Working at a 2 Michelin Star restaurant - Part I

For the month of February, everyone has been setup for stages (or internships in the culinary world). My chef set me up at at a two Michelin star restaurant in the 6th. Initially, he suggested I work regular days and then gradually add in one or two days of double shifts. Well, I ended up jumping straight into 15+ hour days, 5 days a week. My days started at 830am and ended as "early" as 1130pm and as late as 1 am. We typically got a break from 230 - 530, but most of the time I didn't get out until 3 or 330pm. BUT we did have staff meals which often times included extra desserts from Pastry service! But anyway, let me just say that I have never worked so hard in my entire life. My previous stage before school started was at a two Michelin star restaurant in California - since I had a full-time office job, French class, and physical therapy, I was only able to work very Part-time helping the garde manger. This stage in France was super intense and cool because I was given the opportunity to jump straight into working in a French kitchen full-time.

WEEK 1

I was put onto the sautée station for the first 3 - 4 days. They had me turn a couple buckets of artichokes, turn beets, cut up a bunch of cauliflower, prep other miscellaneous vegetables, some brunoise, and hachering BLACK TRUFFLES (they have this great truffle menu here which I wish I could afford !). It's funny because I often find the tedious and sometimes mundane things in the kitchen such as turning, cutting brunoise, and hachering (mincing I guess is the translation?)quite enjoyable. Usually when I am doing my mise en place, I "get in the zone" and in my own little world where I just really try to focus on what I am doing. I remember one time when I was told to monder a bunch of tomatoes (boiling the tomatoes for a few seconds in order to remove the skin). I did exactly what I had been doing at school - made an ice-bath and boiled the tomatoes for a maximum of 20 seconds. As I was taking them out, one of the sautée guys told me to leave them in for a long time and dumped some of my tomatoes back in the boiling water. He ended up leaving them in there for like five minutes and had to throw a bunch of them away because they were so mushy that they fell apart in your hands. Luckily, the tomatoes that I did were still intact and usable. Little things like that make me feel not so bad being the rookie in the kitchen.

Anyway, the mise en place part was okay, however, during service, the two sautée guys (one French guy - the chef de partie, and a new Japanese guy who had been working there for two weeks already) would not let me do anything. They made me wash spoons and pans and change the water in the containers holding the spoons. The first day I was like okay, I am just the stagiaire, the bottom or the totem pole, the rookie in the kitchen... but after four days I was like, this can't be right ? Am I the plongeure (dishwasher) or the stagiaire ? I mean, I would rather be doing more mise en place and at least practice prepping or something than "learning" to wash dishes faster. I was sooo ridiculously bored out of my mind. I was also just there to wrap boxes and things like that. Also, I had some trouble understanding the Japanese guy's French sometimes which resulted in him waving his hands at me whenever I asked him a question. I mean that was his answer.

Où est-ce que je peut mettre ça ?
*waves hands vigorously through the air.
...

Poubelle ça ?
*waves hands vigorously through the air
...

Qu'est-ce que je fait avec ça ?
*waves hands vigorously through the air
...

Seriously, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? I am not in Italy, I don't understand these hand waving signals! ahhahahaha

---------

On the fourth day, I texted my chef to ask him if it was normal for a stagiaire to be assistant dishwasher during service at this particular restaurant. He said absolutely not, talked to the chef, and I was immediately thrown on the fish station. It was crazy because I went from washing dishes to working the line at the fish station ! They started me on cooking the chipirons or squid dish. It was absolutely delicious - sauteed squid with chorizo and confit de tomate on a bed of squid ink risotto, jus of squid and citron, olive oil, and parmesan espume. I was able to help the commi (line cook) of the fish station with everything. She turned out to be super awesome x 1000. We got along very well and communication between us was quite good considering it was all in French. For the rest of the day, she explained all the dishes to me and the way it was cooked. She was extremely patient and even repeated things many times without being irritated. The mise en place at this restaurant is enormous - they have a million different ingredients, sauces, jus, foams, etc for each dish. It was a lot to take in for me but it was really exciting. I was happy that both chefs made changes.

Now let me address being in school for "only" 50+ hours, and then jumping into a 70+ hour week working in a French Michelin restaurant. I have never felt like death until now (and most of you know how shitty my immune system is). I thought school could be tough sometimes because we have our 12 - 15 hour days, three days in a row... but no, I really did feel like death this week. All the running up and down stairs carrying heavy items. Sweating in front of the hot stove, not drinking water, etc. etc. During my "breaks" I would take a nap but I always ended up feeling worse when I got up. I mean I would walk back to work and be thinking "is this really happening? Oh my body hates me right now!" The break felt pretty useless for me, but I did survive my first week and started on a new poste where I will learn a lot.

Le Menu Regional: Bretagne

Coquilles Saint Jacques a la Bretonne




Carpaccio de langoustines aux oeufs de lumps


Petits pavés de bar vapeur, sabayon a l'hydromel, creme de mangue




Ragout de homards aux haricots de Paimpoi


Crepes tiedes fourrées aux poires

... just zucchinis...

Tartes fines aux courgettes, feta et poudre d'amandes. Looks easy and simple right? Well, we spent a great deal of time cutting, marinating, then cutting the zucchini into discs. It was very good and refreshing though.


Anglo B - "Nems" or Vietnamese spring rolls


This brioche was so good. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to try what was inside.

Le Menu Regional: Picardie

Goyères valenciennoises


Crème de chou-fleur aux moules de bouchot


Parmentier de kippers


Carbonnade de beouf à la flamande. I was put on this dish today. Braised endives with apples. Delicious.


And of course, beef which was braised with spices and pain d'epice (spice bread).


Glace de chicorée et son galopin. Sorbet à la bistouille

Salmon Teriyaki - French style

It's back to the grind now.

Saumon Teriyaki, pressée d'épinard au sesame. This is a recipe from my chef, Worked with Andrew today. We done did good. =D


Velouté de cresson, oeuf cassé et saumon rôti


Rognon de veau sauté, jus de veau au pralin de pignon de pin, linguinis Rognon or kidneys is also something I am not a fan of. But I can eat it when it's cut into smaller pieces and is another component of a dish like in a farce.


Macaroon de framboise


Anglo B








Anglo Pastry






Brownies! With crème anglaise and vanilla ice-cream

Le Menu Regional: Rhône-Alpes

Cervelle de canut. Cervelat pistache en brioche, sauce vigneronne. Me and Julie's dish.




Quenelles de brochet aux ecrevisses


Ragout d'abats


Poularde de Bresse demi-deuil


Sorbet a la liqueur de chataignes. Bugnes.

Happy New Year !

From SF

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.