Tempermental, Are We?

Chocolate is many things to many people.  It's delicious; it's heavenly; it's forbidden (only by those who wish a lifetime of sorrow in my opinion); it's a vice; it's dessert; it's breakfast.  I could go on forever, but what I learned in Pastry on Monday was that at that precise moment in time, chocolate was a bit tempermental (pun intended).  It's not as easy as it looks to temper chocolate and it's a whole lot messier when you don't know what you are doing.  That is for sure.

We started with melted chocolate at 55 degrees. Celcius, thank you.  And no, I won't convert that to Fahrenheit, not because I can't - because I swear I can.  It's just that, and let's be honest here, I need Google to do it for me and I'm protesting Google at the moment.  Why?  Well, it's France and if I truly want to immerse myself in the culture I ought to protest something, right? :) 

Chef demonstrates how to temper chocolate the old school way - using marble.

He does this process a couple times with a third of the 55 degree chocolate.

And then scrapes it back into the bowl with the rest of the chocolate. 

After stirring all the chocolate together, he takes the temp.  He is trying to get to 28-29 degrees C.  Then, he will bring the temperature back up to 31-32 degrees C and the chocolate will be ready to use.  We all did this (with varying levels of success - more on that later) and then made these awesome things...

Chocolate eggs.

Which take several coats.

And eventually turn out to be this!

Chocolate pieces for garnish are made using this "bicycle."

The chocolate is rolled and then

the pieces turn out like this.  Tasty and pretty all at the same time.

Then Chef pulled out the big guns - the "guitar" to make bon bons.

This is a ganache we made last week that was infused with cinnamon and star anise.  Just between me and you, though, I didn't put the anise because I'm not a huge fan so mine is just cinnamon. 

I need to invest in one of those "guitar" things.  It makes the most perfect little pieces.

Which we dipped into the tempered chocolate.

Believe me, it's hard not to eat them all right away!  I had to keep reminding myself that there was no more room in my chef's pants for me to eat the bon bons all afternoon in class.

The final product with a few attempts to make them look not so plain jane.  Some succeeded, others not so much.

Frosty, Christmas trees, stars and apparently saws.  I am hoping that the saw is a symbol of cutting down the Christmas tree and not some sick joke by a weirdo working at the mold company.  I feel like you never know these days.

We also made "cigarettes."

Some people made fish.

Then Chef demoed the white chocolate.  I think he thought it was a lost cause to have us try it at such a late hour.  The damage we did to the kitchen, ourselves, and our neighbors with the dark chocolate was enough to keep us there cleaning for hours.   He didn't dare throw white chocolate into the mix.

Much less cocoa butter mixed with coloring.

He took the color mixtures and painted on a piece of plastic.

Poured the tempered white chocolate onto it.

And went after it with the "bicycle."

Once chilled, it looked like this!

Below is a small glance into the mess we made and the trouble we ran into tempering chocolate for the first time.

Things seem to be going well.

And yet, I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be huge lumps like this in there.  Never fear, Chef rescued me and soon my chocolate was smooth and lump free.

See?

Wish I could say the same about my tools and workspace.  Oops.

And to bid you farewell - a chocolate kiss, courtesy of Isa.

Duckburger

Yep, my friends, we have taken duck to the next level here at Ferrandi by serving a duckburger at service with all the typical trimmings (fries, onion rings) and some not so typical (comte cheese and foie gras espuma). 

Last week's service I was on the main dish and imagine my surprise when I found out it was a duckburger.  I couldn't wait to try out the recipe.  I think it was a success.  However, it had to be eaten with fork and knife because the homemade french rolls from the boulangerie downstairs were delicious, but not exactly "big bite" friendly.  Below are some pics of the duckburger and other dishes made during service last week.

Chef and his fancy thermometer checking the temp of the foie gras.

Estee plating.

Her finished fish dish.

Carleta plating.

Her finished escargot dish (snails wrapped in herb butter, breaded and fried).

Group A's fish on top of ratatouille.

Duck burgers ready to feed the masses.

Just in Case You Were Wondering

what Squid Ink looked like, I thought I would show you.

Here are the Squid.

Here I am happily cleaning the squid.

And here, on my hands, is the damn Squid Ink. :)

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

I refuse to decorate or celebrate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but once Black Friday rolls around, bring it on - it's Christmas time. So, after indulging in a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner, B and I decided to get into the holiday spirit by going to the Champs Elysees Christmas market last week. True to Paris form, there was an interesting assortment of booths.

The traditional booth.

The fun booth (although some parents may deem that a trip-to-the-ER-just-waiting-to-happen-booth).

The traditional French food booth (Yes, that is a huge vat of Tartiflette.  If you have never had it, find it and eat it.  It is potatoes, cheese, cream and bacon.  Otherwise known as awesome).

The smoked food booth (salmon being smoked right in the booth).

