Just one of those days

Have you ever had "just one of those days" where nothing goes right no matter how hard you try? Well, I had one today. It all started at 7:15 am this morning, when I should have been walking out the door, but was still sound asleep. Leaping out of the bed and throwing on some clothes, I barely remembered to grab a few euros so I could pick up something to eat on the way to school. We all know how much I love an almond croissant, but I just did not do it justice this morning as I shoved it down while half running to school. Something as tasty as an almond croissant deserves to be appreciated when eaten and I was guilty of treating it like a regular ol' pop tart (and a non-frosted plain one, at that).

Breathing a sigh of relief since I had arrived just in time to change into my chef's outfit and be in the kitchen on time, I realized something was wrong...


Yep. I only had one sock. Awesome.



Trout or "truetle" as Chef inexplicably called it all day ready to be scaled, gutted and filleted.



I chose my seven trout and got to work. Scaling went ok. As did taking the fins off. The minor cuts I told you about yesterday weren't too happy when I shoved them into a dead fish to pull out its internal organs, etc, but hey that's my job and I got over it fast. Then, all of a sudden on my last fish, I felt something a bit different. "What in the world is that," I thought to myself (although to be honest I'm pretty sure I said something other than world and which undoubtedly contains just four letters).



Eggs! One of my 'truetles' was preggers. Sorry Mama Trout!

Chef took all of the not so nice looking fillets that we did and ground them in the Robot Coupe to make a stuffing for the final product. Did I mention that he added a ridiculous amount of cream when making the stuffing or is that just a common assumption these days? Because it should be.

We took the fish carcasses (is that the correct plural form of carcass?) and made a fish stock or a fumet de poisson.

Then came what I like to call torture, but what Chef calls turning. Chef took about 4 seconds to demo how to "turn" a potato and then told us to "Allez" as if after that lightning bolt of a demo we were going to be able to miraculously turn 16 potatoes perfectly despite the fact that most of us had never done it before in our lives. Off we went, mumbling that a miracle is exactly what would have to happen to produce anything near his example.

After filleting and painstakingly taking out as many bones as could be found, we took the stuffing and placed it on one fillet and covered it with another. Sidenote: I forgot to mention yesterday that having millions of tiny bones is another way that fish seek their revenge.

Next, we rolled it into some plastic wrap and tied the ends.

Finally, we poached it in our fumet de poisson.

On to making the sauce. This stage is called "monter au beurre," where you add a lot of cold butter at the end of a sauce to finish it.

My attempt at turned potatoes. Yikes - not so great, but you have to start somewhere, right? At this point, things were starting to look up. Fish was poached, potatoes were as turned as they were going to ever be, and the sauce was tasting good. I was conquering the bad day. All my deep yoga breaths were working. I was cool as a cucumber.



That is until I plated the final product - stuffed trout with a reisling sauce - and I saw that my sauce had separated. Well, s**t. Not much could be done at this point other than take the plate to Chef. I guess I hadn't yet conquered my bad day, but at least it was almost over. I took the plate to Chef, fully knowing the onslaught of "C'est impossible! et C'est quoi ca?" (for my non-french readers: That's impossible and what is that?) would come my way for bringing him a broken sauce. And, it did. Along with "ze fish is undersalted and overcooked." Ouch. However, I disagreed with him on both counts regarding the fish. I think he was just mad at me about the sauce and decided to add injury to insult just for good measure. This technique is something you apparently learn somewhere on the road to being a French Chef, because they all seem to have it down pat.

Never fear, I wasn't going to let my bad morning ruin my whole day. It was a beautiful and warm day today. A perfect day for a picnic. So, B and I grabbed a big blanket, some cheese, a 4 euro bottle of wine and set of towards Place des Vosges (the oldest square in Paris) to lie in the grass, soak up the sunshine and enjoy a delicious French picnic. Along the way, we found a Jewish bakery and bought some amazing breads (pletzel and challah) to go along with our cheese and wine. We were prepared for the ultimate lazy afternoon. Until...

We encountered this noisy construction when we arrived at Place des Vosges as well as a sign saying that in the winter, the grass rests so no one can lie on it. Who made up that stupid rule? That's right. If you are reading this and you are the person who made up that rule, I'm calling it stupid.

Yet, being that it was "one of those days" I can't say that I'm too surprised that our fairytale picnic didn't turn out to be absolutely perfect.

After all of that, we made the best of it though. We grabbed a park bench away from the construction and broke out all our goodies and FINALLY the day started to turn around a bit.

I mean, how can it stay bad when you are in a park as gorgeous as this and you live in Paris? It was a perfect setting to forget all about the separated sauce and the so called overcooked 'truetle.' Thinking back, maybe I should have told Chef that perhaps the 'truetle' was overcooked but my trout was cooked just fine, Thank You!