Nessun Dorma! Nessun Dorma!

Tramontate, Stelle! All'alba Vincerò!
(Turandot- Nessun Dorma)

Intermediate Practical Exam (!)

Here we go again. Today's the intermediate exam. They staggered our start time so that the kitchens would not be too crowded, and also to ensure that our dish remained hot when the judges taste our product. I was scheduled to start at 11:30am.

 Last Starbucks run as "Ash"

 Pre-exam selfie. Was sharpening my knives one more time

Martin just finished his exam

("How was it?" "Putain de merde!" "Oh...")

Okay, exam time. I drew the Sea Breams wrapped in lettuce. Not too bad right? My strategy for the exam has always been to stay calm and just work at my own pace. The dishes are designed to be finished in 2 hours, and we had 2.5 hours. Plus we've made the dishes before. I therefore just need to follow the steps that I memorized. Cook the Jerusalem artichoke (which again are neither from Jerusalem nor are artichokes) à l'anglaise. Set the oven to 170C. Prep the shrimp to grind to become fillings. Ete. We also had to prepare a béarnaise sauce as our technical dish, so I began reducing the vinegar+ white wine under very very low heat while I minced the shallots, tarragon and chervil stems. I'll come back to the sauce after I'm done filleting and skinning the fish.

Chef Caals was present almost the entire time proctoring the exam, and Adolpho, his trusty teaching assistant from Argentina was there the whole time helping people and dropping hints. "You might not want your saucepan on such high heat." or "Here's some cut shallots from the previous exam. It'll save you some time." Chef Caals also provided very good time guidance the whole time. "One hour left! Ouard? I didn't hear you." "Oui, Chef...."

When we had half an hour left I realized that I was running behind. By the 15-minute mark, I just put the fish into the oven, which would require 7-8 minutes to cook, and then I would still need some time to reduce the sauce. I ended up keeping the fish in the oven for another minute since an undercooked fish is a fail but a slightly overcooked fish isn't. Oh right, I also haven't done my bearnaise sauce yet. Uh oh.

I started picking up speed and running in beast mode, frantically cutting the tomato for the Jerusalem Artichoke puree and the tarragon + chervil leaves for the bearnaise. When the chef yells "You all have one minute left!" I was still reducing my sauce. I began frantically whisking the egg yolks for my bearnaise. Egg yolk was flying everywhere over my bain-marie. I didn't care. When the fish sauce looked like it was reduced enough, I plated my dish in the worst possible manner and sent it to the judges, who were waiting in the basement. The bearnaise sauce was then plated separately, and I sent it to Chef Caals the moment it was done, and he evaluated the sauce.

"Ouard, t'es 15 minutes en retard." (Howard, you're 15 minutes late.) The chef said.
"Oui Chef, je sais"
"Qu'est-ce qui se passe? You know every minute is 2% off your grade."
"I was going as fast as I could Chef."
"Look, I'm going to write 5 minutes on your evaluation. That's the most I can do. I have to put something down. Are you fine with that?"
"Oui Chef, thank you very much."
"Now sign here."

Shit, I was 15 minutes late. Even if he counted only 5 minutes, that's 10% off my exam grade. I knew that at Le Cordon Bleu there's no grade inflation, unlike my college. My basic exam grade, despite the fact that I actually liked it, was in the 60% range. I was definitely not proud of my sea breams today, so I doubt that I would get a higher grade than in my basic exam. And now I would have 10% off? I'm pissed.

Poor Christian, the friendly American college student in our group, whose sauce was accidentally thrown away during the chaotic last few minutes of his exam. Since he started half an hour after us, we were busy cleaning up our stations as he finalized his dish. Before he knew it, his sauce was gone. Props to him for not panicking, but it still sucked since the essence of his whole dish lied in his sauce, which has dissipated. No one admitted to taking his pan away. I swear man, I certainly didn't. I was nowhere near his stoves. Chef Caals said he would go check with the school director and see if they could evaluate his exam dish without his sauce. I hope he passes.

Oh well, the exam was over. I packed up my stuff and left the practical to change. I felt like crap, I smelled like fish and I had eggs all over my uniform and face because I was whisking so hard to get my bearnaise sauce done.

When I met up with a friend near Centre Pompidou afterwards, I realized that I didn't put cream into my fish sauce, which would completely alter the profile of the sauce. "Oh well, maybe I remembered wrong and I didn't need to add the cream." I told my friend. She replied "But you think you might need to add cream right? Well then, you probably needed to but forgot. Sucks." Thanks, I feel so much better now. This is exactly what friends are for. I checked the recipe later that night. I needed to add cream. Uh oh.

I really don't know how my exam dish is going to turn out. If I fail the class, I'd get a phone call in the next day or two notifying me. It's like the Nobel prize, except you DON'T want the phone call. I'm going to be spending the next few days not sleeping and clinching my phone close.

