Le Menu Regional: Provence

So my fantastic program at school includes regional menus. Every other week we have the pleasure of learning the wine and food for specific regions in France. Our first menu was for Provence.

Anchoïade


Petits Farci à la Provençale


So this was my dish. Being a rookie, I took a long time doing this recipe. I have never even used a meat grinding machine before. This was a fairly simple recipe, however, there were many steps to it including canneling the legumes, videring them and stuff them. Unfortunately for my rookie ass, I didn't have enough time to reduce the sauce. Nonetheless, it was still good.




Filets de rougets à la crème d'olive et marjolaine, fine ratatouille


Ok - so FUNNY STORY. Eldar was making that olive foam sauce you see above. It was in a bahut and chef told him to put it in the bain mairie. The bain marie is a water bath which we leave on our plaques. You put in other bain-maries filled with sauces, soups, etc that need to stay heated. So Eldar says to chef,

"So you sure you want me to put it in the bain-marie?"
"Yes, Eldar, put it in the bain-marie."

So HE POURS THE SAUCE INTO THE WATER IN THE BAIN-MARIE. AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA. Ahhh, what a classic story to live down.


Aïoli de Cabillaud, minis fenouil et Épinards sautés à cru



Daube à la Provençale




Gros macarons au citron, Sorbet citron


And of course, what else but to finish avec un express ?


Bon Apetit !

The Basics

Ok before I get into school, I just wanted to note that France has introduced me to eggs on pizza. And I absolutely love it. Here is a pizza joint I frequent often when I am in the mood for fresh-made dough, meat, and an egg.

Del Papa
Rue du Buci
6eme

Pizza Caruso - I think it's about 10,50Euro. It has epaules (pork shoulder but tastes like ham), champignons, and chorizo.




And might I add how beautiful Paris is - this is what I see when I have to go to school in the wee hours of the morn... Ok, not that early but it is like 730 and I am used to going in the office around 930-1000 =D. And might I add that when I leave school, it is dark already.


Bonjour !


Anyway, on a commence a "taillage" or cuts. It's amazing how precise Chef Sebastien is. He busted out his ruler and everything. If one thing was a bit crooked, he would definitely let us know. (Which is great in my opinion. I moved here to learn perfection!) My chef used to work for Alain Passard at L'Arpege, and was even on Iron Chef Japan as Chef Passard's sous-chef a few years back. Details of that, I still need to obtain.



Veg for stocks




We then moved onto turning veg, or "tourner les legumes." Needed the ruler for this too of course.


Then stocks - I accidentally burned the chicken which Chef was not happy about. He gets this look of death in his eyes when you burn something...


Then soups...


And salads. All this for a salad? =D




My favorite "salads" of citrus




Look at my chef's expression. Haha what a great photo.


Then it was time to tourner les artichauts and make purees and veg medleys. Wasn't a fan of this.


But this was delicious!


Then to allumettes. Mine rose pretty well for doing it the first time. These were filled with a mix of echalotes sweated and reduced with madere, viande hacher, taragon, parsley. Very good but I put too much taragon in mine.


Allumettes aux fromage


Saucisson au Brioche which is a bit tedious to make, and a sticky mess but oh so deliceux.




We made this heavenly sauce reduced from brown stock and port. OMG, it was so good with the brioche.

And of course we had soufflé week. Here is a photo of my fallen disaster.


Basic pastry class is on Mondays.


Passion fruit souffle. This was so delicious. It's a shame though - we had to throw away a lot of delicious souffles because it was absolutely not possible to finish them all.


And of course, super classique French desserts:

Pate a choux


Abso-fucking-lutely love millefeuille


Moka (not for me)


Paris-Brest - and yes I am very well aware of my crap piping skills. Hey, this is only the beginning. =D


So far school has been "tough" in comparison to life in the office. We spend a good 40-50 hours at school for kitchen time, French class, technologie, wine and cheese class, etc. It's great though.

New Chapter in My Life

So I didn't have internet until really - a few weeks ago (nous sommes 30-03-08!) so I am attempting to update my blog starting in Sept 07.

The move went semi-well. Air France lost 2/4 of my suitcases for about 2 weeks. Good news is that I didn't have to lug anything onto the RER and Metro when I arrived. Also, I ended up buying 950Euro worth of stuff courtesy of Air France. Mostly jackets, boots, and tops since I only had my pants in my suitcases. Bad news is, Rafael had to lug two of my suitcases- and I mean huge suitcases!

My studio is 15 sq meters on the rez-de-chausee on Rue du Four in the 6th arrondisement. Nice neighborhood - shitty studio, but it is a 10 minute walk to school. The lady that let me in was 30 minutes late, and not the friendliest. A bit hard to communicate because my French is not so good. Later on, Raf and I realized that many things in the studio were broken or falling apart. But that is another story.

Dorky photo in my new shithole studio.


My neighborhood


Imagine a box, then a bathroom which branches out on the side of the box. Yup, that is my studio. It's not the size I had a problem with, it was that it was in a bit of a crap condition. Later I would learn that my place would turn into the "I drank too much so I'm going to crash at Joan's place" - I fit up to 5 ppl in my place (floor included).

Here is my kitchen/laundry room/dining room/living room:


I need to give a BIG THANK YOU to Raf for going out of his way to help me move to Paris. It's going to be tough being long-distance but Raf has been nothing but supportive of all my decisions. And of course, he will benefit from me feeding him ;).

After moving, we spent our days before school walking around (shopping, courtesy of Air France, although it was a quite painful experience. By that time I was so sick of shopping but I HAD to do it since I didn't have much).

Here is my prestigious school ;) École Supérieure de Cuisine Française - ESCF Ferrandi




Orientation week began on 10/09/07. It was an easy week of introductions, touristy boat tour around Paris, trips to Hotels and restaurants, meals, etc. etc.

Anglophone class - we are split in two groups. Students come from the US, Canada, Brazil, Hong Kong, Turkey, Colombia, Sweden, and Israel


Me, Natalia(Colombia), Andrew (NorCal, ya!), Jessica(hmm... Germany/Canada/Prague, etc etc etc)


The girls. Me, Amanda(OH, US- she is from a different world/planet but we will get into that later), Jessica, Bengi (Turkey), Julie(OK, US)


Unfortunately, Raf had to leave in the middle of Orientation week. But I had a couple visitors shortly afterwards. One being Sean from my French bootcamp class. We walked around Paris and randomly ran into a Techno Parade. It was crazy but pretty neat. The parade stretched across Paris - we ended up walking all the way to the Bastille.



I think this was the moment Sean started to love Paris.


Then I brought him to a small shindig at my Brazilian's friend's studio. Look how cute the beers are.


Sean, Alex(Sweden), me, Jessica


Shortly afterwards, Tanya from my French bootcamp class came to visit. She was in Burgundy for a month doing hardcore labor at a winery (internship - she is a sommeliere). Chris from Canada who has 1.5 years of Culinary school + 4 years of restaurant experience made us orange duck and pommes de terres.






Quite a bit tipsy. Jacob from Texas is doing the Canadian dance. Many Canadian jokes were made throughout the evening.




19/09/07 was Felipe's (Brazil) anniversaire.

Gift from Eldar(Israel) to Felipe


At a bar in the 18th, M:Pigalle




Me, Eldar(class clown, great entertainment- Israel), Felipe


So class begins. Or perhaps my new life begins. Class photos to come in my next post.