Eiffel Tower at Dusk

This is what living in Paris is all about.

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

One of two things is going on with me recently.

Option 1 - Ferrandi's intense culinary program has messed with my head, and I no longer think straight unless I am deboning some sort of animal or turning a potato.

Option 2 - I have mentally checked out until after the Christmas holiday which is fast approaching.

Either way, I've lost it (at least temporarily).  Why you ask?  Well, for several reasons, but most recently it was the fact that after four months straight of taking my camera to school in order to update this blog, I forgot it yesterday.  Well, today I remembered it.  Score one for sanity. I took lots of great pictures of the pork, braised lettuce and chateaux potatoes we made.  I then took some great pictures at the start of our butchering class this afternoon.  This was promptly followed by me erasing all of them despite the camera's warning of DO YOU WANT TO ERASE ALL?  Score one for insanity.

I know what you are thinking - the score is tied 1 to 1.  So, I'm probably fine and need to stop worrying about early onset of memory loss.  However, you weren't in the kitchen with me this morning and you don't know that I served my rack of pork with the ugly rack side up (I'd show you a picture, but we all know what happened to that, so you will have to use your imagination).  And when Chef asked in his accented English after I plated it before him, "And thinking a little, please.  What iz wrong with zis?," staring at the plate with an obviously misplaced rack of pork, I truly and honestly could not figure out what was wrong with it.  Score about three for insanity.

Yep.  That puts me down 2.  Nope.  That would be 3 - see what I mean? 

Here's to Christmas break and coming back full force in January and kicking insanity's ***.

Naked

You know how some people feel naked when they aren't wearing, say, a watch that they usually wear all the time.  Well, that's how I felt today in Patisserie, except it wasn't my watch - it was my camera.  I forgot to bring my camera, can you believe it?  Incroyable, as the French would say.

So, the only photo of the Buche de Noel that I made is the finished version.  To give you a vague idea of how to make it - there is a lot of butter cream, a little bit of sponge cake, and enough rum to make Old St. Nick's cheeks quite rosy.

Boulangerie: Part Deux

Yesterday afternoon in a stroke of genius, the invisible person who plans our schedules each week gave our ragged, dog-tired group a break: boulangerie class.  Last time we were in Boulangerie, we learned how to make the ubiquitous French baguette.  This time around, we tried our hands at croissants, pain au chocolat, and brioche.  Who doesn't welcome that kind of delicious departure from cuisine?  Apparently about half our class since they didn't show up.  The rest of us, though, had a ball, except maybe for the Boulangerie Chef who continued to tell us that if just kept playing with the dough and talking to each other we would never finish.  I guess even adult students still get giddy the week before holiday break (especially those that are having a hard time thinking straight after a grueling four months in culinary school).

Here are some shots of our attempt to be boulangers for a day...

Walking into the Boulangerie lab is like walking into heaven on earth.  The smell of fresh baked bread and brioche is intoxicating and you suddenly must have bread at any cost (as seen above).

What are they vying for in those bags? None other than this deliciousness.

Walking around in the boulangerie, you find random bread sculptures like this one.

Ant this one.  How do they do that?

Finally, we got to work weighing out the ingredients.

Then, adding them all to the giant mixer.

While the dough mixed, we beat up our butter in order to make the dough for croissants/pain au chocolat.

When it was ready, we divided it.

And put it with the butter in the fridge to rest.

Once rested, the Chef began rolling out the pastry dough and explaining why he had used yeast.  That is when we realized, no one had actually put yeast in the dough.  Oops.

To confirm the lack of yeast he dropped some dough in hot water.  Since it did not rise, he knew there was no yeast.  At this point, I think he knew it would be a long afternoon with ol' Group B.

Back into the mixer went the dough with some yeast.

And Chef waited semi-patiently while our mistake was being fixed.

Next, we incorporated the butter into the dough.

Pounded it some more and did a few "turns."

When it was finally ready, Chef showed us how to roll the dough out at an angle so as to maximize the use of the dough and not have too much "loss."

Then, we began to roll the croissants.

Gorgeous.

Next we made pain au chocolat.

And onto a tray they all went to rest.  Too bad that Chef had been right earlier.  Between our yeast mistake and our gift of gab, we didn't have sufficient time to let the croissants/pain au chocolat rest.  So, into the freezer they went and we will bake them on Monday.  Really put a dent into my Saturday morning breakfast plans.

Moving on - Chef showed us how to work with brioche and pain au lait.

Look at Sonja work her brioche.

These three were made for the trellis brioche.

And then we talked some more.

Once Chef had our attention, he showed us how to make the trellis.

Start in the middle and braid.

And eventually end up with this.

Get your sugar and chocolate on and it's ready for the oven.

We also made the traditional round brioche.

We cut the pain au lait into little pieces.

Rolled those into balls (not as easy as it looks).

And then went to town, making shapes like fish.

And mushrooms.

Finally, we baked the brioche and pain au lait.

In a really fun oven that spins the rack constantly.

Out came this deliciousness.

And this adorable mouth full of goodness.

And this ridiculously huge and yummy piece of greatness.

Walking home with bags full of warm brioche and pain au lait, my Saturday morning breakfast started looking pretty darn good.

Steak and Potatoes, Baby!

The highly anticipated steak day finally came this week.  We had six steaks on which to practice our steak cooking skills: four "regular" steaks and two ribeyes.  The first four we were challenged to cook altogether in the same pan but at four different cooking points: bleu, saignant, a point et bien cuit (rare, medium rare, medium and well done).  The literal translation of those cooking points are blue, bloody, on point and well cooked.  As far as the French are concerned, though, there really only exists two cooking points: bloody and more bloody.  

Attempting the four different cooking points.

After the steaks were cooked, we made a sauce by adding shallots to the pan, a little white wine, some stock and then monter-ing au beurre, which is adding butter right at the end.

My steaks. From well done on the left to rare on the right.

On the left is medium well and on the right is well done.

On the left is rare and on the right is medium rare.  Chef gave me a nod of approval and I was off to start the ribeyes.

Until he reminded me that he had to check my potatoes.  Can't have steak without potatoes.

Seasoning the ribeyes.

Grilling them.

Plating them with Beurre Maitre d'Hotel (herb and garlic butter).  DIVINE!

And again, don't forget the potatoes, especially big french fries like these which are called "Pont Neuf."

Side note: Sometimes it pays to plate later because you hear the feedback of the others who have plated before you. As I was taking my two ribeyes to Chef for inspection, Sonja stopped me, looked at my steaks and told me that I better tell him I had cooked them a point instead of saignant. Apparently, her steaks were about the same cooking point as mine and she had tried to say they were saignant and that didn't go over well. So, I marched up to Chef with my newly labeled steaks a point. However, I think he figured us out since Sonja followed me and couldn't stop laughing when I answered "a point" to his question of how I had cooked the steaks. Either way, he approved of the steaks and sent me on merry way so that I could bring home a perfectly cooked ribeye to make a delicious sandwhich for my husband for lunch.

It was ultra good.  So good that I had to first take a bite before taking a photo.