proof ! le certificat de LCB - cuisine de base

Course Cuisine de Base - Nov/Dec 2008 - all people succeeded ! They are.....

• Cristina Gonzalez, Spain
• Matthew Jones, New Zealand
• Cher Ling Lee, Singapore
• Rosario Saus Cantos, Spain
• Sjoerd Servaas, The Netherlands
• Erich Spangenberg, USA
• Yong Soon Tan, Singapore
• Sean Webb, USA
• Joel Allen, USA
• Satomi Furuya, Japan
• Nerwin Guzman, Venezuela
• Barbara Hocevar Kalkas, USA
• Linda Luce Laborde, France
• Eduardo Moreth Loquez, Brazil
• Chizuru Nakamura, Japan
• Timothy Slater, USA
• Katie Turner, UK

Overslept, last classes, exam day and graduation

Tuesday; Today is our last 'working day'. Two demo's and a practical. And yes, I overslept today. I got a phone call from Cristina where I was.... It was already 11 o 'clock. So I missed the canard/orange dish-demo and the corresponding practical. Shit.. That's minus two points on my list. Quickly, I went to school and talked to chef. He allowed me in on the practical. At least I had a nice dinner tonight !
I did fine in my duck-practical. Turned out that my sauce was super - thick, sweet and spot-on! Too bad that I didnt get points for it.
Our 30th demonstration was a 'gala dinner'; Rack of lamb, gratin Dauphinois and a burning baked alaska ! nice... but it was a very,very long and boring demo.... (sorry chef !).


Wednesday: Ze exam !
(I received a wake-up call today from Amsterdam,
a text message from Spain and my alarm clock worked again)
Went straight to the cafe (for coffee) and then to school.
We had to 'choose' between two dishes; I got the duck unfortunately. I would have liked to do the fish, but no.
And we also had to work on an artichoke to prove our
technical skills.



Well, the duck looked like it had been at the Olympics. Skinny and hairy. Very,very bad quality thing.. And the artichokes were also very little, unfortunately. Too bad, we had to use the stuff anyway.
Three guys were LATE ! Again.... how can you turn up late for an exam? I don't know. Chef was pretty annoyed and so were we. Thank God they're gone now....


I think the exam did go pretty well. The French like their duck pink. Mine was not really pink, but hopefully it was OK. By 11 o'clock it was all over. A final beer in the cafe and then back home.

Went shopping/sightseeing in the afternoon with Cris, had dinner that night with Jayne. Yippee, she's back again. Champagne to celebrate.

Thursday shopping, sightseeing, meeting Joel/Cristina/Brynjar for dinner.


Friday is graduation day. We have to be at ze school by 10 o'clock. The (elegantly groomed French) Director, M. Frederic Chauvin made a speach, all the chefs were introduced by the most senior chef. Today, all the people from the basic courses (cuisine and pastry) were present.


Frederic and Bruno, our two chefs in cuisine.

Yes ! I did it. Here's proof of it.

After the ceremony we had a very nice buffet with hors d'oeuvres and champagne. Thank you chefs AND all the assistants for this!

Goodbyes, kisses, and last hugs (mostly by giggling Asian girls in pasrty...)

Thank you for all your support/emails/comments etc !

Ze blog will not stop yet...... i'll be back soon !

Sj

Exam results....

Yes, I passed both my written AND practical exam ! Yippee !!!!!
details / pictures to follow tomorrow ( I think - maybe / or not / if I have time)

Its all over now. 5 1/2 weeks living in Paris are over. Just a few days left for shopping (?) and sightseeing.

Sj

Ze last few days.... ; Korean TV (in ze face!) and caul fat

Qui, toujours was our 28th demo and practical. Only one more practical to go before the exam on Wednesday. Strange day; It's Monday - chef L. needed coffee, he was slow and the dishes he prepared were not particularly inspiring. Maybe we're all tired. Two people of our class didn't show at all today. Matthew went skiing in Chamonix for the weekend; he's not back yet. With all the heavy snowfall in France he might be in trouble. Hope not. Erich had business to do and didn't show either.

Demo was about Stuffed chicken legs (with chicken forcemeat) - how original, those stupid French.... , a goat cheese salad with bacon (boring) and chocolate and orange mousse.

AND a Korean filmcrew....

