was directing me and that He will do only what is best for me.

Intermediate Week Three

Ah, the last week of summer. Normally the promise of autumn sends me into uncontrolled giddiness, but in Paris very few changes occur between one season and the next. Our temperatures are dropping back down into the sixties after an unusually warm week, but we had cooler days in July and August. Instead of the changing colors of foliage and the smell of burning leaves while I'm walking around the neighborhood, the only indication I find that summer is coming to a close is the sight of fall fashions in shop windows.

For the first time in years I'll miss attending the Apple Harvest Festival in Waynesville, NC, driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway, eating a Bojangle's picnic with family at the Carl Sandburg home, baking countless apple crisps/apple dumplings/apple cakes/apple bread, and spending hours each weekend raking leaves. Actually, "miss" isn't the best verb for that last activity, although even that memory makes me a little nostalgic after a few months of living in the concrete jungle.

To combat my best-season-of-the-year blues, I've started researching autumn in France--where to find the best color, when to expect leaves to peak, what activities are available--and discovered that while there are some recommended locations (e.g., Strasbourg, the Loire Valley), I shouldn't expect anything too spectacular because they don't have maple trees.  WHAT??  As if that weren't bad enough, people here stare at me like I have monkeys coming out of my ears when I talk about the idea of visiting an apple orchard. You'd think that I was suggesting we go harvest our own grain from somebody's farm.

My last hope is that while the trees in my favorite mountain spots will be bare, South Carolina will still have some color when I arrive in mid-November. Browsing through my camera photos I found these shots that I took while walking in my old neighborhood on November 10th--about two weeks before I moved from my house (sniff, sniff). I can almost smell the smoke coming from chimneys and hear the leaves crunching under my feet. [Oh, yeah--don't expect any smoke to be coming out of Paris chimneys.  It's not exactly illegal but most fireplaces are now non-functional, fires are highly regulated, and wood costs of fortune.]

November 10, 2013 in Greenville--miracles CAN happen

Also November 10th--favorite tree in front of my favorite house

Back to summer, though (it's not officially over until 10:29 PM EDT on September 22), this week was one of the most uncomfortably warm ones that we've had since I arrived in Paris. Admittedly, the mid-eighties aren't terrible, but changing in a locker room with no air conditioning after sweating it out in a cuisine practicum reminds me of my high school P.E. days when I'd have to get into my street clothes after running the mile, except back then we had showers AND air conditioning.

Monday

Chef Poupard (a.k.a., Map Chef) gave us a long talk on the southwest Landes region of France before making roasted squab (pigeon) salad, roasted duckling with Roman-style gnocchi, and stewed prunes on hazelnut shortbread.  The pigeon salad was particularly... unusual. It tasted fine, but chef plated the leg by snipping off all of the talons but one, and then burning that talon with a torch. The end result looked positively sinister.  I could almost hear it cackling, "I'll get you, my pretty (and your little dog, too)!"

Sinister squab salad; Roasted duck; Stewed prunes with hazelnut shortbread

After class and a brief lunch break, we went back into the demonstration room where Mark Singer, the new executive chef, awaited us for our first intermediate cuisine theory class on food safety/storage.  Normally theory classes last only an hour and we all looked forward to getting out early in the afternoon, but this chef, much like in our cuisine practicum with him, prolonged it to almost three hours by forming every sentence as a question (e.g., "How long can we store fresh eggs?" "What foods can we freeze?" "What containers can we not use for storage?") even though it was our first time learning these things and we weren't expected to know the answers yet; thus the point of the theory class. Nonetheless I learned quite a lot about food storage regulations--enough to make me think that I never want to run a restaurant.

Tuesday

We joined the Korean lady chef in the morning to make our roasted duckling and Roman-style gnocchi. It didn't rank as one of my favorite dishes--the duckling was a whole lot of work for a tiny bit of meat that wasn't anything to write home about. I did, however, like the pan-fried gnocchi with "bacon" and black trumpet mushrooms, even if my dough did have lumps of semolina in it.

I shoved down some of the duckling for lunch and then went to Chef Caals' demonstration on oven-roasted vegetable roulade with St-Maure goat's cheese, stuffed guinea fowl pie, and pineapple ravioli with mascarpone, pineapple sorbet, and honey sauce. The salad was excellent although I noticed several of the Asian students turning up their noses to the beets and goat cheese (Aisans don't really do cheese).

