I arrived home from dinner last night around 12:30am and after organizing myself for school today and talking on Skype for a bit, it was after 1am by the time I got to bed. But I got up early to do yoga before I met up with Ray at E. Dehillerin, the kitchen supply store. The plan was to do some shopping and hit up a couple of pastry shops along the way. I had not yet made it to E. Dehillerin on this trip to Paris, but I had certainly been in there before. It’s a wonderful mecca of virtually all of your culinary equipment wants and needs. I am considering getting an omelette pan from there to practice my rolled omelettes because we just found out that the 3 egg omelette is going to be the technical dish on our final exam. The pan I have at the apartment is way too large for 3 eggs, so it’s not really sufficient. The only problem is that the omelette pans are really, and I mean really, heavy and I think it would take up most of the allotted weight in a suitcase on the plane back home. I am pondering on the purchase for a bit longer before I decide one way or the other. Ray ended up buying a few different-sized square cake forms and since he had mentioned to one of the people working there that I am at culinary school in Paris, he got a 10% discount. Turns out that culinary students get a discount, good to know!
From there we headed only a few streets away to one of the other really well known cooking shops in Paris called MORA. I had been there a few weeks prior with a couple of my friends from school. They have a very nice selection of cookbooks there, many of which are in both English and French. I especially liked the pastry books with all the beautiful photos. Ray bought 4 books and is having them shipped back to Philly (not an inexpensive venture it turns out since the shipping alone was €166 [~$200], but you have to take advantage of the opportunity to purchase these types of books when it comes along).
The weather was really cold and rainy this morning and it only got worse as it got later in the morning. By the time we left MORA it was starting to come down pretty steadily and it was definitely one of the coldest and wettest mornings so far of my time in Paris. We trudged along under an umbrella in the direction of a beautiful boulangerie and patisserie by the name of Gosellin. Ray loves the baguette à l’ancienne made by Gosellin. In fact, when we were in the shop there were a couple of other Americans there and he told them that they had to buy one of these baguettes because it was the “best bread they would ever taste,” very high praise indeed. We ordered one of the baguettes as well, a couple of coffees, and two of the larger macarons (pistachio and raspberry) with raspberries inside – the Macaron Pistache Framboise and Macaron Framboises. Our next task was to find a place to eat these mouthwatering pastries, there is no seating at Gosellin. We walked out in the direction of Les Halles because there is a underground mall there where I figured we could find a place to sit. The whole area is currently under construction though, so it is more difficult to navigate than it usually is, and this was worsened more by the rain and the cold. We did eventually find our way to the mall and plopped down in a few seats outside of a Starbucks (which are everywhere in Paris btw). I really loved the pistachio and raspberry macaron! They had also had a ton of other beautiful pastries and viennoiserie (yeast-leavened pastries that are enriched with other ingredients such as eggs, butter, milk, cream, and sugar; includes croissants, brioche, pain au chocolat, etc.) that I want to go back and try a few of at some point.
After our breakfast I was off to school for our practical where we were making Cœur de Contrefilet Rôti (Roasted Sirloin Fillet) and making the marinade for the Estouffade de Bœuf Bourguignonne (Beef Bourguignon). It was rather fun to work with large pieces of meat, I never buy much meat at home, as I’ve mentioned. So although I’ve read a lot about butchering animals and understand the general terms involved, I don’t have a ton of hands-on experience with it. I had thought for some time that it would benefit me to do an internship at a butcher shop (say in the Italian market in Philly) so that I could better learn how the art of butchery works, especially as relates to my academic research on culinary history and archaeology, but I haven’t made any steps to do this as yet.
I had some trouble getting the hang of removing the outer layer of fat from both the beef sirloin and beef shoulder, but I will get it down eventually. We had the chef from Australia running our practical and I always enjoy myself more when he’s in charge of the group partly because I know that he speaks English, so I will know what the heck he’s trying to get us to do at any point in time, and also because he is younger and has a more lighthearted approach to cooking and to teaching than many of the other chefs at school seem to have. That and he doesn’t blame you if you screw something up, he tells you how to fix the mistake or how to avoid it the next time around.
Preparing the Beef Bourguignon was fun and I like the fact that you marinate the beef in an entire bottle of red wine. There’s something about that which makes you think “now this is going to be good food.” For the sirloin, I forgot to season the meat before I seared it, so I was afraid that it would turn out terribly, but it wasn’t so noticeable, especially when you add the jus to the dish at the end. Another curious thing was that I ended up with a very tiny amount of jus, roughly two tablespoons. It had a really good flavor and thickness and I didn’t even reduce it that much, so next time I make the recipe I probably need to add more veal stock to the pan when I’m making the dish. We also made Pommes Mousseline (puréed potatoes), which we had done once before to make the Pommes Byron in Lesson 10 that went along with grilled salmon and sautéed spinach. This time we only had to boil the potatoes and put them through the food mill and add butter, milk, and salt. We learned a way to present the potatoes on the plate that uses two large spoons to form the potatoes into an oblong shape.
Before we present the dish to the chef, we always need to warm the food again and warm the serving plate. In this instance it was difficult to know how long to warm the sirloin again to get it warm in the center, but to not cook it too much. Our entire class erred on the side of not long enough in the oven, so we all presented tepid meat to the chef. Next time we’ll know. But it’s a tricky game. And if you cut your meat you don’t want to put it back into the oven once it’s sliced because you will start to cook it through much faster and it will not look beautiful nor taste as nice. In the final prognosis I needed to have salted my potatoes more, this is not the first time that that has come up. It is clear that potatoes require a lot of salt and I’m still playing around with how much that is.
Next we had a demonstration of Côtes de Bœuf Grillées Sauce Bordelaise (Prime Rib of Beef Red Wine Sauce) with Tomates Provençale (Tomatoes Provençale-Style) and we finished off the Estouffade de Bœuf Bourguignonne (Beef Bourguignon) that we will be finishing in practical tomorrow, and we also tasted the Aiguillette de Bœuf Mode (Beef with Onions and Carrots) that had been cooked in part during demonstration the day before.
The best part was that Ray was at the demonstration. Technically we are each allowed to invite one person to a demonstration during the course of the semester. But, I learned from a woman who came to one of our other practicals, from Germany, that anyone can walk in off the street and ask to watch the practical. So I plan to offer it up as an option to any of my friends who might want to come, I just won’t sign them up under my name.
It was so nice to have a friend in the demonstration with me and also to hear what he thought of it. At La Varenne, the school Ray went to in Paris in 1980, they did not teach using demonstrations, they just had practical classes where the chef walked them through all that they needed to do that day and helped them when they needed it. They were given the recipes with both ingredients and steps to follow (we only get ingredient lists and then have to write down the steps involved while we’re watching the demonstration). I do think that the demonstrations are a really important part of our learning experience here at school and they’re definitely my favorite part.
Learning to Cook in Paris 