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 !

Saturday & Sunday - RTL TV (NOT), skulls, walking and walking..

Last Thursday night we received an email from the school about a filmshoot of a cooking program of RTL television. This Dutch team was expected early Saturday morning and I agreed to help out. To cut a long story short: They cancelled. I received a call from the school at 23.15 - a bit late, but on the other hand, we could have a few more beers now!


Eiffel Tower by night. Not bad !

Henk at the main entrance at the Louvre.

Went out for dinner in St.Germain, and had a few beers and desert later in another place nearby my apartment.

The whole Saturday we walked around the city. Sometimes a bit with the metro, but it was mainly waking; Breakfast St.Germain, walked to Louvre via Cite, Place Vendome (Ritz),Concorde, Champs E, Arc de T., and also part of the Marais, with centre Pompidoe, les Halles.

Bit tired after all this....






Sunday: Metro to Montparnasse for a good breakfast in a cafe opposite the 'catacombes'

of ze city. So after a few eggs, a croissant and a coffee we went to see skulls and millions of bones

stacked together in the catacombes of ze city. Interesting. After that we took the metro to Bastille, the Sunday market, un petit bierre and then to Madeleine. Unfortunately, all the posh shops were closed.... Metro back to Dupleix and then a few petit bierres.

Tonight we wil be going to St.Germain again for dinner.

I have to get up early tomorrow morning because I am one of the assistents this week to get all the ingredients for our group up from the prep kitchen to the classroom.

We start with a nice freshly killed rabbit on Monday morning at 8.30.... Yippppeeee !

Friday, ze weekend and a visitor...

friday; yes, ze weekend in a few hours. I'm tired.

This morning was market day. Cold, cold, cold... we bought fois gras, oysters, vegetabes, shrimps, lots of cheeses, some jambon (ham), etc etc. For lunch chef made us a nice meal with wine, a little bit too much..
After that we had to make the chicken dish we had in the demonstration yesterday. It was a bit hard to concentrate after all that wine, but I think I did allright.

The another demo took ages! rabbit, mustard suace, oniuon/carrot salad (nice). And the at 6.30 another conference class with useless questions... we were all tired!

And 'enk came to visit from Amsterdam. He took the high speed train from Ams to Paris in just over 4 hrs. Jayne sorted out the directions in Paris and even Henk managed... That night I finished class at about 20.15. Later we went out for dinner - gooooooodddd!

PICTURES TO FOLLOW LATER.

not so fat free cooking - the tourist during the break - demo

Thursday already,

and a not so fat free cooking day...

Practical 8.30, but first the cafe. Yes, the local drunk wanted to chat - I don't think so ! After two coffee's, quickly to the practical of the day. We are group A and had to cook today but Group B of the basic cuisine course went to the market. Don't know much about theit outing - we are going tomorrow with (a) chef and a translater.

The practical was about the meat-demo we did yesterday. It went actually quite good. New was the 'turning of vergetables'. We had to cut carrots in a special way - in theory this means only 7 cuts on a piece of carrot and it just looks nice. Bit difficult to explain. Basically it's just a small nicely cut carrot. Cook in water/butter (but of course!) /bit of sugar and salt. They looked great. They call this glazed carrots.

Same for really small onions. No cutting, but we had to make a nice glaze on those too.

The meat was 'not too fat' today - pork shoulder, lots of lard, another piece of pork, beef and whatever. Mix, blend and fry in goose fat... (cholesterol,cholesterol and more cholesterol production....)

Actually, everything was done is goose fat. The French way. Thank god we didn't have to make a butter/cream based sauce to go with our meat!

The jus for the dish was not too fat. It was 'only' made with goose fat and finely chopped vegetables. And a bit of butter...

End result: nice piece of meat. Our new chef Patrick (new, first class?) helped us a bit in class and gave us points for quality, presentation, vegetables, technique etc. I think I did pretty good today!

Then we had 4.5 hrs off. So, we (Erich, Sean, me) went to the cafe for a petit bierre (or two). After that with the metro to Louvre surroundings and walked for about an hour along the Seine river. Lunch in a lousy overpriced place and taxi back to the school. Just in time for the last demo of the day.

'Low fat' chicken nicely put on the plate for presentation.

The demo was all about plating up the paté we made earlier this week and chef Poupard also made a stuffed chicken dish (sort of low in fat...)

See you tomorrow !

Sj

Cristina and chef + Matthew with new hairstyle

just two pictures from our last class.

Until tomorrow, bon soiree,

Moi

Smoky room from salmon and cannabis.... (!?)

oh yeah, finally today some proper food: fish and meat.

The morning demo started with salmon and pork in a herb crust.

First chef put the salmon on the smoking hot grill. Right - as you all know, salmon on a grill just stinks ! and yes, it was still before 9.00. Lucky us, we could finish the salmon in the oven, so no more smell. yeah, right !


After that chef made a nice pice of pork with a herb crust and something with potatoes.













picture time !

Chef is no.8 of the (7) dwarfs - here he's showing his pork chops.... !
Yes, chef looks like a real chef....

The end-result should look like this:




and like this:

In the end we'll help chef and the translator Deborah with all the tastings for us.

Satomi is doing the jus.Later that day, after a brief visit to the cafe (only a petite biere), we had to make the salmon and the vegetables and jus ourselves. Not difficult at all and chef said that we all did a pretty good job ! So, first we used the smoking hot grill. Somebody you know burnt the tip of a finger again... (yes, it hurts) and in the photograph, Rosario is doing a pretty good job grilling the salmon.

Funny thing is, we get to grill 3 (!) pieces of salmon steak each. That's a bit over the top. Most people will only eat one...
Thank god that one of the cleaners likes salmon. In the end he went home with at least 15 salmon steaks ! "lucky" man....