To be. Continued...

Quote from this class:

"Ummm..... where did my sauce go?"

-Christian,

Uttering probably the last thing one would ever

want to say in a French cuisine practical exam

When Will I See You Again? When Will We Share Precious Moments?

Is this my beginning or is this the end?
(The Three Degrees - When Will I See You Again)

Intermediate Lesson 30- Corsica

Today we had the final demonstration class for the Cordon Bleu Intermediate Cuisine program. Similar to the Basic program, the final class in intermediate had no practical, which meant no one was paying attention I wasn't paying attention. Hey at least I was here. 5 people out of our 19 person program didn't even show up for this 8:30am demonstration class.

The region of focus today is Corsica, the beautiful Mediterranean Island north of Sardinia. Poor Corsica, despite its majestic ocean views and pristine mountains, Cordon Bleu relegated it to the last class with no follow-up practical. Let me tell you something about their cuisine.... Actually, I can't for the life of me tell you what we learned today. Sorry. I think they have a lot of tasty black pigs. I've eaten the black pigs in Sardinia, which were delicious, so I bet the Corsican ones must be delish as well.

Oh, we did learn something interesting- Zucchini flowers, which, if my memory serves me correctly, are the flowers of the zucchini plant. Yes. I bet you didn't know that from its name. And it is also... damn, completely forgot everything else about it.

Zucchini flower. Very interesting stuff.

but what did we use this for again?

Oh I remember now, it's excellent for frying, so we used it in the Vegetable Fritters dish. This dish reminded me of the Japanese Tempura fried vegetables.

What I can tell you is we had sparkling wine at the end of the class. This I remember. So much for my last class ever in Le Cordon Bleu.

YAY for celebration!

The end of the class was actually quite touching, because this was the last day that we would definitely see everyone from class today, well at least the people who showed up. Everyone has different start time tomorrow during the final, so we probably won't see each other, and although there's a graduation ceremony next week, a lot of people will be skipping it. After the demonstration, we all huddled and gave each other hugs, drank sparkling wine, and took lots of photographs. This was also the first time that I stood behind the chef's demonstration table.

 Band of Misfits. It has been grand guys and girls. Thank you!

I just want to say that we also will miss the folks who didn't show up.

Christian, Gulnazi, Martin, Meng, and Random-Chinese-Guy-I've-never-talked-to

Once class ended, I went back to my favorite café near school Le Vaugirad and started studying again. We have an afternoon to study before our exams tomorrow morning. Unlike in basic, I've barely practiced most of the dishes for the exam, and I'm just hoping that the muscle memory that I've acquired throughout the last two months will come into handy.

This photo doesn't look staged at all

Hopefully I'll be fine.

Quote from today's class:

"The little blag pig of Corsica. A very pretty little animal. Wears a thick black robe. Not a robe like on a French woman. I mean the skin. It's got grey droopy ears, a bit chubby. You just wanna pick it up, take it in your arms and cuddle with it."

-Demo Chef Caals,

On the Coriscan Black Pigs

"Don't be worried about the exam! See this quote? 'Athlete leave only records behind!' I like the quote, almost as much as the photo."

-Demo Chef Caals,

Showing us one of those motivational pictures from a magazine.

The accompanying photo is of a very sexy scanty clad woman

Not sure how it relates to the quote
or how this is suppose to motivate us for the exam.

I don't care! I love it!

I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched, I let it burn.

(Iconapop- I love it)

Intermediate Lesson 29- Flanders

Today is our last practical class for the intermediate cuisine class. We made a pan-fried cod steak with flemmish style red cabbage and a beer jus vinigrette. Wait what? YES we are cooking with beer! No more of that sissy wine stuff. We are cooking with BEER! Too bad we didn't even have enough beer for everyone to use according to the ingredients, so none were left for us to "dispense" after class.

Boom!

The atmosphere in the classroom was definitely very relaxed. This was the last class of the term. We've all taken our written exam earlier this week. Most importantly, this dish is not on the list of dishes to prepare for the exam, which meant we didn't really need to learn it. I think House said it perfectly:

 

(Hint: No)

Normally we would all be rushing to take out our knives in the beginning of the class, but today we just took it slow and took some photos of each other. Even the chef came late to the class.

Sitting on the table... big nono!

We wiped it when we got back back down. Don't worry.

After checking in with us, Chef Caals stepped out again and disappeared for another 15 minutes. We of course started playing with our red cabbages, which is really tough balls of really hard purple leaves. I really shouldn't tell you what we did in a public blog, but I can assure you that it was hygienic. Plus we washed them afterwards. But we did get a bit rowdy with the cabbages. It was very clear that none of us cared to start cooking until 10 minutes into the class. I love this group.