The guinea fowl pie is made by grinding up the leg meat of the bird with chicken livers, pork shoulder, and pork fatback and layering the forcemeat in a pie shell with potatoes and the breasts of the bird. It would have been much better with some carrots, celery, onions, and peas, but the French just aren't into vegetables. The pineapple ravioli was just strange--I love cilantro but it should never, ever be in a dessert.

Vegetable roulade with goat's cheese; Guinea fowl pie; Pineapple ravioli

In the pastry demonstration immediately afterwards, Chef Cotte made macarons with anise-flavored pastry cream and raspberries, caramel crème brûlée, and dark chocolate fondant with bees' nests and white chocolate ice cream. French macarons should not be confused with American macaroons, those little coconut clusters dipped in chocolate. Macarons are light-as-air meringue-based cookies that sandwich flavored pastry cream. Normally I love them, and my favorite flavors are coffee, salted caramel, and lemon, but anise would be the last flavor on the planet that I would choose. I would sooner take cilantro-flavored cream if such a thing existed (and knowing the French, it probably does). The other two desserts were quite nice, though, and the anise flavor was just light enough not to be too offensive.

Macarons; Crème brûlée; Dark chocolate fondant

Wednesday

The 6:30 PM cuisine practicum was our only class for the day, so like the new and improved fastidious student that I have become I spent some time typing up and reviewing the recipes from the prior day's demonstrations (in spite of the fact that it doesn't seem to be helping). The guinea fowl pie seemed simple in theory but as much as I contemplated the best order in which to proceed I couldn't bring it together in my head. We would need to prepare the potatoes, clean the fowl, separate the meat, grind the forcemeat, and make a pie crust, leaving enough time to get it assembled and in the oven with about an hour to bake. Sometime in there we had to get the jus started because it also needed about an hour to cook.

We had my new favorite chef again--the French version of Alan Rickman. I was struggling with cleaning my fowl--it was full of fat and not coming apart as nicely as in the demonstration--and falling behind my classmates as usual, but I finally assembled my pie and got it in the oven. It was then that I noticed the bowl of breadcrumbs on the counter and realized that I had forgotten to mix them into my forcemeat. It shouldn't have been a problem--this was the only cuisine recipe that the chef would not be tasting because cutting into the pie would be too messy (it has to rest for a long time)--but I exclaimed, "Oh, rats!" just as the chef walked by me.

He said, "What's wrong?" I hesitated, then mumbled, "Uh, nothing, I just forgot something..." my voice trailing off. He finished for me: "The breadcrumbs? You shouldn't have told me--I never would have known!" He was laughing, though, so I laughed as well and replied, "I tried not to tell! Forget it--I remembered the  breadcrumbs."  My jus ended up being too salty as well and for all I know the chef gave me a failing grade on that practicum, but he's still my favorite.

Thursday

Before ever starting at Le Cordon Bleu I had been looking forward to the day that we made macarons, and even with the anise flavoring I was still excited. Things seemed to be going well until I mixed my pastry cream. At first I thought that it was fine, but then Chef Walter came around and stuck his finger in it, asking what the little lumps were. Until then I hadn't noticed them, but they appeared to be bits of cornstarch. He became unusually upset, yelling with spittle flying in my face as I refrained from wiping it off that I had put all of my whipped cream into the egg mixture at once rather than how he and the Chef Cotte had demonstrated TWO TIMES--whisking in a little cream briskly and then gently folding in the rest of the cream... except that was exactly the way that I had done it. Trying not to sound belligerent I told him as much, to which he quickly calmed down, shrugged, and said that maybe I had just overcooked it.

Normally we don't plate dishes in pastry practicums, but we had to plate one of our macarons as if we were serving it in a restaurant. Following Chef Cotte's advice in the demo to be very generous with the raspberry coulis, I made sure that it was running gently down the sides of the macaron as he had done, but Chef Walter is a minimalist and said that it was too much--that we should use only a small amount. By now I had accepted that my dessert was already pretty screwed up so I didn't try to explain my reasoning to him.