The chocolate booth.

And the inexplicable Chile Con Carne booth run by no one who looked qualified to make good Mexican/South American food.  Taking this picture was as close as I was going to get to that, believe me.

The bizarre hat booth.

The live nativity with this creature that I still can't identify.

And of course, the Michael Jackson tribute booth, a staple at any Christmas market.

Perigord

As I mentioned yesterday, today was our regional menu from Perigord.  Because B and I are headed to Strasbourg this weekend, I missed out on the dessert course.  So, no pictures from that.  The meal was duck, duck, and more duck and thus good, good, and even better.

Ready to eat please.

Rillettes de Canard.  There is no English translation for this in my opinion.  If I had to call it anything, it would be creamy goodness and there would be zero mention of the fact that I should probably have a clogged artery after eating so much of it today.  It is essentially duck meat that has been cooked in duck fat until very tender then mashed together with seasoning and put into little pots and topped with duck fat to conserve it.  It sounds weird, but is awesome when spread on toasted bread.

The top fat layer is taken off and the rillette that you use as a spread is found underneath.  Yum!

The next dish was a garbure, a soup that is typical of Southwest France.  Veggies, beans, sausage, and you guessed it - duck.

My dish was seared foie gras which we topped with truffle slices so you can barely even see the foie gras, but believe me it was there.

The last dish was magret de canard - duck breast - with potatoes.  Again, it is hard to see the potatoes so I have a photo below. 

They are just as delicious as they look.

Duck, Duck, LIVER!!!!!!!!!!!

So, tomorrow is Regional Menu day and the region is Perigord.  Don't worry, I had no idea it existed either.  Apparently, it doesn't really exist, but used to exist.  I don't know.  Either way, they eat A TON of duck in ye olde Perigord because (spoiler alert) every single dish in the menu tomorrow other than the dessert is based on duck.  And to top that, pretty much all the garnish will be cooked in some manner with what Chef calls "ze fat duck" - english translation melted duck fat.  So, we will all walk out of school tomorrow just a wee bit fatter, waddling like ducks, that's for sure.

After service this afternoon, group B stayed to see Chef break down the two rather large ducks that will serve as the backbone of our regional menu tomorrow.  Yes, we have all broken down ducks before but this duck was raised especially for foie gras and thus is a bit trickier to take apart.  As I watched Chef perform what can only be described as the closest thing I have ever witnessed to a live birth, I was filled on the one hand with awe that a liver could be that big and on the other hand couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor duck who was obviously force fed to produce such a fatty (albeit delicious) liver.  And that dichotomy pretty much sums up my inner conflicts as a yoga teaching culinary student.  However, my culinary curiosity inevitably wins out in the end and I tend not to dwell on things like how they killed the poor duck (I saw the stab mark in his neck) and instead focus on things like how can I make that taste awesome.  C'est la vie.

Ducky.

Let the liver birthing begin.

It's a....Foie Gras!

See how big that is?  Now, think about the ducks you see in your local pond.  This duck's liver is about the size of some ducks' entire bodies.

This is the hole the liver left.

And this is the fat and intestines that surrounded the liver.

You're welcome for ending the blog post with that visual.

Sacrificial Lamb

Today we tackled lamb, and while we didn't actually sacrifice it ourselves I feel like the least I can do is acknowledge that the lamb's life was sacrificed for the greater good (that is if you consider the greater good to be the knowledge of how to cook a lamb shoulder in a Staub by group B in culinary school at Ferrandi in Paris).  That still counts as a sacrifice, right?

I feel like the Staub is my best friend.  It never lets me down.  It always produces quality food.  As Chef says about almost everything within our reach in the kitchen, "Reespect.  You must reespect ze Staub."

Lamb shoulder.  Needs a wee bit of fat trimming.

Into the Staub the lamb goes with some olive oil.

After sauteeing the garnish, flour was sprinkled on top and the pot put in the oven for the flour to cook a bit.

This is what it looked like after a few minutes.  Already looking good in my opinion.

Covered the lamb with water, added a bouquet garni and some tomatoes and then back into the oven.

In the meantime, we turned some turnips.

And some carrots (and potatoes too).

Then pulled out the lamb, threw in the turned vegetables and some pearl onions.  I mean, how delicious does that look?

Final product.  Topped with some green veggies for color.  Chef said everything was cooked well except the green beans because apparently in France they like them mushy and not al dente - another fact that reminds me the French are, well, bizarre.  The only other thing that could have been better was the amount of sauce on the plate.  I was told it wasn't enough.  How terrible is that?  I mean, who doesn't want more yummy sauce in which to dip the insanely addictive baguettes you find here in France?  I should have known to pour all of it on the plate, but I tried to show some restraint and respect for the customer's waistline by not picking up the entire Staub and pouring every last drop on the plate.  My mistake.  Believe me, I won't make it again :)