I was a bit bummed since I didn't do a good job on it and it was my last practical dish at the school. Though I didn't care about my grade, I wanted to do a good job because this was my last practical class in cooking school ever. I have no intention of taking the superior cuisine class because I don't want to be a professional chef, and I'm not interested in pastry. So I was hoping of whipping up something good to celebrate my last class. Chef Caals instructed us to cut the cod steak straight before cooking them, but I decided to be fancy and cut them escalopé, IE at an angle, because I wanted to make them look fancy for my last day. When I seared the pieces of cod, the pieces just collapsed and broke into pieces as I turned them around. And I know for a fact that it wasn't because I held them too hard because after the first piece I flipped the other pieces gently and they all broke regardless. Really a pity.

Quotes from this class:

"This is a recipe of the North, so I don't want to see any of you using olive oil! Only use peanut oil. People from the North have no sense of flavor. They don't know how to enjoy life. They also never smile. "

-Demo Chef Caals,

Who is from Northern France

Student: Will there be worms in the fish?
Demo Chef Caals: What?
Student: Will we find worms in our fish like we did in the Monkfish?
Chef: Ouai (Yeah)..... maybe.... *evil grin*... they would just add to the flavor anyways...
Student's face turns pale...

I Like My Beat Fast and My Bass Down Low.

Wanna get your mitts in my oven?

(Dev- Bass Down Low)

Intermediate Lesson 27- Salt Crusted Fish

Today we made one of the more interesting dishes in Intermediate- Sea bass in a salt crust, served with a vegetable tart.

The sea bass strikes again! To protect humanity from the ill-tempered fish, the French decided to wrap them in a tough salt crust made of coarse sea salt, flour and herbs. The result was an amazing-looking fish mummy wrapped in a very salty dough. The best part? We didn't have to scale the fish! Still need to gut it with our bare fingers though.

 

 Wow! There's a whole fish in this crust.

You put the entire crusted fish in the oven for 25 minutes or more to ensure that it is well cooked. Some of my classmates burnt their crusts, but luckily the fish still came out well. I guess that's what the crust is there for.

In a restaurant, the entire crusted fish would be wheeled to the diner, and the waiter will fillet the fish in front of the diner. It's so tough that one would have to saw through the dough with a serrated knife. Like this:

 

 Opening the crust like a casket.

The scale and skin stick to the dough and come off naturally.

The waiter would then serve the fish to the client with a beurre blanc sauce, along with the vegetable tart. My tart was a bit burnt. Sorry....

 Boom!

That was pretty awesome. I was pretty bummed that my tart was burnt since I'm usually proud of my tart-making skills. But that was that. The flavoring was fantastic though.

Now before we end, I'd like to announce something new to the blog. But first, some context.

Cordon Bleu provides students with standard issued forks and knives to use. We have a nifty pocket on our left arm to carry these around and look professional. Well the non-conformist in me decided to carry chopsticks as well- a nod to my humble Chinese roots. Some of my classmates noticed that I've been eating everything from the demonstration with my chopsticks. It's true, I use them to eat meat, fish, flan, pies, cakes, even soups, mainly because I'm too lazy to wash another utensil afterwards. Apparently, people think that's hilarious. So today, I am happy to announce the latest series in my blog: 

Can He EAt That with Chopsticks (CHEAT-CHOP)?! 
Cue the "Will it Blend" theme song please.

Yes I always carry my bamboo chopsticks

Today our dessert is caramel ice-cream, which the chef kindly showed us how to do even though we weren't going to make it in practical. Caramel ice-cream is prepared a bit different from standard ice-cream. It's not made with a crème anglaise and so it's softer than usual. Most people would elect to use a spoon for this dish, but Can He Eat That with Chopsticks? That is the question:

Photo evidence, with Gulnazi Photo-bombing

She's eating with Chopsticks too!

A little bit of melting ice-cream is nothing to sweat about! Stay tune for more episodes of.... 

Can He EAt That with Chopsticks (CHEAT-CHOP)?!

Quotes from this class:

Student 1: Hey do we need to salt the fish before we fold in the salt crust?
Student 2: Dude.... you're wrapping the entire fish with a thick salt crust, what do you think?

Me: Chef, why is the appetizer called a Fantasy of Two Salmon? What kind of fantasy is it?
Demo Chef Caals: I didn't come up with that name. The chef who created this dish thought it would be a fantasy if he mixed smoked salmon with fresh salmon, and then serve it with a tropical salad. You know, because cuisine chefs are such poets. I don't know how that is a fantasy...

Don't take me tongue tied... Don't wave no goodbye.....

My eyes on your eyes. Like Peter Pan up in the sky....
(Grouplove- Tongue Tied)

Intermediate Lesson 23- Brittany

We go back up north today, to the northwestern region of Brittany. It's right next to Normandy and shares a lot of similar characteristics with its neighbor. I remember visiting Rennes and Saint-Malo 3 years ago. They were really lovely towns and I'd love to go back and visit other cities in the area.

