Churros at the Tuilleries

On Saturday night after a windy picnic on the Pont des Artes (the bridge to be at), we walked over to the fair at the Tuilleries.

The ferris wheel


This is the mysterious ferris wheel that I have seen in so many photos but was never assembled on my previous trips to Paris. I assumed it did not really exist. However, I saw it with my own eyes so yes, it exists. I also saw the haunted house ride that Amelie goes on in the movie. A bit too scary for me.

Churros with Nutella


Like most fair food, the churros looked so good but were in the end disappointing. Even though we saw them being fried, they were a bit stale. After 4 pieces with nutella you feel sick. Would I buy them again? Bien sûr! You are at a fair, what do you expect, dacquoise and petits fours? Although I'm sure in la or in Napa there is a fair that serves this type of fare. Oh wait, I mean San Francisco and it will be called Slow Food Nation and held at the end of the summer. Jealousy.

Un kilo de pommes de terre

On friday, the scariest, most bad-assed chef announced to my cuisine class that he was leaving the school after 16 years. He is o on to a new adventure. The demonstration he gave was the first and last he would give to my class. Why is he so bad-ass? Besides his incredible resume, having worked and taught around the world, banging out a demonstration of 3 entrees for 25 people in an hour and 40 minutes which he started in french and then started speaking spanish (confusing the translator, too funny), he just plain looks tough. He is intimidating, period. I had one practical with this chef before. He is the chef who when looking at our individual plates for the practical tasting, preceded to ask each person in my practical class, "You, want to be a chef in a kitchen?" and then either scoffed, laughed or shook his head. It was a hard day for all of us, but for some reason I didnt take it as badly as I normally would have. I knew he had extremely high expectations and I already knew he scared me so as long as there was no physical abuse, it was fine.

During this demonstration, the chef provide advice. He has seen many schools and said we made the right decision coming to LCB, but it is all what you make of it. He feels that the mistake students make is thinking that they will get all of their learning in class, but there is always homework just like any other school. You also need to be tough. You need to be strong to be able to work 16 - 18 hours a day in the kitchen. He also spoke about the chefs you will learn the most from. It is not the nice chefs, it is the ones you are most scared of. It is for those chefs that you will always get things perfect for, you will never mess up because you are too frightened of the consequences.

On Monday, I will be preparing a fish dish will a garnish of turned potatoes. In preparation, today I turned a kilo (~2.2 pounds) of potatoes. I have carpel tunnel now. My hand hurts.

My version of turned potatoes (it's practice, no judging)


My gear



A beautiful paring knife


The scraps


What do you do with the scraps from a kilo of turned potatoes? Make lemonade. I mean herbs de Provence and garlic mashed potatoes and take them to a picnic tonight on the river.

Modeling, Piping, Turning

On Tuesday morning after the long weekend, I successfully made a Dacquoise. At Le Cordon Bleu, the methodology is to teach us the long, manual method of creating a dish. I think this is a fantastic way to learn especially if you don't have a gym membership. To date, I have beaten egg whites to the point of stiff peaks a few times, made buttercream, chantilly cream and hollandaise sauce all by hand. Unfortunately, I am not ambidextrous so my right arm will be pretty fierce when I graduate.

Dacquoise




Making a dacquoise cake involves a step where you need to check the temperature of a boiling sugar and water concoction. The goal is to get the sugar syrup to a soft ball stage (115°C)). Because we learn everything at LCB by feel and taste, you need to stick your fingers into the boiling sugar (not yet caramel) and test for doneness. I had read about this before in cookbooks and perhaps seen it done on tv once by professionals. I've always used a candy thermometer for working with sugar but not this day. As I stared deeply into the boiling sugar and then glanced at my neighbor who was about to venture unwillingly into hot sugar as well, I said hear goes nothing and stuck my fingers in.

Now, I had been warned by my roommate who had done this recipe a few days earlier that you really have to stick your fingers down into the sugar in order to come back with any sugar that you can test. If you just swipe the top, you are going to have to do it again. Knowing this, I went in deep, but unfortunately for me and my neighbor, we tested our sugar too soon and had to wait until the sugar got even hotter only to do it again. In all, I tempted fate 3 times until the sugar was ready. The process is not so bad, but it is like talking to strangers, it's fun but I've always been told not to do it. In this instance, we have been taught that a caramel burn is the worst burn you can get so of course I was nervous.

