Weekend; relaxing, shopping, studying and sightseeing

Saturday was a nice day. After a bit of rain in the morning it got better quickly, so I decided to get some fresh air (after studying a bit) and walk towards the Seine river. It was quite a walk from Dupleix, via Motte P. to the Eiffel Tower and Ecole Militair and then towards Museum Rodin. (Still no coffee...). Rue du Bac - did a bit of window shopping - and finally a belated breakfast with lots of coffee, eggs etc and a glass of vin blanc somewhere in the 6th arrondisement ! Yes, life sucks, I know....

I took the metro back from Mabillon (X-mas market has started again) because I just didn't feel like walking again. Got home to study a bit again. Reading recipes, recipes, more recipes and all the regional stuff we have to learn. Haven't got a clue what they are going to ask next Wednesday at the written exam, we'll just have to wait and see.

Sunday; Got up fairly early, read a bit in the Cordon Bleu binder and went to the local market at Dupleix metro station.

Fruit, flowers, fish, vegetables, bread, cheese, local protesters, homeless people, rich people, lots of 60+ people and occasionally a tourist. This market at Dupleix is twice a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays. Very nice!

It was quite busy at the market and the weather was great!

Bought some fruit, had a chat with a local (oh yeah!) in fluent Franglais, but it was just nice.

Then breakfast in the local cafe on the corner of the market. I brought my LCB books and stayed for about 1.5 hrs.... Lots of gooooooooooodddddd coffee!

These three shops are my local boulangerie, fish monger and cheese shop.

Home now; Put the iPod on random play and turned up the volume, cleaned the apartment a bit, played on the internet, had a glass of vin blanc, studied a bit (encore) and did some ironing (LCB stuff).

Dinner: Bought a coquelet (mini chicken) with a baguette and a bottle of wine.
Tomorrow will be a long day - practical-demo-practical and finally an evening demo.... we'll finish by 21.00 hrs....

A demain!
Sjoerd

Shopping for cookware in Paris is great!

Shopping for cookware in Paris is heavenly!
All the bigger shops are close together: There are 4 (!) shops on Rue Montmartre (Mora, La Bovida and two shops of A.Simon) and there´s one around the corner at Rue Tiquetonne that specialises in pastry equipment.(G.Detout)
A few 100 meters towards Les Halles is the 'institution' of Dehillerin in Rue Coquillère.

When you go shopping and you are a Le Cordon Bleu student, take your ID card with you for a discount !

http://www.e-dehillerin.fr/en/index.php
http://www.mora.fr/
http://www.simon-a.com/
http://www.labovida.com/
and G.Detout, 58 rue Tiquetonne,Paris

Two nice articles about the kitchen shops have been written on the website FXcuisine.com
Check out the article about all the major kitchen shops HERE. A specific artical has been written on Dehillerin.

Chef invité @ LCB - Dominique Dubray / a cuisine demonstration

Last Thursday was a slow day; Only one demo. So we decided to go to a cuisine demonstration of a non-LCB chef, a so called chef invité session. This time it was chef Dominique Dubray of the Pavillon Elysée in Paris.

He's a good friend and colleague of Marc Thivet, our chef in intermediate.
Because chef was a bit late, he didn't prepare the dessert;

Today's dishes were European crab with wakame seaweed and a lobster emulsion and herb crusted veal tenderloin stuffed with chanterelle mushrooms.

Different ingredients. Coloured carrots.

This demo was set up in the same way as we have our demo's at Cordon Bleu. You get the ingredients list and you have to write down the 'recipe'yourself. (I will not write the recipe details on the blog!)

Interesting starter!

The main course.

picture time!

Nice demo; Thank you chef !

News about our practical exam dishes.

The list is in - no real surprises. It just means I have to study recipes a bit now. The written exam is next Wednesday and the practical exam is another week later.

The latter is all about roasted duck, stuffed salman, fish stew, guinea fowl (pan roasted or stuffed), monkfish, stuffed rabbit, chicken sautee, lamb fillets and stuffed trout. The technical dish is a bearnaise sauce (Cuisine de Base, can't remember, I have to look that up....)
Please read it out loud in French - now it sounds a lot better and nicer !

Long, long, last demo of the week - nice dinner though!

Our last demo today was all about the Languedoc region. This time chef made a salt cod puree with a tapenade for a starter, a traditional white bean stew (cassoulet prepare comme a Toulouse) for the main course and for dessert a apricot and figs gratin with lavender honey / oh yeah!
Well, the chef had quite a few relevant and irrelevant ´petite histoires´ in this session, but the end/result was actually very good. The stew was super (lots of work / we´ll do that next Monday), but timewise it was very long session. We finished nearly half an hour late - but hey - the stew was good! Can´t complain about that. Thank you chef and bon week-end!

big stew

dessert

starter

Chef portioning the white bean stew - that was a nice early dinner before we went to the cafe for a few beers.

Happy birthday Katie !

Today was Katie's birthday. Congratulations ! We're in the same class and right before the last demo today, I asked chef Marc Thivet to make one extra dessert for Katie's birthday. Marc did a nice job - merci chef !

