Mom and Dad come to France.

So Jeani and Mike came to visit and we had a great time. They were on the move non-stop. It was really nice to have them around and go off and see other parts of France together. I think they enjoyed themselves, too. Here's a Cliff Notes version of the trip.

First stop. Le Puy.

In the cathedral touching the fever stone. They were hoping it would help with jet lag and general aches and pains.


After my practical exam, we drove down to Provence. I had booked a hotel online for our first night in Saignon. It was a tiny village but the area looked pretty and the hotel cute. We ended up in a little apartment, and it was absolutely beautiful. The staff was extremely friendly and helpful and I'd stay there again and recommend it to anyone. Here's their website. And here's the view from our balcony. This is the same area and view that inspired many paintings of VanGogh.

It overlooked this cute courtyard.

The restaurant around the corner.


Some local construction.


Village hopping.


This photo sums up their visit pretty well. Dad is up front waiting patiently for mom to catch up. She's busy taking full advantage of her macro lens in the background.



Space invaders visit small towns too.


And we even managed to find some wineries.


The inside of an abby.

Here's the outside.
And another little village. They are seriously all this cute.


Our hotel the second night was recommended by the first. This was a completely different style. It was WAY out of town and kind of lodge like. Set in a valley under a massive rock cliff. Just beautiful. Everyone takes their dinner and breakfast together. It was really peaceful and relaxing. A perfect place to go if you're into hiking and nature.


Florida plates. As my dad quickly pointed out, "that's a hell of a drive."

We got back from Provence and parted ways. Monday morning I went to school and they continued north up to Strasbourg to check out where I'll be living next.


They returned at the end of the week and we picnicked in between class behind the chateau.


And I had one afternoon off so we went out to a near by lake and had a picnic there too. I had a wonderful snooze in the sun.

The entire visit with mom and dad was filled with food. They were on vacation, so all rules were off. I went along with the crowd. And now I think I'm going to need the rest of my time here to get off all the extra pounds I put on from their visit.

Here's my first escargo. I wasn't sure where this fit into my diet. It isn't meat, but it's not exactly fish. But I deemed it acceptable for my pescatarian lifestyle. And I'm glad I did, because they're yummy.



Then off to Lyon at the end of the week. We had dinner with dad Friday night and then dropped him at the airport Saturday morning. He had to get back to work. Mom stayed on for a girls weekend in Lyon and one more day in exciting Yssingeaux. But it was a gorgeous weekend for sightseeing.

The cathedral on the hill, designed by the same architect that did Sacre Coeur in Paris.

A trompe l'oeil. A completely flat building painted with the images of famous/influential former residents of Lyon.


Mom's disgusting (although she said it was really good) lyonaise meat loaf. So. Gross.



No girl's weekend is complete without a trip to the salon for a haircut and manicure.


An afternoon ice cream stop. Mom's documentation of my ice cream documentation.

The beautiful botanical gardens in the north of the city.



Mom walked me to school, and the picture taking continued.

Then she joined the class for the afternoon. Chef said she was a good worker and helped out a lot. But she got in trouble when it came to clean up time. No standing around allowed. But she's on vacation, we cut her a break.

Phew. That's it. And that's the short version. We did so much and I feel so lucky to have had two fun visitors. Now it's back to work and back to my normal diet of healthy eating (while snacking on pastries all day).

Talk soon...

It was like I was competing in a Food Network challenge.

That's exactly how it felt. Well, exactly how I imagine it would feel.

We had our first practical exam a couple weeks ago. A shortened version of our final practical exam we'll have in September. It was a timed, 8 hour test. At 8:15 we were all given the same assignment.

1 Fôret Noir (Black Forest cake -see previous post)
1 Paris Breast
9 croissants
9 pain au chocolates
1 marzipan flower
2 marzipan leaves
1 marzipan plaque with "Honoreus Saint Valentin" written in chocolate.
And an assortment tempered chocolate covered ganache bonbons (The ganache was already made, but we needed to temper the dark chocolate.)

The first half hour was dedicated to planning. We were given a blank spreadsheet to fill in with our schedule for the day. It's our organization method. What are we going to do when. When one thing is in the oven, what will we be working on. The schedule is great for us so we can map out the day and make use of every minute. And it's great for the judges so they know that we know what we're doing and not just winging it. At the end of the first thirty minutes we had to turn in our plans which were then then photocopied and handed back. The judges follow along throughout the day and if we detour off our map, we lose points.

