Happy Birthday to Me!

So today was my 32^nd birthday. I deliberately planned to be in Paris for my birthday this year because I figured that I would want to spend the day with all the friends I’ve made here. Sadly it did not at all turn out that way. Read on to find out more… I’m not saying that it didn’t turn out to be a pretty good birthday in actuality, but there were very few players involved.

The first activity of interest was lunch. I had made a reservation about a week beforehand for Septime, a restaurant that my foodie friend Caroline had not stopped talking about the whole time I’ve been here in Paris. We had talked about going there numerous times for a lunch and I figured my birthday was as good of a time as any to go. Fortunately Caroline was able to join me as well. Septime is located in the 11^th arrondissement on Rue de Charonne, a street that I have walked or run down frequently in my time here because it is near to my apartment. The restaurant does not stand out very much from the other businesses on the street, so you have to know what you’re looking for. I walked by it a number of times before I realized what it was.

The interior of the restaurant has lots of black painted wood paneling with naked light bulbs and candles for lighting. There are very large windows overlooking the street, so it was pretty bright and airy, even though it was a grey overcast day outside.

Septime has two options for lunch, a €26 entrée, plat, dessert menu or a €55 five course chef’s tasting menu. We went for the former option, which was just the right amount of food. Caroline and I chose the same options all the way through the meal. We started with a white asparagus wrapped in some form of mild smoked ham and sprinkled with bread crumbs, served with a smoked egg yolk and a parmesan cream sauce. The smoked egg yolk, which I have no idea how they produced, was still quite runny and with the parmesan cream sauce surrounding it, looked similar to a cracked egg on the plate. The flavors of these two components were simply divine. They didn’t adhere too well to the slippery asparagus, but they were a perfect dipping sauce for the pieces of rustic bread that they served with the meal.

Our second course was a pork belly with a beet and rhubarb purée it also came with thin-sliced and chunks of red and yellow beets and some purple “greens.” Some of the greens were cooked and others were served raw. The dish, as you can see, looked quite lovely on the plate with a lot of vibrant purple colors. I also liked the plate itself.

To finish we had fromage blanc (a frozen yogurt in this case) with fresh, beautiful strawberries, a parsley foam (I know, a bit out there, right?), and tiny miniature meringues. I would have expected a basil foam myself with this dish, since that is all the rage these days. The parsley foam on its own was a bit strong and overpowering, but when you mixed all of the individual components of the dish together, they did work. I especially liked the mini meringues, they added a nice little crunch. The best part of the dish, however, was the candle that they put in it for my birthday. Neither I nor Caroline had told them it was my birthday, the just must have overheard her telling me Happy Birthday and so went the extra step to put the candle in the dessert. It was a really sweet gesture.

After lunch I headed up to the 18^th arrondissement to hunt down the Arnaud Larher pastry shop. I had been there once before during this trip to Paris, with Ray, but it had been closed because of a holiday. Larher’s was my favorite pastry shop on my previous trip to the city, particularly for their dark chocolate and sea salt chocolate bars. It would have been nice to get a few of their other pastries, but I didn’t think I would have the time to eat them before I leave and frankly I’m a bit pastried out at the moment (which isn’t to say that if you put one in front of me I won’t eat it).

I arrived at the shop and it was thankfully open. They had changed the packaging on the chocolate bars, so it took me a moment to find them and it turned out that they only had two of the ones that I wanted left. So I scooped those up, handed over my €10 and headed out the door. The shop is up near Montmartre, so high up on a hill and I started to wander back downhill after I had left the shop, following the path that I remembered taking from 3 years ago when I was last there. I ended up walking right past Moulin Rouge, which I thought was rather ironic / fitting because I had taken a picture of Moulin Rouge the very first evening I spent in Paris as well (when I was going to the vodka bar to meet up with the American Expats in Paris Meetup group). It made me feel as if I had come full circle.

The plan for the evening was to try to have a picnic on Pont des Arts. I had not managed to have any picnics on the Seine yet, so I thought it would be a nice sendoff. I checked with people at school on graduation day to make sure that it would be worth putting something together, and it sounded like there were enough people game for it. I had made a Facebook event to invite everyone from school, but I was still the only one who had responded and so I didn’t know whether I might be alone on the bridge on my birthday. The sky had, as I mentioned, been grey and overcast all day, and it was hard to tell if it would just remain like that or whether it would at some point turn into annoying rain. I was keeping my fingers crossed that the rain would hold out because I couldn’t really invite people over to my apartment (not only is it in the 20^th arrondissment, which is so out of the way that it is a pain for almost anyone to get to, but I also was planning to get up at 6am the following morning because my shuttle to the airport was coming at 7am).

On my way home from the trip up to Arnaud Larher, I stopped at a boulangerie and bought a few baguettes, and at the Carrefour grocery store for some cheese, chicken liver spread, carrots,  peaches, and a bottle of wine. I then went back home to get organized.

Unluckily, just as I was heading to the metro station from my apartment it started to rain, and not just a light sprinkle (like it had been at other points of the day), but a real rain where you did not want to be walking (and especially not picnicking) through it. I had heard from my friend Lisa from school that she was planning to come and was ready to meet me at the bridge when I arrived, so I called her for some advice of what to do. She suggested that I could come meet up with her and a friend who were at a wine bar nearby. I certainly did not want to just turn around and go home and eat dinner by myself in the apartment on my birthday, so I thought, why not? I had included my phone number in the invite on Facebook, so I figured if anyone was planning to come, due to the poor weather, they would just be able to call or text me to find out what was up.

I found Lisa and her friend (ex-boss) Christian at a wine bar on rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau called ÔChateau. I ended up spending the rest of the evening with them and having a great time! We ordered several bottles of champagne (I mean what else are you supposed to do in Paris when celebrating your birthday?) and a meat and cheese platter that we snacked on as we chatted.

Christian was originally from Denmark and had been living in Paris for the past 13 years, though travelling for almost half of the year for his job. And Lisa is originally from Japan, so we spent a lot of time talking about cultural differences, a common topic of conversation I have found when you get together people from a variety of places across the globe. We also came to find out that the chef at ÔChateau was a graduate of the same school that Lisa and I just graduated from, she was did the Grand Diplome degree. She is originally from New York and only graduated a few years ago from school, but is already the head chef at the wine bar, pretty impressive. She came over and chatted with us and was even wearing her school uniform, which was great! She mentioned something about having heard my name before in conjunction with the school, which made me wonder what she might have heard about me.

