"With so much drama in the LCB"

10 points if you get that reference.

After Basic cuisine and pastry I began my assistantship straight away and didn't have time to write one of these. Marie has vehemently pointed out that now I have more than enough time, and that there, perchance, may be people interested in a Cordon Bleu student's life.

Briefly, Cordon Bleu Paris has ten or so cuisine chefs and five pastry chefs, with two of these chefs alternating between the two sections as need be. The course of study is split into three levels, Basic, Intermediate (which I just completed), and Superior. In cuisine, each focuses on basic skills, regional dishes and ingredients, and modern methods, respectively. Pastry begins with basic skills such as the simpler doughs and batters, basic formulations of custards and ecremages, and rudimentary decorative skills focused on piping. Intermediate is all about the various mousses and gelatin based fillings. Superior, once again, is modern plated desserts and then chocolate and sugar sculpture.

Class time is spent between demonstrations by the teaching chefs and then practicals in which the students cook one of the dishes presented in the demo. Each is supposed to last no more than two and a half hours.

A main component of the Intermediate syllabus was forcemeats. These range from cream and fish based mousselines (with either the already present proteins or an addition of egg white as binders) to poultry or meat-based forcemeats bound together with starch, or, in the case of sausage, nothing at all. Meat and fish fabrication was another strong theme, honing our knife skills (sorry for the pun, it was unintentional, I swear). We learned to debone a fish, leaving head, tail, and both filets in tact, removing the carcass of a chicken whole, with the skin, breasts, wings and legs as one piece, which is then stuffed, rolled, and poached. Hollow boning and frenching poultry extremities was another popular presentation, and finally removing the filet and stomach musculature from smaller game animals (rabbits) for stuffing and rolling. Finally, we touched on some French classics, so ingrained in every French person that they evoke a visceral reaction at their mere mention, such as bouillabaisse (a saffroned fish and potato stew) and Cassoulet, a garlicky braise of lamb, white beans, sausage, tomatoes, and duck confit.

New ingredients that we dealt with were lobster*, guinea fowl, fresh water fish, gelled consommé, lamb, anatomically interesting fish like eel and John Dory (it has SIX filets!!!), monkfish, crayfish, and large animal butchery- we watched a whole lamb get broken down into service portions.

Pastry, although as repetitive, was on the one hand, much more interesting than Basic. The art of mixing cream with flavorings in a light, airy, smooth, unctuous, and above all stable concoction was what they wanted us to leave with. Either through a mousse (a mixture of whipped cream and flavoring, often stabilized with gelatin), a bavarois (a cooked custard mousse), or an ecremages (a custard or marmalade emulsified with butter and/or cream) they are all delicious, although I'm a bit sick of them. We were also introduced to decorative chocolate (tempering and molding as a finish) and chocolates.

As an aside, I have a new found loathing for chocolate. Remember, for every piece of artisanal chocolate that you eat, some poor schmuck is sitting out of sight, covered in that temperamental morass, cursing their lot in life, all because of LITERALLY 2 degrees of temperature difference. With a pissed off red-faced French guy about to blow a neck-gasket screaming behind them.

I knew it before, but this session confirmed it: pastry is not my thing. As wonderful as the final product tastes and feels, and as culinarily interesting and delightful it's machinations are, the closest I ever want to be professionally to a pastry shop is the out of the way nook that is the dessert station.

Not that LCB is, or will ever be, a negative experience. To celebrate my completion of Intermediate, I spent the day yesterday cooking a celebration meal. It wasn't a celebration that I had succeeded- you find out morning of graduation if you failed, but rather that I had finished. As a mark, here is the menu:

Poached Fine de claire oysters gratinées with shallot and white wine cream
Seared scallops with a scallop jus beurre blanc atop mushroom risotto and cauliflower cream
Milk and dark chocolate mousse with strawberries macerated in a black pepper balsamic reduction.

Here's to looking forward to Superior.


*If you've seen any Hollywood movie about French cooking, there is the inevitable humorous or emotional scene dealing with the dispatching of poor Mrs. Lobster. You know how I know it is a Mrs.? Cause of the egg sack. MMMMMMM. Anyways, fastest, easiest, and most painless way for everyone involved? A quick thrust of a chefs knives through the base of the head, continuing right through to bisect the appendage.