Our dish today is a Monkfish wrapped in bacon with braised artichokes, broccoli and cauliflower "pannequet."

For this dish, we had to fillet the monkfish, which is so ugly people have to sell them without their heads or no one would buy them. I'm personally not a fan because of its texture. At least we didn't have to scale the thing. We also made blini pancakes with cauliflower and broccoli fillings. Finally, we had to turn two artichokes for the garnishing, and you know artichokes go way back....

We finished a bit late today, at 6:05pm, and as assistants we had to clean up the practical room. Since we had a demonstration class at 6:30pm, most people rushed through their cleanup work and wehad to do more cleaning, in addition to returning the supplies to the storage room in the basement. These two basic cuisine students came in and started nitpicking about how dirty the room was in front of me. Seriously, do you not see us cleaning the place? You still had plenty of time anyways. I told them they had plenty of time, and they just snapped back. "We are assistants! And we need the room now!" I looked at the clock, they still had 10 minutes. Assistants from 2 different classes working together is rather common in this school, since the classes are so tightly packed. Whatever, some people in this school just take themselves too seriously. I've heard of crazy psycho students who steal supplies of other classmates or go into shouting matches with each other over shared space. I'm so glad that my classmates in my last two classes had been normal and cool. We're still very demanding ourselves and work really hard, but I've never had the hostile work environment that some people apparantly experienced.

It's been a long day and we've just finished our third class. After I had everything organized, I was so exhausted that I took a 1 minute power nap before our fourth and final class. Of course my very loving classmates all decided to take photos of me outside of the demonstration room.

Nap Time. Photo credit: Nour

I'm wearing a mask because I'm still pretty sick and don't want to get anyone else sick, and also because we deal with so many food products everyday.

Quotes from this class:

Student: Chef? There's a worm in my fish!
Chef: Yes it's quite normal that there are worms in the fish. That's how you know that it's fresh.
Student: ITS STILL MOVING
Chef: Just throw it out. You'll be cooking the fish anyways.
... 1 minute later....
Student: CHEFTHEREISANOTHERWORMINMYFISH
Chef: Just throw that out too.
Student: I can't do this anymore. Give me a zero for this class. I'm fine butchering chickens filleting fish but I can't take this!
Chef: Just work on your vegetables first and we'll talk.
The student was a good sport. She finished her dish anyways.


"They say even a blind person can make beurre noisette. It is ready when the melted butter stops sizzling on the stove."

-Demo Chef Caals,

On how to make Beurre Noisette (Brown butter)

Nobody does it quite the way you do......

Why you had to be so good.....
(Carly Simon- Nobody does it better)

Intermediate Lesson 22- Laguedoc

We take the SNCF west a bit today and head to Languedoc. Previously, I only knew Languedoc as a major contributor of the European Wine Lakes. Winemakers in Languedoc have been making sub-par table wine that could not compete against South American and Australian wines in the global market. Instead of responding to competitive pressure, they decided instead that their established way of life is more important to protect and used their political clout to force the EU government to buy up all the wines that they cannot sell. The gastronomy section of our hand out basically sums up how mediocre this place is:

This vast area is rich in arable land, natural resources and culinary traditions.

That's it. This kind of generic friendly description is akin to saying a ugly person has a nice personality. Why are we even studying this place?

At least we made a pretty good dish. We made a traditional white bean stew, or a cassoulet. Sadly we didn't have nice pretty ceramic container to present our dish in, only aluminum take out containers. It was still really good though.

Boom

The dish contained poached white beans (poached), bacon, lamb, sausages, tomato concassé, and a confit de canard. All in all, a really hearty and delicious dish.

The frustrating thing about this class was the demo chef and practical chefs had completely different ways of cooking the dish. Chef Bogen showed us one way, and in practical Chef Ju basically told us to cook it in a completely different way. The end result is I would do something according to Chef Bogen, and then I would have to redo certain steps because Chef Ju had a totally different thing in mind.  I heard the other intermediate class also had the same problem with Chef Gui. This is pretty annoying since the whole teaching method of Le Cordon Bleu is to force students to pay attention in demontration class, take notes, and then replicate the dish in practical. I understand that every chef has a different way to prepare the same dish, and that everyone thinks that his or her method is the best. However, this is quite frustrating for cooking neophytes like me when I'm just trying to learn to cook. 

Why can't the chefs all just have a weekly meeting in which the demo chef walk through the way he wants a certain dish to be prepared, and the practical chefs just go with it? Then in practical maybe the practical chefs can share some personal tips on how they would do things differently without forcing everyone in the class to change. I think students would benefit tremendously from more organization and coordination.

Quote from this class:

"And I am going to add a bit of duck fat into each of these pots. What? I tell you, duck fat is good for your health!"

-Demo Chef Bogen,

As he puts huge slabs of white translucent duck fat into 3 of his pans.

