Where Did The Time Go?

Already it’s almost Thanksgiving and I can’t help but feel like just yesterday I was coming to New York on a hot summer day to start work at Restaurant Daniel.  Now, I’m working as a full fledged cook, no longer an intern or a student, at Maze by Gordon Ramsay.  As I look back on the photos of my exam dish and all the other food I plated throughout my time at Le Cordon Bleu, I realize how much I’ve learned in the past few months.  From the canape section at Daniel to the larder section of Maze, I have received a much needed education in restaurants, plating, problem solving, and developed a very thick skin.  I knew working in a restaurant would help me learn a lot of new skills, I just had no idea how quickly it would happen.

My internship at Restaurant Daniel started in June.  When I got the call to come in for a trail day I could hardly contain myself.  The person on the phone told me to bring sharp knives and to practice making french omlettes.  Well, I practiced alright.  I don’t think Corey will be able to look at another egg in a very long time.

My trail day was on a Saturday.  I of course woke up way too early and got on the subway way too early and arrived at the restaurant way too early.  When I finally entered the building I was taken to the tiniest locker room ever to change into my LCB uniform.  I spent the first part of the day working on a brunoise of shallots for the meat section, then I moved downstairs to the prep kitchen where I helped finish the last minute tasks for service.

During service, I worked on the canape section with two other people, tiny space but such a huge experience, plating all sorts of very delicate and exotic amuses.  After I worked on the canape station for awhile, executive chef Jean Francois (JFK) handed me a menu and told me to stand in the corner to watch service.  As I was watching, a familiar face came walking in with an outstretched hand.  Yes, it was Daniel Boulud himself.  Chef Boulud was very polite, he asked me about my culinary background and about how long I would be working at Daniel and as I was answering his questions my head was in a total fog.  I couldn’t believe he was in the kitchen, let alone shaking my hand and asking me questions.  It was insane and I still can’t believe it happened.

As the night came to an end, JFK came up to me and said bluntly, “So, you’ll stage,”  and that was it.  I officially became a Daniel intern the following Monday.

Hello Again!!

Well, I’m back in the US.  I suppose that message is a few months late.  I’m hoping to spend the next few weeks, catching this blog up to date on my recent culinary endeavors including but not limited to my internship at restaurant Daniel in nyc, making my brother’s wedding cake, and getting a new job.  Currently I’m located in Battery Park City in Manhattan, it’s a lovely city and a beautiful area but sometimes my heart does ache for Paris.  Something about that city, the beauty of the architecture, the food, the ability to wander about for hours without ever feeling bored or tired…I miss it, but not all the time.  I’m happy to be back home near my friends and family!  I have a bunch of photos from my last days in Paris through my day in Brooklyn last weekend that I need to upload so expect some updates.  Here’s hoping everyone had a great labor day weekend!!

Final Exam!!

Just a quick update: The exam went great!! I have passed and the chef complimented me on my dish so I’m really happy. Here’s the photos from the exam plus the other dishes that other people served:

My exam dish and the action during the exam

Other exam dishes (Pastry and Cusine)

Just a little note: The superior pastry exam was a sugar sculpture and the cuisine exam was to come up with an original dish that had at least one sauce, a composed vegetable, a stuffed vegetable, a simple vegetable, an amuse bouche and serve 4 plates. We also had to use lamb, foie gras, cauliflower, artichokes, red pepper, and peas.

My dish was lamb stuffed with foie gras and chicken mousse served with a lamb jus, pea gnocchi in a roasted red pepper basil sauce, zucchini stuffed with an artichoke and cauliflower gratin, turned glazed carrots, and my amuse was white asparagus and cauliflower puree.

Night Before My Final

It’s the night before my final exam, the culinary culmination of my time here in Paris. I found myself awake, thinking about the time I’ve spent here. I’ve seen the seasons change, seen Paris go from being dark and rainy, to eternally light out and beautiful, stocked with flowers and perfectly manicured parks. I’ve been lonely in my studio apartment, eating éclairs and wishing I was home, to spending evenings in my kitchen with my two best girl friends, all of us cooking in a space no bigger than a closet. I’ve seen countless museums and walked through so much of this city. I went from being a nervous wreck on my first day of class, to confident halfway through, and now, on my last day of school, so very aware of how far I’ve come and how far I still have to go.