We also got dessert, Lisa and I ordered a fondant au chocolate (flourless chocolate cake) with vanilla ice cream and Christian had fresh fruit (blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and red currants) in a chocolate shell with a berry sauce. When they brought the desserts out, they also had a “candle” in one for me. It was more like a firework spewing flames out of the top. And the whole restaurant, not just the staff, joined in in a rendition of Joyeux Anniversaire (Happy Birthday) just for me. Total highlight!

At the end of the meal the waitress also brought over free aprons for Lisa and I as a birthday gift. How wonderful!

On the whole, although no one else seemed to have planned to show up for the picnic, which reinforced the idea that I didn’t make any friends at school this term, it was not a deterrent to a really lovely evening. I have always been someone who prefers a few close friendships rather than many surficial ones. As I left the restaurant, I thanked Christian for saving my birthday, and I really meant it. It was a night to remember, and what more can you ask of your last night in Paris?

Graduation Day!!

Today was graduation day at school. I made it to the end! There were definitely a lot of tough moments and some fun and some not-so-fun times, but it went by very quickly in retrospect. And now that I think about it, since I am technically graduated at this point, I can tell you what school I was attending this whole time. In case you hadn’t already guessed it, I have been at Le Cordon Bleu, for many, one of the best culinary schools in the world.

In typically frustrating / administratively annoying fashion, the school did not remind us when graduation was, confirm that we were graduating, or tell us where it was taking place. (I have a whole long list of administrative improvements that I would suggest to the school at this point, this being the latest.) When we took the final exam (on Friday), they informed us that they would call or email us within a few days (by Monday at the latest) to let us know if we did NOT pass. Since I hadn’t heard anything from the school by the following Thursday morning (the day of graduation), I had to assume that I was going to graduate.

The only information we had about the ceremony was on the original calendar that the school handed out at the beginning of the term wherein it said that graduation was on June 7^th at 9am (it did not list the location). We weren’t told whether or not to wear our uniforms and everything at school up to this point except for the market trip (which was really outside of school) had been uniform mandatory. One of the girls at school posted, in a closed Facebook group that she had created earlier in the term, some photos from another graduation ceremony that showed all of the students dressed nicely in formal clothes and clearly at a location outside of the school. But, based on the information we had, I assumed that it would most likely take place at school and that we should dress up, but not in uniform. The real kicker in the lack of communication about the graduation ceremony was that in the same time span as they should have sent out a reminder about this, they sent out two emails about cleaning out our lockers at school. It’s clear that their focus was not on the ceremony at all, they were more concerned about setting up for the next term, which starts in about 10 days.

In any case, Michael (my roommate) volunteered to come along to the ceremony to help take pictures for me. Since it was so early in the morning (I found out later that this was because the intermediate level graduation was the same day after ours), I had to get up at 6am to get ready and we had to leave the apartment by 7:30am. We were early getting to school, but that was a good thing just in case we somehow needed to be in another location. It became clear once we arrived that we were in the right place, though there were only a few other students milling about.

Onto the ceremony itself… The administrative director welcomed us all (students, friends, family members) and then the chefs were introduced. There were a good number of chefs in attendance. I had assumed that it would only be the chefs responsible for Basic Cuisine and Pastry, but there were chefs in charge of the intermediate and superior levels as well. After introductions, the two chefs who had graded all of our final exams stood up and said a few words about the work that we had done. It turned out that everyone who was in the two courses (basic cuisine and basic pastry) passed, which is not always the case. The chef in charge of the basic cuisine course said that he had seen some very creative trussing techniques that he had never before seen in his life (pretty impressive, though obviously not desirable in an exam context), some really good Hollandaise sauces, and on the whole some very good work. The other chef standing up for the basic cuisine course, my favorite, heretofore referred to as the Australian chef, said that the majority of the students he had seen did well with the omelettes (though that wasn’t what I had seen in my own exam room). They also told us that no one had be penalized for being late in the final plating of their dishes. Technically there is supposed to be a 2% reduction in grade for every minute the dish was late being finished, but the chefs did not enforce this.

After this little introduction, they arrived at the part of handing out the actual certificates. The names of all the students in the Basic Cuisine Course (followed after by the Basic Pastry Course) were read out in alphabetical order. Once you heard your name you went up to the front where you had your photograph taken with the two chefs representing the course. If you were doing the Grand Diplome (or cuisine and pastry), then the chef in charge of the basic pastry course would also stand up for the photograph and you would receive both of their certificates at the same time. After you had the photograph taken, then you signed a registrar book and received your final grades (transcript). I looked at my grades when I sat down and thought that they weren’t stellar, but wasn’t going to worry about it since all I really wanted was to get the certificate.

Following the distribution of all of the certificates in the basic course, the academic director read out the names of the people with the top five grades in each of the two courses, starting with cuisine and starting at fifth and working his way down to first place. I thought that perhaps I might be in forth or fifth place because I had gotten 100% on the midterm (though it was only worth 10% of the grade) and generally was pretty on top of things for the course. The director got down to the third place name (the 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th place students were all absent from the ceremony), and then the second, and still hadn’t called my name, so there was really no hope now. I also had in my head the names of several students I thought would be likely to get first in the class. However, you will never guess (or perhaps you already have guessed), but when the director got to the first place, whose name did he read off? Mine!!! I was so incredibly surprised. I really could not believe it! The top five students (there were only two of us there from the cuisine course) then had another set of photos taken with all the chefs at the ceremony (we can purchase these photos online if we wish). It was such a wonderful feeling and felt like a very big honor.

When the ceremony concluded there was a small champagne (of course this is France after all) reception upstairs. They had lots of tiny little trays of food, all quite beautiful. The desserts were more interesting to me than the savory options though (comme toujours). Once we had milled around the reception and taken a few pictures, many of the students made their way to the student bar where we hung out for a little while longer. The student bar is just around the corner from school and is where many of the students hang out after classes or meet on a weekend night. I, being on my own agenda, had never been there before.

Eventually we all began to disperse… Many of the people are coming back to the intermediate courses in a few days, so they have more to look forward to. But for me is marks (at least for the foreseeable future) the end of my culinary school experience. I will marshal together some more thoughts on the experience overall at a later date. But I can safely say that today was the best day of the 10 weeks that I’ve been in this course, by far!