He heard the students (mainly me) gasp at the amount of fat and

felt compelled to explain himself

Et j'ai dit.... Bonne idée....

Et puis j'ai vu de la lumière et je vous ai trouvés...
(Jean-Jacques Goldman- Bonne Idée)

Intermediate Lesson 20- Loire Valley

Before I start today, I'd like to tell you a joke from high school French:

Why do the French like Easter? Because it's a Bonne idée (Bunny day)! Hah... okay not that funny. But this explains the title track of today's entry. Yes we had rabbit again. And this time is much more complicated than my encounter in basic, which was also my exam dish.

Hop!

This time, in addition to cutting a rabbit into different pieces, we had to fillet out the meat from the bones, and then use the meat to wrap around the forcemeat that we created from its two front legs, its liver and a duxelle. We also threw some prunes in for kicks.

Sadly, I had to rush through the dish today because we had back-to-back demonstration and practical classes, and the demonstration class ran late. We finished our demo at 6:20pm, and I effectively had 10 minutes to change into practical uniform and prep the kitchen as assistant for 6:30pm class. I was therefore far behind most people today in class. This is compounded by the fact that the fillet work of the rabbit was so complex. At least I got it done. In rushing to complete the dish, I forgot that we were suppose to serve only one slice of the loin with a hind leg instead of the whole loin, so as you can see in my photo I have this chunky piece of meat next to my rabbit leg (whopse). At least my dish tasted good.

On the other hand, my garnish came out great. We had these baked potatoes from which we dug out the contents, mashed the potato and added scallion and cheese, and then filled it back to the potato skins. That I did very well.

I just wish that my cold can get better. The fact that I was late already gave me a lot of pressure, worse yet is I had to be careful to 1. not cough to much 2. cover my mouth when I do cough 3. go wash my hands every time I cough. I definitely lost a lot of time as a result.

Quote from this class:

Demo Chef Stril:(in French) ... and there's a lot of fish in the Loire River.

Translator looked dazed...

Chef Stril:(in French) ... and there's a lot of fish in the Loire River. *WAVES HIS HANDS vigorously

Translator: (in English) and there's a lot of fish in the Loire River. (In French) I was here Chef!

Chef Stril: (In French) well so am I! Wake up! *laughs

As we entered our practical classroom, it was very clear the previous class didn't clean the room thoroughly

Student 1: Ohh the room's a mess! Who was here before us?

Student 2: It was the basic kids.

Student 1: Those stupid basic students. What rookies!

Student 2: Now we have to clean their mess!

Guys... we were in basic less than a month ago ourselves....

Boom, badoom, boom, He got that super bass!

See I need you in my life for me to stay

(Nicki Minaj- Super Bass)

Intermediate Lesson 19- Côte d'Azur (French Riviera)

I arrived at Le Cordon Bleu's building on Rue Léon Delhomme at 11:30am, guilty for having skipped morning practical and leaving Gulnazi to do all the assistant duties. I then found out that only 6 out of 10 people from my group showed up to class, and Gulnazi wasn't one of them. Yep, neither of the assistants today came, and Chef Poupard had to move all the materials to the second floor classroom himself. When my partner-in-crime Gulnazi strolled into the building at 12:00pm, she apologized embarassingly for skipping morning class.

"Gulnazi, I didn't go to class either" I laughed.

"Wait, so who moved all the materials to the classroom?" She asked astonishingly.

"Chef Poupard."

"Oh, shi.........."

"Yep."

Chef Poupard, who also led our demo class at 12:30pm, didn't look too bothered when I apologized today for not being there. He just threatened to fail me so I would have to repeat intermediate in January. Hahah..... oh wait was that not a joke? I couldn't tell. Ummm... Please don't.

For this class, we drove our imaginary convertible Renault Dinalpin along the Mediterranean coast to the Côte d'Azur (French Riviera). Ahh a burst of sunshine by the beach in Cannes is exactly what I need now. We made a puff pastry galette with marinated sea bass, virgin vinaigrette with basil.

Boom.

The dish was very straightforward to make, especially since we didn't have to prepare the pâte feuilletée ourselves. We just baked the thing. We even prevented the puff pastry from rising too much by putting another baking sheet directly over the dough.

On top of the puff pastry, we put some tomato concassé mixed with really soft onions, brunoised green peppers and sliced black olives.

We filleted the sea bass, cut the ill-tempered fish into thin pieces, and then marinated it in a lemon-based sauce. The acid of the lemon cooks the sea bass without heat, and we would have to serve the fish 10-15 minutes after soaking the meat in the marinate or the fish would be overcooked.

We even had some dried tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette as decorations. All in all, this was a pretty and delicious dish.

Quote from this class:

Demo Chef Poupard: Now add a few drops of Tobasco sauce into your marinate

American Student: Wow wait, you have Tabasco sauce in France?

