The week when we had another art class

Remember how we had the evacuation situation on Friday due to a gas explosion nearby ? well, school had to ensure safety and cancelled all classes on Monday. I had heaps of art homework due on Wednesday and on that Monday our chef would be teaching a different class and we were to have the 'substitute teacher' for our macarons making day, so that didn't happen either and everything worked out for the best in the end.

School life resumed to normal on Tuesday, by the way it was the week of petits four secs. We started by making our filling for the macarons, the flavours were : pistache/fleur d'oranger, mangue/passion, chocolat au lait/gingembre, chocolat/menthe, cafe, citron, and chocolat. I chose mangue/passion and it turned out really nice, second favourite after citron and chocolat au lait/gingembre my third favourite. Then we made madeleines and financiers, as well as four poches which were to be baked the following day. We also made and baked the macarons shells which we freezed for the next day. We were told that all the macarons that we had bought and ate, would had been frozen guys, nothing would had been sold fresh. Somehow I wasn't surprised at all because by now, if I could afford it and have lots of space it would be really wonderful to have a blast freezer and a freezer the size of a cupboard and a walk in fridge please.

Wednesday was quite hectic.. ok so first thing in the morning at 8 am we had our second art class. I thought art class had been postponed to May and even when on Monday I had a free day I only did a little part of the homework, just the eggs in black and white and THAT took hours. It turned out that art class was ON! WOAH SHOCK! I had soooo much to do and I was so regretful of being such a slack throughout the long weekend. I slept so late for my standard, i.e. 12.30am but I know that some friends slept like only an hour! to do this art homework. The class itself I like it's just that the homework is dreadful. Our teacher is a MOF from 1979 haha and he is such an adorable character. By the end of the morning I was quite proud of my artwork.

Unsurprisingly art class ran soooo late, we were again given so much homework which in the end made me laugh because of the ridiculous amount of work he asked. I only had two pieces of bread and butter for lunch because we had to run to our lab.

We baked trays and trays and trays of madeleines, financiers, four poches, diamants and piped trays and trays of macarons. We also baked some langues de chats and tuiles aux amandes. We were like a factory more or less, and here is the result of our 2 days work. Ta daaaa....

On Thursday we had a demo by a world champion in patisserie and glaces and it was great! Really great! Yazid was very organised and clean, his work is impeccable and beautiful. He was really interactive and very nice guy, I sat on the very front row and maybe because I was very attentive listening to his every word, I got called up to help him decorate. I think all of us were very impressed by this guy and we all like him and so the atmosphere was very jovial and we took lots of photos, I have lots of photos from that day but I will just show you my favourite. This is like a tableau this photo haha.

On Friday it felt a bit flat because the demo was like the highlight of the week and that day we made 'simple' stuff that I still managed to not get correct ARGH. When I make mistakes I learn to not do it again but in my head I kick myself everytime I don't get things right and I feel really annoyed. I was especially kicking myself when I didn't put the pectine bit by bit when making the pâte de fruit because I was telling myself like a mantra to put the sugar and pectine bit by bit and suddenly HOP I tipped the whole bowl into the saucepan. The bloody thing turned lumpy and I had to strain and plus the colour, rather than transluscent and clear became milky and dull. It should've been so simple and something like that makes me worried that maybe I am just going to be mediocre :( You live and you learn right? Anyway so we made guimauve, pâte de fruits, caramel au beurre salé, and nougat montelimar. . and I loved them all because they were a far cry from packaged stuff especially the guimauve. The day finished with us wrapping the caramel au beurre salé and the nougat with cling wrap ONE BY ONE.

I was glad the week was over because... the following week we would have another week of viennoiserie! and we would make some kouign amann one of my very favourite!