One of them was constantly on the phone, one walked around with a camera (in zee face ! ) and a few other were fully dressed up in LCB uniforms in the audience.
We were waiting for chef to kick them out of his kitchen. But unfortunately, no...

The guy also wanted to interview me, but no thank you. Instead he asked several others before he attacked Barbara with all his questions ! And yes, with ze camera in ze face - real,real close !

The chicken dish was not that inspiring. We had to cut open a chicken leg and remove all the bones except the top bit. That was just there for presentation. After preparing the leg, we had to stuff the thing with a mixture of pork meat and chicken meat.... and finally wrap it in caul fat ! (In Dutch: darmvlies...) Does this stinky stuff come from the belly of a pig or... well,never again.




Yong Soon finished quickly today. He prepared a good dish. Chef was happy with it too - picture time !










In the kitchen you are always best friends with the dishwashers. This is Abdoel (I haven't got a clue what his real name is!) - nice guy and always in for a laugh.


Tomorrow we have the last real demo/practical. After that only the exam on Wednesday morning. Yes, time flies when you're having fun and I wish I could stay longer. But no..... maybe.... we'll see...

see you all tomorrow,
Sj

PS: No results of our written exams yet. Nobody expects to get any of the results before graduation - yes, zis is ze French way of organizing stuff...

(possible) exam dish, saved dish, class dinner and studying

Ah yes, I did sleep in today. Woke up after 10 o'clock this morning. I wasn't really interested in doing a very dull trout fish terrine. It looked nice, but was no real taste to it when I tasted after Thursday's demonstration.

So I missed the first point (out of 6). No problem. Today, Friday that is, we did our fish practical - THE possible exam dish.
Everybody took notes - this was important !







Chef Lesourd gave us a dozen of not so subtle hints in the demo and he allowed us to purchase some tweezers and a descaling tool for fish. Tres important, you know...! yeah, right.









During practical we all did fine, until I had to do my sauce. I added the cream too quickly. I forgot I had to reduce it first to a glazing liquid and ony then to add the cream. S&%t ! I put the 'sauce' quickly in my fridge, out of sight - I think chef never saw it..
Cristina helped me out quickly. She had plenty of fish-stock left and gave me half. So I could start all over again with the sauce. Result was super ! Thank you C. !

Actually, I liked this dish. It looked good, had good taste and was not that difficult to make. Hope I can do this one at the practical exam next Wednesday morning. My sauce wil be fantastic...



Finished by 6.15, the quickly home for a shower and a clean shirt. Tonight is our class dinner at a restaurant at Bastille. This dinner is for everybody in basic cuisine and pastry (and partners = euro 65 extra...).


And, surprise,surprise, there was another version of our possible exam dish on our plate ! hi,hi, I think I can do better than this...

Barbara & Rosario

Katie, Eduardo, chef Fred and Barbara

Chef Bruno with 'his girls !

Got home by 1 o'clock. Tired. Saturday was a very rainy day in Paris. Had brunch near Les Halles with oysters, saucage/lentils and a glass of wine. During ze weekend I have to study a bit. We have to memorize 10 recipes. Not that difficult. This years list is:

• Roast duckling with turnips
• Poached hake steaks with Hollandaise sauce
• Beef Stroganoff, rice and vegetables
• Brill fillets in white wine sauce
• Traditional veal stew with pilaf rice
• Sea bream fillets with fennel
• Sauteed veal chops with glazed onion,mushrooms and lardons
• Rabbit with mustard and sateed potatoes
• Sauteed chicken with tarragon and a turned vegetable garnish
• Poached chicken with a supreme sauce, rice 'au gras'

So we have to make a meat or fish dish, a sauce or jus and sometimes vegetables on the side. It sounds a lot better when I write down this list in French, but with all the accents, ^ and other things, its just too much work....(Words like poularde, lapin,blanquette de veau, filet the this and that, poulet and canette sound a lot nicer then just chicken, beef or rabbit.)

The possible two exams dishes are number 1 and 6 on ze list. We'll see...

Have a nice weekend,and see you all tomorrow, Sj

PS: still no result of the written exam.

class, exam, Japanese visitors

Today, is busy AND a written exam. That means that I have to learn French cuisine expressions. Not....

The exams is/was at 6.30 p.m., but first 2 demo's and a practical.

