And if you go chasing rabbits...

And you know you're going to fall...
(Jefferson Airplane -White Rabbit)

Lesson 13- Traditional Recipes

Today's menu was braised rabbit meat.

The resulting dish from the demo

I actually really like rabbit meat. It's lean, tasty and something one doesn't come across all that often where I am from.

Of course cooking it is an entirely different matter. We each had a full rabbit (skinned) to work with, and have to learn about the different cuts and split the creature into different bits. The material itself was pretty disgusting. We're not allow to take photos of the kitchen during class, but I just had to snap a few photographs:

The "raw" material.

Step one is to CHOP off its head. Step 2 is to cut out its front and rear legs. Step 3 is.... Okay I'll stop.

Pair of front legs and hind legs from the rabbit I had.

Overall, I was not as traumatized as some other classmates of mine. To me it was just another ingredient to work with. Another day in the kitchen.

I think I did pretty well in this class, with my only fault being I didn't reheat my rabbit when I plated it. The meat was sitting out for around half an hour, and I should have thrown it into the oven for a few minutes just to get it warm again. The first words that Chef Terrien, our practical chef, said was "C'est foid!"Okay. Lesson learned. Chef Terrien was actually very nice and was very supportive, but he made it very clear that he would come down hard on us if we made the same mistakes the next time we have him.

Rabbit with mustard

Cut the rabbit, then sear the individual pieces on a hot pan.

Remove rabbit and saute onions, rosemary, garlic cloves and shallots on the same pan 

Brush mustard onto rabbit and put the pieces back onto the pan. Deglaze with white wine and chicken stock

Put into oven for ~15-25 minutes.

Take out. Reserve rabbit pieces and reduce the remaining liquid.
Saute the rabbit liver. Keep the insides pink.

When sauce is done reducing, put in mustard with whipping cream.

Strain sauce. Reheat rabbit meat.
Remember to season!

Serve

Boom

Quotes from this class:
"You did very well today, Howard. That's all I can tell you. You have to improve on a few things but I've told you what they are. Next time I will be paying close attention to you, and you better not make the same mistakes again." -Chef Terrien after I asked if I could see my grade for this class.

Demo Chef Stril: Each student will have his own rabbit to cut and cook.
Female students: *GASP* No!!!

Comme tout le monde j'ai mes défauts....

J'ai pas toujours les mots qu'il faut...
(Natasha St-Pier - Tu Trouveras)

Lesson 12- Stuffings - Part 2

For today's class we learned how to fillet a raw chicken and stuff forcemeat into the breast meat. As we learned last class, forcemeat is a mixure of ground lean meat with fat. This class, we created the forcemeat with a food processor (Robo-coup en français), turning chicken breastmeat into a very lightly textured purée called mousseline forcemeat. We stuffed the purée into the chicken breasts and served it with a delicious mushroom cream sauce.

Yummy food.

To my surprise, the challenge today was in fact not cutting the bird, but instead learning how to "turn" a mushroom.

We're suppose to cut a mushroom like THIS?

Needless to say I completely screwed up my mushrooms. Luckily no one in my group did really well here.

However, even the mushroom paled in comparison to my biggest challenge today- leaving my keys in my apartment and locking myself out. I had no access to my knives and uniform until 9pm, and my class would start at 6:30pm. After a few frantic phone calls, I managed to convince Jonathan, a friendly Canadian classmate from another section, to lend me his equipment and uniform. Thank you Jonathan. I don't even know your last name.

Still I didn't have my notes to cook with, and I had to fly blind, trying to do everything from memory. I was so angry at myself for this screw-up, but I guess nobody is perfect.

Quote from this class:

"You should be glad that I am too tall to see your face. But I know who you are. You should know you really shouldn't sit in the last row. There's a seat in the first row calling your name. Come. Really, come down and sit in the first row. It'll do you wonders." - Demo Chef Legué, after a student in the last row asked a question with a fairly obvious answer.

I'm on a BOAT And It's Going FAST And...

I Gotta Nautical Themed Pashmina Afghan!
(Lonely Island- I'm On A Boat (ft. T-Pain))

Lesson X- Boat cruise edition

So no class today, but the entire basic cuisine and patisserie class was brought onto a bateau mouche lunch cruise along the River Seine. This is supposed to be a regular tradition in Cordon Bleu, and people in the past have had a lot of fun. Frankly I had such low expectations because bateau mouches are reputably such tourist traps. Surprisingly the food was really good not bad, definitely defied expectations, and we all had a real good time. I think the magical ingredient in this meal is the ample amount of wine they served us. Point is the weather was nice and everyone was happy.

