I wanna see your peacock, cock, cock! Your peacock, cock!

Come on, baby, let me see what you're hiding underneath

(Katy Perry- Peacock)

Intermediate Lesson 15- Berry

For reasons I don't want to go into, I had a pretty messed up night last night that resulted in having an alcohol-induced lack of sleep (less than 3 if you don't count the terrible sleep I had on the Eurostar). We had the day off yesterday and I went to London. Because of a situation I was kept up until 4 am despite having a 7 am international train ride. Oh and in my drunken state I thought it would be a good idea to wake up at 6:30am. So I had half an hour to get dress/pack/check out/hail a cab/go to St. Pancras/ go through security / go through UK and French border control/ board my train. Luckily I made it on my train at 6:59. The result was a head-splitting, earth-spinning, daydreaming Chef Kwok in practical.

Good thing that the dish was fairly simple. We prepared a Coq au Vin dish from the Berry region, which is a place that you probably wouldn't even stop for gas on your French road trips. Although this was a Coq au Vin, the school didn't give us roosters to play with because those would take too long to cook. Instead we cooked with normal chicken.

 

Boom Pow!

The dish was pre-marinated for us by the preparation staff (thank you!), and so the chicken was soaked for over a day in red wine by the time we got our materials. The whole thing was pretty simple. Pan sear the chicken so they get nicely browned, and then cook the thing in the liquid with some aromatic garnishes in the oven at 200C. We served it with some crutons, fried bacon and wine-pickled onions.

Ughh we have another 2 more classes coming up right after this.

Quotes from this class:

After preparing a meat pie in demo class (that we sadly did not make)

Demo Chef Vaca: We are going to let you take photos of the pate first, since we'll have to cut it to serve you.

STUDENTS MAD DASH TO TAKE PICTURES OF THE PATE

Chef Vaca: No wait. I need to put it on a presentation plate! No! Stop! Don't take photos of it on a baking sheet! You are just like my adolescent children! Go away!

Students continue taking pictures.

Ay-ee Ay-ee Ayee I'm your little butterfly...

Green black and blue make the colors in the sky...
(SMiLE.dk- Butterfly)

Lesson 11- Chicken Stuffed meat

Ooph another 4 class day. We are now one week into the intermediate intensive class, and we are already on lesson 11.

We prepared half a dish for this class, a chicken stuffed with foie gras mousse and pistachios called a ballotine, along with practicing how to make hollandaise sauce, which we've made before in basic. Therefore, sorry, but there's no pretty dish photos for this class. Here's a picture of my hollandaise.

Pew Pew!

The school didn't provide a recipe for the hollandaise sauce, and honestly I don't remember how to make one at all. I remember that you put in lemon, because last time I added too much lemon. I think eggs are involved because we have to emulsify it with some kind of fat, clarified butter I think? Also I remember we have to heat it over a bain-marie while whisking it until our arms come off. But I had no idea about the proportions. Oh it's 3 egg YOLKs, not regular eggs. And what? Cayenne pepper involved? Do we need to season it with salt? I wa so confused. Apparently the hot water I had in my bain-marie was not hot enough, and I whisk a long time for my eggs to become ready. It should turn from a bubbly texture to a creamy smooth texture. Then you take it off heat and whisk in clarified butter very (very) slowly. I've never knowingly eaten Hollandaise sauce outside of cooking school, and I really didn't know what kind of flavor we were aiming for, so I asked my friendly neighbor Christian to taste my sauce. " Hmm needs more lemon." "Really? I put in less lemon this time because last time I put in too much." "Yeah it's too buttery right now." So I went off to find any lemon juice I could find. Since all of my classmates have used their lemon, I had to scavenge for any residual juice on the used lemons, which gave very little juice. When Chef Ju tasted my sauce, she said it was "too much lemon." Great. Second attempt, same result.

We spent most of our time preparing our stuffed chicken. The trick was to cut out all of the meat of the chicken from the top (spine) of the chicken, instead of the breast side where we always started from, and try to keep the entire chicken meat in one piece. We then took out the leg and wing bones. That was pretty cool. It's like taking off the meaty jacket of the bird. When I spread the single piece of boneless chicken on the table, it looked like a butterfly and was quite beautiful in a macabre way. Oh god I sound like that creepy dude from American Beauty.

Anyways, we wrapped pork forcemeat and pistachio into the chicken, with a long piece of foie gras in the middle, and rolled it like a maki roll, then cooked it in a court bouillon. The process should take at least 1.5 hours, but I only had time to boil it for 1 hour. At 45 minutes my internal temperature was still at 59C, when the target temperature was 65C. I really hope the extra 15 minutes in the water was sufficient to bring up the temperature. We will return to the dish tomorrow.

Wrapping the top of my stock pot with tin foil to maintain the temp.

Hopefully the chicken will keep cooking inside. Hopefully..