Chopping lots of fish - bouillabaisse !

blog, blogspot, Cordon Bleu, Intermediate Cuisine, Paris, SjoerdAfter yesterday's demo about the bouillabaisse, it was now time to chop up the fish ourselves. First I went to the cafe (7.30 am) on the corner for two espresso's, had a chat with chef Patrick (in Franglais, interesting) and was at school before 8 'o clock. Since I was still assistent, I was there early because there was actually quite a bit of work to be done; 3 big trays of different kinds of fish, a tray of general ingredients and 2 trays of veggies had to come from the basement to our kitchen on the second floor; but my co-assistent didn't show up this morning...... he was in class, but not early enough to set up the stuff. %$#@ ! Well, I got it all out on time with a bit of help from James and off we went... Today, there were only 9 of us, one didn't feel like chopping up fish on an early morning I guess....

Today's dish; this is my creation.

chop,chop,chop,chop ! veggies, fish, rinse, chop more veggies, filled the fish, remove all the pinbones, deseed and skin tomato's, chop more fish, sweat the stuff, cut fishbones and pop the eyes, remove gills of the suckers without getting hurt, brown the fishbones, chop more veggies, add water, add tomato puree, add more tomato puree, slice potato on a mandolin and slice off some skin as well (idiota!), cut onions, crush garlic, clean the blood (of your finger) on the chopping board, and clean the blood again 20 seconds later, and above all: add lots (and I mean lots) of saffron! To cut a lot story short - we made bouillabaisse.

Not a bad dish, but a lot of work. My result was sort of OK, the liquid was just a bit too thin. Too bad, better luck next time. The fish was cooked to perfection though! (If I may say so myself.)

King of Chinoix - strain/sieve the soup!

Plating the dish at the end. Everything looks yellow from the saffron.

Merci Karine Carroy for your translations!

Today, it was Karine's last day of translating chef's work/explanations in our cuisine class. Karine normally works at the reception desk and she is not a professional translator, but since quite a few translators are currently unavailable, she was doing this job on the side; Thank you for a good job over the last few days - today's session was slow, but a lot of fun in the end. As chef Thivet would say: Bon travail ! (et aussi avec une petite histoire...) Thanks.

Karine with chef Patrick.

Another Lesourd!

Frederic has a new friend; Or is it his brother 'Damy'?
Or maybe one of the others: Dopey, Sneezy, Sleezy, Slimy or Snotty? All
these little creatures look alike!

Le petit ami de chef L..... just above ze table....

OK, one food update then...........

Yesterday afternoon, right before our dinner, we made something with............

Rabbit!!!  bon appetit !

cuisine & pastry class dinner, no food update

Yesterday evening we had our class dinner. This is a dinner in a nice place together with all the people from pastry. This time we went to the *resto 'Le Passiflore', in the 16th arrondisement, near Trocadero. Since our class finished late (18.15 hr) and we  were supposed to be there at 19.30 - it sort of went wrong. Not many of the 40 students were on time.

But hey, I thought dinner was OK although certainly not spectacular. The only remark I have to make (and also heard a lot from others) is that the restaurant people were very very rude. Not worth the * at all. That's too bad. Maybe LCB can find another place quickly, because they are not worth another vist because of their attitude. sorry.

some pictures;

After dinner we had a beer in the cafe on the corner. Home by 1.15 hrs. Thursday morning we didn't have any classes - that was great! time to sleep..........

Tuna starter, white sausage, Mark Thivet and cake for dessert

Today was chef Thivet-day. He was there for our demo and for the practical. Only two sessions today - easy! The bonus however, is that we have to make sausages in the practical too - we skipped that one last week because there were no sausage-casings available. Unfortunately, I left my sausage-recipe at home; ^%$# !!

Chef T in action.

Karine was doing the translation today, she´s from the reception and she did a very good job. And if you´ve ever seen ´Allo Allo´, yes, she fits right in.

So, today's program was:
starter - galette feuilletee au thon marine, vinaigrette vierge au basilic
mains -  estouffade de boeuf provencale
dessert - tulipe et son emulsion au citron de menton

oh,la,la. c´est bien! we had to make the starter in practical. And yes, it´s another bloody puff pastry recipe. I hate the stuff. So, in practical I burnt it..... s..t happens.
Actually, the dish was very nice and I would definitely make it at home.
On top of that, we had to produce a ´boudain blanc au pommes´. Interesting to see  how we help each other out... some sausages changed plates so quickly during plating because of the time pressure at the end of the practical and nobody noticed. I think the chef judged the same sausage at least 3 times.... But hey, we all plated up differently and the sausage was good! So we are worth all the points from this session.

main course, very undercooked meat. Not good. sorry chef.

A very nice starter / I´ll make it again.

cookies

white sausage....

and sausage in my container, it´s part of Petri´s dinner.

In return he gave me a huge dessert (tart) that he made in his pastry practical. I had a slice downstairs in the ´wintergarden´and the rest went to Damien who eats virtually anything he can get his hands on.

Tomorrow, there will be no blogging. We are going out for our class dinner together with the ´chocolate guys´. It´s at a Michelin restaurant near Trocadero. Don´t know the name at the moment. See you all again soon!

Sjoerd