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!")