 Chef Bogen giving a speech in both English and French

It was so weird to see everyone from school not in uniform. You mean people in this school actually look normal in real life?

Group I with Chef Bogen

More Group I love

The trip was very lovely, and we all were so sad when it ended at 3. but don't worry, there were so many after parties all over town. Our group went to Montmartre.

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed today because I expected more chefs to be present on the cruise. It turned out only Chef Bogen from cuisine, and I think Chefs Quéré and Mahut from pastry were on the boat. It would have been great to talk to more chefs outside of a classroom and get to know them on a personal level and to know their stories. Maybe next time.

 

Cheers!

Quote from this class:
Chef Bogen (end of speech): I hope that everyone will have fun today!
Students: OUI CHEF! :D

Baby Grind with Me

Relax your mind take your time on me
Pretty Ricky - Grind With Me

Lesson 11- Forcemeat Stuffings- Part 1

Today we learned about making forcemeat stuffings. Forcemeat is made from a mixture of ground lean and fat meat "forced" through a grinder. The fat is necessary to grease the grinder, and you would start the grinder by forcing some chunks of pork fatback through before putting other pieces of meat through. This is the stuffing used in dishes such as sausages and pâtés, although we are just going to wrap the forcemeat with tenderized veal.

Stuffed veal rolls with glazed vegetables

Perhaps I still have a juvenile mind, but  when I saw the demo chef and assistant forcing meat down grinder I totally understand what people mean when they say "Laws are like sausage. It is better not to see them being made."The way the meat was forced out of the metal tubes all mushed together in a paste... I mean a fecal joke was just waiting to happen (it did, see below). It also didn't help that for whatever reason the grinder was going very slow with the food and the chef and assistant both pushed down really hard to force the meat through the system grinder for a good few minutes. Later on we found out it was because the grinder was set to its lowest setting, and after some adjustment the grinder processed through all the meat in short order.

I was supremely disappointing to learn that in our practical class the forcemeat would have been prepared for us already, and all we had to do was to marinate it and cook the damn thing. Maybe in the future I can try my hands on using a meat grinder.

We also learned how to make turned vegetables, which is this very complex way of cutting a large carrot into tiny bite size carrots shaped like an American football (or rugby, if you may). Do they not have baby carrots in France? Così should open a Parisian store and educate the masses here.


Quote from this class:
"I think the grinder is constipated. Just push harder! That's why they call it 'forcemeat'." -The translator providing colorful commentary as both the chef and assistant struggled to push meat through the grinder

RED- The Blood of Angry Men! BLACK- The Dark of Ages Past!

Lesson 5- Commonly Used Doughs- Part 2

We continued our education in doughs. This time we learned how to make a quiche. Specifically, we made Quiche Lorraine, a bacon quiche from the Lorraine region of eastern France. The dish itself was pretty straightforward- Make dough> rest dough> sweat bacon> prep filling> mold dough> fill dough> cook quiche. Boom.

I also learned something else today: abaisser is the word in french for rolling out a dough with a rolling pin. Previously, I only knew abaisser's other meaning, to oppress, because the student revolutionary group of Mr heartthrob Marius in Les Miserable is called Les Amis de l'ABC, a pun on the french pronunciation of ABC. So when the chef kept saying "I abaisse the dough this way, then turn it 90 degrees and abaisse it this way. Don't abaisse the dough too hard..... " I couldn't help but think about "Red and Black" from Les Miz.

Boom

I was so happy that my quiche came out perfectly

Quiche Lorraine

Dough:
200g flour
100g butter
pinch of salt
1 egg
2 tbsp of water
Mix dry, Mix wet. Combine, knead and let rest for at least 20 minutes

Garnish :
Slice slab of bacon into small bits, then sweat
Grated gruyere cheese

Fillings:
3 eggs
250ml cream
salt, pepper, nutmeg

Oven should be around 180C. Blind bake crust first, then put in filling.

Quote from this class:
"Has anyone been to the Lorraine region? It's the old coal mining provence of France in the east. Cold, gray. The food therefore has to be more robust. The people there were miners, so big men who worked very hard. They're also some of the nicest people you'll meet. And on the weekend they play football. Very good football. During their free time they like to ride their bicycles around town, you know, ring ring. It's a pity people don't visit there more often. It's really beautiful. The trees are lush and green. Wow never have I talked so much about a region! Where was I on the dish?" -Chef Stril on Lorraine

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...

