Does 'e like 'is job?

After tasting about 10 plates of dull stuffed cabbage (with loads of caul fat wrapped around it) chef asks himself if it is properly cooked, under cooked, under- or over seasoned, if it has a jus that's too greasy, has over/under cooked vegetables - and his last question is : Have I got the right job......

Thank you all visitors !

Thank you all for visiting my blog, leaving comments, sending me emails, text messages etc etc.
Wherever you are - keep following the blog !
So far, I have had hits on my blogs from : The Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, United States, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Australia, Yorkshire (!), Spain, Taiwan, Romania, Canada, Iceland, Canada, Singapore, Brazil, Republic of Korea, Bermuda and Japan. Not a bad 'score' so far. Thanks again for all your support.

Sjoerd.
A demain!

Free download of my LCB intermediate pictures from Picasa.

I put loads of good and bad pictures I made in school in Picasa. Feel free to download any pics you like. In general, the pictures are about 250-300 Kb, but if you want the Mb shots, just send me an email and I'll (try to) send them to you.

check it out at : http://picasaweb.google.nl/sjoerd.servaas
I'll try to be good and update it regularly...

Friday, Le weekend et lundi; Jayne's back ! Thanksgiving dinner

Busy times, as you can read in the header. Let me start with Friday.
Practical lambchops on potato/onion stuff - 'stolen'by Petri from Finland. He was a very happy bunny - he just loved it (too much raw garlic in it...., and his girlfriend is here in Paris too.....). After that we had a demo about sole with a mousseline salmon filling. That wasn't too bad. Only in the practical I sort of %$#@ up, and thanks to Cristina I put a very nice dish on ze table! Fenk U very much darling! (This was on Monday morning) Of course there was a lot more in the demo, but that wasn't really worth mentioning.... and I forgot all about it anyway!

My dish of Monday morning; Sole with a salmon stuffin, morels, flan and a onion/orange pile of something. Nice ! Notice the fantastic turned mushroom on top of the fish. (thank you C.!)

Friday evening - no garlic lamb for me! Jayne is here. Yippee!! Clean the house quickly, get showered, and pick Jayne up from the metro station. We had a nice dinner at restaurant 'Lola', in my neighbourhood. Saturday, sleep in, shop, coffee in a brasserie without coffee (machine broke down) - browsing along boulevard Haussmann (La Fayette, Le Printemps etc.)

X-mas tree in La Fayette
On Sunday we went to our local market at metro station Dupleix to shop for all the groceries and veggie's for Jayne to take home. Coffee in the cafe and then to the Gare du Nord to say goodbye to Jayne who was going back to Amsterdam too soon....
After Jayne left, I went to a party of a few guys of basic cuisine - some sort of belated Thanksgiving party. Well, the turkey was huge (!), all the stuffings were great, champagne, wine, cheese platter, ice cream, tart, beer, more wine; in one word: SUPER afternoon! Thank you all - Alan, Will, Jorge, Steve, Julia, Kelsey, Jennifer, Mark, Eduardo for a very nice time.

Coming home at half seven, I did all the ironing...... and fell asleep.

Monday - assistant day, together with monsieur Liu from China. We both did a good job. It went allright. I didn't have my day today, and was kind of lost in class, Cristina helped me out to make the sauce and cook the stuff and I did a great plating of my dish..... shit, that's sort of all I did I think. I know that's not really true, but I had an off-day. Better luck next time.
Then another chef Poupard demo. he was a bit grumpy when he started, but it got better. The dish was very inspiring: Cabbage stuffed with all kinds of fat and meat and then wrapped in caul fat (from ze pig stomach...) - what a *@$%?* dish.
Poupard's starter was good - fois gras on toast (and now I'm not on a diet!) and a strawberry 'soup'for dessert. Nice!

Strawberry dessert with ´pancake´.







Foie gras on toast







A very boring cabbage thing with ´bricks´of vegetables. I did well in my practical, except for the jus, too greasy!
Then straight to the pub for a few beers, home by half 8.
Thank you all for reading. Hope you still enjoy the blog.
C U tomorrow,
Sjoerd

The teaching chefs in Intermediate cuisine are....

At your request;
The teaching chefs in intermediate cuisine are:
chef Patrick Caals and chef Marc Thivet. Occasionnally, Bruno and Frederic are giving a demo;
Supervising in the practicals: Chef Franck Poupard, Chef Frederic Lesourd, chef Bruno Stril chef Philippe Clergue, chef Patrick Terrien and chef Xavier Cotte.

quite a list, n'est-ce pas?
(Can't find pictures of Chefs Terrien et Clergue - sorry.)

