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...

Work it like a pro-pro-pro, sit and watch it go-go-go...

Down, Down on Me, Put It Down on Me
(Jeremih ft 50 Cents- Down on Me)

Intermediate Lesson 28- Lots and lots of stuff

Today's dish is a seared veal tenderloin served with a creamy risotto and mushroom duxelle and asparagus sauce.

Chef Caals' dish.
The veal's underneath all that garnishes and above the risotto.

Searing the veal was pretty simple, but the garnishes for this dish was a pain in the neck. Chef Caals made all this looked so simple during the demonstration, but that's just because he's a pro and could manage everything  with ease. For me, I know I definitely got a bit disoriented having so many pans cooking at the same time.

You had to prepare the asparagus sauce by boiling the asparagus stems in boiling water, then blend the stems. Meanwhile, you have to cook the mushroom duxcelle, and begin sweating the shallots for the risotto. All ingredients must be served hot, so you can't finish preparing the garnishes too early in advance. There was a point towards the end when we were all using 6 stoves simultaneously: one stove for cooking the risotto (remember to stir constantly), one stove for preparing the Sauce Mornay (remember to stir regularly), one stove for heating the mushroom duxelle (remember to stir regularly), one stove to sear the asparagus heads used for decorating the dish (remember to stir regularly), one stove for making the jus (remember to degrease), and one stove for searing the steak. Good thing our class was in 2GS, a bigger classroom than the standard 1PS / 2PS, because we all had 6-8 stoves to work with, instead of the usual 4.

My dish came out okay. The veal came out very well cooked, but all my elements lacked seasoning. I admit that the risotto came out a bit weak, but the duxelle and the veal I thought tasted just fine. When a teacher consistently gave me the same feedback, my business school / consulting sides start questioning whether I am actually learning from the feedback provided. Perhaps for next class I should put down biblical proportions of salt onto my dish just to see how the chef reacts.

After class today, I ran into Chef Ju in the hallway. She explained to me that she had no more intermediate classes planned to lead, and I won't see her again in class since I am not doing superior cuisine. It was quite a teary-eye moment because Chef Ju has taken really good care of me. More importantly, because we’re constantly being rushed in and out of classrooms, I would always leave some equipments in the room, and Chef Ju, who for whatever reason always had the class after us would find my knives with their distinctive blue indicator tape lying in the drawer. She must have found hundreds of Euros worth of equipment for me over the entire intermediate term, including big knives like my cleaver, which she almost threw at my head for leaving it behind. Merci Chef et bon courage!

Quote of the class:

After a student expressing dismay at how Demo Chef Caals was contradicting himself in class.
Chef Caals: here, read this sign.  *throws out a magnetic sign from his collection of magnets. Sign says: Le chef a toujours raison. (The chef is always right.)
Me: Hey, that's just like what my mom has!

“Wait, no bacon today?”

-Student in demo class,

commenting on the lack of bacon because

we've had bacon as an ingredient

for almost every dish recently.

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...

I'm glad you came, So glad you came.

My universe will never be the same.
(The Wanted- Glad you came)

Intermediate Lesson 26- Roast lamb + Sauce Béarnaise review + Butchering(!)

We entered the demonstration room today with a huge surprise in the demo room. Literally. There was a giant piece of dead animal on the chef's table, with an old man sporting the most incredible mustache I've seen since I last watched Casablanca or the old Pink Panther movies. Seriously, he even wore thick round classes and a a tri-color collared shirt. (I think that makes him a MOF, which means he is one of the very best in France) How much more stereotypically French can he look? I bet he rides his vélo to work every day with a baguette in his basket and wears a beret while drinking café as he reads Le Figaro in the morning. Probably owns a dog called Fido or Milou.

His name's Thierry Michaud, which at first I thought he said Tiramisu.

 Monsieur Thierry Michaud
That's a big cleaver.

M. Michaud subsequently meticulously and systematically dismembered the baby lamb (only 5 months old!) into perfectly cut pieces of heavenly lamb meat. That was really cool and I'm glad the school organized this. Thanks for coming!

Students taking photos of the pieces of lamb.

While M. Michaud demonstrated how to butcher a lamb, Grandpa Bear Chef Stril quietly demonstrated the dish for today, but it was clear that nobody was watching him. The translator even complained that he was blocking the video camera, so Stril had to move all his stuff and quietly work in a corner of his own classroom. Don't worry Chef, I was paying attention.

Stril demonstrated how to make a creme Crème Catalane, which we didn't get to make, and began our practical dish, lamb fillet, with dates and dried apricots wrapped inside, served with couscous.

Boom!

We also reviewed how to make a sauce béarnaise in both demonstration and practical. We've theoretically made the sauce before in basic, but I skipped that class to go to my sister's wedding that time. The sauce wasn't that hard to make, but just like hollandaise and mayonnaise, making this sauce almost broke my arm.

We had Grandpa Bear for our practical class too. Honestly I love this chef, and every practical I had with him just felt great. I went into practical totally organized and in control. Fillet the lamb and start cooking the jus, bam. Start cutting the vegetables for the jus, bam. Prep the reduction for the sauce béarnaise, bam. Gather the garnishes for the couscouse, bam. Everything just flowed. My only hiccup was when my water bath for the béarnaise sauce was too hot and I left the sauce on the bath while I walked to the trash can to throw stuff away. Big mistake. My egg yolks almost became scramble eggs. Good thing it was still early in the process and I could save the sauce. All in all the day went well.

Oh our written exam grades are up already. I have to give it to the school for such a fast turnaround. It's true that there's not that many students in the intensive program, but still props to the school. More importantly, I passed. That's all I care anout. Shout out to my friend and old section-mate Vincent Ho-Tin-Noe, who got A HUNDRED in his basic cuisine written exam. Did you know he just graduated from HARVARD?? What a smart guy.

