Busy week...

Another week at ESCF has flown by; we've been here for almost two months now...craziness! We started off the week making several type of sponge cakes to complete more complex cakes during the end of the week. Tuesday was our first wine tasting (interesting) and Wednesday we had service which went MUCH better than last time. We made authentic Austrian apfelstrudel, thanks to Désirée, and a spice bread with citrus slices and a red wine citrus gélée, both of which were delicious and turned out very well. We completed some time-intensive cakes like Moka, Charlottes, and a Griottines Roulade and today we're headed to a flour mill to learn the wonders of an essential base of pastry. I'm going to Nantes for the weekend to Josh and Philippe and can hardly contain my excitement! I'll update more in detail and add pictures when I get back.

Macarons, "mini-ovens" and movement

I'm pretty sure I tasted about 30 types of pastry this week, maybe more. We made 12 types of macarons on Monday (vanilla, violette, caramel, rose/raspberry, orange, mint, green tea, chocolate, coffee, pistachio, apricot, lemon/basil) and at least 24 types of petits fours (bite-sized cakes/cookies) on Tuesday/Wednesday. Throughout those three days, I tasted every single thing we made, at least once...craziness! Tasting as we went turned out to be a good thing because everything we made was plated up and sent to the French Senate for an award ceremony our school was hosting. 

Within those 30 or so pastries, I was responsible for making caramel macarons (aka bling bling macarons - the chef got the biggest kick out of this), sables nantais (small butter cookies) and four poches (almond cookies topped with candied fruit/nuts), all of which turned out pretty well. We also made almond paste roses and started learning about pulled sugar at the end of the week. 

Bling bling ;p

Our macarons

Sables nantais

Chef's pulled sugar rose

Having bakery class is becoming dangerous - when you make delicious bread, it's hard not to eat too much of it! We made baguettes, as usual, and then my team (Désirée and Gloria) made walnut/raisin/prune bread and Flamenkuch which is kind of like pizza, but far better. When we pulled our flamenkuch out of the oven, the class on the other side of the bakery tried to bribe us for a few slices with a heart...made of brioche ;) After eating my weight in bread I decided that it would probably be in my best interest (and the best interest of my clothes) to abstain from taking bread home. We make tons of bread on Friday and are allowed to take home as much or as little as we want - temptation is at every corner in pastry school! 

Bread wreath

Flamkuchen - Wish they served this in the cafeteria

After bakery on Friday, a few of us went to Pierre Hermé because it was Macaron day and they were giving 3 free macarons to each customer with donations and proceeds going to charity. Pierre Hermé is renowned for his macarons and they're not cheap which is probably the reason why the line was ridiculous at the store. There were more than thirty flavors to choose from, ranging from the traditional (lemon) to the exotic (foie gras/chocolate and white truffle/hazelnut) and we each walked out with several. Désirée and I went on a shopping spree at H&M afterwards to stock up on spring fashion now that blue skies and sunshine have made their return. I had dinner with Leah afterwards at a cute place on rue Mouffetard, Mouff'tartes (53, rue Mouffetard). You'll never guess what they serve...tarts! 

Lining up for Pierre Hermé macarons

This weekend I got to indulge in my second passion, dancing. I went to an African dance workshop on Saturday that was 2 1/2 hours of sweaty fun and a belly dance veil workshop on Sunday that put my arms to work. This weekend made me miss my Dance Dance Dance days in Glen Ellyn when I was dancing 4 times a week and getting my daily dose of sanity and laughter. I'm thinking about taking a belly dance class and am hunting for more dance workshops to feed my dance addiction. Lucky for me, eating pastry and dancing go hand in hand. 

 

Oh Paris

I could swear that there is a monster in my watch or calendar that is eating up the minutes of each day and the days of every month...time is passing so fast! Last week was a whirlwind because we had restaurant service on Wednesday and Thursday; the experience was interesting to say the least. I was assigned to plated desserts with two other students, Désirée and Aurora so we were responsible for all of the preparation, plate composition, expedition, etc. Wednesday was not one of my better days in the kitchen and I was glad when the night was over. 