Chef: Oui.... of course.

Student: Where can you find it?

Chef: Anywhere..... in any supermarket.

Student: No way! Where? I've never seen it.

Chef: Typically these are placed in the condiment area, where one would expect it.

... 10 minutes of back-and-forth later...

Student: I just find it incredible that you can buy Tobasco sauce in France. It's like made on some random island off of Louisiana!

Chef: The basic students go on a farmer's market field trip, and the superior students to go the wholesale market. Perhaps we should organize a field trip for the intermediate students to go to the supermarket!

... at the end of the class...

Student: Howard, this better not be your quote of the class!

While cleaning up the practical room after class...

Fellow Assistant Gulnazi: Howard, you have to step on my foot now.

Me *washing my knives*: Huh? What?

Gulnazi: I accidentally stepped on yours, and by Russian tradition you have to step on mine!

Me: I didn't feel you stepping on me, so..... I'm not going to step on you.

Gulnazi: You must! Or else we'll fight each other!

Me: No! I'm incapable of hitting women.

Gulnazi: HOWARD! You HAVE to step on me, because we're going to be assistants together for the rest of the week.

Me: I'd rather fight and see who wins!

And so, my week of being assistant with Gulnazi began with:
1. Both of us skipping our first class 
2. Us arguing over why I should step on her foot
Five more days to go, partner....

I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell.

I know, right now you can't tell...
(Matchbox Twenty- Unwell) 

Intermediate Lesson 18- Auvergne

We travel to the Auvergne region for this class, and we prepared a braised forcemeat dish wrapped by cabbage and bacon.

Pow

We've made so many forcemeat dishes already it's getting boring. What annoyed me in this class is that in the past, the chefs presented the rule of forcemeats using 20g of salt for 1 kilogram of protein, but for this dish they're saying it's 9g of salt for 1 kilogram of protein. When I asked the Chef, he said "Obviously it all depends on the dish." Then why was there a rule if its always going to depend on the dish anyways? At least this dish is wrapped in bacon. Everything is better when it's wrapped in bacon. We served the dish with some vegetables cut to pont-neuf.

Confession: I didn't go to practical class today. The picture was from the chef's demonstration class last Saturday. I've been suffering from a terrible sore throat since Saturday, and last night I woke up basically every other hour because I was drowning in my own phlegm. My throat hurts when I eat and talk. Sorry, I know it's TMI, but I feel compelled to explain myself because I am also assistant for the week with Gulnazi. I feel terrible to have bailed out on her and left her alone because today the assistant had to grind up the meat for the entire class. Really sorry about this Gulnazi. I intend on going back to school at noon today and help with the afternoon practical.

Although my throat is really killing me now, at least I don't have a fever. In intensive, you can easily miss 4 classes just by skipping one day. That would really suck since you are only allowed 6 absences.

I have to admit though: sleeping in on a Monday morning felt great.

Quotes from this class:

Student *Pointing at the forcemeat wrap that the chef made*: That's for one person?
Demo Chef Caals: Oui Madam. This is for one person.
Student: Oh my god. Can I do a smaller one?
Chef Caals: We're already using our smallest bowl as a mold
Student: I dunno, to me that size is already really..... intimidating!
The Chef ended up serving a half portion dish for her.

In a champagne supernova in the sky....

How many special people change? How many lives are living strange?
(Oasis- Champagne Supernova)

Intermediate Lesson 17- Champagne

Our Grand Tour de France today takes us to Champagne, with its universally acclaimed sparkling wine. We made a braised sole fillet stuffed with fish forcemeat and served with a Champagne sauce and mushroom flan. Oh we also had to "turn" mushrooms, which was the bane of my existence in basic. It is back, and this time there's no escaping.

Insert Explosion Sound

I added some chives for garnishing because the dish looked so drab on its own. I'm really proud to say though that this was one of my best dishes in intermediate. The presentation was fantastic, everything was cooked well. Flavoring was fantastic. The sauce was great, with good acidity and texture. The mushroom flan was yummy. The turned mushrooms could look nicer, but tasted great. I even finished early, and timing has been a consistent issue for me in intermediate. My only weakness was that my station should be cleaner. Dude, I've been told to be more organized since parents-teachers day in grade school. I've long given up being tidy. Thank you very much but I'ma gonna focus more on my strengths than my weaknesses, chef.

All of this masks a fundamental problem of this class: Our soles came filleted. We didn't have to do any of the slicing ourselves. As some of you may know, I've always struggled with filleting a fish. If we had to cut that damn sole, I don't think I would have done nearly as well. This is also an exam dish, and the chef refuses to say whether we will be getting the fillets or a whole fish in the exam.

We had some extra Champagne from this class's leftovers and we definitely finished it off after class. Ahhh nice cold fizzy champagne. Not a bad way to end a practical class! In my old school, this would have been grounds for dismissal, but here even the chef drank with us.