 

I also had a lovely engagement this evening with my friends Cécile and Christopher (and of course baby Paul as well) for dinner. They had invited over the same two friends of theirs that I had met very early on in my stay in Paris, Aurélie and Ludo, who are very nice themselves. I had wanted to make them dinner to show off all of my newfound culinary skills. Ultimately I ended up making a quiche lorraine (using the school recipe of course) and not anything more elaborate. I had suggested making one for them on a previously planned get together that we ended up rescheduling. I originally wanted to do something a bit more elaborate, but what with arriving back from England last night late and having graduation today, it didn’t seem like the best time to pull together a complicated menu.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Cécile and Christopher don’t do a whole lot of cooking in their kitchen, so while making the quiche I had to improvise a bit. For one thing, they did not have a rolling pin and I had to use a wooden vase instead. It actually worked quite well. The knife situation was not what I’m used to these days either, though they did have a nice ceramic bladed knife that was pretty sharp (especially in comparison to the other options). And in general working in a kitchen where you don’t know the location of the various ingredients and equipment you need can be a bit of a challenge. Cécile had bought a cream that was more yogurt-like in thickness and not the liquid (pourable) variety that I am used to, so I worried that it would effect the texture of the filling (remember I’ve only ever made quiche lorraine once at this point). The tart pan was also a bit larger than the recipe called for, so that meant that the filling was not very thick when you poured it out over the bottom of the tart.

Suffice it to say, that when it was all said and done with, the quiche came out quite wonderfully. I was rather pleased. We ate it with a simple salad and a glass (or two) of red wine. With the leftover dough from the tart I tried making my mom’s pie crust specialty, where she sprinkles the leftovers with cinnamon and sugar, rolls them up, and bakes them in the oven with the tart / pie. They’re a special treat that we only get when she is in a pie-baking mood. I did my best to replicate them this evening, but Cécile and Christopher did not have any cinnamon, so it was only a poor representation of the real thing.

We also, had a nice cheese course with a baguette that Christopher had just returned from purchasing as I was arriving at the apartment for the evening. It is far superior to the baguette from the bakery down the street from my apartment. This one had more holes in the dough (healthier yeast / starter) and had a much chewier (my preference) crumb (the interior of the bread). In Paris you are rather at the mercy of the talents of your nearest boulangerie and I am definitely feeling that there is something missing in the techniques of the one that is most convenient for me. But it is good to get the comparison. In any case, yet another lovely evening with friends and food.

Chris doing his best impression of a stereotypical Frenchman!

Final Exam Day Finally!

Today was the day of our final exam. At this point it feels like it has been a long time coming. At least a month ago we were given a list of 10 recipes that we were told might appear on the final. There are essentially three components of the final exam: (1) bon d’economat (list of ingredients); (2) a technical dish; and (3) the practical.

The ten potential dishes that we had this year were the following (I was later to discover, upon finding a previous student’s blog that the list doesn’t change much from year to year).

1) Poularde Pochée Sauce Suprême, Riz au Gras (Poached Chicken with Suprême Sauce, Rice “au Gras”)

2) Poulet Rôti et Son Jus – Jardinière de Légumes (Roasted Chicken and Jus – Garden-style Vegetables)

3) Tronçons de Colin Pochés, Sauce Hollandaise (Poached Hake Steaks with Hollandaise Sauce)

4) Filets de Barbue Dugléré (Brill Fillets in White Wine Sauce)

5) Blanquette de Veau à l’Ancienne, Riz Pilaf (Traditional Veal Stew, Rice Pilaf)

6) Côtes de Veau Grand-Mère (Sautéed Veal Chops, “Grand-Mère”-style Garnish)

7) Canette Rôtie aux Navets (Roast Duckling with Turnips)

8) Sauté de Bœuf Strogonoff, Riz aux Légumes (Beef Strogonoff, Rice with Vegetables)

9) Terrine de Poisson Chaude, Sauce Beurre Blanc (Hot Fish Terrine with Beurre Blanc)

10) Filets de Daurade Poêlés au Fenouil (Sea Bream Fillets with Fennel)

For the technical dish we had to make a French rolled omelette. This means that the eggs don’t have any color on them (not browned) and you shape them into an oblong shape that resembles a football. A few days before the exam my friend Becca had an omelette-making-get-together at her apartment. The reason that I hadn’t thought it was really worth practicing much at home was that I did not have the correct size of frying pan. I contemplated for a very long time buying one at one of the kitchenware shops in Paris, but I knew I would likely not be able to fit it into my luggage at the end and I didn’t want to waste the money. The pans that we used during the exam at school are small and cast iron. There was one practical where we got to practice making an omelette with the school equipment, that’s how I know. But there was no way to practice any other time with the pan from school. Becca had gone out and bought a relatively inexpensive lightweight frying pan that was about the right size for the omelettes. The problem ended up being that her stove was electic and the pan wasn’t heavy enough to register on the automatic stove, so there was no way to use it. I did try a few omelettes – one in a larger frying pan and one in a saucepan with a base about the size of the frying pan we wanted to be using – and they both turned out okay. But there was no way to practice the conditions of the exam, so it didn’t mean too much. While at Becca’s she did show us a Jacques Pepin video (the second half) on youtube that demonstrated the French rolled omelette. This was extremely helpful and for the exam I ended up just following along in my head with what he had said and it all turned out quite well. Several of the other people in my group had to do their omelettes over again because they were too colored and the chef allowed us two tries to get them right.

Back to the actual day of the exam… Because we were group E, we were the last group to cook in the kitchens on exam day. Groups A & B went in the 8:30am class time slot, Groups C & D went in the 12:30pm time slot, and we went in the 3:30pm time slot (though our written portion of the exam started at 3pm). I arrived at school around 2:30pm to find most of my groupmates already in the Winter Garden reviewing their notes.

Everyone looked very nervous and a few people commented that this was the most nervous they had ever been. I can empathize. Despite my knowing that I am just doing this course essentially for my own education (and in the hopes of weigh laying it into a career more focused on food), I am a perfectionist at heart. I know that all I have to do is pass and that very few people don’t pass and that I probably couldn’t even fail if I tried to, but I still want to do well for myself.  I have been studying like a mad woman and doing the best I could to cram all of the ingredients, quantities, and techniques into my head for these recipes. I’m not used to memorizing recipes, so it is definitely a new horizon for me. Also, a lot of them have the same or very similar ingredients in varying quantities. And sometimes there are additional herbs that you can add that are written on the ingredients lists for some of the recipes and not others. For example, we have rice three times in the various recipes and the amount of butter (if it is listed at all) varies from recipe to recipe, the way that the liquid is listed is different, and whether or not you add thyme and bayleaf is not always mentioned. What I’m trying to say is that it is very hard to keep it all straight (unless of course you have a photographic memory).