We had two plated desserts - a chocolate tart with chocolate sorbet & apricot sauce and a chocolate/orange fondant with a raspberry center, vanilla ice cream in an almond tuile, and raspberry sauce. Two of my prep jobs were making tart dough (super easy, we've made millions of tarts already) and ice cream, both of which I managed to screw up then save at the last minute. Tart crust is so basic and I was quite unhappy (understatement of the century) when I learned that I made an error - I forgot to double the eggs! We were making a double recipe and I only added enough eggs for one recipe which is why my dough looked questionably dry. Luckily, I realized my mistake just in time and added the requisite egg....Phew! 

I promised myself and my group that mistakes were a thing of the past but the ice cream fairies had another plan in mind. I've never made ice cream before and having to do so during my first restaurant service was stressful especially since we were under a time limit. I read the recipe and verified it at least three times (this was also a double recipe) before I started. Things were off to a good start and I was whisking away, trying not to make sweetened scrambled eggs and monitoring the temperature vigilantly. My chef came over to check my progress and put my ingredients on the stove, or so I thought. I needed to add stabilizer to the ice cream and chef gave me specific instructions about mixing the stabilizer with part of the sugar to help its incorporation which is why I had two containers of sugar, one with stabilizer and one without...do you see where this is going? For some reason, only one of the sugar containers made it to the stove next to me and guess which one got left out??? The one with the stabilizer! I got to the end of my first ice cream making experience, turned around to the table and almost wanted to raise my hands to the heavens when I saw the sugar with the stabilizer sitting on the table...what were the odds??

To make a long story short, I had to add the stabilizer and then heat up the whole concoction again and thankfully, the ice cream did turn out well in the end. My last mishap during prep was dropping a hot tray of grué tuile on the floor - classic.  Luckily, during service, I was on chocolate tart duty - the plating was fairly straightforward with the exception of making quenelles of sorbet and I made it through without any major mishaps.

The rest of the week was a blur. We made raspberry millefeuille with anis flavored pastry cream for lunch service on Thursday and they turned out beautifully. Friday we were in the bakery making specialty breads because it was Open House at school and I went home with my favorite, olive bread with herbes de Provence. 

I spent Saturday afternoon at school for open house and we mastered Mont Blancs, Parisien flan, and almond paste roses.  People would come in and stand in the pastry laboratory for an hour eating whatever we or the other students put out on the table and asking us about the ingredients. At the end of the day, every morsel of pastry had been devoured.  

After open house Désirée and I decided to check out a well known chocolate shop, Jean-Paul Hévin (231, Rue St. Honoré), located on one of Paris' most expensive and fashionable streets. The chocolate shoe in the window captured our attention - chocolate and shoes, what more could a girl ask for? The funny thing about the chocolate shoe is that it costs the same amount as a real shoe that you could actually wear and not just eat! 

After a slightly hectic week, some much needed stress relief (aka dancing) was needed. Laura and I went to an old school R&B night at club Gibus, the self-proclaimed #1 hip hop club in Paris. The club was huge and there was a great mix of people including some hard core dancers. The whole night I kept thinking to myself, I feel like I'm back in the States. All of the music was American and everyone knew the lyrics and was crankin' it, brushing their shoulders off, poppin' and lockin' , etc...craziness! 

Sunday felt like springtime and I spent most of the day wandering around the Bastille market and the 6th arrondissement by my school before making a quick stop at Pierre Hermé for a ispahan millefeuille(lychee, raspberries, rose, and puff pastry perfection). After a weekend like that, I'm thinking that I may need to spend an extra year in Paris just exploring and enjoying the abundant culture this city has to offer. 

In the land of fabulous food...

This past Saturday, I had the best meal and restaurant experience of my life, thus far. Two pastry students and I went to L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon, a two Michelin starred restaurant in a very upscale neighborhood of Paris. The restaurant is known for it's food but what really sets it apart from other restaurants is the seating arrangement. You won't find the ordinary tables and chairs at L'Atelier; everyone sits at a "bar" surrounding the open and therefore relatively calm kitchen. From where we were sitting, we had a perfect view of the chef thinly slicing fresh Iberico ham with such concentration that you would have thought he was serving the President himself. 