Santè! Chin-chin! Cheers! Salud! Prost! Salute! Pura vida! 飲勝! 干杯 (随意)! Kampai!

Whatever language you speak, the meaning's the same!

Man, it's the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and I don't deny that I'm missing me some old-fashioned all-american capitalistic fist-fighting in the mall for Black Friday sales. I see so many Black Friday deals online that I really wish I could just go help lift the national consumer spending this weekend.

Quote from this class:

Me: Chef, an average egg is 50 grams, and the recipe calls for 175 grams of eggs, do we really need to measure out 3 and a half an egg, or can we just use 4 eggs?
Chef: Well, the truth is, many of these recipes alter their ingredients slightly for copyright reasons. They can't put down the same exact ingredients as other published sources. That's why you sometimes see recipes calling for 2.33grams of salt, when it just means a pinch. So yeah, use 4 eggs. It's just a question of copyrights.
Me: Oui Chef.

"I heard this when I was 20, and I was shocked hearing this at such a young age.... And again.... I'm just passing you a saying that's very well known among French chefs. I didn't make it up, so don't blame me.... They say a cook who doesn't have their dish cloth is like a prostitute without her ass.... yeah, there you have it. That's why all chefs are crazy. We've been pushed and exposed to all sorts of crazy stuff at a young age."

-Chef on explaining why we always need to

carry at least one dish cloth

C'est une belle journée.... Je vais me coucher....

Belle. La vie est belle. Comme une aile. Q'on ne doit froisser
(Mylène Farmer- C'est une belle journée)

Intermediate Lesson 16- Île-de-France

We travel back to the Île-de-France region for this class, which is where Paris is located. Our handout for today says:

Paris and the the [sic] Île-de-France are symbols of gastronomical trandition, reflecting the magnificent work carried out by the master chefs such as Taillevent and Escoffier, not forgetting Carême and the young contemporary chefs of today.

So what dish are we making to honor this symbol of gastronomical tradition? Lamb chops. No actually... lamb stew. Seriously? And this is a dish that some mistress of Louis XVI invented. I think we could have done something a little better. Luckily this dish was freaking delicious.

 Pow Boom!

The dish contains a bunch of thick lamb chops seared for color, and then braised in a stock served with potatoes and onion for 35 minutes. We also served it with a weird leek cannelloni stuffed with mash potatoes. It was so good! I even caught a pastry chef from across the hall stealing my lamb. He said it was delicious and said he was really happy to have chosen my station to take food. I'll take that as a compliment.
 

We had the really cool and chill-lax Chef Gui (pronounced as Gee. Not his last name and short for Guillaume), or Gui-Gui (Gee-Gee) when we asked him if he had a nickname, for class today. He's actually huge enigma. Looking 100% Asian, he has a very french first and last name (starts with a T, and I never remember how to spell the whole thing). And he speaks English with a thick French accent. I though hearing Asians from Edinburgh speaking English with a Scottish accent was weird. Listening to Chef Gui talk blows my mind.

I'm glad we had Chef Gui, because although the daydreaming from this afternoon was gone, I was still pretty out this class. Luckily this class finished early at 8:40pm. Time to head home to lie down and sleep to do laundry, clean my room, write my blog, study and then sleep. It's been a very rough and bizarre 24 hours.

Quote from this class:

Demo Chef Caals: Legend has it that this lamb dish was created by the mistress of Louis XIV. She would use an oven temperature far lower than what we are using(190C), set the dish into the oven for slow cooking, and get naughty with the king while it braised. Frankly I think in reality she never knew how to cook.

A few minutes after we have forgotten this kind-of-weird historical faux-fact

Chef Caals: So put this into the oven for 30-35 minutes.

Male Student: Chef, how long would it take this to cook if we cooked it the way in Louis XIV's time?

Chef Caals: Well, how long do you need to make love?

Male Student: ou-phhh wtf.....

Chef Caals: Answer is I don't know. I really don't. Probably a very long time for it to cook.

Yeah, this conversation would never have happened in America....

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.

But we've got the biggest balls of all!

I've got big balls! I've got big balls!
(ACDC- Big Balls)

Intermediate Lesson 14- Lamb Fillet

Our dish today is a lamb fillet served with vegetables and fried potato balls.

Boom!

It was actually a fairly straightforward dish. We had to cut the lamb fillet from the rack of lamb, and I continue to lament on how wasteful haut-cuisine is in France. Clawing down the bone is the best part of eating a lamb rack! Why would you deny your customers the pleasure of dirtying their fingers to eat from the delicious bones??

The fun part of today was creating the potato balls that you see on the right side. We lierally took our melon ballers and dug out perfectly good-looking round balls from whole potatos and then fried them. They're so delicious. Chef Caals thinks that I haven't seasoned the balls enough, but by this point I just think the French and I have artistic differences when it comes to seasoning. What was left were potatoes with beehive-like holes all over them. Perfect for making mash-potatoes.