The biggest surprise today was actually how we received the chicken. As mentioned, I feel pretty comfortable with preping a bird by now. However, the chicken we received today still had its head attached, and its internal organs completely where they are not suppose to be. I therefore had to chop off its head, deal with its trachea, and stick my hand up its @$$ and pull out all of its organs anal-probe style. At least it's already plucked and bled. This is before you do any of the other required steps in preping a chicken.

Is it looking at me??

As mentioned, we will return to this dish tomorrow.

Quote from this class:

Midway though demo class:

Student 1 talking on the side during class: Is the French word for ambulance ambulance? Or Smur?

Demo Chef Poupard: Nonononononononono! Ambulance, c'est ambulce en français, not Smur!

Student 1: Really? Are you sure?

Chef Poupard: Yes, I am very sure. There are two meanings of ambulance, ambulance for transporting supplies and ambulance for transporting people. Both are for medical related reasons.

Student 1: Then what is a Smur?

Chef Poupard: Smur has a doctor on board. Ambulance don't.

Student 2: Why are we talking about ambulances in the middle of class????

Chef Poupard felt pretty strongly about this subject because he used to be a fireman, and firemen in France have ambulance responsibilities as well.

No one fights like Gaston! Douses lights like Gaston!

And now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs! So I'm roughly the size of a barge!
(Beauty and the Beast- Gaston)

Intermediate Lesson 05- Burgundy

Our magical Cordon Bleu tour of French regions takes us to Burgundy today, with a dish by the name of "Gaston Gerard" Style Free-Range Chicken with a Morvan-style "Crapiaux."

Pow-pow!

Gaston Gerard was the mayor of Dijon, and this dish was apparently created by his wife in the 1930s. The chicken itself was done pretty simply: pan sear and then braise in the oven. The sauce was a delicious chicken stock mixed with a few spices, cream and mustard. We served the dish with a Morvan style pancake which incorporates potatoes, yeast, herbs and fluffed egg-whites, giving the pancake a particular fluffiness. We also put a herbal salad that I didn't  enjoy eating because the class assistant accidentally brought cilantro instead of parsley to use. I guess it's really my fault since I didn't notice when I mixed the salad. I like cilantro, but not when it is served as a salad.....

The weirdest thing about this dish is that the skin of the chicken is supposed to be taken off the meat before serving, but the skin is the best part of the chicken! Sorry Chef, I'm keeping my chicken skin on. My sauce apparently contains too much mustard, even though I already halved the quantity. My pancake was definitely well done, if I may say so myself. I have to admit, if there is one thing I learned how to cook living in America, it is how to make a good pancake. This pancake is extra fluffy because it's got yeast and egg-whites, similar to the famous pancakes at Clinton St. Baking Company in New York City, making the pancakes extra fluffy.

One thing I noticed about this term is that the demonstration chefs have consistently run out of time. They would go through the dish at a reasonable pace, and then during the last half an hour basically fly through the finish of the dish, which is problematic because a lot of us just get lost at the steps that they skipped or didn't explain. There's a lot of "Now in practical you should cook it that way, but I'm running low on time so we will do it this way." So confusing. I hope this doesn't become a pattern.

Quote from this class:

"At Cordon Bleu, each chef has his way of doing things. You may think it's annoying, but some chefs consider this an advantage. When you leave the school, you'll digest all the information and take the things that suit you most."

-Demo Chef Caals,

after a student complained how chefs constantly gave very

conflicting advice on the "right" way of preparing ingredients

"Every country has its weird thing to eat. In France we have escargots. It's something that many people go 'ew...' when they see it on a plate."

- Demo Chef Caals,

On Escargots

Don't Stop Me Now! I'm Having Such A Good Time! I'm Having A Ball.

Don't Stop Me Now! If You Wanna Have A Good Time, Just Give Me A Call!
(Queen- Don't Stop Me Now)

Intermediate Lesson 01- Basque Country

I'm so excited to start my intermediate class at Le Cordon Bleu! Basic Cuisine was a blast, and I just want to keep learning more dishes and techniques.

The Cordon Bleu classes in November-December is intensive, meaning that we go more than twice the speed than the regular program. By the end of this week, we will reach lesson 10 (!). The good news is it will be over in less than four weeks. Lets hope I don't get sick or injured during this time.

Anyways, today's dish is a Basque-style Chicken Sauté.

Wham! We served the chicken

The dish incorporates some Esplette pepper, which is from the Basque region. We also served it with a pilaff rice with saffron, sautéed jambon and peppers typical of the Basque region. The bird itself was cooked sear-braised style

Perhaps it's been a long time since I've worked in a high pressure kitchen, or maybe I just suck, but I kept making mistakes in the kitchen. First mistake was I accidentally stabbed my left hand while cutting the raw chicken thigh. I've done this more than a dozen times over the last few months, so how did I screw up? Blood started gushing out and my uniform was all bloody and stained. Luckily, I had Chef Poupard as my practical chef (THANK YOU CHEF GUO FOR TELLING ME HIS NAME), who promptly brought me to the first aid section. The cut itself wasn't that deep, but he very clearly used the same level of focus to meticulously examine my cut and treated it as he used when he plated his dishes during our demonstration, which I really appreciated. This is a solidly good chef who cares about his students.