Re. the lessons, this was very,very easy. The first demo was an apple merinque, sauteed chicken and Parisian style gnocchi. Not very interesting, but ok. The practical was the chicken. The purpose was to cut up the whole (huge) chicken in 8 correct pieces. Quite easy actually.

In the picture, chef Stril is 'burning' the merinques....

It all tasted great (at 11 a.m.....) Ze Merinque result of chef S is not too bad.

Eduardo (Brasil) is cleaning the (chicken) pan

after the demo.
After we did our chicken dish in practical, which made

quite a nice dinner tonight, we had another simple demo.

Scrambled eggs, something fishy (trout) from the -au bain marie-

oven and a very nice dessert I can't even remember...

After the last class, we had our written exam !

Some of the class are stil studying for the exam. Well, that sure didn't help...

Above, part of the Asian connection in class- Chizuru, Cher Ling and Yong Soon. In the other picture it's Tim, Joel, Satomi and Cristina reading the last things before the exam starts. Who said nobody was nervous about this written exam.... ?

During our 'studying', there was a big Japanese group doing a practical. As you should know by now, ze French LOVE RED MEAT. All the Japanese kids made a dish with nearly raw meat that looked horrible.

And yes, some even got a (very standard) certificate for it. Everybody 'appy again !

Well, exam went fine. I think I passed. We'll find out tomorrow. I'm thinking of skipping tomorrow mornings extremely boring trout dish. I can do with a bit of extra sleep.....

See you all tomorrow,

Sj

meat, sweet and fire alarm !

Wednesday. Only a short day today. We have to study this afternoon. Some are getting nervous - tomorrow we have our written exam. We have to study 7 different recipes (ingredient list and amount of veggies), a long list of French words/cuisine expressions and some other stuff. The exam consists of 20 multiple choice questions, 10 true/false questions and we have to fill in the 'blanc spaces' of ingredients lists. Shold be pretty simple...

All this trouble is worth ONLY 10% of our total exam.....

well, on to today's demo and practical.

Trout flan (nearly snotty) with port wine sauce AND truffels, pork medaillons with pommes Dauphine and a fresh fruit sabayon (yukkie ! yellow snotty hot stuff on top..)

In the picture, chef Stril is using the deep frier to make pommes Dauphine.

tastings for everybody

Picture: top - Trout flan made 'au bain marie' in the oven with a very nice port wine suace with truffels and bottom: Fruit sabayon. i.e. too much yellow snotty stuff on very nice fruit....

After starting our practical, the fire alarm went off. No, I didn't do anything wrong (yet) - it was only an exercise. You stop cooking immediately, take everything off the stove, and go outside where you immediately step into a pile of dog s@&t !

After 10 minutes it was all over and we could go back to our cooking stations again (where I found out that the class dickhead 'stole' my scales and later my hot plate, just when I needed it.... got the scales back !)

Tomorrow is a busy day. 3 classes and an evening exam. Wish me luck !

Bon soiree,

Sj

tips & tricks, part 2

Kitchen tips (from chef and others)

cooking rice in the oven;
no room in the kitchen? not enough plates to cook on ? Make your rice in the oven !
Fry a finely chopped onion or a few shallots in vegetable oil or (better) butter until golden then add the rice to the same pan and stir on the hot plate. Add 1.5x the volume amount of water (chicken stock is better!) to the rice/onion mixture, bit of salt and stir. Put a (baking paper) lid on and put in the oven for about 16 minutes. Great result ! When cooked add a knob of butter and stir well. To put in some more colour, add really,really thinly diced carrots,courgette and grean beans. (Cook/fry the veggies first quickly before adding to the rice.)
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Make your own fries (patat).
cut nice long strips from potatoes - 1 x 1 x 5 cm.
Cut a potatoe first to a nice big square block, then to smaller blocks and finally to strips.
keep in salted water.

there are 2 options now:
1. put in cold water and bring to boil. (blanching) take out, dry and then in 180degC hot vegetable oil until golden. Take out, salt them and serve.
2. Fry the dried strips first in 140degC oil and the again at 180degC until golden. salt, serve.

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Mushrooms; yes, they can be washed but do it quickly. Clean with your hands in a bowl of water.
After rinsing take them out and sprinkle with lemon juice. This stops them from browning. Process as quickly as possible. Do not leave mushrooms in/under water!!