That's Amore!
(Dean Martin- That's Amore!)

Lesson-4  Commonly used doughs- Part 1

Today's class was on doughs, and we focused on making Pissaladiere, a French interpretation of pizza from Provence. Instead of a cheese and tomato sauce base, the dish used caramelized onions, and is topped by typical Mediterranean ingredients such as olives, anchovies and tomatoes.

I was pretty depressed after the fiasco last class. So I thought the best way to cheer up myself was to ace the next class. I took copious amount of notes during the demo, reviewed the notes, and made sure I knew exactly what I would be doing before entering my practical class.

Of course, no amount of planning could fully prepare a person for the heat and pressure in a kitchen. Right off the bat I screwed up the amount of olive oil in my dough, effectively rendering my dough too wet. I poured in an incredible amount of flour hoping to dry my dough but at the same time fearful that I'd overcompensate and make my dough too dry. I managed to stabilize the situation and let the dough rest.

Then I screwed up the caramelizing of my onion. A friendly classmate walked by my station and said "I think your garlic is burnt in your onions." Shit, what should I do now? I decided that I was so determined to do well this class that I had to chuck the entire pan of onion and garlic out and refire. Fuck it. I am not letting some stupid garlic ruin my dish.

The end product was fantastic. The chef that day (Chef Vaca) was very impressed by my pie crust, which was golden brown but still soft. He said the only comment he could give me was that my onions could have been softer, which made sense because I refired my onion and didn't have enough time to cook them thoroughly.

I was so happy with my product. Here's a victory pose:

 

I think my expression sum up how I felt

Pissaladiere:
200g flour
Yeast
5g salt
5 g sugar
2 Tbsp of olive oil (Not 3!)
60ml water
1 egg

Garnish with caramelized onions. Top with anchovies, olives, tomatoes, ete.

By the way: I love the French and French cuisine, but honestly leave pizza making to the Italians. I know a pissaladiere isn't the same thing as pizza, and the cooking methods of the two are pretty distinct, but pissaladiere is definitely a relative of the pizza. Sadly I would say they are the ugly cousin of the Italian pizza, below the New York or Chicago pizzas. The Pissaladiere's dough was too thick and fluffy, and frankly a pizza without the tomato sauce or cheese just tastes weird.

Tip of the day: If you think anchovies are too salty for your taste, you can soak them in milk to take away much of the saltiness. Pretty cool huh?

Who's that chick? Who's that chick?

Feel the adrenaline moving under my skin...
(David Guetta feat Rihanna - Who's That Chick?)

Lesson 3- Poached Chicken with Supreme Sauce / Common Thickeners

The dish, as cooked by the demo chef

Continuation of our stocks lessons, today we learned about chicken stocks. For practical we focused on poaching a chicken and learning how to make Béchamel sauce, which is one of French cuisine's mother sauces. We used it as a base to make the Sauce Suprême for our chicken.

First we learned about thickening agents. Thickening agents refers to ingredients that we use to thicken a liquid. Common thickening agents include starches (flour, potatos, rice), others include milk, eggs, ete. The instructor was quick to point out that gelatin from bones is NOT a thickening agent, as it alters the property of the liquid by too much. In our class, we focused on roux. White roux refers to mixing flour into melted butter, while brown roux is the same thing but you allow the melted butter to brown first, which would give the roux a deep brown color and a stronger flavor.

Two ways to make Béchamel:

1. Mix cold white roux with hot milk, equal parts
2. Mix hot white roux with cold milk, equal parts

Pour the milk into the roux all at once and whisk vigorously or you will get lumps. Allow the liquid to boil to activate the thickening agent. To make Sauce Suprême, mix in a ton of chicken stock and reduce until it becomes a beautiful creamy texture. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Boom.

For practical, we got a chef who fancies himself as a Darth Napoleon Gordon Ramsey Vader. The guy was 5 feet tall and enjoys walks around humming the Darth Vader Imperial March song while criticizing everyone's cooking methods. He always managed positioned himself next to me every time I screwed up, and mocked how I handled my whisk/chicken/pan/whatever. It was very stressful as I had to manage the poaching chicken, boiling sauce and cleaning my station, all while enduring the Imperial March in the background. I ended up burning my rice in the saute pan, which gave it an unappealing brown color and prevented it from absorbing liquid afterwards. When tasting, the chef spat my rice into the trash and said "This is the shittiest rice I have ever had. You are lucky that this is the last ungraded class!" Thanks chef. I was so demoralized that I just shoved my food into the Tupperware to bring home. I ended up trashing everything.