Paris was so very romanticized in my mind before I came here, and that fantasy was in a two dream pileup with the idea that I would come home fluent in French. This experience was not easy and in the early months it was far from ideal. There were many days, usually marked by rain, knife wounds, or lack or internet service or, let’s face it, an apartment, where I hated Paris, well I’m glad I stayed until spring. Spring in Paris isn’t necessarily the most beautiful time of the year, it’s just the first time anyone in Paris actually feels like leaving the apartment. It’s finally light out, and the rain becomes less and less frequent (why is it that everyone knows that Seattle is rainy all the time but the rain in Paris is kept secret??). The most important part of Paris for me, besides the education, is the friendships I’ve gained. I really tried not to make friends, not because I’m mean or a loner, but because I didn’t think with only a few months here, that it would really make sense to become close to anyone. Well, I’m glad that didn’t work out. My friends are amazing. Dinner parties, museum trips, lunches, parties, nights at each others apartments after the parties, walks around the city with no plans in mind, my friends have made Paris so much better than that silly romanticized version I had in my head as I stepped on the airplane in Connecticut. I can’t thank them enough for changing my life for the better here in Paris.

Some day, I hope to have become much more fluent in French (apparently osmosis coupled with software is not the best way to learn a language) and come back here, and then I fear, Paris will once again have a standard to live up to. The standard I set for it by embracing my days off and visiting every possible tourist attraction, and every hole in the wall that tourists don’t know about, the standard that my friends help set for it by giving me such wonderful memories, and  the standard Le Cordon Bleu set for it by giving me wonderful skills, and even more wonderful food to enjoy while I was here. I can’t believe that my time here is running out (only 5 days left) and while I’m excited to come home and curious about my future, I have another, less expected feeling…sadness. Tomorrow is the last day I will wear my uniform and cook in the little school on rue leon delhomme. Tomorrow is the last time my friends and I will go the bar near school after an exam and question what we could have done better. The next five days are full of lasts and I’m sad about that, but I couldn’t be happier that I made the decision to come and that even on the bad days, this experience was well worth it. I can only hope my next stage in life will be anywhere near as fulfilling.

All New Photos!!!

So, clearly it’s been awhile since I posted anything, and I plan on finishing writing up the days but that’s the easy part, the hard part is getting photos up. Well, it took the entire day but here are all of my unposted photos. Make it last! It’s like Christmas morning, if you open all of your presents at once, you’re gonna be really jealous of Jon who always takes a really long time opening his presents and acts all smug about it, but then Matt shows why he’s the oldest when he pulls out a present for himself that he hid under the couch and well there you go, Christmas at the Aubin House. This is of course after we make each other breakfast and sing carols

March 25-27 Random Pics from Corey’s Visit

April 8-9

April 11-15

April 15 Every Time I Die Show

April 17 International Food Festival

April 19-30

May 5-12

May 13: Rungis

Flowers Part 1

Flowers Part 2

Fruits and Vegetables Part 1

Fruits and Vegetables Part 2

Cheeses

Everything/Everybody Else:

May 16 & 17 Korean Dinner and Day out with Merrie

Greatest Hits of the Last Few Weeks

April 11: Student Dinner

Tonight was the student dinner.  We went to LeDoyen which has 3 Michelin stars, which basically means it’s one of the best restaurants in Paris, which is a big deal.  The restaurant is located right on the Champs Elysee between Place de Concorde and where the real commercial part starts.  It looks like a beautiful house in the middle of the woods, pretty cool considering that two blocks either way and you’re hit with some of the busiest most touristy parts of the city.  Dinner was amazing.  It started with an open bar and hot passed hors d’oeuvres.  My favorite were these little tiny vegetarian egg rolls.  They were absolutely amazing and I’m actually doing a play on them during my second do what you want workshop, but I haven’t even talked about my first one yet so I’ll explain later.  The pre-appetizer was a white asparagus puree with a parmasean crisp, creme fraiche, and black truffles.  Again, amazing.  I actually used the asparagus puree in my first do anything workshop.  Apparently I’m quite the copycat.  This dish was probably my favorite thing we were served, not that everything else wasn’t wonderful, but this dish was just perfectly put together.  The next dish, the appetizer, was foie gras with a passion fruit gel followed by our main dish of filet mignon wrapped in duxelles and puff pastry served with a red wine truffle sauce.  The predessert was this incredibly rich coffee mousse with a coffee gel and a coffee bean crisp.  It was good but man was it strong!  The main dessert was a dice of pineapple with coconut foam, a sugar crisp, and banana sorbet.  It was yummy but by that point I could barely eat any more…although if it were anything chocolate I probably would have managed.  I ended up just eating the pineapple and giving my banana sorbet away to a friend who loved it.  You would think dinner would be over at this point but no, we still have post dessert and espresso.  The post dessert was an array of mini desserts, lemon macaroons, chocolate tarts, and pound cake.  I ended up going home right after dinner so I could get some sleep before my parents came in the next day.

