Rustic Vegetable Soup AKA The Longest Day Ever

9/1/2010

Today was a ridiculously long first real day of school.  I'm talking alarm clock blaring at 06:45, home at 21:45, and in bed at 00:30....And I thought I worked long hours at Coyote!  My schedule for today was as follows:

08:30 - Cuisine Demo
12:30 - Cuisine Practical
15:30 -Pastry Demo
18:30 - Pastry Demo

The demonstrations (2.5 - 3 hrs) are like college lecture classes.  They take place in one of the 2 kitchen classrooms, and we sit (in full uniform minus the hat, hairnet, apron, and tea towel) and frantically try to scribble down notes (and take pictures!) pertaining to everything the chef is doing to prepare the dish.  We are then expected to replicate the dish in the practical classes (2.5 hrs) at our own individual work stations within the smaller kitchens.  So after knowing that, the schedule above might not look SO bad, right? WRONG!  

Rules for Le Cordon Bleu:

1. Never be late.
2. Do not wear the uniform outside of school.
3. Never be late. EVER.

This all translates to getting out of my classes in just enough time to NOT be able to change into street clothes and even see the light of day until the sun is beginning to set.  Also, because I am a newbie, I did not yet have the sense to pack a lunch (or a tiny crumb), so I couldn't help but ponder the irony behind the fact that I was a culinary student surrounded by food ALLLLL day, and yet I was starving beyond belief.  We do get to taste what the chef prepares at the end of the demo, but let's be real, that's just a tease.  Somewhere around 09:30, while restlessly sitting in my first demonstration, my stomach kindly let me know that the measly banana I scarfed on the way to class was just not cutting it...the food did not come until after my first practical (where we get to take home what we make -- YAH!), somewhere in the neighborhood of 15:00.

So, enough complaining about hunger, you get the point...I was hungry.  The chef made a Rustic Vegetable Soup -- very simple, right?  It consisted of bacon, water, veggies, and of course --- BUTTER!!  He also talked a lot about turning vegetables and various cutting techniques...to which, I though, "Oh, I've totally got this -- chopping is my thing!"  Well, fast forward a couple of hours, to me standing in the kitchen like a lost puppy, looking at my knife and potato like we have never met.  If nothing else, culinary school is a very humbling experience.  Not that I EVER thought that I was a fantastic cook, but I definitely thought I knew my way around the kitchen!

Chef chopping the bacon

The final product!

 A couple of things the chef told me as I was preparing my Rustic Vegetable Soup:

1. I peel my carrots like his grandmother
2. My potato slices should have been triangular and uniform sizes, and they most definitely were not (as he so kindly illustrated by picking up two very mismatched shapes)
3. I browned my bacon because I had too much butter (I did not know that was such a thing!), therefore my soup would be black instead of transparent

Even with all of these potential disasters in the works, the soup actually turned out decent in the end (and it was most definitely not black!).  I got a "Bon" from the chef, so I can only assume I did an okay job!  I know for a fact it was at least edible because I helped myself to it in between my 3rd and 4th class of the day. 

My soup reheated the next day!

The HUGE container we get to bring our food home in...enough to feed an army -- and don't judge me, but so far I have eaten everything all on my own...

 So that was my first experience with Cuisine...now on to Patisserie!

My last 2 classes were both pastry demonstrations, so we were able to see how various glazes, extracts, and fondant were all made, which was pretty interesting considering I brought about ZERO outside knowledge of anything pastry with me to this school.  In the second demo, we started our first actual lesson, and the chef made lots and lots of shortbread cookies!!  He created a million different variations, but we are only required to produce one kind (Diamond Cookies) in our practical.  I am actually really excited about my pastry classes because, as I mentioned before, it is an area that I am not very familiar with, so I will hopefully learn a lot of fun things to dazzle you all with at a future date (even though I am doubling my workload...but we won't discuss that...)! 

Here is what I love about all French cooking.  As we we were watching the chef create these fantastic cookies, everyone kept asking questions about cooking temperature and time, and all the chef would come back with was, "They are cooked between 140 - 160 degrees (Celsius..obvi), and they are done when they are done!"  Hm...okay....reproducing these cookies on my own tomorrow should be fun...

The finished cookies!!  We will be making the bottom left cookies

 So, that was an overview of my first real day at Le Cordon Bleu, and I can say with confidence that it was pretty overwhelming.  I definitely need to practice the techniques that I am learning so I don't always look like a bumbling moron, but who knows when I will find  a second for that!  Also, I am  trying hard not to put too much pressure on my future plans at this point because I really tend to get down on my myself when I am constructively criticized by the chef, and of course I take it all personally...even though they told us not to at the beginning, but you can't help it!  So, as I said, I am going to work VERY hard trying to avoid controlling my future so that I can enjoy every day as it comes...and figure it out as time goes by.  As I was making my trek home after this insanely long day --- with 17 different bags on my arms and literally a vat of Rustic Vegetable Soup --- I saw my first friend in Paris peeking over the buildings on my street, and she put it all into perspective.  As her lights were twinkling (bc I was lucky enough to catch her during her first light show of the evening), I was reminded about how amazing this opportunity really is.

- à tout à l’heure!