My "American" grandparents

Today we visited my "American" grandparents. We used to live next door to them when I was just a baby. They took care of me for many years while my parents were working and my mom was in school. Grandma used to give me fresh-baked cookies everyday. =)

Gram and Gramps from back in the day. I love photographs like this.


Happy Family visit.

It's Christmas time in California

It's so good to be home. So far, all I have been doing is hitting up my favorite restaurants. A lot of eating and spending quality time with my family and friends. I finally got to meet my new baby nephew, Zack! He's so adorable - and it's funny because he has my eyes. No one else in our entire family has eyes like me.

For Christmas eve dinner, I made a 6-course meal for my family. I am always such a procrastinator and didn't even buy the groceries until 12pm. I almost didn't find a duck but I remembered that at the Chinese markets, they always have things like duck, carcasses, bones, etc. I didn't start my mise en place until 2pm, but was able to serve dinner at 7pm.

I brought this delicious foie gras terrine I made at school back home to share. It was a big hit. Then I served brioche with saucisson, an orange salad, sea bass, duck, and an apple tarte. My family loved the meal, and ate soooo much foie gras (especially my dad, brother Huang, and brother-in-law, Rick). They didn't realize how many courses there were and ended up telling me to stop serving so much. Funny thing is that I did everything just the way I learned in school and for me, the flavor was lacking in the brioche, the stock, and sauces. I used a lot of chicken and duck bones and caramelized everything very well, but the stock was still lacking. I just think it was the quality of products here. The average butter here is not that good compared to France which resulted in the brioche was lacking that delicious buttery-ness. well. Oh and the duck I found here was sooo skinny. It was such a drastic difference for me, but at least my family enjoyed it.

Delicious foie gras terrine made with cinnamon, fleur de sel, sugar, nutmeg, apricots, dates, prunes, pistachios, hazelnuts, etc.


Brioche au saucisson. I served it with a port sauce.


The new addition to the family! Rick, sister, Sue, and lil Zacky.


I wore my chef whites for fun.


Merry Christmas !


Adorable !


Oh I almost forgot to mention that I bought a new Kikuichi Santoku knife for chopping. It's sooo sharp, I love it ! I accidentally gave myself a tiny cut just by grazing it at the store. hahaha ! Ah, nothing like having a brand new kitchen tool. I was chopping some onions and accidentally chopped off the tip of my thumb. Oops ! It was bound to happen someday. I already had a fresh burn from school on my hand on top of my thumb bleeding through the bandaids - my family was kinda freaking out but it really was not bad. My hands are getting more and more gnarly - kitchen hands in training.

Happy Holidays ! I love my new Santoku.


And here is a photo of part of our 2nd Christmas dinner - Chinese-style. My mom always makes 89734872389 family-style dishes. It's fabulous ! It's too bad I don't know how to make Chinese food !



My belly has been very happy.

Boudin Noir - something I DON'T like to eat...

After having poissonerie on Wednesdays, we now have Charcuterie class. Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products such as sausage, confit, terrines, etc., primarily from pork. We have a couple of great Charcuterie chefs giving us demos.









We made a brine and injected it into the flesh of the pork. This is how the meat is cured.




Even the head is used to make head cheese. Every part of a pig is used and not wasted.


This is head cheese, or Fromage de tête. It's really just a terrine made with any meat and gelatine they can extract from the head.


Deliciously fried pork belly. Poitrine de porc. How about eating that at 10am.


Now onto one thing that I can I say I do not like eating. Is it possible? Such a popular French classic that I find disgusting?

It starts with fresh blood - you have to get fresh pork blood that is max a day old. Quite a few of us tasted it, and well, it just taste like blood.


If I remember correctly, onions, shallots, wine, salt, and pepper were added to it.