The way things work on the day of the exam is that, as you are entering one of the demonstration rooms, you pick out a plastic colored disk from an envelope. This will designate what dish you will be writing the ingredients list (bon d’economat) down for and also what you will be cooking in the kitchen. Each group is given two different colors, so that there will be two different recipes being made in the kitchen and you will cook with someone who is making the other recipe on either side of you. Our group ended up with (1) the Hake Steaks and Hollandaise Sauce and (2) the Blanquette de Veau. I had chosen the Hake.

In trying to write down the ingredients list I knew that I wasn’t 100% correct because I couldn’t recall whether it was a half or a whole carrot or whether there was a shallot in the court bouillon that is used to cook the fish. But everything else I was very clear on. Fortunately for me, I had decided to make eggs benedict for brunch for my friends the previous weekend, so I had those ingredients and quantities down pat. We were given 15 minutes to recall and write down the ingredients and quantities for the recipe we had chosen and then we handed our papers in and went up to the kitchens to cook (where we were given the correct list of ingredients – though there were no techniques or steps written on the recipe).

Once we got up to the kitchen we were placed by the chef in the positions we would be cooking in. That meant that most people were in a different place than they usually are in the kitchen, which can certainly throw you off a bit. I was fortunate enough to be able to cook in my usual spot, although not surrounded by the people that I usually cook next to.

When we had cooked the hake steaks in the practical earlier in the term the steaks had already been cut for us, but we discovered that we had to cut our own in the kitchen today. I think they did it mainly for dramatic effect since the hake is a fish with a pretty menacing looking face.

I tried my best to cut steaks of relatively equal weight, but they varied from 200-250g, which meant that the cooking times were going to differ. The first step was to make the court bouillon (the broth used to cook the fish on the stove). Then, after the hake steaks were cut, I set to turning the zucchini and and potatoes (which I knew would take up a good deal of time – yup, still not an expert at the whole turning thing). Once those were done I put them on the stove in boiling salted water (the potatoes start in cold water) to cook. The next thing to make was the hollandaise sauce. Earlier in the day I had done an hour and a half yoga class and my arms were already pretty well worked out, so the whisking was a real struggle at times. In fact, we had an assistant in the room with us (to help find ingredients and just generally keep everything running as smoothly as possible) and he noticed how much I was struggling and came over and helped me to whisk when the chefs weren’t looking for a little bit (shh! don’t tell anyone). It all came together in the end. Instead of plating a single portion on a plate, as we had done in the majority of our practicals, we were each given a large silver platter to plate up 4 servings of the dish on. This was a complete surprise and so messed with any conception of plating the dish that I had had in mind. Once we were done (and I was finishing at the wire), we put aluminum foil over top of the platter and put it on the shelves above our stoves to keep warm. Then we were kicked out of the kitchen while the chefs tasted our food (so it didn’t get cold while they waited for us to clean up). What a relief to have that over with!

(Sorry no pictures from the exam…)

Michael (my roommate) was waiting for me in the Winter Garden (the student lounge area) once the exam was over. From school we headed to Frenchie Bar à Vin. This was one of the two remaining places on my “must eat at before I leave Paris” list (the other being Septime). We got there around 7:30pm and there weren’t any available seats at first, though we did manage to squeeze in at one of the tables eventually. Michael and I had a glass of rosé (oh so very French of us) and then a glass of chardonnay. Michael ordered their buratta with truffle oil, fava beans, and artichoke hearts and I ordered the Napoleon cheese, summer truffle honey, and espelette pepper (a favorite spice used by the basic cuisine chef at school – the school keeps it on hand just for him). Both of the dishes were not only beautiful, but also extremely tasty. I also had for dessert the chocolate pot, caramel passion fruit, which was AMAZING! The caramel mixed with the chocolate was such a beautiful combination in your mouth.

The great thing about the wine bar is that it is directly across the street form the restaurant, so you can watch all the people ordering and eating over there (where you have to book a month in advance at least) and can even see into the tiny kitchen that they have at the back. We ended up chatting with the two women sitting next to us, which is what made the meal all that much more memorable. They both live in Paris and we got to talking about proper greetings in different countries and when to “vous” or “tu” someone and the social dynamic around that in France. How lovely to be able to chat with some real Parisians and enjoy some delicious food!

Lesson 30 with an Appearance by “Chef Teagan”!

Today was our final demonstration at school, lesson 30. Once the course got rolling the time really flew by. We did have several weeks of intense study with a lot of classes each day and that’s when we covered the most ground. This and last week, as I’ve mentioned are pretty vacuous with very few classes and lots of time to study or roam around the city.

For our last demonstration, led by our basic cuisine chef, we made Carre d’Agneau Rôti Persillé, Légumes Printaniers et Tomates Farcies (Rack of Lamb with Parsley Crust, Spring Vegetables and Stuffed Tomatoes) with Gratin Dauphinois (Potato Gratin or Scalloped Potatoes) and for dessert an Omelette Norvégienne (Baked Alaska).

For the rack of lamb you make the parsley crust by mixing together fresh breadcrumbs, parsley, garlic, thyme or herbes de Provence, and butter or olive oil as the binder. You want it to stick together. Once you have it to the right consistency you roll it out between two sheets of parchment paper and put it in the fridge to solidify. Eventually you pull it back out and cut it into long strips the length of your rack(s) of lamb which you lay on top of the lamb (that has already been seared on the stove and precooked (though you do put it back in the oven for a little bit once you place the crust on top).

There are a number of garnishes for this dish. The first one that we started on involved boiling chicken stock with red currants to turn the stock pink (the currants apparently do not add a whole lot of flavor, but they do change the color of the stock). Once you have pink chicken stock, you strain out the currants and put in new turnips that have been peeled. You cook the turnips down in the chicken stock until the stock become a glaze (this takes a while). Another garnish used baby/new carrots (the small ones with the stems still on) that were cut in half lengthwise and then cooked on the stove with a little water, honey, cumin, salt, and butter. A third garnish were tomatoes that had been topped and scooped of their seeds, which were then filled with a mushroom duxelle (a mixture of finely chopped mushrooms, onions, shallots, and herbs, sautéed in butter) and then baked in the oven (these were the tomates farcies). The final garnish consisted of lettuce hearts that you blanch, caramelize in butter, and then boil in veal stock until it is reduced to a glaze. You’ll notice that you have a lot going on on the stove for this recipe.

