Rain Rain

Its been (very) rainy so much of what I've been doing lately is inside. My life has also gotten much less interesting since I've settled into a pattern here. My room is actually starting to feel like "my room" and I no longer have to look at maps to get between "home" and school.

Nonetheless, things are still interesting. I had my first French class at l'Alliance Francaise last night. I will try not to complain that after five (?) years of French they placed me in level A2 (2nd of 4 levels). The truth is that, although my vocabulary is good, I need a pretty thorough review of grammar. However, we spent most of last night's class going over things like when to use etre or avoir in the past tense and the use of imperatifs. These are things that I did in 7th or 8th grade, and they've been hammered in me pretty well. After class the teacher noted that maybe I should go up a level next week, and I think I agree with her assessment. Since the books are non-refundable though, I will go through and redo all of the really boring stuff, just to make sure I have it down.

Today we made pissaladiere (wikipedia has a slightly better description). As the chef described it, it is a pizza with ingredients that little children don't like. (olives, capers, anchovies, onions, tomatoes...yummy....) Surprisingly it isn't so bad, and mine turned out pretty well!

(Chef did not crimp the edges of his, though we had to in practical)
Chefs:
Mine:

This was part I of our dough sessions. So far we have used "savory yeast dough" in pissaladiere, have seen pasta being made, and today we saw savory short dough (for a quiche Lorraine and a wild mushroom quiche) and also the preparation of puff pastry. In many ways, I feel like all of this dough making is for naught because dough is one of the things that is easy to screw up: the ingredients must be measured precisely and you must know exactly how much to knead (or not knead) the dough. And it is just so easy to hop into a local supermarket freezer section to buy dough. (Dough freezes very well, so you lose nothing from buying a good dough that has been frozen) Furthermore, flour comes in different "grades" (In Europe, it is marked - for example "55" is all purpose and higher grades have more whole wheat, but in most parts of the world flour isn't marked) and the grade determines how much water/butter you need to add to the recipe. This is frustrating! And where will I buy "dry butter" that I need to make my puff pastry with?

Sometimes its great to make something from scratch (like apple pie during thanksgiving), but so far, I am not convinced that making dough, rather than buying it, is particularly "worth it" for most occasions.

Bissous!
Daria

Little Piggy Went To The Market

The Mouftar (sp?) market was amazing.

There was an accordion player, a (high school?) band, and even a little circle of people dancing to recorded music. The entire experience reminded me more of going to Harvard square on a Friday night (....I miss that...) than going to a food market in the US. The street was full of many different merchants selling various meats, fish, veggies, breads, everything! Most of it was raw (fresh), but some of it was prepared, so if I had not already made lunch plans I would have eaten there.

The market is only open on Sundays until 2pm, so I made a point of deciding to cook something for my host family today just so that I could go to the market today. I decided on Cannelloni with a ham and spinach stuffing. I saw it made in demonstration, but because we won't be making it in practical, I decided to try it myself at home. I bought all of the ingredients at the market (but, unfortunately many of them came from the supermarket that was also open....I could not find Ricotta or lasagna sheets (from which I made cannelloni shells) anywhere else!)

Since I had left my recipe binder in my locker at school, I took a few detours and made it a bit differently than how we did it in school, but it was still good - and my host family really liked it! My hope is that if I cook sometimes for them, I will be able to join them for their dinners when I don't feel like cooking. (I didn't have a practical in the past 2 days so I was ready to cook up a storm today) In addition, when we had dinner, we spoke almost exclusively in French...so it would give me an opportunity to practice my French. Yay!

<3 D

A 300 Euro Meal

No...I didn't spend 300 euros on a meal...but I did get to taste it!
Chef Bodier, the first Sous Chef of the Ledoyen (*** Michelin) came to the Cordon Bleu to do a demonstration. He made:

Beet macerated with smoked and citrus flavors
Truffle and fine macaroni timbale with a cream sauce
(and the head of pastry made) Chocolate and orange tartlet

Oh my God. The food was amazing. Everything looked like a desert. I was so incredibly sorry I didn't have my camera to take pictures. The macaroni actually stood up vertically on the plate to create this little box, and inside of it was the truffle and cream sauce. It was so delicious. (Though, I don't think I would ever pay for truffles, since they are incredibly expensive, and surprisingly for me at least, not that good. )

Now comes the kicker. The appetizer...alone...costs 85 Euros at the restaurant. HOLY MOLY! The most expensive main course (for one) cost 140 Euros. OH MY. So how do they come up with these ridonculous prices? They serve, on average, about 40-50 people per night that they are open...and they have 21 chefs (16 cuisine, 5 pastry) to serve them. That is one chef per two people! Amazing. Needless to say, I don't think I'll ever be eating there on my budget (now if Lehman or someone else wants to pick up the tab then....)