When it's cooked


The thing about this is not the taste - I mean it tastes good. BUT it's the texture. The texture is absolutely horrifying (to me). It has this gritty, coat your mouth, disgusting round in a bad way texture. The texture itself made me want to vomit. I mean, SERIOUSLY vomit. I couldn't believe that I could find something so gross. And it definitely wasn't a mental thing. Eating blood? Big deal! I am Chinese, I grew up eating chicken hearts, tripe, and pig ears. In fact, Chinese people love to eat coagulated blood (which I don't enjoy in Chinese or Vietnamese cooking, however, I can eat it and keep it down, no problem). But oh my goodness. I tried to drink water but that gritty texture was stuck in my mouth. I really felt like throwing up for the next 20 minutes afterwards. I'm really sorry, Boudin noir. As lovely, classic, and tasty as it can be, I just can't do it.

I went home later and told Raf about how I couldn't believe I had found something I didn't like to eat. Then he told me how he got kicked out of school in France when he was a kid because he refused to eat the Boudin noir in the cafeteria. Phew! I don't feel so bad now. =)

Ok so onto some better gastronomy. Restaurant Service!

Today I was assigned to a simple dish with Felipe- Poulet Rôti, et salsifis au jus truffé, pommes fondantes


Sous-chefs for the night


Other creations of the night:








Chillen at the end of service.


At the end of service, we usually have a bottle of champagne waiting for us. Chef Stephan kindly opening the bottle for us.


Oops


I don't think I will be drinking broken glass anytime soon.

The FINAL !

Been up since 630am for finals. School started at 745am. I finished around 430pm. 3.5 hours practical - cooking that is with French chefs scrutinizing your every move and technique.

So this was how the final worked. We were told it could be an entrée, a main dish, or a main dish and a dessert. I studied almost every single recipe we have done thus far - soupes, salads, tartes, poultry, etc. I also studied all the French culinary vocabulary, techniques, etc. It was pretty stressful for me because I felt like this was the first time I actually cared about what I was studying.

Our practical test was broken into two days, - one group went today, and another on Thursday. Everyone took the written exam today. Thankfully, (YES, thankfully) I was assigned to be in the first group for practical. That means I took both tests today and got it over with.

We were randomly assigned numbers which determined what order we would serve our dish. Then we were given the recipes in which we had 30 minutes to study the recipes and write out the organization of our tasks. Our group was given Potage Cultivateur (easy soup with different cuts of several vegetables) and Poulet Sauté Façon Basquaise; a chicken recipe we haven't done before however the technique was similar to Poulets Sautés Chasseur.

Being my first culinary timed test was pretty stressful at first especially with professional French chefs walking around with clipboards critiqueing our technique and organization. Sometimes they would just stare over your shoulder, then start writing stuff down. Luckily, I was focused enough to not have it affect me much. Overall, the timing was right and I actually finished a bit early.

I noticed that many people cooked the cabbage in their soup for too long which turned them brown. I was really happy with my soup overall because I cooked the vegetables at the right time in order for them not to turn brown or become a purée (I did that the first time I made it in pedagogie). I was also happy with the fact that the chefs rated my soup as the second best tasting soup.

As for the chicken, most people had issues with the cooking - the chicken was actually undercooked. I messed up a bit on cutting the chicken as I needed to have a couple "frenched" or manchonner pieces (for the non-cooks, imagine little drumlettes with a clean bone sticking out). I ended up wrapping some chicken meat and skin around a couple bones that I had cleaned up. As far as I know, it worked. =)

The French written test was fine. It was long though - I think around 10-15 pages. I "overstudied" which wasn't a bad thing. I probably just made a few stupid mistakes here and there. Overall, I am SO glad it's over. Now I can relax until Xmas.

And yay for restaurant service tomorrow.

I am so relieved !!!

Le Menu Regional: Alsace

Tarte flambée (flamme kueche)


Foie gras chaud aux navets confits. My dish! It was a hit, but my chef and I agreed that the navets needed more sugar.


The left piece of foie was a whole lobe roasted and sliced, while the middle tranche was escalopée and then sauteed.


Doesn't he look evil ?


Sandre en choucroute a l'ancienne, beurre blanc


Civet de chevreuil


Tarte au fromage blanc, coulis de mirabelles. Sorbet au Kirsch




Kougelhopf

Pre-test#2 - Quite possibly the worst day of my life

...at school.