Class macarons

Friday

Chef Cotte was with us in the pastry demonstration again, this time making the infamous Opéra cake. It's made with a thin Joconde biscuit sponge cake that's covered in chocolate glaze, flipped over and imbibed with coffee syrup, covered in buttercream frosting and another layer of cake, imbibed and covered in chocolate ganache, covered with a last layer of cake and imbibed, frosted with the rest of the buttercream, and finally coated in the chocolate glaze. The taste is similar to a tiramisu with extra chocolate and less cream.  Complex as all the parts to the assembly were, we knew that the biggest challenge would be the final decoration. Apparently a cake can't be referred to as "Opéra" unless it has the word written on it in fancy letters (probably another French law).

Opéra

After a quick lunch we went to our practicum to make the Opéra. A new-to-us chef was in charge (we had seen him around the school in basic but never in our classes). He made all of us leave the room because we came in before him (some chefs expect us to do it; others threaten us with zeros). When he let us enter again he demanded complete silence for the duration of the class unless we were talking to him. At first I was more than a little terrified of the angry little man, but in an odd way I kind of liked him. He was very helpful when I messed things up (which I was doing quite a lot in my state of panic) even though he would roll his eyes each time and say, "Please don't make me cry today." He was eventually calling us terroristes which is almost a term of endearment.

The cake ended up taking almost all three hours and angry chef had to leave while we were in the process of writing "Opéra," so Chef Walter took over and did the final evaluation. Although I had practiced writing at home for days with Nutella on parchment paper, I realized as soon as the chocolate hit the cake that I had cut my cone tip too big, giving the writing a sort of cartoonish, crowded look rather than something elegant and sophisticated.  Chef Walter agreed.

Gilbert & Sullivan, perhaps

Those of us in the Grand Diplome program had to run out of class to get to our cuisine demonstration in time, hoping that nobody was checking uniforms since most of us were covered in all parts of the Opéra cake. Chef Poupard wasn't concerned, though, focusing more on his map and everything about the Bordelais region of France. He made for us Arcachon oysters with leeks and chipolata sausages, Bordeaux-style duck breast with fondant potato rounds, pan-fried cep mushrooms and bacon, and Bordeaux cannelés.  The breasts came from foie gras-fattened ducks which brought on about a 45-minute class discussion on the ethics of foie gras. Poupard prepared the main course in about 30 minutes, though, which made us pretty hopeful about repeating it in our practical the next morning.

Oysters & leeks with chipolata sausage; Duck breast; Bordeaux cannelées

Saturday

The cuisine practicum began at 8:30 the next morning. It didn't involve cleaning any animals--we only had to trim the breast--and I knew that the majority of my time would be spent on rounding the potatoes. Each individual slice had to be turned into a perfect circle and each circle had to have the top and bottom edges rounded out. I was taking a particularly long time--20 rounds took about 30 minutes to complete. The cep mushrooms were only a little easier. In demo Poupard had washed them, but some chefs find washing mushrooms to be highly offensive and our chef wanted them only brushed off and peeled entirely, both the stems and the caps.

This chef was also someone whom we never had and he spoke no English at all. He reminded me a bit of a pirate, possibly due to his scraggly looks and the little hoop earring that he somehow got away with wearing, but he was pleasant enough. Most importantly he liked everything about my dish but the presentation (of course) and declared my rounded potatoes to be perfect, even suggesting that people get a photo of them for future reference (being the slowest isn't always a bad thing). We all finished in record time and by 10:00 AM I was headed back home to begin the weekend.

After lunch and an unplanned (but not unexpected) nap, I sat down to finish my internship application.  Early in the week I bit the bullet and bought health insurance (the one document that I was missing to qualify for the internship) through Cigna, and over the next several days I had been struggling with them to get my proof of insurance form. With everything finally in hand I was able to proceed.

Apart from the proof of insurance, the application required a copy of my passport, student visa, and residency permit along with a CV and cover letter written in French. It contained a series of essay-type questions as well that seemed to ask the same question in multiple ways: Did I think an internship was a good way to finish my education and why? What is the goal of an internship? What do I hope to get out of an internship?