April 12: My Parents Come to Paris

I picked my parents up in the morning and brought them in to Paris on the train.  About halfway through the ride, my Dad ended up getting his camera out of his luggage and started taking photos of the trains and yards we passed on the way in.  Here’s a little glimpse of what my parents did during their stay: Eiffel tower, Louvre, Orsay, Luxembourg gardens, Cosi, mussels and wine at a cafe (Mom w/ me), Versailles, trainwatching (Dad), shopping at Galleries Lafayette (Mom w/ me), Marmottan museum, Carnavalet museum, falafels in the Marais, Sacre Coeur/Montmartre, walkingwalkingwalking, Notre Dame, Berthillion, Pierre Hermes (Mom w/ me), Poilane (Mom w/ me), Rue Cler, Invalides, view of Eiffel tower from Trocadero, Champs-Elysee, Jardin des Plantes (Dad), a trip to the open air market on Convention (which my Dad is still talking about) and they also sat in on one of my demo classes.

April 15: Mom and Dad sit in on demo/ Every Time I Die concert

Today my parents came to my demo class.  Chef Poupard made ceviche of cod with guacamole, stuffed veal with foie gras and stuffed tomatoes, and stuffed dates wrapped in phyllo dough with saffron ice cream.  They loved the class and my mom practically bought out the school store.  My Dad was so excited that the chef made ice cream that he didn’t even balk at the egg yolks or saffron flavor that was in it.  Like a good daughter, I gave him my portion and got him some extra from the leftovers.  I made the veal the next day and luckily I have some good friends that gave me their veal so we had plenty to eat.

That night I went to the Every Time I Die concert with Merrie and Carter.  The concert was at a little venue in Parc de la Villette which I believe was created to confuse people.  The parc is giant with all of these red weird looking buildings and they are all concert venues. They aren’t just similar looking, they are also set inside foliage so you kind of see a red building, walk all the way over there, and then it’s the wrong one.  Anyway, we found the place and we got there during the second band but were still able to get all the way to the front.  The show was awesome except for the point at which Merrie and Carter were assaulted by two kids that the idiotic security guard pushed from the stage into them.  You can check it out here.   I also put up my videos from the show you can see them here.  At the end of the show the guys in the band started pulling up fans (something they’ve done a lot and had some trouble with too) but they started with me and then I grabbed Merrie and Carter.  Carter was booted off by the security guard so Merrie and I dodged him and ran toward the back of the stage near the drums and danced together away from the rest of the kids onstage who were doing their crazy windmills and kicks and punches.  You can see video of that here.  All in all it was a fun show and later that night Merrie and Carter and I went out for drinks.

April 17: Parents at the Orsay, Me at the International Festival

While my parents went to the Orsay museum, I went to an international festival with Priska, Morgan, and Bruno.  I only went because I really wanted to get out of my apartment but it ended up being awesome.  There was tons of free food and drinks and music.  The highlight though may have been the Miller Lite I had at the USA tent, hilarious.  I brought back lots of food and desserts for my parents, it looked like a box of powdered sugar exploded in my purse!

Alright, I’m taking a break I’ll do another update later with the rest of the hits and with photos!

 

 

Weekend Update with Liz

My friend Morgan’s boyfriend is in professional pastry right now. It’s a continuation of the diploma program and his first task was to make 8 cakes in one week. So on Saturday a bunch of us got together at Bruno’s apartment and tasted lots and lots of cakes. There are photos below.  There were so many I couldn’t remember the names of a few and keep in mind, these cakes traveled the metro system so they used to be prettier.