I filled out my schedule with modest confidence. I felt good about the Foret Noir and Paris Breast. However the croissants and pain au chocolate, not so much. All the timings for the fridge and proofing were still a little hazy in my head. But I filled in my schedule and handed it in just in time.

At 8:45 the cooking began.

I started with my pâte à choux for my Paris Breast. Everyone in class had secretly agreed before hand that if there was pâte à choux on the test, we'd all do it first. This is because when you cook a pâte à choux you can't open the oven during cooking. And it takes about 42 minutes to bake. We only had one oven between us, so we had to coordinate.

The pâte à choux came together just fine and I dressed it and put it in the oven with the others, no problem. I swiftly moved on to the croissants and pain au chocolat. Now these are essentially the same thing. A painn au chocolate is a croissant, only it starts as a rectangle, not a triangle, and you put chocolate inside. Personally, I don't know why you'd ever eat a croissant if a pain au chocolate was near by. But that's just me.

So I mixed up the dough and wrapped it up in plastic to let it rest beside me while I continued to work on my other assignments. Next up, the chocolate genoise. This is cake that is the base for the fôret noir. It is a very simple cake to make. In fact, I was telling my mother the night before, oh yeah, my parents were in town and mom wanted so much to help me study for my exam. One of the best ways to learn is to teach, so I went though all my recipes and explained the process to my mother. When I got to the genoise, I told her this is so simple it's almost impossible to mess up. You just have to remember to sift in the flower and coco powder. While that is true, it's also true that you gently fold in that sifted flower by hand, NOT the mixer. Then bake. So when I got to my chocolate genoise in class, I didn't hesitate at all. "This cake is so easy, it's impossible to mess up," I thought.

Once again, I am reminded, nothing is impossible. I pulled my genoise out of the oven and it was much shorter than normal. I cut it into three layers and it was more dense than normal. This normally light and fluffy cake was a dense hard brick. And I couldn't figure out why. I set it aside and moved on to other tasks. I'd come back to that later.

I gave my croissant dough a tour, put it in the fridge. I whipped up my praine moussiline for the Paris Breast and put it in the fridge to cool. I rolled out my marzipan plaque and torched it to give it some character. I sculpted a pink flower and a couple of green leaves. Gave my croissants a few more tours and chills. I was on a roll and ahead of schedule. Before I knew it, it was just about time for our 30 minute break. I quickly cut and formed my croissants and pain au chocolates, gave them an egg wash and threw them in the proof box.

At break I was feeling good. I was ahead of my schedule, so I decided to redo my genoise just after the break. So that's what I did. I asked chef if this was allowed. He gave me one of his classic answers that isn't an answer at all. "Do you think you need to redo it?" He has a way of turning very simple questions into twisted mind games. I still wasn't sure if this was allowed, but I did it anyway. I had the time, I may as well. So I did it again.

I believe it was Einstein who said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Well, I think the excitement of a timed exam was altering my logic, and I made my genoise exactly as I did before. My result? The exact same hard dense brick. Duh.

But by this time, I was out of time. I had to move on to my chocolate and put all the pieces together to present my buffet. I moved fast and tempered my chocolate, assembled my Paris Breast, baked my croissants, inscribed my marzipan plaque and finally assembled my Foret Noir.

Everything was good except for the Foret Noir. The genoise killed it. And my chocolate shavings were not as pretty as the first time. So that didn't help either. I was hoping it could at least look good on the outside. At least make a first impression, you know? But it wasn't great. No way around it.

But I finished. All in all I was happy. My croissants were the best I'd ever made (still MUCH room for improvement), my chocolate writing was better than before, my Paris Breast looked good, and my work station was all cleaned up. I did my best. That's all I could ask.


Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures before the judges cut into things and moved it all around. But here are the remains. And here is the terrible Fôret Noir.


Not so bad flower.

And the delicious Paris Breast.

All in all, this exercise confirmed that I love to bake. I think I thrive with a little competition and pressure. It makes it more fun. And I loved doing everything on my own. This was the first time that we were able to make things from start to finish on our own and all at once. For me, this made it much easier to spot areas where I need to improve. But overall I loved it. So much fun.

At the end, we were interviewed about the day. Chef asked me how I thought I did. I told him what I told you and explained the trouble with my genoise. He said I was brave to take the time to do it over, but that I did it over wrong. He said you NEVER put the flower in the mixer. But he was confident that I'd never make that mistake again. Me too. So my marks were low in organization. (I'm pretty sure I could keep a neater work station.) But despite my genoise, my taste marks were high. Not bad for the first round.

Our final exam is 15 hours long over two days, and will include ice cream. Yikes. I really need to organize my notes.