The last questions that I needed to answer were with regard to where I wanted to do my internships. All along I had assumed that I would be doing them in Paris, but when I realized that I could go anywhere in France I suddenly knew that I wanted to try other cities.  Aside from the fact that pretty much every other city has a lower cost of living, here was a perfect opportunity to experience more of the country.  Plus, let's face it--Paris and I haven't exactly been best friends.

After a bit of research I finally decided that I would request to do my cuisine internship during April and May in Montpellier in the south of France and my patisserie internship during June and July in Lyon or Grenbole in the east close to the Alps and Switzerland. It wasn't incredibly scientific--I figured that I should put down cuisine first because it's the one that I'm most likely to pass, Montpellier should be pleasant in the spring, and I would love to be by the coast for a while. Lyon will be nice for the summer months and it is supposed to have some fabulous restaurants, plus I've always wanted to see the Alps.

My excitement and hope is back up for the internships. Already I've begun looking at apartments to rent and activities in those areas. The restaurants and patisseries that I chose have great reviews and a lot of them are open only Tuesdays through Saturdays, so although I'll be working many long hours I'll be guaranteed some days off. It's still possible that I won't qualify for one or both, but it feels really good just to have a plan.

Intermediate Week Two

My first two weeks of trying to be a more conscientious student have proved to be... unsuccessful. Yes, I've been faithfully typing out and studying my recipes after each class but somehow that hasn't translated to better performance in the kitchen.

The one positive change that I've noticed, though, is that cleaning fish, birds, and other dead animals doesn't bother me half as much as it used to.  While I wouldn't go so far as to say that I enjoy it, little things get me excited such as successfully ripping the tendons out of a chickens's legs through its "knees" or getting out all of its innards through the tail with one hand sweep of the cavity. I actually gave a gasp of delight when a chef showed me how to gut a fish just by pulling the gills.  Okay, maybe this isn't a positive change - maybe this is how most serial killers get started - but it certainly makes life easier these days.

Monday

Our only task for the morning was to make the pan-roasted guinea fowl and "half-moon" cut vegetables from Friday's demonstration.  The Korean lady was our chef, freshly back from her vacation in Thailand.  My bird was a good bit under-cooked, but only because the chef herself had advised me to take it out of the oven (I didn't point this fact out to her).

Tuesday

My schedule was free from Monday morning's class until Tuesday evening's class and I used my time to clean the apartment and read before heading to school. Chef Vaca, also back from vacation, led a demonstration on terrine made from langoustines (scampi) and lamb sweetbreads which, as it turns out, aren't sweet or breads at all but the thymus or throat of a lamb (I actually thought that "sweetbread" referred to the brain, so you can imagine my relief... not that we probably won't have to cross that bridge eventually).

For the main course he made red mullets served inexplicably with the head and tail still attached - because who doesn't want his dinner to look partially alive? - and stuffed with a black olive tapenade next to a savory onion royal custard (think onion-flavored flan). The fish wasn't too bad, but the custard was horrific. Aside from the fact that it was incredibly bland (Vaca even admitted that it needed more salt), it had cooled by the time that we were able to taste it which only made its custard-y texture more repulsive.  Dessert was nice at least: homemade ice cream served over poached pears and chocolate sauce.

Langoustine & lamb sweetbread terrine; Red mullet with black olive
tapenade and onion custard; Pears Belle-Hélène

Wednesday

Wednesday picked up the slack from the previous two days and we were faced for the first time with two cuisine practicums on the same day. The morning began with a pastry demonstration, though, in which Chef Tranchant instructed us on how to make the Jamaica, a recipe so complex that the ingredients took up two pages. It had a sponge cake base (similar to chocolate ladyfingers) topped with coconut mousse, poached pineapples, mango-passion fruit mousse, and a passion fruit glaze.

Jamaica

After lunch we made our way to the first cuisine practicum to make the stuffed red mullet.  Chef Poupard was in charge, but another chef was with him - an American expat named Mark Singer who recently retired from Le Dodin restaurant (thanks, Google!). As in most practicums we weren't introduced to the chef and I assumed that he was in training. That assumption began to change, though, when he would stand next to me asking in a bored voice questions that I was never sure how to answer such as, "Would you eat a fish that looked like that?" or "Stop what you're about to do. What should your next logical step should be?"