But it's quite funny now that I think about it.

For our first dish, we had to make allumettes au fromage which are simple, BUT you need time to make a puff pastry.

Flashback from the beginning of the semester:


There's a technique to it in terms of mixing the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, and then incorporating the butter into the dough without it ever "leaking out" of the dough itself. You also have to roll the dough, fold the dough, and turn the dough a certain way, and then let it rest. Then you do it all over again. The turns and resting results in the pastry dough puffing up and having many layers.

Long story short, we were all running late in putting our allumettes in the oven. I didn't even have time to foncer my allummettes, let alone do enough turns to have them rest and then puff up correctly in the oven. It was terrible. Everything about today was terrible. I was 100% dans la merde. And it was quite the same for everyone else. Chef was not too happy today, to say the least.

Let's just say Pre-test day#2 resulted in:

"Stupid !"

Slamming the oven shut... throwing a pan here or there on the plaque.
"Putain de merde !" (Context translation - fucking shit, I suppose)

Mix that in with a few looks of death.

And then my chef looking at my dish, then looking at the other chef, pointing to my dish, and then having that look. You know the "can you believe she is serving this shit?" look.

Then the:

"Joan, the poubelle (trashcan in French) is over there."

Followed by "Everyone, there is a poubelle here, ok?"

Ah, classic.

And to top it off, I was the first to serve both my dishes today. So basically that means I get the most shit (everyone else's didn't work out too well either but you can only yell so many times). Also, I think I got a lot of shit because the first time I made them, they rose pretty well and my chef mentioned for me to keep the technique up. The ones I made for the pre-test were rushed, flat, leaking cheese from the sides, uneven, and just plain ugly. The shitty-ness of my first dish overshadowed whatever I made for my second dish. Chicken something? I don't even remember.

But anyway, I knew it was completely shitty. But at the same time, I don't think it was the best idea to have a timed test with a puff pastry recipe that requires turns, time, and more turns and time. Regardless, I was quite disappointed in myself and how the day turned out. But it's okay. C'est comme ça.

Pre-test #1

This week we are having two "pre-tests" to prepare us for our final exam before Christmas vacation. Amanda I were stressing out about these tests even though there was no grade and it was strictly for practice.

So for today's test, we had very simple recipes - Quiche Lorraine and Poulet rôti. We all picked numbers randomly to see who would present their first dish first. Then we would need to serve our second dish a few minutes later. It turned out to be totally okay - I even had time to kill.

Here are my creations - these are extremely classic French dishes in terms of preparation as well as presentation.

Quiche Lorraine. The only complaint on my quiche were that the lardons were cut too large. BUT the only reason why my chef noticed was because he saw me cutting them. He said to me "Not steaks, Joan." HAHAHA! Also, I need to work out foncer-ing the tarte (edge of the tart to make it all pretty). Otherwise, the seasoning and cooking was good.


Poulet rôti. I got a few points docked off for the tressing of the chicken. But otherwise, it was ok. My jus tasted terrible in my opinion, but it was because we used water instead of stock which didn't give it the right flavor. You like how traditionally, the middle finger sticks out? HA


So far so good.

Rungis Market ! On prend un tour !

Rungis Market is the largest food market in the world. They are a wholesale market that are used by most of the restaurants in Paris and the surrounding areas. It's so large, that we had to take a bus to each different warehouse. Did any of you ever watch Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations in Paris? Yah, he went too. The pictures are self-explanatory. And anyway, this post is useless without pix! Isn't it more interesting to describe my life in Paris with photos anyway?

On y va:

04:00 !


Les Chefs














If you ever feel like drinking some wine or having a meat sandwich at 5am - here is your place.


Been drinking too much French wine...


I <3 U






Prized pigs






Supposedly the best brand of Roquefort out there








These are mini-ananas!






These are REAL gargantuan asparagus.


And to complete this tour, we had to eat what the workers at Rungis eat at 9am. Table wine with fried pork belly and fries. Ummmm.