After the demonstration my roomate and I went out for a quick drink and then we went to see "le grain et le moulet" (I think that is what it was...) A very French movie. I didn't understand the first quarter of the movie, but then I started following much better. In typical French fashion, the movie isn't very happy....and its also way too long. It was obvious that it had nowhere near the budget of most Hollywood films, but that was nice too because the actors actually looked like real people (with wrinkles and even FAT!). I'm going to try to see some more movies (in French) so I can improve my comprehension and actually learn this crazy language while I'm here.

Cheers!
D

Sauces continued....Chicken.

We're in a unit of sauces. Yesterday, we made Fish Fumet, and since that is a stock based on fish, we supplemented it with whiting. Today we made a white sauce...but we made it with chicken stock...so we also cooked chicken. We had chicken with white sauce (and rice). Its not that it was "bad," but for the amount of butter that we put in the sauce, it should have been better. The sauce is not a bad "alfredo" type sauce, but it does not belong on chicken.

We had a different practical Chef today. So far, we've only had Chef Bruno in practical but today we had Chef Thivet (?). Chef Bruno is really nice, makes an effort to speak in English, and generally gives a helping hand when necessary. This Chef, otherwise, was pretty intense. He often said "well its your recipe, don't ask me what to do." Considering we started with a chicken that was just feathered (and we needed to truss it etc...) this was not a very great comment to hear.

I was happy that I gave the recipe an extra readthrough at the beginning of class and I made sure to be very organized throughout the entire process. At the end of class, he told me that mine was good - YAY! And I wasn't the last one done (In fact I was one of the first!) Voila is the finished product:
(Image courtesy of my super housemate who also has a cannon camera and lent me her cable)

In honor of images, here are a few more.

(The starting ingredients for the chicken today)

(Our Kitchen)

(Self Explanatory)

Cooking Classes

Today we made fish.
We Scaled. Gutted. and Filleted the fish. This is a skill I don't think I will be using anytime after Paris.

It was...pretty disgusting....
The fish turned out pretty well, but I didn't have time to finish my reduction sauce so it wasn't as strong as I would have wanted it. (We made reduced Fish Fumet, a fish stock, as the sauce)

After class, one of the girls in the class sliced her palm (maybe a 2 inch cut? it was pretty big...) when she was putting her knives away. It was scary.

I'm just tired after a very long day today. I have a lot to learn and I have to get better at French and start cooking better too! (My fillets weren't exactly cordon bleu quality...)

-D

First Day (Part II)

3 hour practicals are exhausting. That is my conclusion for today.

I am the "assistant" this week so that means that I need to get there early to bring up all of the ingredients that we need to prepare the recipe, then distribute them among all of the students. There is supposed to be two assistants for each class, but the other person who was supposed to come help today wasn't in class. In fact, we had only 6 people when we were supposed to have 8. I struggled a bit to find my way and how to get the dumb waiter (the food elevator) to work...and also struggled with the walk in refrigerator door. I didn't see the latch so when I pulled it didn't open...then the chefs (who have lunch in the room that is next to the refrigerator) said something in French and I thought it meant that the door slides...so I tried to slide it. They all started laughing!! Finally someone actually helped me get the door open, but I was completely red faced by then.

The class itself went pretty well...not amazing since I didn't quite get the timing and I should have looked more carefully at the recipe before we started cooking, but the soup turned out not bad. That made me happy. In cooking class, no one follows the same schedule. Its not like the Chef announces : "Okay, now cut the cabbage, and please stir the soup" rather he just walks around while you prepare it. I was definitely one of the slower ones (there was a guy who had worked in a kitchen for 4 years already and he was *so* good!) but it turned out okay.

Today, I learned how to cut properly (even if slowly), and I only cut myself once, and only a tiny little bit. So it was pretty good. I'm also very proud that I cut my first onion without crying, rubbing my eyes, or having to walk away for a moment to compose myself. YAY! My mirapoix cuts were uneven, but small and my other cuts were pretty good (though often uneven).

As I walked through the metro with my swimming pool sized container full of soup, everyone looked at me oddly, but I was pretty proud of my creation.

-D

Soup:

First Day (so far)

When I had orientation, Cordon Bleu gave me a little book which had my name and then "B". My mother (who was there with me) and I also took a look at the class lists, and jointly confirmed that I was in group "B".

I think ghostwriter came by and changed some letters around...I am in group D! I went to class (at 8:30!) and we noticed something was wrong immediately because there were 10 students in the practical (all practicals are 8 students). Someone read attendance and I wasn't listed, of course. I left and then found that my class starts at 12:30 today! Arghh!

It did give me some time to mark my knives (everyone gets the same knife set, so its important to mark knives to make sure they are identifiable) and do some other administrata.

I will hopefully repost tonight about my real practical when I have it.