Sunday was amazing because…it snowed! It was snowing pretty hard for about 4 hours last night and it was beautiful. I felt compelled to have hot cocoa and try to take pictures of the snow as it fell.

Today we made red mullet (it’s a fish) with potato scales (you’ll understand when you see the photo), broccoli flan, an orange beurre blanc sauce, and fresh veggies. It was pretty tasty and mine came out pretty well. The chef said my fish needed a little more time to cook but hey to me that’s a lot better than being overcooked.

Check out the photos:

Goodbye to Corey

I had class the same day on March 31st that we came back from London. I was supposed to have demo at 3:30 and practical at 6:30 until 9:30 but it was Corey’s last night so I skipped practical and Corey and I went out to dinner in St. Germaine one last time. The next morning I took him to the train station and said goodbye. He’s at home now, eating subway and working out.

After leaving Corey, I met up with Hannah and Merrie to go to this convention for cooking professionals. There were a bunch of free food samples but even more free drink samples and by the end of the day we were a little tipsy. We were even given 2 small bottles of Cognac to take home.

On Wednesday, I had demo at 12:30 where we were shown braised asparagus in a cream sauce with shellfish, fillet of beef cooked in consommé with horseradish sauce, and an apple cinnamon and mascarpone parfait with a sugar design on top.

Thursday morning, bright and early I made the same dish. It wasn’t hard but the chef said my meat was over cooked which, it was and my sauce was a little thick, which was also true, though it was also very tasty. Pictures of both my dish and the chef’s dishes below.

Thursday was also the first really beautiful day we’ve had here in Paris in a long time. The sun was shining through my windows and heating my entire apartment. It was lovely. I couldn’t possibly stay inside so I went to the park where they were implanting already bloomed flowers on the inside track of the park. I finally got to the bottom of Paris’s ability to have beautiful flowers blooming in winter. I hope the sun is shining wherever you are reading this from, soon enough we’ll be wearing flip flops and sunglasses and complaining that it’s too hot. I can’t wait!

Friday we made sweatbreads which if you don’t know what they are you should look them up, don’t go by the name.  They came out pretty well but I had chef Thivet and he says everything is parfait so who knows.  Here are some pictures:

London Trip Part 2 (March 30/31)

Sunday we thought we were getting up early, around 9, but apparently in London day light savings time happens between Saturday and Sunday not Sunday and Monday so it was actually an hour later than we thought it was. Incidentally, we didn’t realize this until much later in the day.

We started off the day by having brick oven pizza for breakfast. By that point it was actually 11:30 which I deem a totally acceptable hour for pizza. After brunch, we walked to the British Museum where we saw the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon. After the British Museum we continued our walk to the British Library which is a huge building with a small room housing incredibly important documents. We saw the Magna Carta, Shakespeare’s First Folio, Beatles memorabilia (including hand-written lyrics), the Gutenberg Bible, notebooks from da Vinci and Newton, and a Beowulf manuscript to name just a few items. A lot of the presentations were interactive which is always more fun than the alternative.

After the British Library, the three of us took the tube to the Bank station and walked to see St. Paul’s Cathedral. We were planning on going on the London Eye (which didn’t end up happening) s owe decided not to go up to the dome (I found out later that it isn’t even open on Sundays). We walked from St. Paul’s across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern museum. The Tate had a lot of really cool art, some of my favorites being the social commentaries of the 20/21st centuries. There was also a substantial amount of big names like Monet, Braque, Picasso, Pollock, and Rothko. It was a lot easier to appreciate modern art at this museum where all the titles and explanations were in English as opposed to Pomidou where everything was in French.

When we finished with the Tate we headed to Harris’s area to have some Indian food. I had a samosa and butter chicken and corey had chicken biryani and something else that I can’t remember the name of. It was the best Indian food I’ve had (I’m no expert though) but I’m still not sure whether I actually like Indian food. After dinner Corey’s diet coke addiction kicked in so we stopped at a store for some diet coke for him and chocolate for me. Instead of walking straight back to the dorm, Harris took us on an LSE campus tour where we took some photos of the LSE animal statues and library. We ended up at the dormto take a quick nap and watch some more basketball.