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eggs; this is a tricky one, also very personal.

in general, when boiling an egg, put it in boiling water. After 6 min, take out and put in cold water. it should have a slightly runny eggyolk now (I hope)
Boiling water, 10 min - cool in cold water: result hard !
Boiling water, 2.5 min - cool in cold water: result dip toast in egg

COLD water, put egg in, to the boil = ready. Result is a snotty breakfast egg.

And shell the eggs in a bowl/pan of cold water. First of all it is better for your hands (HOT), but the shell comes off easier.

Overcooked eggs have a (thin) black line at the yolk/white line.

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That's it for now,
Sj

9 Dec - back online - Duck/Stroganoff/beer

Today,we had 2 practicals and a demo.

We started with a whole fu&%$!ing duck ! at 8.30 in the morning... horrible.

We had to truss the bird, burn it off and then put it in the oven for 45 minutes. In the end it should still be pink(ish). As I said, horrible. I did a pretty good job I think - chef S. liked it. Joel from classB took it home to the family where he stays - they like (raw) duck.... yes, they are French !


After that stupid duck a demo; but first, chef Stril explained a few detais about the exam next week on Wednesday. That's the practical exam - should be OK.... I hope.



Taking notes during class; Yong Soon (r) and Cher Ling.


Demo was about langoustines, jumbo shrimps, salmon and Stroganoff. Nice demo - halfway, a big group of Chinese people stumbled in (NOT noisy at all...), took pictures of our class and demonstration - and left. Well, they probably pay LCB big money for this...


I liked the dishes of the demo;




Chef Lesourd - one of the 8 little brothers (remember the 7 dwarfs...) tasting the stroganoff dish.
Qui, ca va - c'est bien - tres bon etc etc. Can't do anything with that !


After class a petit bierre.... or 3. Nice. Now dinner - today's stroganoff with rice.

see you all tomorrow,
Sj

Back again, BIRTHDAY, more to follow later

Merci, merci, yes today is my birthday. I am 4? now.

The last few days were a bit busy. So my blogging isn't really up to date at the moment.

Last Wednesday, my last blog input, was beer-evening

Thursday I was fed-up with the computer - no blog !

Friday, I had a class until 9 pm and Jayne arrived from Amsterdam !

Saturday/Sunday = weekend = sleep = ??? = shopping = no blog.

Today is Monday 8th December, my birthday.

Jayne's still here. She bought me a few super presents; Books and a new Nikon digital camera - a really small one. Great !

Chef made me a very nice dessert

during class. Shortbread with

mascarpone and strawberrys, with

a reduced orange juice and vinegar suace.

Thank you little chef L. !!

Just got back home. We had a nice dinner in a bistro around

ze corner. So only a short blog tonight. More to follow tomorrow

about what happened over the last few days.

Thank you for all your cooments, Emails and text messages !

Sj

no blog

no blog - beer..... sorry

Fishday...

yes, today was fish, fish and more fish.

First a fish practical, then a fish demo and finally the corresponding practical of this demo. In short: Fishday !


Chef P. is testing/judging Erich's hake dish.


It started off with poached hake. Not much taste to a poached fish like this.... but we did ok. I didn't take it home. We had our young chef Patrick 'judging' us. He walks around with his piece of paper close to his chest so we can't see the notes/scores he is making. Cheffie was a bit strict today.



Zis is my resut of the first fishdish. Hake with a Hollandaise suace and turnes vegetables and potatoes. It was very nice , he said.... Don't know if he meant it, but I think so...


The challenge today was the
infamous Hollandaise sauce.
I did good.... (as a Dutchman).




Rosario (Spain) concentrating on the fish !




Then on to the demonstration. Chef Lesourd again. Good fun. He actually showed three fishdishes. Dover sole, salmon and something elso (forgot that one !), all with veggies and sauce or mayonnaise. Tasted good.

In the last practical we had to make the sole, but we got turbot(s) in the end. Gutting, trimming, filleting etc etc. Then we had to make our own fishstock from the bones. Easy. In the picture, Sean is chopping away.. Cutting up the turbot to make the stock. Result not bad - makes good dinner. I also got Erich's fish. Nice dish. See you all tomorrow, Sj

things that come back regularly... inside information.