He eventually followed one of his critiques sarcastically with, "But what do I know? I'm new here. I'm only the executive chef." I never even knew Le Cordon Bleu had an executive chef, but as it turned out he was the new one. Pointing to the classmate across from me, his final question was, "Why is your fish fuller than his?" After throwing out three or four guesses involving every part of the fish preparation that I could remember, I finally said, "Because his fish baked longer?" As it turned out, it was the chef's confusing way of telling me that my neighbor's fish was overcooked and mine was not.

One ongoing issue that always makes me a little crazy is that some students still don't understand that there are eight of us in our practicum, meaning that all ingredients need to be divided equally eight ways even if it's less than what the recipe calls for. On  many occasions things run out before the slower students (I) can get to them, requiring that we have to "borrow" from our classmates.  In this instance the black olives were gone before two or three of us got to them and they were already made into the tapenade. As a solution, we combined all of the tapenades into one and divided it among ourselves.  This made the presentation of our final plates particularly entertaining because the chefs would evaluate each one differently (too much garlic, not enough salt, just right, etc.) not realizing that they were all from the same batch.  Of course, when Poupard tried my tapenade he bit into a lemon seed, but protesting that I didn't actually make it seemed unwise.

Smelling of sweat and fish we joined the rest of our class in the cuisine demonstration with Chef Caals. This lesson focused on the cuisine from the Burgundy region of France where they are perhaps best known for their snails. Not to disappoint, Caals made tasty puff pastries filled with escargot and a mushroom mixture.  The main course was a braised chicken and savory crapiaux (flapjacks). For dessert he made gingerbread and gingerbread ice cream, causing the whole room to smell like Christmas and making me deliriously happy.

Chicken & "crapiaux;" Puff pastry & snails; Gingerbread

The second cuisine practicum immediately followed the demonstration and another chef, an older gentleman whom I had never seen before, led the charge. He spoke no English and gave several passionate lectures to us in French even though only two of us had even a basic grasp of what he was saying, so mostly we just nodded and said, "Oui, Chef," a lot (which doesn't always work - he gave me a rather wild-eyed stare at one point). I wasn't even sure in the end if my dish was acceptable, although I'm fairly certain that he liked my sauce.

Thursday

Though complex, I felt that the Jamaica shouldn't be too difficult. It required that we cut long strips of the sponge cake the width of our elbow spatula to line the ring mold; however, what I hadn't counted on was that my spatula was a good bit wider than the ones provided in our knife kits (I bought a new one from Dehillerin after my school-issued one was stolen). When we added the second layer of mousse which was supposed to stand above the cake rim, I realized my mistake but could do little to fix it.  The good news is that Chef Olivier, the one who likes to fail me and nearly did, is on vacation for several weeks and Chef Tranchant is much more understanding.

Class Jamaicas - how they should look

My wide-spatula version

Class finished by 11:00 AM and our next class wasn't until 6:30 PM, so I went home and promptly fell asleep while trying to read.  We came back in the evening to a cuisine demonstration again with Chef Caals. He made a fabulous chicken salad with walnuts and Granny Smith apples, a not-so-fabulous sea bream fillet wrapped in lettuce with shrimp forcemeat and a side of Jerusalem artichokes, and little puff pastry tarts filled with Mirliton batter and apricots and topped with rosemary-infused sorbet.

Chicken salad; Stuffed sea bream; Apricot & rosemary Mirliton

Friday

The first class of the day was a pastry demonstration with Chef Tranchant at 12:30. In what I'm guessing was an effort to quell talking, the class translator called all fifty-something of us into the room one at a time and assigned us seats. I enjoyed the change, though - for the first time ever I was able to sit in the front row. Tranchant made what is probably my favorite dessert in all of our classes to date, the Fraisier - a Genoise sponge cake with a mousseline cream and lots of fresh strawberries and topped with Italian meringue.

Fraisiers

Our first intermediate pastry theory class immediately followed the demonstration.  Tranchant gave us a brief lesson on chocolate - where it comes from, how cocoa powder and cocoa butter are made, what the types of chocolate are - and then took us through the process of tempering chocolate for decorations, a skill that will likely end up as the technical portion of our final exam. He ended the class by showing us how to write with the chocolate, something that we'll be putting into practice next week on our Opera cakes.