By the time Corey and I were hungry again, Harris informed us that everything was probably closed. A quick walk around his neighborhood proved it to be true so feeling desperate we stopped in the first open restaurant, Burger King. While we were there we checked out the map and decided to walk to Leicester Square because it wasn’t far and we wanted to see London one last time. Well, when we got there, we kicked ourselves because everything was open.

On the way home, we stopped at a local pub for some Guinness extra cold. When we got back to Harris’s we packed and watched live American baseball on the BBC. Apparently they play American sports on one channel really late at night which I think is really cool, but I don’t have a t.v. here anyway. We headed to the bus stop around 3:30am which took us to the airport and back to Paris.

Here are some pictures in two parts from our trip:

London Trip Part 1 (March 28/29)

March 28/29

Since Corey came to Paris, we’ve been on a very good schedule…A very good U.S. schedule that is. Weve been going to bed and waking up late, late, late. Well, the 29th was our trip to London and around 3:3am when we were about to go to sleep for about an hour before waking to catch the metro to get to the train station to take us to the airport (confusing I know) I realized the metro might not be running. After checking online, I was unfortunately correct so we got ready to go and started walking to our nearest RER (train) station which is about 45 minutes away. We must have been walking a little too leisurely because we almost didn’t make the train. Corey ad I ran into the station, bought tickets, ran down the huge flight of stairs with a big suitcase just as our train was pulling in. What a relief! We got super lucky.

After finally arriving at the airport, Corey and I boarded our plane and both fell asleep immediately, not waking until the plane was landing in London. We headed from the airport to central London via the Tube (the London Subway) on the Piccadilly line where we waited to meet Harris (Corey’s friend/house mate from UPenn) at a local coffee shop. Because we were running on an hour of airplane sleep, we decided to get coffee and having lived in Paris for awhile now and having become accustomed to small portion sizes I ordered a large and it was HUGE and not very expensive even with the pound conversion. I immediately liked London. Corey and I had just sat down to drink our coffee when Harris walked in. We sat and chatted at the coffee shop for awhile before heading to his dorm/flat to drop off our bag.

Our introduction to London began with a walk around Harris’s neighborhood. We walked from the London School of Economics (LSE where Harris is pursuing his masters) to Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, to the Thames river where we saw Big Ben, Parliament, and the London Eye. Our first actual stop was Westminster Abbey.

My first reaction to Westminster Abbey was, “You have to pay to get in?” In Paris, almost all of the churches are free to enter and tour and the museums have a fee to enter. However in London, the big museums were donation only and the churches cost money to enter. Westminster Abbey was really beautiful and impressively large. Unlike most of the very open churches in Paris, Westminster Abbey was labyrinth like in its layout. I think my new favorite facts from Westminster Abbey is that Darwin is buried there and there is also someone who couldn’t afford a large plot so he was given a very small square plot and is buried standing up.

After Westminster Abbey we headed to a pub for lunch were I had a BLT, Corey had Indian chicken madras, and Harris had fish and chips. From there we went to the Cabinet War Rooms which lie just on the edge of St. James park. The Cabinet War Rooms are a series of rooms, apartments, offices, etc, where Winston Churchill made his decisions during WWII. They are either in their exact same state or a recreation of their state while the war was going on. It was really interesting to say the least and one of my favorite parts was the large room that now serves as an interactive Churchill museum. I could have spent a loooong time there but we were pretty tired and had more to see so we cut our trip short.

After the war rooms, we headed out to St. James park where we took some photos before heading back to Trafalgar Square where we went to the National Gallery. Harris took us to the National Gallery because he wanted to show us a couple of Van Gogh’s paintings. When Corey and I looked at a map, we saw that they had a lot of paintings that we had both studied in art history like da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, Botticelli Venus and Mars, The Arnolfini Wedding, and the Ambassadors to name a few.

After the National Gallery, Corey, Harris, and I headed back to the dorm for a quick nap before heading to a pub for dinner. Corey and Harris had the same chicken sandwich and I had Guinness battered fish and chips, mmmm. We got gelao for dessert before heading back to the dorm to watch March Madness (all number 1 seeds for the first time in the final four, WOW, the ugly stepsisters win this time) and got to sleep.

Here are some picture from the 28/29