The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Over the last 6 weeks, we've crammed a lot in. Being a basic cuisine class, we learned about the basic pastries, the basic sauces (orange, hollandaise, bernaise, bechamel, anglaise), the basic stocks (veal, chicken, fish), and how to prepare, cook, and serve fish, meat, vegetables and desserts.

Some of what we've done has been very Good. Like learning how to:

1. Fillet fish and prepare or remove the skin
   
   Filet o' Fish
2. Poach and pan fry fish
   Getting that Nice Pattern and No Curling in the Pan!
   
   
3. Tie up poultry to roast or cut up poultry into parts
   
   
   Threading the caneton (small duck) up tight
   
4. Season while cooking
5. Appreciate Wine
6. Not be anal about recipes and use taste and judgment along the way
7. Make all the basic sauces
   
   
   Crab Bisque or Shellfish stock or sauce - all from same base
   
   Hollandaise
8. Make preserves
9. Prepare chocolate truffles
10. Utilize tools like metal rings and chinoise and spiders (like a wire-mesh slotted spoon)
    
11. Tap the awesome power of rich stocks to make sauces great
12. And a little bit of technique for presentation...
    
    My Noix St. Jacques (scallops) turned out lookin' purty durned decent
    
    My Carribean cake needed a little piping practice, but overall, not too shabby
    
    I really like how this salad w/cold-cooked fresh salmon roulades turned out
    

But...not everything has been so useful.

Most of the recipes that we've made are very old French recipes - many of which result in meat or fish that's overcooked, heavy butter and cream-laden sauces that, while saying "old school", also seem to say "Please call my cardiologist. NOW!". Surprisingly, many of these sauces, which the chefs thought tasted good, resulted in me and Susie looking at each other with wrinkled noses and thinking "I don't think so". They were just plain Bad. Many of these recipes came out looking bland and/or tasting bland or overly rich, but underly flavorful and left me thinking that I'd never ever make those at home.

But I'm not one to let a few bad apples spoil the cart.

I tried to do as much as I could to learn. I feel like I'm taking quite a lot away from the experience...from things like Fish Stock - that we made enough times that I could almost make one blindfolded (aside, perhaps, from the part where I use the cleaver to chop up the fish bones) to turning vegetables and steaming them with aromatics in the water to impart flavor without fat (imagine that!!!).

I've spent a lot of time on plating and feel that I'm much improved in terms of making presentable dishes, but, sadly, that was not so evident in my final exam.

The exam was last Thursday night. It was a 3 hour affair where you're handed the names of two recipes and you have to make them from scratch doing all prepping, cooking, plating, and cleanup - without recipes. Although I am renowned the world over for my poor memory, I did manage to mostly remember the 6 recipes that they told us might be on the exam. For that, I feel like I accomplished something that night.

I felt good about how I was doing with my prep - everything cut the way it was supposed to be and in neatly separate prep bowls...until I started carving the chicken. I was cutting it up into several pieces to make Poulet au l'Estragon (tarragon) when I got a piece that didn't look right. I thought I needed to cut off a certain part when one of my chef instructors, Chef Christophe, came through the kitchen, looked at what I was doing and said "Please don't tell me that you were in my class. Please don't tell me that you were my student." O..U..C..H.

I told him what I thought I needed to do next, but he repeated his chide. I went on and did some other things first since I had lost some confidence about my meat-cutting skills when chef Christian returned...and then proceeded to show me what I needed to do...doing exactly what I had told him I thought I needed to do...but now I looked like a loser. It was so sad.

So I made my two dishes - Oeufs Meurette (eggs with a red wine sauce) and the Poulet. Burnt a little toast here...broke one of my poached eggs there...failed to sufficiently reduce and thicken the sauces...and finally, although I got both plated and warm to the table, the chicken was insufficiently cooked. Quelle désastre. Well, I thought, at least I can say that I went here even if I don't get my diploma the next day:^( I was actually OK the next day, but I was seriously depressed after I finished at 9PM that night...especially since my classmate Susie's dishes looked like they were right off the table from Gary Danko or Bouley. OK, OK, but she had worked in the kitchen at the Four Seasons in Thailand, so I don't want to pound myself too hard for this. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to have ended on a slightly higher note.)

Didn't really help that it was raining, either.

Ultimately, I did pass...not with flying colors, perhaps, but I passed. I now have a shiny new diploma to show for it and a little of my confidence has returned. Perhaps the fact that I gave the chefs a bottle of Koehler Pinot Noir improved my fate. Or not. Regardless, this has been a wonderful experience so far and I'm blessed for having had the opportunity.

I'm glad I came and I've gotten much out of living in Paris for a spell. My French, I fear, has deteriorated since I've been here, but I think that if I could stay for a year or two, I'd get the hang of it.

All in all, Paris has been beautiful. Heck, it was almost 60 degrees last Friday night (even though it was nearly 30 degrees last night). The architecture at night, lit up with lights, is just inspiring. The Xmas decorations are starting to appear (though not so much on the Rue des Rosiers - the main the Jewish quarter) near the Ritz and out in the 7th, near La Tour d'Eiffel. That whole "magic of the season" is definitely happening.

Living here has been extraordinary, if relatively brief. It's been great to settle into a neighborhood, find my way around the city a little better, explore the arrondissements, and not feel like I have to rush to this museum or that shop or get that perfect restaurant reservation every day, the way you do on a 1-week trip.

My ability to form a coherent sentence in French seems somewhat better, and although I'm still struggling with verb tenses, my vocabulary is improving. Frankly, I think that I won't get to sound much better than a 2-year old until I get to live here for a few years.

Sooooo....honey? What do you think? :-)