I had a request the other day, about the things we learn in the kitchen - do certain issues return, what kind of oil(s) do we use and why, how to make a good stock (veal, chicken but also vegetable), plating up (how), the use of herbs, why bake or poach etc etc.

In the coming weeks I will try to explain a few things about these issues. If YOU have any ideas or questions, just ask or send me a 'comment'.

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Useful for the home-cook is the way of chopping vegetables.

Thinly sliced vegetables just cook quicker. Easy! Don't always use big chunky parts, it just takes longer to finish your dish. If something has to simmer for a long time, you can use bigger pieces of vegetables. When making a stock, you don't use the vegetables in the end; It's only for taste.

When you want to boil vegetables, like carrots, put them in cold or handwarm water, bring to the boil and ONLY THEN ADD SALT. When finished, the vegetables still have a little bit of a bite/crunchy, get rid of half of the boiling water and replace by cold water. This stops the cooking, but keeps them warm.

For green vegetables it is a bit different; If you want them to STAY green, boil water with salt first and then add the vegetable (courgette). When finished, rinse well with COLD water.

To warm everything up, put all the cooked vegetables in a (one) pan with water and reheat briefly. Drain and plate up. Easy.

We learn how to cut in different ways. Big, small, triangles, thin strips etc. See my blog-entry of 18th November for examples. This subject comes back EVERY lesson. The latest crap is about 'turning' vegetables. It's nice for presentation, but a lot of work. This way of cutting (carrots, potatoes, courgettes) gives a nice torpedo shaped result. Turning vegetables means to pare down vegetables into even, identical shapes, usually ovals with 7 sides. I make about 20 sides, but I do better every time. It just looks nice on a dish, but it's a stupid therapeutical job...

Get good equipment. When your knives are clean and sharp, the job is a lot easier and safer. (And when (not if) you cut yourself, it's at least a nice clean cut....) And take care of your equipment. Don't ever put it in the dishwasher! Keep knives always sharp. I know, that's difficult, but there are many ways to do that. Ask at a good cookery shop.

The use of different oils.

Well, sometimes it's a personal choice, but in general, baking in olive oil can be done, but it's often to strong. And when you need a high temerature you can't use it. Like in a mayonaise, the taste of olive oil is very strong. Instead, you can use a vegetable oil. If you need browning (of meat or fish) you can also add a knob of butter to the hot vegetable oil before putting in the meat/fish. I do cook at home with a lot of olive oil, but here they use that mainly in salads. There's a lot more to tell about this, but maybe some other time.

Herbs;

In short, always cut these the LAST SECOND. Right before you plate up. They go off real quickly. Sometimes its only there for decoration; Then they should look nice and fresh. When putting herbs in a salad, put them in at the last moment. See also : Fresh herbs for a bit of background on taste and how to store fresh herbs.

more to follow....

Sj

Chef's assistent, rabbit and fish

Monday,

Monsieur 'Enk, my visitor from Amsterdam is leaving. He will have a look at Montmartre today, and then on the high speed train back home. We had a great weekend. Must do this again some day.

Today I'm chef's assistent together with Erich for the whole week. This means we have to get all the vegetables, herbs, meat or fish etc etc from the prep kitchen in the basement up to our kitchen. Everything has been sorted out by the people from the kitchen and we only have to check and give everybody in our class the right ingredients.

Erich didn't show this morning, he had other business to do, but Sean helped out. Great!

Today was rabbit day. Dead-naked-head still on-intestines still present (yummie !)

and of course not so fat free.

Cristina chopping up the rabbit !

After chopping up the thing, we had to brown it in the pan first, make a mustard sauce and present it with a Rosemary skewer of liver/kidneys on top. Ha ! I did great. Chef said I had the best (thick, that's the trick - read: cream) sauce of all. Rabbit was super. Tonight I'll have a great dinner.

We finished quite on time, so we had time for a petit b@#rre, eh, a coffee I mean in the local cafe. After that, one more demo to go and that's it for today.

This demo was all about Hollandaise sauce. We have to make this again soon, it's tricky one... And incredibly rich... (butter and egg yolks). The sauce goes great with fish and chef also presented poached Hake and fried Dover Sole ('Tong' in Dutch) with the sauce.

Looked good and tasted great. Finished by 15.30. Yippee !