To go along with the lamb, we also made gratin dauphinois. My mom makes a version of this every year around the holidays, but of course the French version is a bit more finicky. They require their potatoes to be first peeled and cut into perfect cylinders and then thinly, evenly sliced from there. That way each of the circles you have in the dish are exactly the same size (a bonus because they will all cook at the same rate, but really not an imperative step). Once the potatoes are sliced, you add cream, milk, thyme, bayleaf, chopped garlic, salt and pepper and put the pot on a low simmer on the stove until the potatoes are cooked. Them remove the pot to the side and allow the flavors to infuse. Eventually you will put the potatoes, etc. into molds or a baking casserole that you put in the oven. It is optional to sprinkle some cheese on top. The molds of the gratin were used to decorate the platter with the lamb on it in class.

Now, the best part, the dessert. I don’t think I’ve ever had a baked Alaska before and it is strange that it is called an omelette Norvégienne in French as well. The chef said he didn’t really know the reasoning behind either of those names. It’s a fairly complicated recipe, especially if you make your own sorbets, but it is quite the showpiece. I believe that they were popular in the United States in the 1950s in restaurants that did a lot of tableside preparations. As you will likely recall, baked Alaskas are set on fire (flambéed) right before serving.

For the one that we made today the chef prepared a strawberry and an orange sorbet from scratch. There is also a genoise cake that is made (a thin sponge cake that is used to make the layers in the baked Alaska). This one is baked until it is stiffer (less moist) than other genoises that I’ve had before (for example the one you make if you are doing a bûche de noël). You also make an Italian meringue, which is the chewier variety of meringue that we’ve been taught.

To assemble the omelette Norvégienne you cut a long slice of the genoise and then soak this in a sugar syrup. On top of the genoise you put a layer of one of the sorbets (we started with the orange one), then another layer of genoise, then the strawberry sorbet. Top this with another layer of the genoise and then surround the entire thing with other layers of genoise so cover all of the sides. From here, you spread a layer of Italian meringue around the entire thing and then use some other meringue in a pastry bag with a tip to decorate the exterior. The next step is to use a blow torch to lightly brown the exterior of the meringue. Finally you pour some liquor of your choice into a bowl, set it on fire, and then pour it around the base of the baked Alaska. Voila!

The best part of this demonstration for me was that I got to go up to the front and help out the chef with the baked Alaska. I got to put the sugar syrup on the genoise and also to spread the strawberry sorbet layer on. My friend Lisa, from my group, took a couple of picture of me while I was up there and later sent them to me on Facebook calling me “chef Teagan.”

And, we also got a small glass of champagne at tasting time. Apparently this is the tradition with the last demonstration in all of the courses.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, today, yes during the very last demonstration, we had our first school fire drill. Just one more demonstration of how much I do not understand how this school makes decisions. I think that they recently had an actual fire in the building during one of the practicals and had to evacuate the building, so they figured they should try to practice.

Eggs Benedict and Skeletons

I had invited a few people over this morning/early afternoon for brunch at our apartment. The menu consisted of eggs benedict (which I had never had before, let alone made) with a green and a fruit salad and chocolate mousse for dessert. I made the chocolate mousse a day ahead because I figured that my arm would need a rest between all the whisking required for making that and the hollandaise sauce for the eggs.

I followed a recipe from school for the chocolate mousse but also used chocolate bars with tiny pieces of orange flavoring and cocoa nibs in them, so the mousse had little pieces in it and was not just the smooth texture we’re used to. And, of course, it also had an orange taste to it, which was really a lovely addition. I thought it came out wonderfully and I think everyone else was in agreement at the end of the meal. I have to say that when I was making it I went to whip the cream and after I had whipped it for a little while (by hand) I began to wonder if I had bought the wrong kind of cream. I pulled the container out of the fridge and read through the label (which was in French) and clearly saw that it said the cream was good for making chantilly (whipped cream with sugar), so I should not have any trouble whipping it up. I am simply not used to having to do it by hand. It takes a lot more effort than you would think. In the end I managed to get it to the right consistency, but I was pretty sure my arm was going to fall off or burst into flames.

The morning of the actual brunch, I pulled together all the ingredients for the hollandaise sauce (I had made the clarified butter the day before just to have it out of the way) and then started the whisking. The sauce doesn’t take all that long to make, but you have to be vigilant on checking the temperature to make sure that the egg yolks don’t get too hot, because then you will start to cook them and the sauce will be ruined. The process involves whisking 3 egg yolks with 45ml of water over a water bath (bain marie) on the stove until they get to the “ribbon” stage. Then you take the bowl off the heat and slowly whisk in the clarified butter (180g). At the end you put in a squeeze of lemon, salt, and a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper.

For eggs benedict you need something resembling bacon, which was a little difficult to find in the grocery store since there are so many varieties of smoked ham products, eggs for poaching, and english muffins (which were actually very easy to find). To assemble the dish, you toast an english muffin, use one half of it as the bottom, put a few pieces of bacon on top of that, then the poached egg, and finally the hollandaise sauce.

Katy, Elspeth, and Jean Christophe came over for brunch, so with Michael and I we were five. The food was all really great! Katy brought a fruit salad with peaches, strawberries and mint, and Elspeth brought champagne and orange juice so that we could make mimosas. Brunch is just making its way into the French food scene, but they still do not have boozey brunches like we do in the United States, so the mimosas were a rare treat (not to mention the fact that I rarely have time for brunch at home).

After brunch I walked with Katy back in the direction of her apartment in the 5^th arrondissement and discovered the Jardin des Plantes, a lovely flower garden that I had not yet been to. The park also has a number of museums, some large greenhouses, and a menagerie (i.e. small zoo) that you can pay admission to see. Katy left me at the Jardin to explore while she went on with the rest of her to dos for the day. I had seen that there was a museum of comparative anatomy and paleontology and that looked right up my alley, so after I wandered around the gardens for a bit, I decided to check it out. The museum was AMAZING! I walked in and it was a huge long hall filled with articulated skeletons from animals of all sizes, almost like a skeleton army at the ready. In the side cases they had many of the smaller skeletons and also various parts of the animals (lungs, heart, intestines, etc.) preserved in formaldehyde, presumably done in the late 19^th century when this type of preservation was popular. My favorite was a money’s ear with the hair still surrounding it in a jar. The second floor was filled with casts of dinosaur bones and the top floor had fossils from even earlier life forms (plants, shells, etc.). I really enjoyed it!

