A pretty laid back week

I was supposed to post this on Monday but I'm just now getting around to it so excuse the delay...

The week always seems shorter when you take an extra day of vacation to bask in the Portugal sun ;) Since we were scheduled to have cuisine/charcuterie class last Monday, I extended my trip to Portugal an extra day and skipped class on Monday :) It's hard to motivate myself to attend a class that is based upon things I don't eat (pork) and things that you can feel clogging your arteries just by looking at them - cream, butter, puff pastry, eggs, and cheese. Interestingly enough, even when we make vegetable dishes, the veggies are usually encased in a buttery dough with a cream sauce. 

Our week in class was probably the most laidback week we've had in awhile - on Tuesday we prepared for restaurant service, had service Wednesday and Thursday, did some painting in between and ended the week with cuisine class. There were three plated desserts on the menu which meant we had a lot of prep work to do plus we were moving  temporarily to the 4th floor for service which involved multiple trips up and down to transport things we needed. Never before did we appreciate the convenience of our lab and the fact that it's always (or almost always) stocked with the ingredients we need and machines and tools that are in working order when we need them. There's nothing like making a recipe where sugar is an essential ingredient only to discover that you'll need to run down three flights of stairs to grab the 100 grams of sugar you need. You know what's even better? When the waiter comes into the kitchen for the second time for a dessert with sorbet and it's not ready yet because when you went to churn the sorbet, you realized the machine was broken and had to run to the 1st floor to get a new machine, put it together, and churn out sorbet. Let's just say it was a very lively service. 

The three desserts that we prepared for service were:

Cheesecake squares - a pistachio almond biscuit topped with a pear/cranberry/currant compote, cheesecake and a salted white chocolate square with raspberry coulis

Raspberry macaron (basically Pierre Hermé's Ispahan) - Macarons filled with rose buttercream, fresh raspberries and litchi with litchi/rose sorbet

Marmite lutées - Tropical fruits (mango/kiwi/orange/pineapple/banana) in a lemongrass/cinnamon syrup topped with puff pastry and served with madeleines 

We also sent out strawberry/pistachio "fishbowls" filled with pistachio bavarois, strawberry coulis, fresh strawberries and strawberry gélée for pre-dessert and fresh made nougat (we couldn't stop eating it!) and chocolates for mignardise. We finished way earlier than usual, 10:30pm, partially because we had done so much prep work the day before. 

On Thursday, we prepped our lunch dessert in the morning (cheesecake topped with a cherry and a strawberry/orange/Cointreau soup with cinnamon sablés) and then got to work painting our pastillage. Pastillage is basically a mix of sugar, starch, gelatin and water that is shaped, hardened, painted and used as decor. We brought in photos to paint onto our pastillage and we spent most of the day mixing food coloring with Cointreau and painting to our heart's content. 

Thursday's dessert 

My painted pastillage 

Friday was cuisine class for the 2nd time that week and although I had a very strong urge to skip for the above stated reasons, I figured missing class twice in two weeks was probably not in my best interests. Unfortunately, the majority of my fellow classmates did not share my sentiments. You'll never guess how many people showed up to cuisine class on Friday...4! ....out of 10! We tackled the menu for the day (Coquille St. Jacques, Carolines, Friands, salmon aumônière) and headed out for a lunch of Korean food afterwards...not a bad start to the weekend. 

St. Jacques - Scallops, mussels, shrimp, salmon and mushrooms in a seafood cream sauce

Sausage friands - puff pastry filled with doctored up sausage meat

Carolines - Choux puffs filled with an asparagus cream sauce

Salmon aumônières - fresh smoked salmon with chives and cream

in the best crepe I've ever tasted

It was a lazy Paris weekend for me. I did some window shopping, lots of sneezing(attack of the pollen) and food tasting on Saturday before I headed home to catch up on So You Think You Can Dance online. On Sunday I hung out in the Marais with Laura  for the last time before she headed back to the States today ;((.... 

Gearing up for my big bakery test tomorrow so I'm off to go over my notes

My delinquency...