Once the cakes are baked, the praline buttercream is made and piped out (I'm getting a bit better) and then the two cakes are sandwiched together with the buttercream protruding a bit for a "generous" effect, it was time to made the marzipan rose.

I've made a few roses before out of gum paste but still need a lot of practice. The rose and leaves on the cake look fine here though and I receive some compliments on the cake itself which was nice.

Today, I made Poached Hake Steaks with Hollandaise Sauce. Of course, it could not be as easy as just poached fish and hollandaise (which I have made before because I love it), the majority of the practical was spent on turning carrottes, potatoes and courgettes. It was great practice and I hope to buy some veg tomorrow at the market to practice more. Plus, we had an amazing chef who was a great teacher and super nice. My favorite chef of the week.

Troncons de colin pochés, sauce hollandaise (and turned veg)


Side note: I oversalted my hollandaise--I was in a good mood this morning and was a bit generous with the salt. Some of the chefs like more salt and some much, much less. At LCB, you have to learn all the chefs palates and season accordingly. I knew when I tasted it that the sauce had too much salt but I didn't have (or I thought I didn't) any more citron to correct it.

When I had my tasting, the chef said everything was good including the turned veg, the fish, the plate looked nice, but then he tasted the sauce twice and I knew what he was going to say before it came out of his mouth in french. He told me that we are in france, not in america (earlier, he had looked at my name badge to check where I was from) and hollandaise should only have a little salt and I should have added a bit more citron. He was so sweet about it that I think it is a fun story and of course I learned my obvious lesson--correct the components as much as possible, especially the sauce, before plating and presentation.

My 2nd birthday!

Yay! Finally fireworks in Paris! I missed them on my real birthday on the 4th but got to see an incredible display on the 14th. While I missed the military parade and Nick and Carla on Champs-Elysées because we got home so late the night before, a fabulous picnic with music and the backdrop of le Tour Eiffel was very sweet.

Our picnic.


Here we have fruit, chips, chorizo, baguettes, marinated cucumbers, wine and a Betty Crocker birthday cake in the shape of a sun that my roommate made me. Delish! We are getting more and more organized in our picnicking but haven't purchased a blanket yet, but the paper bag was a nice touch.

The Champs du Mars was so crowded that we were lucky to get a spot on the grass. We did not have a view of the concert where apparently James Blunt played but that was fine with us because you had to stand up on the main lawn where the concert was and that was too much for us.

Our view.


Picnics!


Being in Paris under le Tour Eiffel on Bastille Day made me so happy, amazed, grateful and proud of myself for making my dream to live in Paris come true. You too, can quit your job and move across the globe. "It's so easy, even a girl can do it" (one of my favorite quotes I have heard so far from one of the chefs here regarding turning mushrooms. It is a very interesting quote because I don't think the guys can do it either).

Bals des Pompiers

Like everything in Paris, the Firemen's Ball was more than I expected. I thought we were going to walk into the garage of a local firestation and there was going to be a disco ball and drinks and music and that would be that. Bals des Pompier is the exact opposite. The party starts at 9am and goes officially til 4am.

The ball we went to was in the Marais by 1/2 a block from Saint Paul station. When we arrived at around 1am the line was all the way down the street and around the corner. After waiting more than an hour and a half and being stuck in front of by some americans and some thugs and 6 euros later, we were in. Fully uniformed french firemen (and one woman) and all.

Waiting outside of Saint Paul church to get into the Fire Station.


The line crowding to get in.


Another holding area where you pay 6 euros for entrance + 1 drink (Heineken)


Poor photo of inner courtyard with a live band.


Crazy Firemen's party.




A beautiful sunrise when we arrived home the next morning.


In Paris, when you go out, the party doesn't stop until 4 or 5 so why not save the cab fare and get a bite to eat of a crêpe or kebab on the corner and wait for the metro to open. That morning we got home a bit after 6 in the morning. A beautiful sunrise.

Paris Weather

Just a quick comment on Paris weather. This morning it was sunny. During my run it was sunny and overcast. Then at the end of my run it started sprinkling. 2 hours later, it is a full downpour.

Weather in San Francisco is also strange and ever-changing but more predictable. You know it is going to be fairly consistent all day and for sure the fog will roll in and it will freezing at night. Here, it changes dramatically by the hour and by the arrondissement. Good luck choosing clothes for the day and forget about wondering what shoes to wear. You will reliably chose wrong. But you are in Paris, so c'est la vie.

Firemen's Ball!