Reality vs the Dream: 

I realized today that I still have a long way to go

In business school parlance, this would be called a good "failure case." I ended up writing a post-mortem analysis about why I screwed up (better station management, mis-en-place earlier, ete), so this wouldn't happen again. Why did I care so much about what a short chef says about my food anyways?

Quote from this class:
"If you do cut off your finger, you are not allowed to scream, because you will scare everyone. Also do not bleed all over the station or you will have to clean your own blood. Do not ask for help because your finger is gone already. Come on, I am just kidding!" - Demo chef Vaca, while cutting a chicken. No one laughed.

What she order, FISH FILET?

That shit Kray-ze.
(Jay-Z & Kanye West- Niggas In Paris)

Lesson two of Cordon Bleu focused on stocks. Stocks are the basis of many dishes in this school, and I feel that we will be making these quite often. The demonstration class instructor walked us through the many basic stocks, and made a brown veal stock and white sole stock in class. The second emphasis of this class was to learn how to descale and filet a sole. The instructor, with typical grace and dexterity, made the entire process seemed natural and straightforward. I went home that day thinking it wouldn't be too bad.

Our practical class was bright and early at 8:30am on Saturday. We had an Asian chef insturctor, who was friendly and very clear in his instructions. What a contrast to our chef in lesson one! Curiously, I couldn't find this person in the chef's biography file, so I can't find out his name.

Sadly that was basically the only highlight of this class. The processing of the sole took an arm and a leg. Wash>De-fin>Scale>Gut> Take out Eyes>Filet> Skin the filet. The process was painful. I've heard graduates of Cordon Bleu say that the memory of fileting a fish will forever be seared in their minds, and I see exactly what they mean. My first filet was an absolute disaster, with the piece of meat looking more like mash potato than fish filet. Luckily, each fish has 4 pieces of meat (for each quarter of the fish), and we had 2 soles to prepare. Still it was quite nerve-wracking cutting out the fish filet, and then meticulously cutting off the skins.

My hands smelled like sole for the rest of the day, even after a shower and a few hand washes. I will never take a fish filet for granted. Ever.

Review of my dish: Sauce was too thin (I should have Stirred in More Butter). I also folded the fish the wrong way (pretty bone side should be facing out). Finally plating could have been prettier (garnishing, sauce could have been poured better)

Otherwise the fish was actually braised pretty well.

Quel heure est-il où tu es?

Un autre avions et tu repars 
(Simple Plan - Jet Lag ft. Marie-Mai)

I had no class scheduled for today. Cordon Bleu's schedule is known to be quite erratic. Classes can take place during any of the following periods 8:30am-11:30am, 12:30pm-3:30pm, 3:30pm-6:30pm, 6:30pm-9:30pm from Monday to Saturday. Because there are 9 basic groups sharing 3 kitchens with intermediate, advanced and recreational classes, our schedules completely depend on the availability of kitchens and instructors. Cordon Bleu classes are designed so that students can take the basic cuisine and basic pastry classes concurrently, which is advertised as a 40 hours/week commitment. Therefore, for folks like me taking only the regular speed basic class, the advertised class time is 20 hours/week, which sounds incredibly little. The truth is somewhat complicated. First is you would always need to bake in extra time to dress into your cook's uniform because you are not allowed to wear the uniforms outside of school premises for hygene reasons. (You don't want to cook with clothes that have germs and dust all over them). More importantly, because classes can take place any time during the day, there are often awkward times of the day when students have nothing to do. Take one of my weeks as an example:

There are days when I have 3 hour gaps between classes. Days when I have no classes, and quite a few Saturday 6:30pm classes. For students who live far away from school, it just doesn't make sense for them to go home if they have a few hours between classes. Cordon Bleu also provides very few public access rooms for students to hang around, ie just a depressing "Winter Garden" that looks like it was hacked together in the 60s.

All in all, I wish that Cordon Bleu would group all students into clusters of Monday, Tuesday Wednesday and Wednesday Thursday Friday or something like that. This would allow students to work really hard for a few days straight, and then have more efficiently timed free time.

So what did I do on my free day today? I babysitted my niece all day! She's absolutely adorable but I think I've changed enough shit diapers for a lifetime. Well I guess this is growing up.