Exam Studying – Note à Note Cuisine

Over the past week and a bit I have been doing a lot of revising for the final exam at school, so I have not had the time to keep up with my blog as I would like. Fortunately for you though, I haven’t been up to all that much exciting, so you really haven’t missed much. I do, however, want to make note of at least the more enjoyable activities that I was able to squeeze in amongst the studying.

 

The day after the dinner at L’Atelier Maître Albert we had another “guest chef” demo at school in the afternoon that I went to. This time it was not a chef from outside the school, but instead was an introduction to a course that the school offers called Hautes Études du Goût. They have created an Institute of Advanced Studies in Taste, Gastronomy and the Arts of the Table in conjunction with the University of Reims. There is a two week course that they offer in October or November (I can’t remember which). It was a little unclear who their target audience is, but the price tag is pretty significant (€5,500 including fees, accommodation, meals, and local transportation).

As part of the school’s attempt to show us something about this program they had a Social Anthropologist come in to talk about anthropology and food, obviously a subject I know quite a bit about. He gave an hour talk on the basic anthropological theories relating to food and did quite an admirable job I would say. I was under a little pressure from some of the students at school who know that I also have a Ph.D. in food anthropology to lay a few difficult questions on the speaker. But given the topic of the talk and the straightforward way in which he presented the information, there was little that I could question him on. I did ask how he thought the theories he was talking about were relevant to actual chefs in the kitchen because most of the things that he mentioned are not consciously considered by people who actually work in food (the connections between food and identity for example) to any great extent. This is part of what I have been thinking a lot about as we go through the course at school, how relatable is my anthropological knowledge of food to the actual food professionals (chefs, cooks, etc.). Its something that definitely needs more unpacking…

 

The second half of the demo was two chefs from school (Napoleon chef and the chef with the squeaky voice – who are both in charge of the Superior Cuisine program) talking to us about and demonstrating a style of food called Note by Note. This is supposedly a style that follows after molecular gastronomy. As far as I was concerned, they didn’t do a very good job of explaining what the philosophy behind this style of cuisine actually is, so it certainly requires further investigation. Since I’ve never heard of it before though, it did feel like we were getting access to the cutting edge of food, which is pretty exciting. The chefs demonstrated two dishes an œuf meurette (a traditional french egg dish with poached eggs and red wine) and tomate mozarella (as in a caprese salad). The chefs separated out every ingredient in the traditional forms of the recipes and tried to recreate the flavor and some of the textures in slightly different forms. For the œuf meurette they used red wine powder to make a paste for the base of the plate. For the tomatoes, for example, they make little jellied balls of tomato purée and also made a basil sauce. For the mozarella they made these frozen balls that had a completely different texture than mozarella, but a very similar flavor. This type of cuisine is not widely available in restaurants today and is similar to molecular gastronomy in that you would likely eat a good number of courses and still be hungry at the end. I also do not know if this is something that is only really being worked on by these two chefs from school or whether it is popular amongst other chefs in the industry as well.

Student Dinner at L’Atelier Maître Albert

This evening was our student dinner for school at a restaurant called L’Atelier Maître Albert in the 5^th arrondissement. We were given the details of the dinner, including the menu, about a month ago at school and told that we could invite someone else if we wanted to for an additional €75 (our meal was included in our tuition costs). I had thought about inviting Michael, though I know he is trying to save some money, but I was glad that I hadn’t in the end. This meal was not worth €75 at all.

I arrived at the restaurant a bit early, because I wanted to make sure that I could find it and the invitation stated that the serving would begin at 8pm sharp (which was not the case). We were told to arrive between 7:30 and 8pm. I had spent most of the day studying and the weather was perfect for a lovely stroll, so I thought I would leave home a bit earlier than necessary to have some time to walk around the neighborhood in which the restaurant was located. I found L’Atelier Maître Albert down a little side street at around 7:15. There were a few other people arriving at just about that time as well and one of them was a girl from my class. She wanted to sit down and have a drink at a brasserie around the corner to kill the time between our arrival and the dinner, but I declined an offer of sitting with her in preference for the walk. I would have invited her to join me, but she said she had taken a cab to the restaurant because she couldn’t really walk in her shoes. I am all for looking great, but not at the expense of comfort and (especially) mobility. I felt bad for abandoning her there, but I so wanted to go for a walk down by the river.

I arrived back at the restaurant after my stroll and found many more people had arrived, of course a large contingent were outside smoking. I walked into the restaurant and found a seat at a table in the middle of the room. I wanted to try to sit with some of the people in my group, but everyone seemed pretty spread out. I was at a table with a number of the Spanish speaking students and a few others, all from basic cuisine.

One of the things about the restaurant is that it is owned by Guy Savoy, a world-renowned French chef who has a 3 star Michelin restaurant in the city. Although L’Atelier is not of the same caliber, the expectations were that the food would still be of a very high quality. When we sat down at a table the staff brought over a glass of champagne, always a nice way to begin a meal.

We started off the meal with a Tartare de dorade aux épices douces (Sea bream tartar with spices). The daurade was mixed with shallots, sesame seeds, olive oil and lemon juice and was served with an orange caramel sauce glazing the plate.

The second course was a Soupe d’artichauts, Toast pruneaux noisettes (Artichoke soup with a toast of prunes and hazelnuts). The chef told us that this is essentially the same soup that they serve at the Guy Savoy 3 star restaurant, but that version has truffles in it. Instead of the toast with prunes and hazelnuts, it usually has a truffle and mushroom pastry. To me the dish tasted under-seasoned, we all added salt to it at our table. But I imagine with the strong taste of the truffles that it would be a much more powerful soup and have a much better balance of flavors. It was just rather dull in the form we had it.