Quote of the day:

"Oh.... nobody is paying attention to me anymore. It's so sad."

-Demo Chef Stril

preparing the Crème Catalane while everyone

was mesmerized by the butcher cutting up the lamb

Demo Chef Stril: Although we are flambéing the sugar on the surface, this is a crème catalane, which is totally different than a crème brûlée. The two dishes are different in the following ways.....*goes on for another minute or two*

Demo Chef Stril: Bon, so now we burn the sugar on the dessert.

Student: Oh, so this is dessert just like a crème brûlée?

Chef Stril gave the student an "Are-you-f-ing-serious??" look...

If you really want to know the difference: crème brûlée is made with a crème anglaise base, and has to go into the oven to solidify. Crème catalane, though has similar ingredients, contains flour and cornstarch, and only needs to be cooled to solidify.

I can't tell you what I learned from school but, I can tell you a story or two um...

Man I love college......
(Asher Roth- I Love College)

Intermediate Written Exam

We had the written exam for our intermediate level cuisine class. It's so weird because I feel like I just had my basic cuisine exam not so long ago, but I guess this is why they call this intensive.

Students studying hard before the exam

Students studying.... less hard before the exam

The school also decided to change the format of the exam, so instead of giving us questions printed on paper, they decided to present the questions from powerpoint, giving us 2 minutes per question. Considering that these are all fact-based questions that you either have the answer to or you don't, this format is actually really tiring because I would answer the question in 15 seconds... and then stare at the projector screen for over a minute before the next question showed up. I swear I almost dozed off a few times and almost didn't notice the question change. For this reason the exam took almost an hour to complete, when in fact we could have finished it in 15 minutes.

Just like the Basic written exam, the questions in the exam ranged from impossibly stupid, to questions that none of us have answers to. When the question- "How much does a crossbred duckling weight?" popped up on the projector screen, we all burst out laughing. How the F would we know that? I guessed 2kg, because a standard chicken weighs 1.2-1.5kg, and I figured ducks have leaner meat than chicken, especially the crossbred one. Answer is 1kg. Okay I have at least one question wrong. At least I got "Reisling is a wine from Normandy: True False" right. Wait, Reisling is NOT from Normandy.... right? Good.

I'm glad that I've been keeping this blog, because it helps me keep track of every class we had, and gives me more things to relate to each class.

We have afternoon class today right now, but since I skipped the demonstration class on Saturday, I can't go to today's practical class. Oh well, I'm going to go home and practice some exam dishes.

 

Practicing turning carrots galet 

I would argue that my irregular shaped carrots look closer to real pebbles

than the perfectly-cut carrots done by the chef

Quote of the day:

Classmate 1: Howard, I heard reading your blog really helps with reviewing the exam.
Classmate 2: Yeah, Howard! I started reading your blog!
Classmate 3: I started reading Howard's blog before it was cool.....
Thanks guys. I really appreciate your support for this blog!

Oops, I did it again!

'Cause to lose all my senses. That is just so typically me.
(Britney Spears, Oops I did it again)

Intermediate Lesson 24- Perigord

Our dish today is a delicious pan-fried steak, celery flan served with Madeira sauce with diced truffles and potatoes in goose fat.

Pew Pew Pew! Chef Caals' dish.

The dish today is fairly straightforward. Prep celery stock like you would with mash potatos and then make flan with it, make jus for the steak, turn potatoes, and then fry the steak. Sadly we didn't have fresh truffles to work with, just canned truffles. Then again, it's probably too much to ask LCB to provide us with expensive in-season fresh truffles.

For some reason, I couldn't get this dish right. My celery flan wouldn't cook 10 minutes after the necessary time needed to cook. Moreover, my steak that was supposed to be rare came out slightly better than blue. My jus wasn't syrupy enough. And Chef Caals says that both my steak and potatoes weren't seasoned enough.

Here we go again. My food is always not seasoned enough, even though I personally think it's just right (okay the potatoes could be a tad bit saltier, but the steak was definitely good in my mind). I really don't know what I should do other than just cover my food with salt. Oh well.

I later learned that most of my classmates had undercooked steak, despite our following the timing the chef provided in the demo. We suspect it was due to the fact that most of us took our steaks out of the fridge just because searing, because we all left to fry the steak to the end, as we should. We should have left our steak on low low heat longer. Truth is I should have felt the suppleness of the meat before taking it out of the pan.

The only thing I can't quite figure out is why my flan didn't cook at all. The suggested amount of time of cooking for the flan was 15 minutes, and I've left mine for at least half an hour, and I turned up the heat after 20 minutes. I'll need to go back to my notes to see if I missed something.

I did learn something interesting though, and that is a celery purée. If you're too sick of mash potatoes, you can boil a celery root in a equal parts water/milk liquid (seasoned) until you can pierce the celery root with no resistance. Then put it into a blender with butter and cream and blend blend blend. Serve it with chervil and appropriate seasoning and you'll have a refreshing purée that is different than your usual mash potato.

Quotes of the class:

Student: Chef, what can you do if you overcook your meat?
Demo Chef Caals: What do you do if your meat becomes too cooked? You can cry. And then run to your chef and say "Chef, I think it's overcooked," and your chef will probably say, "It happens."


"The ingredient list says that you should decorate your flan with carrots, celery and leeks. If you want to, you can decorate your flans. If you want know what I think, then I would say don't do it. It doesn't add to the flavor. It is a waste of time and frankly it looks horrible. It's so 70s. If Chef Terrier (A very senior chef at Cordon Bleu) asks, you can tell him Chef Caals refused to decorate his demonstration plate, and he can come talk to me."

- Demo Chef Caals,

On raw vegetable decorations on a flan