Hint: it is always better to blanch your potatoes first before frying them. If you simply fry them directly then you always end up the core being undercooked and crispy. Blanching them a few minutes first precooks the potato, so that after you fry the potatoes they would be cooked thoroughly. Salt the water when you blanch them.

We also got to play with these big metal molds to plate our dish. This is why I arrange my lamb and make it look so nice!

Quote from this class

"Jean-Baptiste Denys was the first doctor in history to have performed a blood transfusion on a person, using lamb blood. It' didn't work....."

-Demo Chef Caals

On blood transfusions. I don't remember how we started on

this subject.....

Oh girl, when I'm in love with you, Keep fishin' if you feel it's true.....

You'll never do, The things you want, If you don't move, And get a job
(Weezer- Keep Fishin')

Intermediate Lesson 13- Alsace

Our dish for this class is a filleted trout stuffed with morel mushrooms.

 Chef's version

 My version. Isn't it nearly identical?

I still suck at filleting a fish. It's definitely no longer like my first experience when I nearly destroyed the fish, but I'm still not quite there yet. I'm so glad I didn't get a fish for my basic exam. The trout was probably the easiest fish I've filleted, but then I discovered that the fish has an infinite number of bones piercing out of its flesh to be taken out one by one.

Honestly the dish is not that exciting, except for the UFO pebble shaped carrots that we had to turn.

Yep this is definitely NOT done by me.

What's more exciting is the region that we covered: Alsace. They say Strasbourg is one of the most beautiful cities in the world during Christmas. Personally I really want to go check it out this year, maybe after my exams. Any one want to go with me?

We had a new chef today for our practical. Chef Andriamanjoka hails from Madagascar and looks like he came straight out of a Paul Gaugain painting. He was really good to work with.

The Chef.

Quotes from this class:

Demo Chef Poupard: Kouglof is another type of legume (vegetable) that people eat in Alsace
Student: Wait, Kouglof, isn't that a kind of pastry or cake?
Chef: Yes, it's made from a dough.
Student: Then it is not a legume! It's not grown!
Chef: Mais oui! It is a type of made legume!
Student: Well is pretzel a legume?
Chef: It can be! Look I'm using the word legume generally to refer to garnishes. These kind of items can be generically called a legume if they are served as a garnish to a main dish. Understand?
Student: .....

When demonstrating how to prepare the trout
Student: Chef, do we need to take the eyes out of the trout, like we do with other fishes?
Demon Chef Poupard: Non, ce n'est pas la peine. It doesn't matter. We'll leave it on the fish so it can see better.
Chef Poupard was referring to the dead trout that he just filleted and boned.

Well hi, welcome to MeatShake where you can 'taste the secret.'

It's nice and tender. Mixed in a blender. Don't you want some meat? (Yeah)
( Ugly Duckling- Meat Shake)

Intermediate Lesson 12- Making Sausages and Gels.

We continued with the balloutine that we worked on yesterday. Taking the braising liquid we made yetserday, we clarified it and turned it into a gel.

Chef Poupard's Jelly, served with a piece of the balloutine

This is how our dish should theoretically look like

To clarify a stock, you simply take a stock and add eggwhites and grounded meat into the simmering liquid. The eggwhites and the blood from the meat will act to hold all the impurities and rise to the surface when cooked. The key is to not let the liquid boil vigorously, or the impurities will become incorporated into the liquid, and you'll never have a fully clear soup, or specifically, consommé soup.

Then to turn it into a jelly, simply add a lot of gelatin leaves into the soup, boil, pour onto a surface, and let the surface cool in the fridge. Gelatin leaves are derived from the gelatin in bone marrow. The thing is, you need to let the liquid cool substantially before the jelly will solidify. The chef in demonstration has a fancy blast chiller that brings the temperature down to -30C, but we only had regular fridges in our practical rooms, and none of our jelly solidified enough.

We also made sausages today! Basically we grounded a bunch of meat together, added a lot of cream, and then filled it into the intestines of a lamb (ew). When done correctly, the filling liquid looked really disgustingly pink and liquid, like a meat milk shake.

Chef Poupard letting the pink meatshake flow smoothly into the intestine casing.

The good thing is, the filling liquid turns white after cooking. If you ever plan on making this yourself, just remember that the cooking liquid that you poach the sausage in can never go past 85C, or the casing will break. Also avoid having air pockets when filling the casing, or it will explode.

Et Voila!

Quotes from this class:

Demo Chef Poupard: Voila, our filling is now well blended in the blender *Pours out a gooey pink liquid of meat shake

Students: Ewww!

Chef Poupard: Oh come on! You guys see this kind of stuff every Saturday night, after a few rounds at the bar!

Students: Ewww!

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.