Yikes! I've been so busy living a crazy life in Paris of going to school, eating fabulous food and traveling that I haven't updated in weeks...my apologies. The month of May has been interesting since we've had several long weekends and shortened but hectic class weeks. I just returned early yesterday morning from a trip I planned to Portugal at the last minute...more about that later. In one month, I will be finished with classes - how crazy is that? It's hard to believe that I've been in class for 4 months and will soon be pushed out of the "nest" to test my honed pastry skills in a Parisian establishment. Over the past two weeks we've been mastering more French classics such as: 

• Forêt Noire (Black Forest cake)  - Mastering the art of making chocolate curls 
• 
• San Marco - Pistachio/chocolate deliciousness 

• Tiramisu - Absolutely delicious...I could eat this every day! Our chef adds lemon zest to the marscarpone cream which gives the tiramisu a lighter/fresher taste. 


• Pudding diplomate de cabinet - an egg custard with lady fingers and alcohol soaked candied fruits - not a fan
• Gateau de fromage blanc -very similar to cheesecake but lighter and more eggy 


• Gateau de Voyage - Pound cake aka cakes that travel well and don't need refrigeration. We made a quatre quart (basically a pound cake but a little richer), a raspberry/rose cake, lemon cake, marble cake, fruit cake (much lighter than my grandmother's - the only fruit cake I'll ever eat) and a weekend which is basically a very eggy pound cake covered with kirsch glaze. 

Marble Cake 

Raspberry/Rose cake 

Fruit Cake 

We also had dinner service two weeks ago and it was by far the easiest dinner service I've ever had because I spent most of the afternoon doing mis en place aka making lady fingers (biscuit à la cuillère) for us to use the next day. My first batch was less than stellar which chef was all too quick to note, comparing my batter to a bodily fluid - "Qu'est-ce que c'est cette piss?" The next batter was much better and by batch 8, my partner and I were lady finger experts. We spent the rest of the night sampling our classmates' wares - brioche french toast with red berry coulis, apple aumônière with tonka bean ice cream and calvados/caramel sauce, marmite glacé (mint meringue filled with chocolate mint sauce), date squares and chocolate covered physallis. Service went pretty well and we finished at a decent hour which is always nice. 

Brioche french toast w/ red fruit coulis 

Apple aumônière with tonka bean ice cream and caramel/calvados syrup

Chocolate covered physallis 

Last week we also carved styrofoam with Pascal Niau, our drawing teacher, in preparation for the ice carving we'll do in a few weeks. Evidently, the topic I picked and had been working on for weeks, a mermaid in a shell,  was far too complicated and got scraped for something more realizable, a shell. I never thought I would be taking a knife to a rectangular block of styrofoam and making a shell "magically"  appear, but slowly but surely, I made it happen thanks to lots of guidance from Mr. Niau. I'm curious to see how our ice sculptures will turn out...on verra. 

Clay model of my shell - future ice carving 

Desirée's amazing styrofoam sculpture 

Outside of class, I've been visiting pastry shops/restaurants with my classmates and hanging out with Laura before she goes back to the US :( Laura and I tried out a crêperie we had both been wanting to try, Crêperie Bretonne Fleurie (67 rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris), a very quaint creperie with Breton knick knacks scattered all over. I had a galette with tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions which was crispy, slightly buttery and delicious. The dessert crepe was just ok - I enjoyed the confiture de lait (similar to dulce de leche) that was on top but the consistency of the crepe was too soft for me. Most of my classmates and I have eaten good galettes in Paris but have yet to find a crepe that's up to our incredibly high standards - we're on a mission. 

Window decor at the crêperie 

Crêperie Bretonne Fleurie

Fenny and Desirée (two of my classmates) and I went to Carl Marletti (51, rue Censier, 75005 Paris) one afternoon because Fenny and another classmate had been raving about it. Desirée and I ordered the Lily of the Valley and Fenny ordered a lemon tart. The Lily of the valley is a pastry with several components including mini choux pastry puffs filled with violet/blueberry cream stuck on a puff pastry square with more violet/blueberry cream and topped with a violet/sugar piece. This is by far one of the best pastries I've ever tasted! The flavors were perfectly balanced, the choux pastry was cooked to perfection and the whole thing was incredibly light even though it contained lots of cream. Fenny's lemon tart was amazing and apparently infamous - people are always waiting for them to come out of the oven. If you ever get the chance to go, eat outside and you'll be served your chosen pastry with mint flavored water on an elegant black plateau - very chic. I also bought a caramel eclair to take with me and it was divine -crunchy crumble topped choux with a light caramel topping and the creamiest caramel filling you've ever tasted. As the French say...miam, miam! 