The main course was Souris d’agneau à la broche, Parmentier aux herbes (Spit-roasted leg of lamb with herbed parmentier potatoes). The leg of lamb was nothing special to me. I only had a few bites of it because really, who wants to eat a huge hunk of meat? I was personally more interested in the bone than the meat (but then that’s me). The lamb was cooked with shallots, onions and herbs in the oven for 2 hours at ~100ºC and then spit roasted and served with a gastrique sauce. The herbed parmentier potatoes were the highlight of the meal. They were a whipped potato made with olive oil rather than butter. They were incredibly luscious and had a lot of flavor from the chives and parsley.

The vegetarian option, since there were at least a few people who had opted out of the lamb, was some other type of white fish. Number one, not all vegetarians eat fish and it is rather rude to assume that they do (Americans would have a fit if you did this at a banquet). And number two, that meant that they had fish, soup, and then fish again, not the makings of a very exciting menu if you ask me. It could have used a bit more forethought.

Dessert was a big failure! It was a Mangue rafraîchie et son sorbet (Fresh mango with mango sorbet). The mango had been cut well in advance and so many of the pieces had started to turn brown (someone should have told them to squeeze some lemon juice over the top of it), and the sorbet had been prescooped and plated and refrozen so that the scoops had a thin crust of ice all around them. Most people did not even bother to eat more than a bite or two. The chef told us that serving the same food in several different manners / textures is one of the techniques that Guy Savoy really likes in his food. I would say that it was a failure in this particular instance, but I’m certain it has held him in good stead in other cases.

On the upside, it was a pleasant experience to be able to go out to eat with the majority of my classmates (both basic cuisine and pastry were there) and some of the chefs and administrators from school. The ambiance of the restaurant was quite nice. But the food was a big disappointment. I would have thought that the restaurant would have tried a bit harder than they did knowing that we were a bunch of culinary students and that they would be even more severely judged than normal.

This is a photo of me with several of my classmates (wonderful ladies in Group E).

French Cuisine Makes Great Salads!

This morning Elijah had to leave pretty early to get to the airport, which also made me realize how early I will have to get up on the day that I’m flying home. Yes, it’s getting to that point, where it’s all downhill from here, lots of coasting (I hope) until it’s time to go home to Philly.

It was SO nice having visitors for the last few weeks. Even Michael commented how much of a difference it made in the level of energy in the apartment. Too bad we can’t have a steady stream of people coming through who are as enthusiastic about getting to know Paris as Conrad and Elijah were. I sure got in a lot more memorable sightseeing with them around. And there were more excuses to go out to fun restaurants as well, which I will never complain about.

After Elijah headed off to the airport, I went to the Père Lachaise cemetery, a popular tourist destination and the largest cemetery in the city of Paris. It is very close to our apartment, only a five minute walk. I almost got hit by a car in crossing a street to get there though, because I was looking the wrong way, but in hindsight it would have been pretty ironic to die while on my way to a cemetery. Père Lachaise is the final resting place of a number of famous people, which is the reason that tourists bother to travel all the way out to the 20^th arrondissement. It’s probably the only tourist attraction in this neighborhood in actuality. The cemetery is very large. I wandered around for an hour and a half at a pretty good pace (as I am wont to do) and didn’t even get to see half of it. I took a few pictures so you can get a feel for the place. It reminded me a little of a New Orleans style cemetery, which makes sense because there is a good amount French influence in the culture in Louisiana. It is not simply grave stones, but instead actual buildings which you can go into (most of them are locked up to the public), but they are quite elaborate. It certainly seems like it would cost a lot more than the standard gravestone to construct. The only famous grave that I stumbled across, I wasn’t really looking for them so much as trying to get a feel for the cemetery as a whole, was that of Oscar Wilde. There was a plastic fence around the outside of the grave and people had written all kinds of messages on it. As I mentioned, I didn’t have enough time to see all of the cemetery, so I may very well go back before I leave.

We did have one class today at school, a practical to make the Magret de Canard à l’Orange (Duck Breast in Orange Sauce) and the Gnocchi au Fromage à la Parisienne (Parisian-style Gnocchi with Cheese), which I had been looking forward to trying to make ever since we watched them being made demonstration a few days ago.

We were fortunate enough to have my favorite chef in charge of our demonstration today, yes, the Australian chef. He showed us a different option for how to cut the gnocchi than we had seen in the demonstration. The first method we’d seen was to have the dough/batter in a pastry bag and then to cut each gnocchi with a paring knife as we squeezed a bit more dough out, but this means that you only have one hand on the pastry bag, and it can be a bit difficult to wrestle with. The other option that he showed us in class today was to put a large pot of water on to boil and then tie a loop of string around the two handles (which means it has to have handles) very tightly so that you can use the string to cut the gnocchi. That way you can use both hands to squeeze on the pastry bag and you can go a lot faster.

People were running into a lot of problems with their pastry bags in class. Several of them had lost the correct metal tip that we were supposed to use from their kits, so they were trying to get by using a smaller one, which simply did not work and also didn’t make the chef very happy. He made them take out the tip and borrow the correct sized one from someone else in the class. Also, since we were using the blue plastic pastry bags that they provide for us at school, several people had problems with the dough leaking out. I don’t know if they accidentally punctured the bag with a knife or they were working with some defective bags, but it was not a pretty sight with dough oozing out of various parts. When the chef was demonstrating the second gnocchi technique, he had to go through three people’s pastry bags before he found one that he could use (mine actually). In any case, we all sorted it out in the end.

The Parisian gnocchi were boiled in water first, dunked in an ice bath, and then baked in a béchamel sauce in the oven. Since I prefer a tomato sauce with my gnocchi, I wonder if you still have to bake them or whether you can just boil them on the stove and toss them in the sauce. I am certainly planning to experiment with this recipe because I do love gnocchi so much. And as I mentioned before, the Parisian gnocchi tend to have a smoother texture than the Italian ones, which I really enjoy.

As far as the duck went, we each got one duck breast to work with. These duck breasts are from foie gras fattened ducks, so they have an extra layer of fat on them due to the fact that the ducks were force-fed. Ducks are already pretty fatty and these take it to the next level. You don’t even need to add any fat to the pan you’re cooking them in because they provide all the fat you’ll need. Along with the duck breast you serve an orange sauce that comes from a reduction of sugar, red wine vinegar, and orange juice (it makes a kind of caramel), with some veal stock. You also section some oranges that you marinate in Grand Marnier. And you make a julienne of the orange zest, which you peel off the orange using a vegetable peeler. We have a specific tool in our knife kit called a zester which produces something quite like a julienne, but the chef told us in the demonstration that peeling the orange with the peeler and then julienning it was much preferable. This julienne is then blanched and used for garnish on the plate.

