Vendredi, Mai 1

Vendredi, Mai 1
Today is the first day that we are working in the kitchen at the University of Wine, so the menu will be interesting. I’ll post the menu quoted (cuz it’s in French) and explain what it is.

Amuse-”Declineison d’asperge”
Asparagus three ways, white asparagus cooked in milk with green onion, white asparagus puree with chives, white asparagus sautéed in butter

Entrée (second dish, usually veg)-”Mitonee de legumes du moment”
Braised carrot, squash blossom stuffed with green part of chard, sautéed green onion, sautéed fava beans, braised artichokes, sautéed pencil asparagus

Poisson (Fish)-”Petite bouille de roche et rouge barbet”
Seared red mullet, toast with rouille (spicy mustard/mayonnaise), rockfish bouille (not quite a real bouillebaise)

Viande (Meat)-”Bateau de pigeon, jambonnette de sa cuisse et blette au blat”
Seared squab breast, white chard and parmesan square, squab leg lollipop (the jambonnette), quenelle of liver/heart/shallots pan fried, pan sauce from squab bones

Dessert-”Harmonie de fraises du basilic”
Butterscotch cookie, basil citrus sorbet, macerated strawberries with citrus, glucose/starch/orange “crisp”, sugared basil

Pain (Bread)-”Anis, campagne, pain brioche”

I worked on the squab, which is surprisingly tasty. Really, you need to see the pictures, cuz words just don’t do these dished justice.
Oh, and by the way Chef Jean Michel, who is our chef here, is amazing. He makes up recipes just from walking around and looking at food quality, he plates on the fly, he’s bloody brilliant. He’s probably the most amazing chef I’ve ever seen. I love France.

Hooray for internet.

Miercoles, Avril 29

Today was…interesting. Consisted of getting off the plane from our eleven-ish hour flight, waiting three hours to get on the bullet train because apparently it takes from 7am to 11am to cross the terminal, and rididng the train for another three hours. Luckily I got to sleep on the train since I didn’t on the plane. Then we got to the apartment and settled and such. I got the smallest room, but it has a wall against the back of the bed so I’m good with that. We grabbed a little bit to eat at that point, I got a sammich that I’d had the last time I was in France. It was a soft cheese inside the bread and a harder cheese melted on top, and I’m fully aware that my mother will kill me for eating her favorite sammich. Then we went to eat at Numero 75, Chef Brunel’s restaurant and the place I will be staging at. It was very cool. I have pictures, they’re dark, but there. Ummm….I’ll figure out the picture situation somehow too, that may be a little problematic until I get home.

Numero 75

Black olive tapenade-salty, olive chunks, good texture and variety

Yellow olive tapenade-slightly sweet, didn’t like as much, similar texture

Dried tomato pesto-salty, sweet, indicative of sun dried tomato

Mint crème brulee-like a very buttery custard, almost a sweet mint compound butter brulee

Coconut panna cotta with berries-Mild, creamy, not overpowering in flavor, smooth

Chocolate tart-Bitter layer, followed by a caramely crunchy layer, and a sweet fluffy one, with a creamy caramel sauce (high cream content?)

Apple crumble-Made with duck fat instead of butter, creamy and crunchy/soft

Oh, and I slept like the dead. I was completely out. Need more sleep.

Jeudi, Avril 30

Went to a market this morning. It was awesome. I love those little markets. We got cured meats, cheese, baguette, fruit, gummies (If you know me, you know the significance of this), and a couple rotisserie quails. Which are very cool. One of our classmates bit the head off his quail. We did a walking tour of the city, and had a kind of tasting lunch at Les Halles, which you WILL get a picture of, it’s a vertical garden on the outside. It had tons of meats, cheeses, olives, oysters, breads, etc. It was very cool. Very good wine too. Oh, and I got a bottle of wine at the grocery store for 1€85. Be jealous, all of you. ^_^ Then there’s a wine tasting at the Pope’s Palace.

Kay.

I do not have internet connections at my apartment, so updates will be REALLY sporadic for a while. I'm gonna do what I can, but the general format will probably be a three or four day update all at once. On days that we have a menu, I'll list it and then list what we actually did, since there's a little confusion on it. Thanks for your patience.

Bye for now

Hopefully this posts, it's from my phone. I'm in the airport waiting for the plane to France so I thought I'd mention a couple things. I don't know if I'll have stable internet, so updates may not come every day, I'll let you know when I do about that. Regardless, I will try to update as regularly as possible so there's an idea of what is happening. So now I will attempt to enjoy my next hour or so of waiting.

Right then.

Apparently the phone posting hasn't been working right. So.

A couple weeks ago we did gala testing, where we tried out different variations of the same basic recipe for one dish (we worked in partners) for the $65 a plate dinner we put on. My course was amuse bouche and we ended up with toasted brioche, quail fennel sausage, wilted arugula, and a sunny side up quail egg. We called it a "Quail egg florentine" and I was actually pretty happy with it.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we started prep work on the gala, so we had to get all the breads and amuse stuff ready before the actual day. The bread was mainly for display, since the eating breads would be done day of.

Thursday, I was set for front of house and my partner was back of house, so I dealt with people and he got to cook. There were 30 people there and my mom was at my table, so it really wasn't so bad. I ended up making parker house rolls, gluten free bread (which I'd never made before, but was a big hit, so yay!), and my partner made fogasse (see pic), and baguettes.

Friday, we made the same breads, minus fogasse (and I just ended up making some epi loaves instead, again pic, the epis look like stalks of grain) and I was in back of house. Went pretty well, all in all. We got out a bit earlier, so we all cracked a beer from the dinner and talked cuz that was the last class we had before France.

So....Tuesday I leave for France. I'm slightly nervous about the plane (I dun like planes) but I'm so excited about going to France. It'll be awesome. Wish me luck. Oh, and I'll be bringing my laptop and camera so please check back. I'll make sure to get these in via computer not phone.