From the theory class we headed to our evening cuisine practicum to make the stuffed sea bream fillets.  Another new and nameless chef was in charge, but he soon became my favorite chef ever.  Aside from the fact that his voice sounded like Alan Rickman with a French accent, he was incredibly laid-back and calm or as some might say, "chill." He peeled the garlic, ginger, and shallots, setting them aside in a bowl for everyone, and even when he was critical he was likable. When I finished way last because I forgot to boil my lettuce leaves and then overcooked them and had to do them again, he never yelled or told me to hurry and he stated that my fish was "perfect." To top it all off, while I was cleaning up my utensils he scrubbed down my stove for me. That's the joy of a new chef - he's not cranky, tired, and irritated with all of us yet.

Saturday

We had only one morning class before we were officially finished for the weekend.  Most of us were pretty excited about the Fraisier, stating that it was the one dessert that we wouldn't be giving away or storing in the freezer. This dessert was going really well for me, too - I had fallen behind because this particular kitchen had shared stoves and I had to wait for a spot, but once the batter was mixed and baked I assembled my cake quickly, becoming the the first person to finish the cream and strawberry layers. This was surely going to become my first big "nailed-it" day in pastry!

The chefs always make the Italian meringues for the entire class in the mixer but Chef William decided that I should learn how to do it. He pulled me over to test the syrup - it has to be 225 degrees Fahrenheit - but he wanted me to use my fingers instead of a thermometer.  I had done it before - it involves dipping your fingers in ice water, grabbing some of the boiling syrup, and dipping it back in the cold water to check the texture - but it terrifies me. My fears were well-founded, too, because I was burning the dickens out of my fingers although I tried to conceal my grimace of pain from the chef. But we made the meringue and it was time to finish our cakes.

My meringue went on smoothly, I torched the top beautifully - the chef was watching and even gave a little clap and "bravo" - and the jelly glaze was perfect, but when I removed the metal ring mold, the plastic lining that protects the cream came out with it, tearing up all of my edges.  The chef tried to help me hide the messy rim by putting a smaller piping tip over the one that I was using and starting a decorative edge, but when I took over the piping bag from him I made matters worse by forgetting about the second tip and knocking it out onto my cake multiple times, creating a sort of spastic edge.

Class Fraisiers

My post-apocalyptic Fraisier (but check out that center torching job!)

The most significant happening of the week came when I received an email from the school with a link to the application for an internship and a deadline of September 22. I already knew that it was coming this semester but hardly thought that it would be so soon. My heart sank a little when the document requirements included proof of health insurance, something that I had avoided up til now.  After finding some online insurance quotes and going back through my budget spreadsheets to run the numbers, the possibility of an internship still seemed feasible - tough, but feasible.

What consequently is not feasible anymore is extra travel, birthday and Christmas gifts, new clothes, vitamins, hair salons, groceries, or any other unnecessary spending. I'll have to move to another studio or rent a room when my lease ends in March - I'll need something cheaper and preferably within walking distance of wherever the school assigns me - and in the unlikely event that I can secure both cuisine and pastry internships I may have to move locations for each one. Upon the completion of the internship(s) I will come home quite literally penniless.  These are the best-case scenarios - I still don't have a backup plan if I don't pass my intermediate or superior levels.

When these ulcer-forming thoughts invade my mind I have to remind myself once again that God is still in control of everything. The Israelites wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years without their shoes and clothes wearing out; surely God can see me through another six to ten months in Paris and whatever follows after that. For now (assuming that I can get health insurance before the 22nd) I'll fill out the application and request both internships, praying while I wait that God will open or close the door as He sees fit and that I'll joyfully accept His decision either way... and maybe think of non-nefarious ways to earn a little extra cash.

Intermediate Week One

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

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

Eric Kayser getting a fill-up

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

Tuesday

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

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

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

Almond cake, apricot streusel, and Scottish cake

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

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

Wednesday

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

Tranchant is obsessed with a straight pastry line

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

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

Thursday

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

Stuffed Savoy cabbage; shellfish soup; strawberry gratin

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

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

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

Lemon tart and the less enjoyable passion fruit & raspberry tart

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

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

Friday

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

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

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

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