Xavier

Little Fred 'le petit'

Marc

Xavier, Frederic et Patrick

Bruno

encore Bruno

Franck

Marc

Coq au vin with(out) blood or chicken?

Easter pie....

Cock, eh, coq au vin day - first the demo, then the practical.

Started early at 8.30 with chef Caals.

He was in a good mood and joked around a lot.

The starter was interesting: Easter pate. Since today is Thanksgiving (that is some kind of a big $$$$ day in a certain country - not in Europe!), the easter dish was 'very appropriate'. Next was the coq en barbouille (whatever that means) and a pear and walnut tart. All in all, not bad.

chicken - no coq !

The coq. Well, this time we were in for a surprise - it wasn't a coq - it was a bloody CHICKEN! Main reason: The cooking time of a rooster is 2.5x longer then the cooking time of a chicken. No,no,no, a chicken is a lot cheaper...... it's (also) about euro's! (is the general thought in class)

Coq or chicken au vin is easy. Marinade the 8 pieces of chicken wine and cognac with lots of berries and veggie's (preferably overnight), Fry the coq, make a very reduced sauce, garnish it with soft onions/vinegar, blanched and fried lardons, a slice of bread fried in clarified butter and put a parsley leaf on top. Easy peasy! I did well, although the sauce should have been a bit thicker. (Chef: 'It's not a jus, it's a sauce.' - but then in French)

Speaking of the thickness of the sauce - we could make the sauce thicker with either using starch (in a bit of water) or blood. And yes, we had two full bottles of perfect nice very bright red blood in the classroom. The blood would thicking the sauce perfectly, but it would also make it look a lot better - read: darker = black. As it should be. I did mine with the starch solution.

Later that day - the cafe; 2 beers and a plate of nice ham/salami etc later, we decided to open my coq-container and eat it. Had a few pieces, and threw the rest in the 'bin' and flushed it. sorry about that.

Ballotine brick - France is 'appy!

This week, we made a ballotine. This is like deboning a whole (oh yeah) chicken, but leave it sort of whole - don't break or cut the skin. Then you stuff the thing with a pork and chicken filling and top it off with a nice roll of fois gras. "Close' the bird, roll it up in plastic, tie it firmly together and cook it in the consommee. To be served the day after making it. It's fantastic to eat this when you're on a diet!
I took a few slices from chef's ballotine home and gave it to my 80+ year old neighbour - she was very very pleased with it - mais c'est tres gentil! yes, I know...

When my brick of fat was ready the next day, I took it home and I contacted my landlady - and oh yes, she wanted the 1.5 kg thing.

This was a pretty rich brick; It tasted nice, but only a few slices, that's more than enough for me... And I'm not really on a diet.... I think!

Seems like the French LOVE these kind of dishes; Lots of fois gras, and they prefer their meat served pink (rose). Too pink, I'd say!

Bye for now,

Sjoerd

Ze schedule for this week and the next; not that bad!

Basically it's a very doable two weeks - starting at 8.30 in the morning until roughly 18.00 hrs.

Creativity and playing with aspic (gelatine)

Tuesday, we had a very special day - we had to play with aspic. (Gelatine)
After we had made a very nice consommee (that's a very clear clarified 'soup') we ruined the consommee by putting loads of gelatine sheets in it - horrible!

Consommee - before and after clarifying. Quite a difference.

But afterwards we got to play with it, because the casing for the saucages that we were supposed to make were not there - so it was playtime!
Interesting to see that some people in this world think you can actually plate a WHOLE tomato on a plate in aspic and put the ballotine on top - but chef Poupard corrected it and sliced the tomato thinly (2 mm thick) and put it on a plate.

Picture time! B-class, you did a SUPER plating of the aspic, it looked great. Very very creative.(by the way, I'm in A-class...)

Levi was champion 'playing with words' - VOILA! On a day like this, he would fit right into the Amsterdam/NY/Vancouver gay-scene. Oh-la-la!

The best plate of all, I think!

Chef Poupard destroying, I mean tasting the stuff.

The tomato slicer....

Judging Catharine's plate

Chef T's creation. Nice!