The menu at L'Atelier allows you to pick several tasting size dishes, a full sized portion of meat/fish or a menu "decouverte" with 9 courses (the best choice). I decided to take a brief day off from being a vegetarian (my apologies to those of you who are strict veg) so I could taste some of the more interesting dishes. My classmates responded with, "Do you even eat fish and seafood?," a very valid question seeing that everyday for lunch I eat a huge plate of vegetables with an overgenerous side of carbs. The servers in the cafeteria can't believe that I don't eat meat or fish ("That's all you want?)  and always compensate by giving me a gargantuan portion or rice,potatoes or pasta. The French don't quite understand why anyone would willingly stop eating meat. Back to lunch...

I ordered an eggplant millefeuille, langoustine/truffle ravioli, and sole with celery root and truffles. I could go into a million details about every dish but I won't tease you. To put it simply, each dish was composed of fresh and perfectly cooked elements that presented beautifully and left you wanting more and anticipating the next course. 

My favorite course by far was dessert...les tartes. L'Atelier has managed to take a simple and classic dessert, a tart, and turn it into a conceptual dish that you will never forget. I was presented with five miniature tart slices, each of a different flavor-chocolate/caramel/macadamia nut, apple, chocolate, lemon, and cinnamon. Before I even took a bite, my classmates and I had a discussion about the plan of attack - with five different tarts, some of which had very strong and distinct flavors, it was necessary to figure out which to eat first so as not to "pollute" the taste of the others. Pastry chefs and foodies...we're an interesting bunch! Wonsang and Désirée didn't even have to ask me how the tarts were, the look on my face and my loss of words said it all. 

I could go on and on about the food, excellent service, and interesting policies (dogs are allowed!) of L'Atelier but I'll spare you and give you what you really want...photos!

This week in class has been kind of slow as we've started to prepare more classic French pastries (babas, Mont-blanc) but we haven't finished anything yet because today...we have our first restaurant service! The ESCF houses two restaurants that serve the public and are staffed by the students and tonight is our turn to prepare desserts for one of the restaurants. I'm both nervous and excited; I've never worked in a restaurant before so I'm not sure how timing plays out, but I'm excited for the new experience. I'm on the plated dessert station with Aurora and Desiree which is a blessing because one of them has previous restaurant experience and the other has previous pastry experience. We're preparing a chocolate tart with chocolate sorbet and tuile cookies and an orange/raspberry molten chocolate cake. We go in at 1pm today to prep everything and will hopefully be done by 11pm...I'll definitely write about how it goes! 

New places that I've tried out recently: 

• Jean Charles Rochoux - 16, rue d'Assas - A chocolatier that is known for his chocolate figures/sculptures, truffles, and caramelized almonds enrobed in dark chocolate (absolutely delicious!)
• Pain de Sucre - 14 rue Rambuteau - My new favorite pastry shop! They have very innovative desserts, delicious macarons (try the lemon/lime, chocolate mint, and griotte/pistachio), homemade marshmallows and so much more.

Choux pastry and landlords that go bump in the night

I'll be able to make choux pastry in my sleep after this week! We're having a pretty choux-ette (chouette means "cool" in French) week in the pastry laboratory making some classics like éclairs, religieuses, Paris-Brest, etc. After piping out choux pastry and working with finicky fondant to make glaze, we understood why such pastries cost what they do...they look easy to make but it takes time to make them all uniform and shiny. If you looked around our lab, you would see every éclair shape possible, unless you were looking at Chef's eclairs and then you would just see perfection ;) 

The proper glazing technique

Filling the éclairs and religieuses can be quite hilarious if you put too much cream in and who knew that you filled them that way? Every time we make something new in class, I feel like I've been let in on a secret. Sometimes when I see pastry in a shop, it looks complex and perfect, but when we break down the steps to make it in class, I'm confident that I will be able to make a decent reproduction in the future. 

Coffee and chocolate eclairs

Religieuses

In other news...The women I'm renting from let herself into my apartment at 11:15 last night and scared me half to death. She then proceeded to lock me in my apartment which I didn't realize until I was rushing to catch the metro to school...craziness! Life...never a dull moment. 