My parents came by to pick me up when we were done. We boxed up my exam and hit the road for Provence. Vacation pictures to come....

Photography

There was a photographer in class several weeks ago taking photos. Here's where they ended up.
(the first pic is me, looking manly. not the greatest photo i've ever taken.)

I got a job!

Really, I convinced someone to let me work for them for free.

At the end of our program, I have to do a one month internship at a real patisserie or restaurant. The school is supposed to place all the international students in internships because, well, it can be difficult. But I'm quite impatient. And somewhat of a control freak. And I don't like other people making decisions for me. So I put the word out to a few friends asking them for any advice or recommendations.

I had no idea where I wanted to go. The coast? Big city? Small village? I've always said I could live anywhere for a year, so a month is really no big deal. But I thought I may as well find somewhere I'd enjoy. The last couple months in tiny Yssingeaux have made me realize that living in a less than optimal location has the power to slow down the speed of time.

So anyway, one friend suggested Strasbourg. It's an important city for many reasons, past and present. It's old, yet it has every modern convenience. It's located in a beautiful region. It's centrally located and easy to travel to or from. It's a university town so it's got a youthful energy. And it's population is around 300,000. Not too big, not too small. I like it.

So I mention my internship and interest in Strasbourg to a friend and he tells me to contact his friend who has a pastry shop in, as luck would have it, Strasbourg. So I promptly write a letter (in French) introducing myself and my situation. Intern Aurelien proofed (rewrote) it for me. Then a couple weeks later Aurelien says that he's going to Strasbourg to visit some friends and I am welcome to come along if I like. At this point I hadn't heard any response, so I email again and say I'll be coming to town (again, in French) and get a quick reply: Call me (yes, it was in French).

Yay! This is good. Only problem is, she thinks I speak French! And I do. Kinda. I've been improving heaps. And I understand a lot. Chef has been speaking more and more French in the lab and Yssingeaux only speaks French. So I get in a lot of practice. But I'm still not very comfortable speaking. This is something I'm gonna have to get over. I know. And I am. But I felt like I painted myself into a corner. Here I wrote this nice letter in perfect French and now I'm gonna get on the phone and speak like a kindergartner. She's going to think I'm a fraud. I was terrified.

So I asked Chef for help. He misunderstood and called for me. He chatted about the program, about me, about what we make, about his expectations for our internships etc, etc. Then he handed me the phone mid conversation and I awkwardly set up a meeting time for Saturday morning. And that was that. I felt bad that Chef had to speak for me, but I was relieved that Chef spoke for me.

So I went to Strasbourg and it was exactly what I had hoped it would be. I met with the woman at the patisserie and the head chef on Saturday. We had a short, simple and nice conversation entirely in French as they don't speak English. They both agreed I could come back to do my internship with them. What a relief! So come September, you can find me working here, at Litzler-Vogel.

And when I'm not working, I'll be wandering around here.






I even found a yoga studio. (It's the pink building with blue shutters.)


And if I don't feel like walking around the city, maybe I'll kayak.



Delicious pretzels (or Bretzels as they say in Strasbourg). I'm told this is where they were invented.


Look, an unexploded bullet. Not sure which war.


Here's the beautiful cathedral. My pocket guide told me, and is now telling you that, "It is one of the most important monuments dating from the Middle Ages (11-15c). Its 466ft high spire was completed in 1439. It remained the highest in Western Europe until the 19th c."

I went in when a service was in progress. The music was intense.




Okay. I just looked at the time. I'm up too late again! Gotta get some sleep so I'm rested for class and my parent's visit. They arrive tomorrow evening. They'll hang out in the area for a couple days then we're driving down to Provence for the weekend. I can't wait.

I'll probably check back in next week. Bonne weekend!

Two month mark.

I promised some food pics and here they are. Sorry for the delay. I'm not sure where time sneaks off to in Yssingeaux.

It was another delicious week with lots of good food. We had another go at croissants and pain au chocolate. Then we spent a day or two playing with chocolate. And we made a couple yummy cakes as well. Have a look.

The cakes in the background are Frasiers and our cereal bars dipped in chocolate up front. We've made marshmallow a few times now. It's pretty darn good, but there's something really off-putting about pink marshmallow for me. I want nothing to do with it. Not even if it's dipped in chocolate. But the other guimauve (marshmallow) we made was chocolate. And let me just say, when I get home I hope people are ready for the best rice crispy treats um, like, ever. I think this will be another staple in my future shop. And maybe my pantry.