My dish came out relatively well in the end. But I hadn’t realized that we were supposed to put the duck in the oven to warm up again before we put it on the plate. It’s not that I wanted to serve lukewarm food, it’s just that I thought the residual heat from the stove would help to keep it warm enough to serve after it had rested (because the pan that the duck was in was sitting on the metal shelves above the stoves and this is a good place to keep food warm as you are finishing all the components of your dish). The temperature, however, was not the issue so much as the doneness of the duck itself. It was still too pink (rare) and the chef had told me to take it off the heat earlier with the idea that it would be reheated and therefore cook a bit more before it ended up on the plate. Suffice it to say that I plated everything up and then the chef told me I had to put the duck in the oven to cook it a bit more. So I had to reconstruct the already-sliced duck breast (i.e. put the pieces back together), wrap it in aluminum foil, and put it in the oven for a few minutes. I had to replate everything on another plate as well which took about 10 minutes when it was all said and done. I had been cruising along fairly well, but this definitely slowed down my finishing the dish. I still could have left the duck in the oven for a bit longer as it was more rare than the chef preferred even after the second plating, but it was time to call it a day.

I packed up the duck, and the sauces, with the orange peel julienne and the orange sections, and the gnocchi and brought it all home. I knew that it had a lot of potential and Michael might even want to eat some of it. I ended up making a delicious salad out of the duck and the orange components. I sliced up about half of the duck breast into smaller pieces, tossed in a good quantity of the orange sections and julienne pieces, and used the sauces to make a dressing. Since the sauces were pretty sour from the orange juice, I used some olive oil to thicken it and turn it more into a dressing and then poured this over top of the other ingredients along with a lot of salad greens. I have to say, that this was one of the nicest salads I’ve made since coming to Paris. It got me to thinking that perhaps a good use of all of these French recipes would be to make salads out of the various components. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that it would be a cool restaurant concept. You could have all the flavors of a traditional French dish in addition to a bunch more roughage, which I personally love! This is not the first time I’ve developed a concept for a salad-themed restaurant. I do love salads and they are so versatile!

Horrifically Bad Indian Food at Krishna Bhavan

This morning Elijah went off to explore the Louvre while I stayed at home to do work. And then in the afternoon I headed off to school for the second to last demonstration that we have in the Basic Cuisine course, number 29. Today we were making Croustade d’escargots Basquaise (Basque-style snails in a pastry case); Pavé de sandre sauce aux herbes, ratatouille (Pike-perch steak, herb sauce, ratatouille); and Magret de canard à l’orange (Duck breast in orange sauce).

This evening Michael, Elijah and I were headed out for Indian food. The Indian neighborhood in Paris is located in the 10^th arrondissement, right next to the Turkish neighborhood. This morning while Michael and I were hanging around the apartment we decided that it would be nice to go out to dinner together for Elijah’s last night in Paris. Not feeling particularly in the mood for more French food, we decided on Indian as a good option. I went online to research a good Indian restaurant and came up with Krishna Bhavan, a 100% vegetarian option. I originally found a recommendation for them on TripAdvisor, but also cross-checked their reviews on a couple of other sites, some of which were from only the week before. From the information on the internet, it looked like quite a promising choice, so we made plans to all meet there at 7pm.

When we arrived at the restaurant it was already quite busy, even though it was still a bit early by Parisian standards. There were seats available for us though, so we sat down immediately. The restaurant was Southern Indian, so not the more prevalent type of Indian food you find in the United States (which is Northern Indian). We all ordered a lassi to drink, Elijah and I had mango, and Michael had banana. All of them were served warm and we had to ask for ice to help cool them down. We ordered a variety of different dishes, but were quite disappointed all around. All of the dishes came with the exact same three sauces: a coconut-based option, a tomato-based option, and a vegetable option. Elijah also ordered a spinach and paneer dish, but it was clear that the paneer had been cooked to death in a sauté pan, it was far drier than it should have been. Also, most of the breads were simply microwaved in the back before they were served, the texture was far too chewy and not at all pleasant. To make a long story short, I have no idea why people enjoyed their meals at Krishna Bhavan. We were not impressed by any part of our meal there. Michael commented that it would have been a lot less work to walk across the street from our apartment and try the Indian restaurant there and the food would almost certainly have been better!

Chateau de Fontainebleau

Today we were off on an adventure outside of the city of Paris, we were on our way to the Chateau de Fontainebleau. I felt that it was important that Elijah experience the grandeur of a French chateau during his visit and since both Michael and I had never been to Fontainebleau, it seemed like a great option. Many French monarchs lived in this palace and each made their mark on the buildings there by adding additions and changing the existing structure since it was originally built by Francis I in the 16^th century. The rooms are breathtaking and the decorations are almost unbelievable they are so extravagant!

In order to get out to the chateau we had to take the metro from our place to the Gare de Lyon, then we purchased tickets for a regional train, which took us on a 40 minute ride to the train station nearest to the chateau. From there we then got on a bus for about a 10 minute ride to the gates of the chateau itself. It was, as Michael said at the time, a bit of a “planes, trains, and automobiles” scenario. Once we arrived at the chateau we grabbed a couple of sandwiches from a nearby boulangerie and ate them as we walked through the grounds. We spent several hours inside the chateau itself, which also included a small museum on Napoleon, aided by the help of some audio guides that were included in the admission price. And the chateau was not too crowded either, which was nice.

After walking around the chateau itself we spent a few minutes in the gardens, which were not, aside from their scale, particularly impressive (especially in comparison to somewhere like Versailles). But, despite the fact that the forecast had predicted rain, it turned out to be a gorgeous and sunny day at Fontainebleau.

After the chateau we headed back to Paris and Elijah and I went off to wander around the Marais district so he could see what it was like and do a little shopping. They have a ton of nice boutiques in that neighborhood and fortunately they are open on Sundays. We walked around for a few hours and then I decided I was pretty hungry, so we went to L’As du Falafel for dinner so that Elijah could experience the wonder that is a great Parisian falafel. We wandered around a bit more after that and then decided to sit down at one of the outdoor cafés and have a drink and watch the people go by for a bit. I even ran into the guy who cooks across from me in my group from school! That situation somehow made it feel much more as if I actually live in Paris, i.e. running into people I know on the street (which happens all the time in Philly and I miss).