Day 9 Le Cordon Bleu Paris

It's day 9 but by the end of the day we had completed lesson 11. There are 30 lessons in the course (30 Demos and 30 Practicals), so technically we're 1/3 of the way through the course material if we were to keep this pace. Today was my first day as an assistant. I have to say that this really puts a crimp in the works. LCB gets free labor out of its students by using them to haul the ingredients for their group from the basement. You would think that for a $12,000 tuition, the ingredients would be at the kitchen for the students! Since we had two practicals today, Kelsey and I had the privilege to run up and down between the basement and our kitchen twice today. This really places undue pressure on the students. Rather than preparing for the session, the assistants have to worry about supplying their group with enough of every ingredient required for the session. The basement is like the dungeon where a group of subterranean dwellers roam protecting their domain. There is a whole convention for how things are done in the basement which are of course not taught to low life students like me. It's trial by fire.  Ok...my feelings on the subject are obviously negative. We managed.

We were grilling salmon at 0830 today. The smell was overpowering. I was told by another student that she could smell the salmon when she came out of the metro station 2 blocks away! The dish was grilled salmon,  Byron potatoes, and an emulsified butter sauce with chives. It was a nice dish with a nicely flavorful sauce, but we all reeked of the salmon by the end of the session! The Byron potatoes are creative. The potatoes are mashed and placed on to a cookie sheet with a pastry bag. They are then indented with the back of a ladle to create a bowl and filled with a béchamel sauce topped with gruyere. Then baked. The salmon is resting on a bed of spinach sweated in butter.

My Plate

Next we had a 3 hour demo which kicked off the series on forced meats. First was the Duck Terrine. I had tried the rabbit terrine on our market day last week and really liked it, so I was eager to learn how to make it. Lots going on with this method of combining meats and fats, grinding, creating a gelatin layer, etc...I want to try this when I return home. The second half of the demo was devoted to making paupiettes de veau bourgeoise (stuffed veal with glazed vegetables). We were responsible for making this during the next session. The Chef kept harping on moving fast on this one since there was so much going on. The side dish on this meal are "turned" carrot and small onions. Turning vegetables is essentially taking a potato, carrot, celery or any other vegetable and making it look like a football. I don't remember ever having turned vegetables. It's apparently something very holy because it's a big deal at LCB.

The ensuing practical was recreating the above demo. Kelsey and I raced out of the demo

as soon as it ended to take care of our group. We ran down to the basement to grab all of our ingredients and sent it up on the dumbwaiter to our assigned kitchen on the 2nd floor. Then we ran up to the 2nd floor to greet the dumbwaiter with our delivery. Of course, we were short on eggs and had no veal stock. I ran back down and got them. Julia was a huge help the whole day . She was the assistant last week and felt our pain. Anyway...I finally got set up and fell into the flow of my recipe. Lots of steps...turning carrots is much harder than it looks.    Here is my finished plate. Now that I look at it, the presentation looks like some angry Polynesian God. Why the hell did I do that??? I need to work on my presentation. I would laugh if this plate was served to me in a restaurant. However, the food itself came out fairly well. My sauce was too fatty as you can see against the plate. I didn't skim it enough as it was reducing (it tasted really good though). we were all done at least 30 minutes early. Not bad!

I was happy to finish for the day since I was meeting up with my buddy Chris and a fellow co-worker. We met up and went to a pub. I apologized for reeking like a giant salmon, but mentioned that I had food from both of my practicals in my backpack. They were both eager to taste some LCB "haute cuisine" so, we broke out the salmon, byron potatoes, and stuffed veal and feasted despite the fact that the food was cold. They seemed to enjoy it and the bar didn't seem to mind.

Wolfing down food from my 2 practicals

I don't have to go in until 1230 tomorrow! That's a first:)