We spent a lot of time this week on chocolate. Dark chocolate, specifically. We learned how to stabilize it so it will dry hard and not be all melty as it sits around or when you pick it up. This, (like everything else) is a tricky process. Dark chocolate has to be cooked over a bain marie (double boiler) until it's 45-50ºC. Then you pour half of it on the table to be worked and cooled to the high 20's. Then you put that mixture back in with the remaining and get it all to a consistent 31ºC. Then, and only then it will be stable and you can begin to play.

Bubble wrap mould.





We took our chocolate creations and decorated our mousse fingers. That's not an official name. I don't remember what they're called. But it's a biscuit on bottom, with a moulded mousse, all dipped in chocolate. These were mine.


Here's my Framboisier. It's a basic biscuit, cream and raspberries. Traditionally decorated with a layer of green marzipan and fruit on top. We ran out of raspberries, so I had to substitute with strawberries on top.

Writing with chocolate. C'est trés difficile. Much more difficult than even tracing type. I was having flashbacks of my type class at the Circus. Mark Brought would not be impressed with my work here. Either am I. But I'm new. It's okay.

I didn't budget my space well. I know. But I like the idea of overlapping my letters. My art teacher, however, hated it. "Never never never do this," he said. He has so many rules, and he strongly advises us to follow tradition. At first I had a hard time with this. Especially coming from an art teacher. "Never, never, never use blue. Ziss is very important," he said.

I don't know. Maybe I've been an advertising creative too long, but as soon as he said this I could only imagine blue cakes, blue ribbons and blue icing (all tastefully done, of course). Give me a challenge and I'll figure out a way to get it done. It just seems silly to me to have such a concrete rule. "Why?" I asked immediately. And he said it's because "you don't find blue in nature." Well, again, I disagree. I'm looking at a beautiful blue sky right now. "And in France we don't use blue in pastry," he added.

Okay fine. I'm in France. I'll follow the rules. I think I'll have to if I want to pass my final exam with my instructor on the jury. I'll make up all my own rules when I get home. But for now I'll play nice pretend that there's no such thing as the color blue. I'll only use odd numbers. And I'll give space to every single letter I ever write. Cross my heart.


Here's another example of frustrating. So first we rolled out some marzipan and cut/shaped it to look like a plaque or scroll. Then we torched it to add some aging effects and then I RUINED it with chocolate writing. This was so frustrating for me. We practiced and practiced on the table first, but the marzipan has an entirely different texture and well, you can see how well mine turned out. And check out the grade. Hmm. Not fun.


Okay. Enough with bad type. The good news is, my croissants are improving! Not great yet, but at least it's not 100% brioche like last time. Look, there's a few more layers and pockets of air. Yay.


We made a bunch of stuff, including pain au chocolate. This is exactly the same as a croissant, only when you roll it, it starts as a rectangle, not triangle and you add chocolate inside. In France, this is breakfast. Isn't that delightful?


This one looks really good. I'm guessing it's Aldo's. He's our only guy in the class, and he's also the best baker. He's been working in bakeries in Lima for years. Chef put us in teams this week and Tam and I were matched up with Aldo. So my future croissants are looking good.


The Belle-Hélen. It's not as pretty as the Black Forrest cake from a couple weeks ago, but this dessert delivers. You serve it cold and it just tastes happy. Almost like an ice cream cake, only more smooth, and all around better. I had more than my fair share last Friday.


Alright. I gotta go pack. I'm headed to Strasbourg this weekend to check out the town. I've heard good things and am hoping to find an internship there for September. I'll check back in next week.

Bonsoir!

When it rains, it pours.

There's a fabulous thunder storm roaring outside. An entire orchestra is playing. But this piece is all about percussion, complete with gongs. I love it. I heard the rumbling start earlier today so I scrambled out the door with my sneakers and ipod to get in a quick run. And I have to say, a mean dark cloud that spits on you makes for one motivational running coach. Also my new running path helps. I discovered a beautiful path just behind my apartment. Sidwalks and all. It's fantastic. Now I don't have to run in circles or be chased by cars.



These guys joined me for a while the other day.


Man, it's really pouring out there now. Crazy, as just yesterday I was toasting myself beside this lake.



Jacqueline (my flatmate), Adda (intern at ENSP and CAP graduate) and I went to la barrage for the afternoon. Jacqueline went for a short walk, which for a Swiss woman is only a mere three hours. Adda and I relaxed with the dogs and kids in the shade. I SO wanted to take this guy home with me. I can't wait to adopt a dog someday.


Anyway. Enough rambling. I'm gonna go wake up Nate. But I'll be back later with food pics.