Today I went for a run and it was fantastic. I ran from my house in the 7th up and around the Tour Eiffel and back through Ecole Militare. Things I saw on my run:

• beaucoup de touristes (of course)
• a older man who appeared to be naked sitting in his convertible sunning himself and reading a map
• a neighborhood clochard (a homeless man) on rue de Sufferen who sleeps in a tent, not to be confused with the our clochard who we give our pâtisseries too. He may get really fat by the end of the year...
• musée du quai Branly
  
• other people jogging (only men though, Parisian women don't need to exercise?)

As usual, there were tons of people milling about the tower but what was especially nice was the huge speaker systems that were set-up and playing classical music. The speakers, the tv station buses and crews were all set up around the tower in preparation for the big party tomorrow, Bastille Day.

The city has been in preparation for Bastille Day for some time now. Last Sunday, I was waiting in a long line for the Musée de l’Orangerie (free the 1st Sunday of the month) out in front of Place de Concorde and I stood there watching crews set up the stage in the place where the president and Carla will preside and watch the activities on Monday. The barricades along Champs-Élysées have been up for weeks.

Tonight, the night before Bastille Day is the Firemen's ball (Bal de Pompiers)! Tonight all the fire stations in all of Paris open up to the public and there is a disco! The firemen wear there uniforms and host the party. It sounds like something that should happen in San Francisco but doesnt. boo!

Hopefully, I'll wake up early on Monday and watch the military parade and catch a glimpse of Nick & Carla.

Butchering Rabbit

Interesting activities I did at school this past week:

• Grilled salmon
  
• Stuffed animals into themselves
• veal rolls (flattened lamb with a mixture containing lamb rolled up to neat package), very tasty
  
• stuffed chicken (chicken stuffed with a chicken mousse), also very tasty
• Turned mushrooms and carrots (no success with either veg)
  
• Made coffee éclairs
• Butchered a rabbit

At 8:30 in the morning my cuisine class began butchering one rabbit each. The room was markedly silent. The surgery had begun for each of us.

The skin was already removed from the rabbits for us, but everything, including eyes remained + a little bit of white bunny fur on mine. I didn't have an issue with butchering the rabbit but a few did with reason. A skinned rabbit does resemble a small stretched out dog and of course it very clearly resembles a rabbit.

The rabbit is fairly straightforward in taking apart, at least the large cuts are. You have to make slices into the body until you are about to hit the bone such as the vertebrae and then you finish the separation with a twist of your hands so you are actually manually separating and breaking the back bones with your hands. It's a twist of the hands, a crunch sound and the body is separated into parts. You have to do this because the bones splinter if you use a knife and this is dangerous for the customer to eat. We were warned never to give dogs rabbit bones because the bones will cut up a dogs intestines.

Once the body is cut up into parts, the detailed work begins and it's just hard. I would need a lot of practice to make really clean cuts and know exactly where to make the first cuts because some of the parts are so very small.

A few highlights from this experience:

• Removing the lungs:
• This wasn't too bad but it was necessary to get to the heart. The lungs are soft, whitish with red veins running through.
  
• Removing the heart:
• The heart is so small for the size of the animal. It was hard to get my knife into the body cavity so I had to tug a bit which felt a little sad.
  
• Anecdote from a friend's experience: My friend was pulling out the heart and the rabbit jerked and moved. He was so freaked out. I would have been too.
  
• Cutting up the liver:
• Easy to remove and cut up. However, I looked over at my friend's cutting board and when she cut into her rabbit's liver...it began peeing on her! Bright yellow pee. One of the nastiest images burned into my memory ever. Now quite funny.
  

Again, the butchering was not that bad but when I got to the head of the rabbit, the eyes just keep staring at me. I tried to work quickly to finish up so I didnt have to see the head anymore. I am grateful for the experience and now have more than 3/4s of the rabbit in my fridge, along with the chicken mousse and the veal rolls...

Note: These are replatings! so not as nice looking as when the food was made (primarily because some of the components have sauce on them now that shouldn't due to transport to my house i.e. everything goes into a big container including the sauce).

Rabbit with its liver & kidneys on rosemary skewers + sautéed potatoes


The full plating for school for this was huge. You place one of every piece of the rabbit on the plate include the full saddle.

Veal rolls with turned carrots and pearl onions


I would definitely make this again. To totally demean the dish, it is, in fact, the best tasting meatloaf in the world without tasting at all like meatloaf.