Lily of the Valley at Carl Marletti 

Dessert case at Carl Marletti 

Desserts on the terrace = perfection 

I've been to a few restaurants lately but will have to save those for another post - this one is already long. But, before I forget, I did attend two interesting events over the last two weeks. Two weekends ago, Desirée and I went to Salon Saveurs et Gourmandes, a food expo with regional specialties from France, Italy and Germany. We tasted our way through the expo for three hours and sampled everything from fresh Parmesan cheese, white truffle butter, every type of oil imaginable, chocolate, ice cream, vodka, and so much more. When we left, our bags were pretty heavy after buying some of the delectable goodies that we were drawn to buy after tasting them and our stomachs were pretty confused after the range of things we ate. 

Marzipan creations at Salon Saveurs 

Biggest mortadella I've ever seen! 

Last week, Laura and I went to see a book reading by David Lebovitz, a former American pastry chef living in Paris who recently published a book about his life in Paris. If you are ever in Paris and need to hear some good old American English, head to WHSmith, an English bookstore at 248, rue de Rivoli. Being surrounded by David Lebovitz's following of Americans in France was surreal - I'm pretty sure I didn't hear a word of French all evening. It was interesting to hear David speak about being an American in Paris and I sympathized and laughed about certain things that us Americans collectively remark about the French. His book, The Sweet Life in Paris, which I read over vacation, had me laughing out loud (I attracted quite a few stares from the Portuguese and French) and contains some good recipes if you're interested. 

The infamous David Lebovitz 

Laura at the Jardin de Tuilerie

I'm off to get ready for our 2nd to last restaurant service. I'm on plated desserts tonight and since there are three of them, it should be a pretty "interesting" evening ;) 

More about my vacation in Portugal later...here's a picture to whet your appetite. 

Vegetarians who eat bacon, burn themselves with caramel, twist pretzels, lose their keys and still have time to dance!

What a long week! We were only in class from Monday-Thursday but we spent 48 hours at 28, rue de l'Abbé Grégoire cooking, tasting wine, burning our fingers, rejoicing over our last drawing class and making lots of yummy bread. The reason our schedule was so full this week is because we had so many "extra" classes. Even though we're studying pastry, we also have cuisine, wine, drawing, and bakery classes all of which we had this week on top of having Friday off - it was an interesting week to say the least. 

We started off the week in cuisine with a new chef, Alain Montassier, our school's charcuterie chef. As the charcuterie chef, he knows everything there is to know about pork (a vegetarian's best friend!), catering, and savory pastries. Three different items were on the menu: Quiche (vegetable and quiche Lorraine with pork belly chef cured himself), tatin de chèvre(layers of smoked ham, potatoes and goat's cheese topped with a puff pastry crust) and gnocchi parisienne (tart shells filled with a creamy cheese sauce and cubes of poached choux dough). I chose to make vegetable quiche (what a surprise) and it was delicious, especially since it had more vegetables than egg filling. The tatin de chèvre was every one's favorite, even mine - you can't go wrong with potatoes, ham/bacon, goat's cheese and puff pastry. My classmates couldn't get over the fact that I ate a tatin even though it had smoked ham that was cut like bacon. What can I say...I have a thing for bacon. The gnocchi was not my thing mainly because it was really rich and chef added a healthy dose of rum to my recipe - I've never seen a culture put rum in so many things! 

Veggie quiche 

Tatin de chèvre

We spent the rest of the week burning ourselves and cursing in pain also known as making croquembouche. Croquembouche is a traditional wedding "cake" in France that has four main elements: nougatine for the base/decorations, royal icing to decorate the nougatine, chox pastry, and caramel. Two of these elements, nougatine and caramel proved to be our worst enemy. If you had walked into the pastry lab when we were making the nougatine or putting the croquembouche together with ridiculously hot caramel (300-350 degrees Fahrenheit) you would have seen the burn dance - jumping up and down and saying/screaming choice words while you waited for the caramel to cool down enough so you could remove it without removing your skin too. Sounds like fun doesn't it? My croquembouche came out a little off kilter but not too shabby for my first time. 

