Thursday, 19 November 2009

beaujolais nouveau 2009 - wine, cheese and paté - santé!

Les trois chèfs....
The big thing at the school today was the introduction of the beaujolais nouveau 2009.
In France, this is quite a big issue - but in reality it's just a huge marketing thing to promote the beaujolais nouveau wine. Le Cordon Bleu did a really nice job to introduce the wine and set up a big table with cheese, paté, bread, drinks etc etc. very, very nice! Thank you LCB. This was a very nice lunch!

In the picture are Levi, Damien, Mark and Cristina.



Long but good day - 3 sessions

It did go pretty good today. Normal routine - get up, wash, walk to school, croissant on the way, cafe for coffee, go to school, change and start in class.
And it's only 8 'o clock in the morning....

First a fish practical. Dourade (sea bream) wrapped in lettuce leaves with a Jerusalem artichoke puree on the side (with a fish sauce of course, nice, greasy and thick: in one word: RICH )
I'll skip the starter and dessert for now....
In practical we had to make it. It was quite a funny class; It seemed that a few people are making it into a race. They start real early with the practical (like 20 minutes before we are even supposed to be in class) and try to get out as quickly as possible - not my style. Let me put it right, some are really good, but we have 2.5 hours for a lesson, that's MORE than enough! We'll see if we can change it a bit.
C'est chef James et Rafael

Chef Terrien was supervising. Nice, relaxed man. And taking notes on his little handheld computer. He sees everything.
He just walks behind you and checkes the consistancy of the forcemeat, he'll check your sauce without even noticing, and he observes you from a distance. Oui chef, we know! I like chef T.

Poaching the sea bream in the stock reduction was OK and easy, although it was a challenge for others; I saw somebody poaching the fish in just water.... interesting... water has quite a taste and flavour...
All in all, I think I did well today. Fish was cooked, sauce was OK, puree was good.
my dish

The only thing today was that I wanted to move the sautee pan 1 minute after it got out of the oven...... 'mailto:'#$@@!& !!' without using my tea towel.

And this evening chef Patrick was playing with oysters, duck, cream and lots of butter in the demo. This demo was very relaxing; lots of laughter and fun!

C U later, Sjoerd

slight problem - but good day!

Bonjour, bonsoir à tous !
Un petit problème, aujourd'hui dans la cuisine. Le casserol était deux cents degrés.....





merde!

Palm big blister now, index finger feels stiff because of 2 long burns along the whole finger, middle finger 3 'normal' burns, ring finger the tip slightly burned and thumb only a one. Score: I'll rate it at 10 points (at least!) The burn counter goes up.

Funny thing is, it doesn't hurt. I'm OK.
I just grabbed the pan... that came straight out of the oven.