If only we could just use Slapchops!

Lesson: 1, Knife skills. Veggie Soup. Bacon

Our first dish at LCB was a rustic vegetable soup. Frankly it was quite an unremarkable soup, but it was a thinly veiled excuse to make us cut 8 "vegetables" (more on that later)

Each Cordon Bleu lesson is divided into the demonstration class and practical class, each taking up around 3 hours of our time. Demonstration classes always precede practicals, and missing one demonstration class would bar you from entering the corresponding practical class, giving you 2 absences (6 absences and you will not be allowed to take the final, effectively failing you out). The two classes may or may not be on the same day, and in some cases practical classes may take place 2 days later.

Cordon Bleu's teaching method is to provide students with only ingredients, and chefs would walk students through the cooking instructions during the demonstrations. Students therefore take notes of each step furiously in demonstrations. Luckily, since a translator translate line by line everything the chef teaches in French, students effectively have double the time to write down notes. Correspondingly, students are allowed to ask questions in either French or English, and everything is (generally) translated into the other language.

Back to the soup. The emphasis of this dish is to teach students how to paysanne a vegetable. Paysanne refers to vegetables cut into sticks or triangles then thinkly sliced into about 2-3mm width pieces. We paysanned leeks, potatoes, carrots and daikon radish (nooli) and diced green beans, celery and cabbage. The final vegetable, peas, required no cutting. Why were potatoes categorized as a vegetable? I guess even though they are a carb, they are botanically a vegetable. The soup itself is quite simple: 1. Sweat Bacon 2. Add veg to sweat. 3. Add water 4. Season 5. Serve with dried baguette and grated cheese.

My First Dish at Le Cordon Bleu

The class also touched on other types of cuts in french cuisine such as the Julienne and the burnoise, which we would practice on vegetables, but not put into our soup.

Students are divided into groups of 10 for practical class. For us, our class took place at 3:30pm on the next day. Our class started off very tensely, as our instructor let it be known that he was not going to be easy to work with. As we waited for his command to enter the kitchen at 3:15, he yelled at us for not being prepared already and for slowing down the class. Students who were missing some ingredients had vegetables thrown at them followed by an obligatory "Putain!" To give him credit, he was quite good at explaining techniques to students, and to assist students who needed help. At the end of class, I talked to one of my classmates about how rude I felt the instructor was, to which the classmate says "Non, il n'est pas mechant. Il est.... qu'est-ce que c'est.....il est francais." I guess that explains it.

Quote from this class:
"C'est pas l'armee, mais presque.... Il faut tout le monde fait la meme!" (It's not the armee, but almost.... Everyone must do the same!")

Attention au Départ!

Direction notre histoire!
(Les Enfoirés - Attention au Départ)

Wallet? Check. Navigo? Check. Messenger bag? Check. And here we go.

Today was the start of a new chapter of my life as I will be attending Le Cordon Bleu’s basic and intermediate cuisine classes over the next 4 months. A year ago, I would not have imagined that I would be attending culinary school in Paris this fall. However, when the opportunity appeared, I just had to take it. The feeling is still quite surreal, but I’m very happy that I’ve made this decision.

In this year, I expect to learn the way of classical French cuisine. I hope to improve my French well enough to engage in a sustained and normal conversation with someone. Finally, I hope to become very familiar with the city of Paris, a city that I have always loved.

The first day of school was, as expected, quite unremarkable. I wish the school would do some things to get students excited about cooking or attending school, such as maybe a half an hour quick simple cooking demo that would serve the function of dazzling students. Instead the day was focused more on registrations and logistics. The most exciting part of the day was when we received our equipment: uniforms, knives and Tupperware. It was quite exciting to have something tangible to try on and carry around. We were repeatedly told to mark every one of our equipment so we would not lose them. Theft is as a matter of fact quite common in LCB.

After a few hours of registrations, tours, and rules (never be late, never enter the kitchen before the chef, never wear school uniform when leaving the school), I went off to a cooking equipment store at Etienne-Marcel to buy my safety shoes, which was the only piece of the uniform that was not supplied by the school. Our first actual cooking class starts tomorrow, and I will be updating this blog as I progress through the class.

Quote of the day:

"No jewlery, no watch, nothing on your hand, except the wedding ring (l'alliance), because those can never come off."-when explaining the dress code of Cordon Bleu

Getting excited with all these new toys.