As I'm typing this, we are on spring break which means that we are already halfway through the course. It's only Monday and I'm already missing school. I don't know how I would feel when the 18 weeks is up honestly. I'm such a lame sentimental I know.... *sigh*

Melinda x

Unforeseen event

So you can plan ahead and scheduled this and that but when it comes to life, you never know what's around the corner do you? April Fools day fell on the Friday our class supposed to have another evaluation, and for this particular evaluation I felt like I had underprepared. Some class mates practiced their pâte à choux at home and everything!! I only scribbled out my 'plan' in the morning...

Anyway, so we had class as usual in the morning then went to lunch. During a particularly good lunch of pintade aux pruneaux all of a sudden we heard a loud KABOOM and for a second everything trembled! Everyone ran towards the window and we saw parts of rooftop flying up the sky just around the corner from school. Immediately we heard chef instructed us to evacuate and we walked through a thin cloud of smoke. So what happened was, there had been a gas leak in a building situated one street behind our school.

I didn't think that we had to wait out for that long, maybe half an hour... and everything would go back to normal and evaluation would run as per normal... but to cut a long story short we waited around for about 5 hours on the street luckily it was a particularly sunny day so mid afternoon a group of us took a walk to Angelina in Jardin du Luxembourg and had some team bonding tasting session. So how about the evaluation chef? some of us asked.. NO evaluation, no time to fit it in the packed schedule, too bad.

By late afternoon the sun was nowhere to be seen and because we were just standing around it was cold! I was probably seen huddling on to people like a duckling to its mama. Finally around 5pm we were allowed to enter school which was in darkness especially the basement where our change rooms are, we were told quickly to change and leave. Honestly, not that I was shaken but it was a bizzare day and even though I was tired I went on a good long walk to clear the head... I felt a bit cheated like an olympian who got disqualified... no evaluation after all that (little) preparation? I want to know whether I make the grade you know... you are talking to a nerd here, not sure everybody shared my disappointment about escaping the evaluation.

Apart from the explosive Friday, the week was fairly relaxing and a short one because Monday was Easter Monday. Tuesday in the lab was more collective work than individual, we made batches different types of pâte d'amandes and praliné. I actually love learning making basic ingredients like this, because I am all for 'if you can make it better why buy?! though I am not going to make my own pâte d'amandes anytime soon, not a fan. Praliné maybe ... because it is oh so good! Find a step by step praliné tutorial by my chef here.

On Wednesday we learnt to temper chocolate properly. I'd never done it before and I honestly didn't know much about chocolate. But as always whenever I listen to a talk about something I find interesting I get into it A LOT. Just like when I went to a talk about growing food in the balcony. I became a bit obsessed! I got myself a worm farm and everything! Anyway, back to chocolate. What I didn't know before was that tempering is precise work and I love PRECISION !! I want an infrared thermometer!! Also to enrobe things in chocolate using a fork and try to make some pattern is so much fun... love it!! Though to enrobe soft rocher in a coat of chocolate with chopped hazelnut with our hands is NOT as much fun.

And then on Thursday we made something that had been in my list of things I wanted to attempt one day, tarte infiniment vanille de Pierre Hermé. Even though I am not super happy with the pimply glaçage and my piping, I have to admit that it still looks quite pretty and I didn't have any intention to give this one away to anybody.

On that day we also made tarte caramel aux fruits secs. Over the years I have become very daring when it comes to making caramel, I like it dark and almost almost burnt. Caramel au beurre salé comes after vanilla and citrus in my top three favourite flavours, but when I asked if I could add salt chef said NO! Don't add salt because it wouldn't go well with the fruits. I think he was right, I love the caramel as it was without salt. This tart came as a surprise because in the end it looked quite festive and it tasted beautiful, lucky I kept one (we made two).

Friday you know what happened. So that was the end of another week that was 2 weeks ago now.

Time seriously flies and I am already a bit sad that we are nearly at the half way mark. But everything has an expiry date right? C'est la vie and all that ... *sigh*. Anyway, trying to look at the brighter side of things, I think I would love doing intership as well.... because not only I am a nerdy student, I am also a workaholic.

Melinda x

Ps. Chef said he rescheduled the evaluation to the 12th of May... bless him ;)