I thanked him and went back to 2GS to continue cooking. Sadly, I made more mistakes such as browning my vegetables and undercooking my chicken. Sorry chef. I hate disappointing people I look up to.

Surprisingly, Chef Poupard said my chicken was cooked perfectly (despite it being very bloody and red inside). I just don't understand French tolerance for raw meat. His feedback to me were mainly that I should have placed my chicken behind my garnishes so the round shape of the plate can compliment the shape of my chicken. Also he wanted my rice to be cooked softer. I pushed back and said said that I thought we needed our rice Al Dente, but apparently the only type of rice that we cook to Al Dente is Risotto. Everything else should be more douc, softer.

Quotes from this class:

"If I see someone using their cellphone in class..." *PAUSES... then takes out his rolling pin* "Let's just say.... " *Smashes the rolling pin on the table... SMILES* "  I'll smash it into pieces. Or it'll go into the deep fryer."

-Demo Chef Poupard

Setting ground rules on the first demonstration class of the term.

Demo Chef Poupard: How much do you think 10 grams of saffron costs?
Student1: 20 Euros!
Student2: 100 Euros!
Student3: 8 Euros!
Demo Chef Poupard: 8 Euros? Madam! *Runs over to the student and shakes her hand* I will buy 1 kilograms from you for that price and go on vacation!
Answer was around 40 Euros for 10 Grams. Higher quality saffron will cost more.

I threw it on the GROUND! You must think I'm a joke!

I'm not part of your system, My dad's not a PHONE! DUH
(Lonely Island- Threw it on the Ground)

Lesson 25- Chicken Sauté

The dish of the day is Chicken Sauté with Tarragon and Italian Style Vegetables.

Kaboom!

"Italian style" just means that we cut the vegetables into angled thick pieces, roast it with olive oil and mix some basil leaves into the veg. This is not culturally stereotyping at all.

The chicken was pretty interesting because we've fileted chicken before, but this time we cut the chicken into pieces with the bones attached first, cook the chicken pieces with the bone to retain their shape and then cut out the bones just before serving Don't forget the Oyster, which is called "sot-l'y-laisse" in French because it means only a fool would leave it on the chicken. We pan seared the meat and then "sauté-ed" them, though in my book we were basically braising the bird since we were cooking it in a veal stock liquid over heat. Something I learned today- chicken breast takes about half the time needed by dark meat to cook, so if you don't want to overcook your chicken breast you should take them out ahead of time. As per usual the braising liquid is reduced and turned into a delicious sauce flavored with tarragon.

Our practical chef today was the wonderful Chef Ju. She's a very friendly chef from Korea who spoke perfect French and English. She gives a lot of helpful tips to students and likes to engage in friendly banter with us. For example she was complaining to me how painful and useless her Chinese Cupping therapy session was.

One thing you learn very quickly is to always clean and clear your station. One of the most frequent commands by the practical chefs is "Débarrassez-le!" (Clear that!), followed by a hapless student saying "Oui chef." Another thing you hear a lot is "C'est pas propre!" (It's not clean!), again followed by a hapless student saying "Oui chef." You learn to wash and wipe your knives, your cutting board, your table, your cooking station, everything all the time. You get rid of trash whenever you're not cutting. In fact, at the end of every class, one of the grading criteria is your cleanliness, in addition to your food. It's actually quite refreshing to always have a clean station ready for the next ingredient.

Nevertheless, one thing I noticed about the chefs is, despite their obsession with clean stations, they don't care much about the cleanliness of the ground. When the chef examines your station, he/she rarely inspects the floor. Obviously don't throw a banana peel on the ground, but we've been wiping bits of scraps off the table and onto the floor, and so far no one has ever complained about water or chopped shallots on the ground. Frankly I find it quite dangerous, even though we all wear slip-resistant kitchen shoes. Someone can easily slip and fall. But then we're not graded on how well we walk either, so I guess if one is pressed for time, throwing things on the ground is the most efficient way to clean your station!

Quotes from this class:

"All the cuisine chefs at Le Cordon Bleu are better than the pastry chefs. Why? Every chef here can teach at least the basic pastry classes. But can the pastry chefs teach basic cuisine?" *EVIL GRIN*

- Demo Chef Vaca

During practical class,  after Chef Ju explained something in French too quickly...

Me: Pardon Chef, est-ce-que vous pouvez le-répéter en anglais? (Excuse me chef, can you repeat that in English?)

Chef Ju: *GLARE* On est en FRANCE! (We are in FRANCE!)

Me: C'est vrai, chef. (That is true, chef.)

Chef Ju: Et en France, on parle en français! (And in France, we speak in French!)

Me: Oui Chef....

Chef Ju was just giving me a hard time, she eventually explained in English.

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.

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.