Halfway during the practical Sean smelled a familiar odour. He checked with a few others, and yes, it was cannabis ! Probably coming from somebody smoking in the prep. kitchen. Chef looked shocked.

Well, in the end, we all made a pretty good dish.

Surprise of the day: ME !
See you all tomorrow !

Sj

Tuesday - the morning off; soup too salt and a great (dead) chicken

update: with the pics of today now.

Today, we had the morning off. Start of our first class at 12.30.
I went for coffee and a sandwich first in the cafe, then to school. Our first practical was the finishing off of the consomme. That's basically a nice bouillon with a LOT of work put into it.

Some are really creative with puff pastry.........Here is how the clarifying of the consomme goes: you make a mixture of finely chopped vegetables like carrots, onion, leek in a bowl and mix it with egg white and lots of minced meat. After the (stock) consomme comes to the boil you put in the mixture with the minced meat, stir quickly and let it rest. Simmer for a while and make a hole in the top layer. It's quite hard now because of the egg white. Using a ladle, pour the juices over the crust over and over again.

After a while you get a clear bouillon with lots of flavour/taste. Run through a sieve. Plate up with nicely cut vegetables. Cutting the veggies is very therapeutic...
I left my sieved bouillon too long on the heat - result was an awful (to me) salty soup that just looked nice. Too bad, better luck next time.

Second class was a demo. Snotty egg omelettes - French style.
French style means always three eggs and the omelette should also be a bit runny. Not my kind of omelette.... Well, chef made about 6 omelettes. Looked good and tasted OK.
Then he did a roast chicken (oven). Yes, the oven again at 200C, using a nice metal pan, easy to burn-burn-burn your hands... yes, I did it again, but not too bad at all.

I'll spare you the details, but my chicken turned out to be great. (Little) chef loved it.
We also did 'turning artichokes'. You need really sharp knives for that. It was quite easy actually when you use the right knife - the breadknife. Who would have thought..?

This was the vegetable we had with the chicken. It was also filled with nicely cut strips of crunchy carrots, daikon and celeriac. Not bad, I did a pretty good job.

Class finished at 21.15 . It has been quite a long day.

Took home the rest of the chicken (90%) and just ate it all with a nice glass of red wine. It's now 10.30 pm and I'll have a quick shower and go to bed

PS: we only had one petit bierre between classes.....
who said that chefs are always alcoholics....

Soup,soup,soup and more soup. And fish...

Yes, you've guessed right; Today was soup day part 1 AND part 2.

We started early this morning (8.30) with a demonstration. Oops, almost forgot, I went to the cafe first - for a coffee that is, and yes, my French beerdrinking belly was also there. Had breakfast at the school because I was early. A fresh warm croissant and two mandarins. And more coffee.

The demonstration today was all about consommee, fishstock, sweating vegetables, cutting, chopping onions and lots lots lots lots of vegetables. In general - making soups. We (chef) also had to make fishstock from scratch. (chopping fishbones, veggies, boil, skim, strain; the lot)

Katie using the shredder, her toy....

Did I already mention the very tasty crabsoup (bisque) ? That was the best of the day.

And on top of all that: A very French onion soup in the last demonstration, together with the consommee chef prepared in the morning and also a watercress soup. Lost already ? well, I was (and still am). After class I went straight to the pub to down a HUGE beer in seconds !

By the way, chef ALSO made a cauliflower 'farty' soup. Not too bad, but not too special.

You should look at my journal now. Today's notes are a mess, I think I have to rewrite it quickly before I mix up everything.

Joel waiting to be served. As usual....

Our practical was goooooddd. Today, we had to kill. Kill a lot of small live crabs. Fantastic! You use your big butcher knife/chopper to split them before they start running around on the marble table. None have escaped, I think.... Each of us had about 15 small crabs to 'chop'....

After sweating, adding vegetables, straining etc etc it all came together with cream, butter and a bit of seasoning. There was a lot more to it, but this wil do for now. After plating up, everybody's bisque looked different re. color, texture and taste. Small home-made croutons on top. Chef thought mine was very nice. Yippee ! I was a happy bunny there.

I took about one liter of bisque home to put it in the freezer. I can't see any more fish/bisque today because later in the day we made MORE fishsoup. So no bisque with bread for me tonight. Just beer and.... someting. Don't know yet.

As I already mentioned, we also made really good croutons. Better than you ever tasted. First you clarify your own butter (not difficult) and then you put everything in a frying pan. Easy peasy. Nice !

Erich is happy with his bisque. Big smiles here !

In the meantime (little) chef was practicing his 'Franglais'. He was trying to say 'thank you' for a few minutes but it sounded EXACTLY like f&#k you ! Chef is still learning....

In the first demo we started with the consommee and we finished it in the second demo. Far too much work for 'just' a nice soup. Don't think I'll ever make it. At least it was a clear and light soup.

And yes, as a bonus, we had to make another 8$#@$% puff pastry ! NO, NO, NO. Chef helping out with the puff stuff....

Dead crabs...

Don't want to do it again. Well, I did my best and it's resting in the fridge now. And do you know why we have to make it - in the end we sprinkle it with cheese, cut a nice shape and it will rise nicely in the oven. Result: a cheese stick to go with the soup. I hate it! all that work for a stupid cheese stick.

The results of the second demonstration.

The highlight of the day : The big beer in the end in the cafe ! No, but seriously, it was the bisque I made myself and the French onion soup that chef Stril made.

The big question : would I make it all again? No, definitively not, but I'll do the onion soup and if I can find fresh (live) crab in Amsterdam I'll make the bisque. The rest? Too much work....

Tasting chefs results; Barbara and Katie with Sean and Erich (and just an old guest...probably from the USA..)

See you all tomorrow !

Sj