 

Adventures in puff pastry

It's hard to believe that I just finished my third week at ESCF and that tomorrow starts my fourth week - time is going by so quickly! This week was an intensive introduction to and training in puff pastry. I've seen puff pastry made once before during a class at Le Cordon Bleu so I knew the process was fairly complex and time-consuming. 

We started off the week by making two different types of puff pastry, one in which you incorporate the butter into the dough and the other in which you incorporate the dough into the butter. Our chef told us that the second process, called inverse puff pastry, produced better results but could be a little more difficult to work with. The class spent most of the day taking copious notes on the puff pastry process and then trying our hand at it. 

Chef working the puff pastry dough

The process of making puff pastry could be renamed the rolling and waiting game. After you incorporate the dough into the butter or vice versa, you have to roll out the dough several times, folding it and turning it in a specific way so that the puff pastry does exactly what its name indicates in the end - puffs. When you're not rolling, your letting the dough relax in your refrigerator. If you're ever in need of an arm workout complete with a tasty treat at the end, make puff pastry...your arms and your taste buds will thank you! 

After we mastered/massacred (in some cases) the process of making puff pastry dough, we used the two doughs we made to create a variety of classic French pastries that usually involved almond cream. The two things we made this week that I could eat everyday were chaussons aux pommes, puff pastry "slippers" filled with applesauce and apples and Pithiviers, decorated puff pastry filled with almond cream. Knowing that I actually made these two buttery and delicious creations only added to my delight when I tasted them. There is nothing like fresh, flaky, buttery puff pastry dough...yum! 

Chaussons aux pommes and apple tart in bands

When we weren't in the kitchen this week, we were either learning about the scientific part of pastry (although this usually turns into a lesson about choice French words), perfecting our French (pronunciation, pronunciation, pronunciation) or sketching/composing a dessert plate for an imaginary client with an outrageous budget.

Mr. Niau and our plated dessert sketch

Here's a list/review of places my fellow future pastry chefs and/or I visited this week:

• des Gateaux et du Pain (63 blvd Pasteur, 75015 Paris) - This is not your average pastry shop - it is incredibly chic almost to a fault, creating a quite austere/cold environment. However, what this shop lacks in warmth, it makes up for in the quality of its products. I had a chocolate creation (I can't remember the name!) with 5 layers of chocolaty goodness and I heard rave reviews from my other classmates about their purchases. 



Chocolaty deliciousness from des Gateaux et du Pain





• Amici Miei (44 Rue Saint Sabin, 75011 Paris) - An Italian restaurant run by Italians with quality wood-fired pizzas. I ordered a white pizza with potatoes, rosemary, and mozzarella and while the topping was a little bland (could have used more salt or rosemary), the crust was perfection. 



Potato, rosemary, and mozzarella cheese pizza


Denise Acabo A L'Etoile d'Or (30 rue Fontaine, 75009 Paris) - Thank you David Lebovitz for mentioning this place on your website, it's a true find! This candy store and it's owner are like nothing you have ever seen before. Denise, the owner of the shop, is an unforgettable and knowledgeable woman who is known for her braided grey pigtails and tartan skirts. She is incredibly helpful and will tell you anything you want to know about the high quality/rare French confections in her shop. I've never paid so much for a bar of chocolate before(10 Euros!) but when I tasted it, I understood what real chocolate is supposed to taste like.


One of the best chocolate bars I've ever eaten! Dark chocolate filled with salted caramel




A fabulous find


Gerard Mulot - A reputed pastry/bakery/chocolate shop. I tried their macarons and was overpowered by the thickness and sweetness of the filling. I'll have to go back to try some of their desserts. 
Favela Chic (18 rue du Faubourg de Temple, 75011 Paris) - A Brazilian restaurant/bar/club that Laura and I went to on Saturday. The ambiance was great, the crowd was mixed, and the dance floor was tiny but that didn't stop us or the Madonna look alike who was really getting down.
Le Rétro République (23 rue du Faubourg de Temple) - My new favorite place in Paris! This is a dance club in an old theater and guess what kind of music they play on Saturday nights...Latin! When we walked in I was in pure heaven -  there was a crazy mix of people with different levels of experience and the dance floor was huge...will definitely be going back there as often as possible!