Back to food.

From the looks of my recent posts, it seems as if I've only been hopping around France wandering about. And I have, a little. But I've spent most of my time in the lab up to my elbows in butter and flour (or burre et farine). So it's time to return to my main subject. Food.

As usual, I'm playing catchup and I have so much to tell you I don't know where to start. So I'll just start with the most recent and jump around. That's how my brain works anyway.

Our buffet from yesterday.


MILLEFEUILLE
Again, very traditional French pastry. It's puff pastry, layered with pastry creme and then topped with fondant.


CROISSANTS
Our first go was a failure according to Chef Sebastian. In this cross section you can clearly see all the layers, oh, no you can't. That's the problem. When rolling out all the tours (folding rolling out, refrigerating, folding, rolling out, refrigerating, etc.) our dough became too soft and our butter melted into the dough. This is a no no. If the butter melts, the layers fuse together and it's just one big clump of dough and you may as well call it brioche.


CHARLOTTE AUX FRAISES
Mostly a mixture of pastry cream and whip cream, with fruit and a light cookie for crunch. Not bad at all.


BABA RHUM
I've never been a fan of alcohol in my desserts. This stayed true with my Baba Rhum. It was a bit of a fiasco. I applied too much rhum and my cake pretty much fell apart. But we decorated with fruit and voila, banana saved my Baba.


FOREST NOIR (Black Forest)
I named mine The Forbidden Forest.
(an exception to my alcohol in dessert dislike)


It's alternating layers of chocolate cake soaked in sherry syrup and Chantilly cream (good God this stuff is fantastic). Sherry cherries are sprinkled in with the Chantilly. Then the entire cake is coated with dark chocolate shavings and cigarettes. Making chocolate cigarettes is entirely more difficult that it looks by the way. But I think I could probably say that about most of the things I've been making. In any case, I'll be making Forest Noir again and again. Both for me and my future shop. We cut into this one yesterday.



PLATED DESSERTS

This was my first go at a plated dessert. We had all of 2 minutes to throw something together. I got the seal of approval from our design teacher who came in and critiqued all the work. (How cute is his son?)


Tam's turned out great.

Off for now. More to come... Bonne journée

PS: If anyone wants a specific recipe just let me know. I'm happy to share and I'll do my best to explain.

Ahh, Paris.

Hi. I'm back. Well I've been back since late Sunday evening but have been slammed with school and fatigue, so I'm just updating now (as you can see). I had a fantastic long weekend in Paris. I'll summarize the highlights.

Logistically it worked out great (well almost). I rode up with Aurelian. He's a 23 year-old intern working in the school office for our six month term He's also from Versailles and was driving home for the weekend, so he took three passengers. So it was Simona, the Romanian girl in my class, Adda, a Spanish girl that just finished the French CAP and now working at the school, and myself.

The drive was smooth. We arrived around 1:30. We dropped Adda at her friend's place and then Aurelian was going to drop Simona and I off at our hotel before he continued on up to Versailles. However there was a very important lesson to be learned before that could happen. DON'T TRUST TECHNOLOGY. Not for the important stuff. Always always write down the name, address and phone number of your hotel. EVEN if your confirmation email is on your iphone. Just do it. Then you won't be driving around at 3 am feeling really embarrassed, tired and stupid. Yeah. So for whatever reason I didn't write it down, and Simona's iphone couldn't pick up wifi and we didn't know the full name or address of the hotel. I couldn't believe how patient Aurelian stayed. I would have been livid. I felt so irresponsible. We knew the neighborhood and half of the name, but had no luck in our blind search. Then I remembered that I had forwarded the confirmation to Nate. So I used my new French cell phone which only had 10 euros of credit loaded to call. Thank God he picked up and was near the computer to Google me out of my mess. How ironic, relying on technology got me into trouble and got me out. Finally by about 3:30 we arrived at our hotel with a simple lesson learned. Pen and paper are your friends.

So a bit of a rough beginning, but all was well from then on.

Day one:

The view from my room.

Simona and I...
...and our lunch.A service in Notre Dame. (I can't remember the holiday, but it's a Catholic one and the reason we had a long weekend.)

I left Simona at Notre Dame and continued along the Seine over to the Tour Effel, and passed a few other landmarks on the way home. I was reminded what solo travel feels like. And how much I've missed it. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy company. Especially with specific people. But strolling solo, with no agenda, is a feeling I've grown to love.


One of the nicest garage doors I've ever seen.


Day two:

It was raining so I wandered around Musée D'Orsay for the afternoon. Apparently it wasn't a unique idea.

Then up to Montmartre for dinner.



Day three:

I met up with Aurelian near Pompidou. He had some friends visiting from Montreal and was giving a walking tour for them and other ENSP students. I love walking tours. This one ended up being about 14 hours long. We walked and walked and walked.

One of the many space invaders.

You can hire a bike for 1 euro.

Luxembourg Gardens.


There was a wedding just starting at Saint Geneveive. So we stepped in for the beginning. So did many others. I guess that's the price you pay for getting married in a church that's on the tourist map. Wedding crashers.


White asparagus is in season in the Latin Quarter.


A different view of the Eiffel Tower.

And another. We took an afternoon break and I promptly fell asleep on the lawn. It's a nice place to wake up.



A very Parisian thing to do (I'm told) is to have a picnic on this bridge. We didn't bring food, but we joined the crowd for sundown.


It's also a bridge to secure your love. In absence of trees, lovers carve their initials onto locks and hang them along the bridge.

Check out this soldier. He's got a blue lightsaber.


Day four:

My lunch with Simona. Soba noodles. Tasty, but too salty.

Chateau de St. Germane En Laye. Just outside Paris. Simona and I took the train out to meet Adda and Aurelian here. They couldn't drive into the city due to long weekend traffic.


The front seat was in charge of getting us home.


They took us through the beautiful fields of Burgundy. Well, that's all I saw. I slept most of the way.


Alright. That's it. And I'm pretty sure that's enough. I'll check back in this weekend and fill you in on school. There's a lot of filling in to do.

Until then... bonsoir, or bonne journée (depending on your timezone).

Le Puy-En-Velay

I'll keep this short as it's WAY past my bedtime and I still need to translate the scientific properties of salt into French.

Just wanted to share a few pictures from Le Puy. It's a small town about 20 minutes from Yssingeaux. I took the bus over for the day a couple Saturdays ago. Fantastic little city. It'll tell you stories later. For now, have a look at the pretty pictures.









Okay. Sleeping now. Off to Paris tomorrow after school. Thursday is some sort of holiday here, and the school is closed on Friday. So I'll check back in with more pictures and updates next week. Bon weekend!