Et Voila. My first day at Le Cordon Bleu

I had my new student orientation at Le Cordon Bleu today. We started with a very basic, boring and long orientation go over the entire cordon bleu program...and all of the cordon bleu offerings (we even got a quick intro to the gift shop...euh). Then we had a tour of the school and got our uniforms and all of the other good stuff (read: knife kit) that comes with our hefty payment.

The school looks great :) Its fairly small, but there are 7(?) industrial kitchens. The format of the school is a 3hr demonstration class (with students in all the "basic cuisine" groups attend together) and then perhaps that day, or most often, the day after, a 3 hr practical where groups of 8 students use the kitchen to make one or two of the recipes the chef showed during the demonstration. In the practical, every student gets some of the counter space, but his/her (its about 50/50) own oven and range w/ 4 electric hotplates. Its not bad.

On to the goodies:

The uniform didn't fit me...at all. I exchanged it and decreased the size of both the jacket and the pants. While the pants now fit me better (though I, like everyone else in the class will need to get them hemmed) the jacket still seems large. Perhaps you will have to judge when I post fbook pix. (Once again...when I get my USB cord).

The knife kit was better :) I was salivating over it prior to getting to C.B. but its not as big a deal as I thought it was going to be (though its still great!). Other than the Chef's knife (9") and a basic serrated knife, I probably won't be needing most of the other tools when I'm back in my own kitchen. We'll learn how to use a lot of the tools and will use them at the school...but my gut feeling is that I will not be filleting a fish back in Palo Alto. (Even if Scott did like fish!) Nontheless, its very professional and pretty amazing to learn how to use all of the tools. For a description of the knife kit, check out: http://chezchristine.typepad.com/chez_christine/2006/08/lcb_knife_kit.html

We had a brief break for lunch, and then we had our first demonstration at 3:30pm. This was on a pretty basic vegetable soup...that didn't even taste good. HOWEVER the point of the soup was more to learn the cuts of food and basic knife skills. It was pretty interesting.

Alas.. the class was 3 hours long. Its now 1am and I'm tired...so I shall have to cut short the blog post. (Went to an absolutely amazing restaurant for dinner... maybe I"ll chronical that experience, and more apartment hunting, tomorrow)

-D