Graduation from ESCF Ferrandi

School has finally come to an end. Its unbelievable how quickly five months have passed. It feels like only yesterday I started my first day in the lab and was mortified by one of Chef's 5,000 sexually harassing jokes.

Graduation was simple. We received our certificates of completion, Chef said a few nice words, and we sampled some canapes, desserts prepared earlier in the morning, and of course the obligatory flute of champagne. Chef created a sugar sculpture to display alongside our pastillage pieces and my penguin ice sculpture.

Ice ice baby!

I'm generally always cold. Paris is really cold. A cold person, in a cold city, working in a refrigerated room is not necessarily a good thing. Carving ice? Someone shoot me now. However, I came to realize that carving ice requires a lot of muscle and delicacy at the same time, and you're likely to break a sweat. I started out with a rather large ice block and a general idea of what I wanted to carve.

Normandy Day 3

On our last day in Normandy, we started out by visiting a small family owned and operated cider distillery. Here they bottle their own cider, cider based products, and calvados (apple) liquor. I'm not a big fan of calvados, but did manage to bring home a bottle of their demi-sec cidre.

Normandy Day 2

What are aspiring pastry chef's dreams made of? Butter, sugar, flour. We've already visited a flour mill, so day two of Normandy started with a visit to a butter factory. Normandy and Brittany are renowned for their love of butter. Who doesn't love butter? Demi-sel croquant butter? Even better butter.

Normandy Day 1

Day one of our Ferrandi class trip to the Normandy region of France started by meeting at Gare Montparnasse at 6AM. Luckily for me, I live very close to the train station and it was a mere three minute bike ride.

A TGV ride and transfer later, we arrive in St. Malo and did a hurried tour of the town. Its quite cute and reminded me a bit of Rouen. We lunched not too far away and this meal was probably one of the best of the trip. When by the ocean, you'd be a fool not to order seafood.

Coming to a close...

Today we finished our testing by making some marzipan roses, and unmolding ice cream. It wasn't too interesting, but afterward we got to make whatever desserts we wanted with supplies on hand. A few cakes, tarts, and cookies later, it dawned upon me that school is really going to end soon. It's quite bittersweet; sending countless days being harassed by Chef and seeing my friends will definitely be missed, but I'm embarking on a new adventure!

In a matter of weeks, my blog will be littered with rants about my stage at Plaza Athénée and how they beat me (not really), and I might not even have a chance to take pictures. Thinking about it, photos are likely prohibited anyways.

So next week we're going on a class trip to Saint Malo, Cancale, Mont Saint Michel, Isigny, Omaha Beach, Scotteville, and Cherbourg. We're going to be visiting a cidre factory, a butter factory, and a whole lot of other things I can't decipher on my itinerary. Suffice it to say... I'm excited!

But before all the excitement, we had to clean up the lab, clear out the fridges. I really take cleaning seriously.

Testing 1..2...3

It's t-minus less than two weeks until we graduate, and of course that means its test time! Being the nerdy Asian that I am, I love being tested, evaluated, and rated. Yes I know; it's pretty sad.

I've just finished day one of testing, and it was a bit rough, as I'm battling a cold. It's hard to have a steady hand when you're holding back a sneeze. I think I'm doing well so far, but I guess we'll see after tomorrow. And after that we're working on sugar sculptures. I think chef seems to think we're more excited and skilled at sugar work than we actually are. My fingers still hurt from pulling sugar.

Confections and regional desserts

With two weeks off of school, I have easily forgotten how difficult it is to wake up at the crack of dawn (or rather 6 am) to run off to school. It has become a lot more difficult with the cold weather and snow.

This week we worked on confections and traditional desserts. Though I really like caramels and nougat is okay, I really cant stand marshmallows. Mind you, I love the marshmallows we get back home. I'm talking about French 'guimauves' that we flavored with rose, mint, and violet. Kind of gross if you ask me. I can't seem to handle anything that has a flower essence, except for maybe lavender.

Blog neglect and big things coming

So I guess I'm starting out the year a little slow... blog wise. Perhaps it means that I've taken my social life up a notch, or maybe have been too busy, jet-lagged, and slipping in the snow here. Nevertheless, its great to be back in Paris. Its odd feeling a bit homesick, especially when you're not exactly sure where home is anymore.