Visitor in class and the Spanish girls

Yesterday, we had a visitor in class. Cristina brought a very good friend from Mallorca to class - Carlos. He stayed for the choucroute, flammenkuche and nougat session. I think he liked being at the demo (not the food..?) and he also wanted to wear a LCB jacket, so I borrowed him one. Yes Carlos, you looked good in it - basic pastry for you next year??? (Later that day, we had a few drinks together and went out for dinner. Very nice evening with lots of laughs! thanks Carlos, it was good fun.)

The Spanisg girls in class - Cris & Monika.

Turned veggies, filmcrew, stuffed trout & smokey lamb

Today is an easy day. And the menu looks sort of promising:

Yesterday's demo was about flammenkuche, truite farcie and choucroute. Yes, you guessed right: It's all about ze Alsace area. I only know this area from the wine (as one does!), and certainly not the food.

The first one, flamething, is a pizza, nothing more, nothing less, but light and tasty. The choucroute, sauerkraut, was a lot (and I mean a lot) of work. It looked good in the end...

We had to make the trout dish in practical. I kind of liked it.

We had to debone the suckers (2 each) from the the top of the fish (back) and take out the backbone. Easy peasy! Then fill it with mushroom stuffing (Duxelles), make your own sauce from ze bones AND TURN CARROTS and a mushroom! This time it was 'Vichy style'. Not a torpedo shap, but more like a humming top. Interesting....

Cris turned the mushroom for me - thank you!

Plating a fish on a plate goes like this : Tail (skin on tail-end) to the right handside and the belly of the fish always faces the customer. Sauce around the fish, never OVER the fish. Voila!

Then a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggg demo of Chef Thivet. I sort of fell asleep during class and eventually I went outside to get some fresh air. Sorry chef!

Dishes of this demo:

Carpaccio sardines (no sardines available - seabream as a replacement)

lamb (stuffed of course!)

nougat (mailto:#@@$! not for me, thank you)

The lamb dish was also the practical. We got a 1 kg very nice piece of lamb, with all the fat/bones etc still on it. After deboning and trimming there was a whopping 250 grams left on my plate - before even cooking it! So, to cut a long afternoon short - make sauce from bones, strain and reduce, cut balls with a melon-baller from potatoes and fry them, make mushroom garnish and prepare an onion/tomato garnish. Finally bake the lamb and serve rose. Et voila ! C'est tout.

The rest of the day: Filmcrew in class. This time they were really nice people. Not like the Korean filmcrew we had last year in our class. If I understood correctly, it will be a LCB (promo?) film.

And we had to make our class photo. Fully dressed up, without the badges/spoon and smiling like.... well, you get it!

Few people missing during the photo session - like China was late, D.from Paris didn't show and little C. was probably sleeping somewhere in the building. We had lots of photographs taken by others of our group, so Mr.BIG photographer will probably not be making much money from this group....

enough for now,
bonsoir and see you all later!
Sjoerd

fantastic LCB management

Today I received a very (useful) email from Le Cordon Bleu -
-----------------------------------
Dear Sjoerd,

Thank you for your interest in Le Cordon Bleu Paris. A little while ago you requested some information from us. Are you still are interested in attending Le Cordon Bleu? Please contact me at your earliest convenience. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you, etc etc
-----------------------------------
Since I'm in Intermediate right now, probably more than a 18 months AFTER I requested information about the LCB program, it seems a bit useless (to say the least) to me to even respond to this very sloppy administrative 'management'. What are they thinking - that I've never ever been to LCB in Paris before? I've paid twice already...
( I pass the admin office at least a dozen times a day - let's just call this typical French management) In one word: sloppy !

This also goes for emails with questions that are sent to LCB over the last few months - to some I still have had no reply. And I'm not the only one....
LCB - please do something about this!

sewers, smell, oysters, foie gras, bierre, vin et encore une bierre

weekend!
Monsieur Henk is here for a short visit. Saturday, Henk was on his own until 4 'o clock - we met near metro Etienne Marcel. Cristina joined us later because we wanted to buy some stuff at the kitchen shops at Rue Montmartre.
Last year we went to the bone collection of Paris (closed now!), and now we went to the sewers on Sunday morning. Musée des Égouts de Paris. Actually, it's quite interesting, there's a huge system under the city. And it smells a little bit underground..... in short: a nice tour. Then straight to the cafe...

more to come later ....

Having a few oysters. Nice.

At Rene's (and family) request, our Amsterdam market friends

They asked for pictures of........... me.......... OK then .........

enough ?