Suprême of chicken with sautéed mushrooms


This dish is not too difficult make and the mousse inside is really good. I had extra mousse so I used two other methods of cooking the mousse--one: in a ceramic ramekin in a water bath in the oven; two: rolled as a sausage in plastic wrap (yes, plastic! but food grade) simmered in chicken stock. once the little sausage can hold its shape, you poke the plastic and the stock flavors the mousse as it finishes cooking. Yum!

Future ville

Last Sunday, my roommate and I ventured out to the La Defense district which holds the largest mall in continental Europe. The sales were going on so we thought it would be interesting to see the mall and the La Defense arch.



The area feels a little blade runner -- a very futuristic city relative to Paris, where there are no buildings much taller than 8 stories; no skyscrapers save the black montparnasse and tour effiel.

Les Quatre Temps




The mall, Les Quatre Temps. A nice mall filled to the brim with people shopping the crazy sales.

The Arch


Under the Arch




The Jazz Festival


Outside in the plaza, the La Defense Jazz Festival was taking place so there was a stage with music and bouncy rides for kids (and only for kids!).





La Pouce (thumb)


Do you think the thumb knows that the big head is way back at Jardin du Luxembourg?

6 days

Last week I went to school for 6 days in a row. It was really tiring with classes starting at 8:30am. Saturday was a bit much with a demo and a practical right after so I got out of school at 4pm that day. For some reason, my practical group is the only class with multiple Saturday and night classes this term.

Below are a few of the dishes that I have made in the last two weeks. Most of the photos will be from pâtisserie because our cuisine dishes get smashed up too much during the Chef's tasting in order to ensure everything is cooked and tastes appropriately. Enjoy!

Oh, gâteau de fruit.

We made 3 of these. I gave them all away. It is much better than American fruit cake, but I just have never liked glacé fruit. You can see the madeleines in the background.

Madeleines


Vol au vent (pastry case) alone.


Filled with Leeks.


My puff pastry, which we made by hand, came out really well. I even received a very nice compliment from one of the scary Chefs.

The second photo is a replating of Puff Pastry with Leeks and Poached Eggs and the most delicious sauce called Albufera. Unfortunately, I didn't have any eggs at home for the photo but it really did look nice in class and is an absolutely delish dish.

At this point, I have made puff pastry 3 times by hand. I feel fairly confident about it and would make it at home though the recipe calls for dry butter which would be challenging to obtain in the states.

Crab bisque and croûtons


The crab bisque involved killing the live crab with a chef's knife straight through the body. I had no problem doing this although it seemed to both a few people. We later bashed the crabs shells with the ends of our rolling pins. All in a day's work...

A nice tidbit: Our practical chef was showing me how to cook the croûtons. I didn't have enough butter (I had a lot in already) so he grabbed more butter, tossed it into the super hot cast iron pan and stuck his fingers into the hot pan to help the butter melt faster. He then told me not to use my spatula to cook the croûtons and started flipping the croûtons into the air and told me to do the same. It was awesome.


Gâteau Basque


A pound cake like base with pastry cream inside along with a sprinkling of prunes. Not a bad tasting cake, just a whole lot of effort and work for a somewhat plain cake. It does give one practice piping since the whole cake is piped in 3 different layers.


Saint Honoré


I got a tiny burn from the dipping the puffs into caramel which is the worst type of burn you can get. However, this cake is so good but it is a bit of overdose on the whip cream, which we whipped by hand.


Chaussons aux pommes (apple turnovers)


This one is really worth the work. We made three of them and I ate two. Each has 50+ grams of butter. Yum!


Palmiers


Mine came out small but the Chef said it was fine. Also, some of the egg wash sealed the ends so they are not as open as they could be. Still a great snack after school.


Paillettes au fromage


These cheese straws were an accompaniment to a consommé that we clarified and placed a brunoise of vegetables in.

As you can see from the photos, it has been a few weeks of low-calorie food. Hopefully, we will start making some heartier meals. For example, tomorrow I am making stuffed veal rolls and later in the day lots of éclairs. Anyone interested?

Ingrid Betancourt rescued

Incredible news today. Ingrid Betancourt was rescued from her captors, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. She was kidnapped 6 years ago and was speculated to have died in captivity because of deteriorating health and no one had seen her since October.

In my first week in Paris, I went to Hôtel de Ville where there is a huge poster of Betancourt with a counter of the number of days that she has been held in captivity. This was when I first learned of her and the hope people had that she was alive. The photo is haunting and deeply sad. It was a photo taken by her captors to prove she was still alive.

This news is all over tv and Sarkozy is holding a press conference right now with Betancourt's children and family.