This is the view from my doorstep this morning:

Christmas cakes

This past week marked the last week of class before winter break. I really can't believe that there are only 3 more weeks of class. It's amazing how time really flies. Sometimes I wish the program was 10 months instead of 5, but I feel like we're usually on overdrive mode to cram as much in as possible.

With the holidays upon us, we made a few holiday cakes including a buche noel and holiday wreaths. Though I can't say I'm a fan of the marzipan pine cones, they turned out very pretty.

Les bons bonbons

After working on icecream, I realized that a fistful of warm tempered chocolate really isn't so bad. True, it's messy, but in comparison, I'd much rather have my hands coated in chocolate than stinging from being frozen.

Bretagne butter cake of death

On Monday I decided to make a cake from the Bretagn region of France called a kouign amann. I guess it can be considered in the viennoiserie category since it's made with leavened dough, but this is not your average croissant... or pain au chocolat. Well maybe a distant cousin of the croissant on steroids chocked full of insane amounts of butter and sugar.

What cauchemars are made of

Sometimes I'm in complete awe of the things we make in class (in a good way) and sometimes I just cant wrap my head around why we're making something. Case in point.. chocolate clowns. Yes, I understand molding chocolate eggs, airbrushing, and modeling marzipan are very important skills to learn. But really, a clown? Are you kidding me? What child in their right mind would want one of these. They're quite creepy if you ask me; and I'm sure they'd give some kid cauchemars (nightmares).

I scream, you scream, we all scream...

...for ice cream, or rather because our fingers are being frozen beyond recognition working with the chilled treat. And trust me, its quite painful removing sheet pan after frozen sheet pan out of the blast chiller, especially if you're someone who is always cold.

Gateaux de voyage and trip to Champagne

Monday we made a bunch of 'gateaux de voyage' translated as travel cakes, as they don't need to be refrigerated. They include fruit cakes, pound cakes, and anything that has high amounts of fat/sugar/alcohol that helps to extend the shelf life of the cake. Chef was even telling us about how some 80 year old fruit cake sold at auction in the UK a few years ago. We were harried to finish them (I think they went off to the restaurant or the freezer) and I didn't get to try the English fruit cake and raspberry cake I made.

Restaurant and entremets

This week we had restaurant service and worked on entremets. It took me a while to figure out exactly what entremets are. According to Miriam Webster's dictionary, etymologically, the word comes from Old French meaning "between food", and is a "dish served in addition to the main course of a meal; especially : dessert". Well what is the difference between an entremet and any other dessert classification such as mignardises, chocolates and sorbets? Well they're pretty much cakes; something you'd buy in a patisserie to serve 8-10 people.

Though winter is upon us, we're still using fresh fruits in our desserts, which is quite nice.

Croquembouche

What is a croquembouche you ask? If the French could ever conceive an ornate and unnecessarily complicated pièce montèe, this would be it. Apparently this monstrosity was created by Antoine Careme in the late 1700's. The name comes from the French words 'Croque en bouche' meaning 'crunch in the mouth'. If you ask me, it should be called pain on the fingers, since so many people burned themselves dipping and assembling the cream puffs with molten sugar. It makes for pretty cream puffs though, and I was lucky enough to not maim myself.

Chocolate piece

So I'm really excited about this blog post! For about a week we've been working with chocolate. Its messy, its difficult to work with, but in the end I finished my chocolate piece and am very happy with it! I'm not sure what I was going for, but I wanted a cracked earth with things coming out of it. Its sitting atop a granite block with fluid chocolate lines coming out, accented by hearts and 'fire balls'. What do you think?

Restaurant and molded desserts

Wednesday was another night of restaurant service. Aside from the chocolate work, I haven't been too excited about this week's desserts. The day before we quickly threw together some chocolates for service.

Chocolate work

Yesterday I realized that its about six weeks until I fly back to the states for the holidays. My brother's 30th birthday is coming up, so I need to beef up my repertoire of cakes and goodies to bake when I get back. I'm even thinking of building him a chocolate sculpture.

This week we're starting on chocolate and creating chocolate sculptures in class. I was initially very apprehensive. Not only is chocolate very temperamental (ha ha inside chocolate joke), and not very forgiving, its a mess to deal with! I have a feeling I'll be doing laundry more frequently, as my chef whites are going to invariably end up brown.

In class we practiced making molds and molded some eggs. I added some oil based coloring to my egg, though it would have shown up a lot better had we been working with white chocolate.