Croquembouche

We ended the week in the bakery sauna making pretty much any bread we wanted to - our chef gives us free range and we run with it. My partner and I made pain viennoise which is kind of like brioche but softer, pain de mie (sandwich bread) and pretzels! Chef showed us how to twist the pretzels and we were off. At the end of class, I was super excited to go home so I could relax and take a shower after the sauna like conditions in the bakery but the powers that be had another plan in mind. When I went down to the locker room to open my locker, I looked in my bag and realized that my keys decided to escape and go on an adventure - they were nowhere to be found. I dumped my bag and searched everywhere but could not find my keys. To make a long story short, I decided to check with security for the 2nd time (the 1st time I clearly asked the wrong person) to see if anyone had turned in keys and...they had my keys! Note to self - make sure keys are secured before leaving the locker room.

Wonsang mastering pretzel twisting

Pretzels

I had a really good three day weekend complete with a lovely dinner and a delicious Ladurée breakfast with some fellow classmates, dancing the night away with Laura in the very classy Pigalle area and taking a 3 hour African dance workshop = sweat fest.  

I'm compiling a list of food places I've been to in the past few weeks which is why I haven't gone into detail about places I've been to recently. We have a calm week ahead so hopefully I can make some progress on it. 

A much overdue update

I've finally decided to hunker down at the kitchen table to give an update(sorry it's been so long) which might prove harder then I thought. I'm going to have to dig pretty deep to remember what happened two weeks ago especially since these past few weeks have been jam packed with food and adventures that all seem to blend together. Here we go...

After spending a week doing chocolate work, we were all looking forward to getting back to pastry. To be more specific, I was definitely looking forward to pastry again. We started off week 18 in the kitchen doing cuisine for the second time with Chef Schaefer. Again, we made a menu based on the ingredients we were provided and some direction from Chef Schaefer. I'm always excited about cuisine class because it's rare and we get to eat what we make for lunch instead of cafeteria food.  However, this time, I was a little skeptical when chef threw out some of his ideas for the menu. Has it ever crossed your mind to combine sweet potatoes or cauliflower with passion fruit? It clearly crossed chef Schaefer's mind; he proposed making a sweet potato/passion fruit soup and a cauliflower/passion fruit soup. All of you know that my emotions make themselves known through my facial expressions and the chef got the message that sweet potato or cauliflower + passion fruit = hmmm, I don't think so in my mind. Yes, I know I'm in the culinary field and therefore expected to try new things but I didn't see how in the world that combination was going to work. That's how I ended up making sweet potato/passion fruit soup on a Monday morning in Paris. 

Besides the soup, I also made vegetable chips (sweet potato/beet/zucchini) and a bulgur/vegetable salad while my classmates tackled veal with ratatouille, scallops cooked in various ways, chicken breast mousse, homemade sausage, etc. When it came time to taste the infamous sweet potato/passion fruit and cauliflower/passion fruit soup, I took a spoonful of each with an open mind and quickly realized that my taste buds were closed to the idea of this "interesting" combination. I tried, I really did. At the end of the class, the chef said to me laughingly, "Keep the passion, but without the fruit!" Amen to that. 

Zucchini chips

Sweet potato/passion fruit and cauliflower/passion fruit soup

Scallop seviche

Homemade pork/vegetable sausage

Our cuisine buffet

We spent the rest of the week making 4 different entremets (layered cream/sponge cakes). Entremets are the beautifully decorated cakes you see in pastry shop windows and now I know the secret to making them! Between starting the different layers of our entremets on Tuesday and finishing them on Thursday, we had restaurant service. This service was a little more hectic than the others because certain elements of the plated desserts were still being made when service had already began. Luckily, I was on pre-desserts and we made a lemon spoom - unstabilized sorbet mixed with meringue. Whoever decided to combine these two elements is a genius - we couldn't stop eating the leftovers! We received more rave reviews after service so all in all, it was a pretty good night. 

Spoom

Macaron ananas estragon - Hazelnut/szechuan pepper macaron filled with anis pastry cream and tarragon spiked pineapples

Mogador - Raspberry soaked chocolate genoise with chocolate whipped cream and fresh raspberries topped with raspberry jam and coated with cake crumbs

Equateur (pronounced egg-water by our chef ;)) - coffee daquoise layered with crème brulée and coffee flavoured St. Honore cream with a caramelized sugar crust

Fraimboisie - A shell of pistachio joconde/dacquoise filled with vanilla St. Honore cream and raspberries topped with pistachio buttercream and raspberry swirled glaze

We were off on Friday (thank goodness!) so I went out to a delicious lunch with a few classmates and bummed around Montmartre with the 5 million tourists who had the same idea.  Those 5 million tourists and I spent the rest of the weekend walking around Paris and enjoying the blue skies and spring sun ;)