A Culinary, Cultural Adventure

An Interlude (non-entry)

2004-11-29T04:56:00.000-08:00

Hey folks! It's been a while since I've added a new entry -- finishing school and getting ready to leave Paris (not to mention travelling around Switzerland, Greece, and Italy for the last 3 weeks) has been keeping me busy. I don't have much time now, but when I get back to the States, I plan to update this blog considerably, including pictures of every dish demonstrated in my classes. Should be up in a week or so, so stay tuned. :)

2004-11-07T14:49:00.000-08:00

Coeur de contrefilet roti, pommes mousseline (Roasted sirloin, pureed potatoes)

2004-11-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

boeuf bourguignonne, pommes a l'anglaise (beef burgundy, boiled turned potatoes)

2004-11-07T14:47:00.000-08:00

Cotes de boeuf grillees sauce bordelaise, tomates provencale (Prime rib of beef red wine sauce, tomatoes Provencal-style)

2004-11-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

quiche lorraine + quiche aux champignons sauvages (wild mushroom quiche)

Off to California!

2004-10-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving tomorrow for my college reunion in the Bay Area. I'm excited -- I can't wait to see what everyone has been up to in the 5 years since graduation. Of course, I will see my good friends who I normally visit and keep in touch with, but I'm really excited about talking to those people who I consider friends, but just haven't had communication with since school. Running into random people and just saying,"Hey, what have you been up to? It's really good to see you again!" Makes the 36 hour roundtrip journey over 4 days worth it. :)

2004-10-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Deep Fried Shrimp, Tartar Sauce

Fried Shrimp and Cheese Souffle

2004-10-18T08:13:00.002-07:00

What a great appetizer! I love shrimp, and deep frying them preserves the flavor and juiciness... yum. I'm looking forward to making this back at home, though it's a little bit more of a pain to deep fry without a deep fryer that helps you get and maintain the appropriate temperature. Might have to look into getting one of those...

Practical today went well, though we did two dishes -- a cheese souffle, and deep-fried battered shrimp. A funny note from this practical -- for the tartar sauce, we needed to incorporate a boiled egg. Since I had water boiling, I boiled eggs for myself and two of my kitchenmates. They ended up not putting the eggs in their sauce, so I was wondering what to do with the two boiled eggs (still in their shells). Marianna suggested that I just put the eggs back on the egg rack, that the downstairs prep kitchen could probably use them. I was wondering how they would differentiate between the raw and cooked eggs, but I figured they would probably figure it out. :) Well, guess what. During demo that afternoon, chef needed three egg yolks for the recipe. He cracked one egg, got the egg yolk, no problem. He cracked a second -- what the heck? It's already hard-boiled! He cracked the third. Hard-boiled again. He got both the hard-boiled eggs I had put back! He laughed and cracked a joke about boiling eggs so that they last longer, and sent the assistant down to get more (fresh) eggs.

SHRIMP PREP
Remove the head and shell down to the last shell before the tail. Keep this on. Remove the digestive tract by cutting an incision along the back and simply use your knife or a toothpick to locate and pull out the tube. To prevent the shrimp from curling inwards during cooking, make a few diagonal incisions in the belly.

MARINADE
olive oil, finely minced garlic, minced parsley

TARTAR SAUCE
You start by making mayonnaise, which is an egg yolk, salt and pepper, mustard, vinegar, and peanut oil (incorporated a little at a time and whisked at room temperature). Then to this, you add minced shallots, parsley, tarragon, chervil, capers, and a hard-boiled egg, which makes it a tartar sauce.

BATTER:
Mix sifted flour, potato starch, and baking powder. Mix in the liquid elements -- water, and a little peanut oil. Mix until you get a smooth batter. Set aside until ready to fry.

STEPS:
Prep the shrimp and marinade. Mix the shrimp in the marinade, cover, and put in the fridge.
Prep the batter. Set aside, covered, at room temperature.
Prep the tartar sauce. Set aside, covered, at room temperature.

Heat oil to 180C. Ready a plate with paper towels to absorb the grease of the shrimp when they come out of the fryer. Bring out the batter and shrimp. Add a pinch of salt to the batter right before you start and mix well. Ok, take a deep breath. Take a shrimp by the tail, dip in the batter so it is battered on all sides, let excess drip away, and lower shrimp into the oil, not letting go of the tail for a few seconds, before releasing it into the oil (this is important to prevent the shrimp from sticking to each other). Repeat for 4-5 shrimp. Fry until golden brown. When done, lay on towels to absorb the excess oil.

Plate shrimp with tartar sauce, with a few sprigs of parsley around! :)

CHEESE SOUFFLE
Make a white roux with flour and butter, making sure not to brown or burn the roux. Set aside, as you'll need everything else to be ready before you continue. Brush a souffle mold with soft butter, making sure you get all the sides (to make sure the souffle doesn't stick to the mold -- if it does, it is hosed). Put this into the fridge. Whip egg whites stiffly in a large bowl. Add cold milk to your white roux and bring to a simmer, whisking. At some point, the sauce loses its liquid consistency and becomes rather thick and spongy -- cook for 1 or 2 more minutes past this point, whisking to make sure that you keep it white. Take it off the heat and add egg yolks. Whisk. Add grated cheese, and whisk until cheese is melted. Take some of your whipped egg whites and add it to your sauce, mix. Then add the mixture back into the large bowl with the remaining egg white. Mix, using a rubber spatula, until the white is well incorporated. Note -- all this needs to be done quickly, as the mixture needs to stay hot. Take your souffle mold out of the refrigerator, brush on another layer of butter, and dust the mold with flour, shaking the excess flour out. Then pour in your souffle mixture.

Put into a preheated oven at 180C and cook for 20 minutes. If you've been successful, your souffle will rise. :)

2004-10-18T08:13:00.001-07:00

(picture--demo) Crab Bisque

2004-10-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Clarified Beef Consomme w/ Brunoised Vegetables

2004-10-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) French Onion Soup

Soups!

2004-10-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

This week was soup week -- we made a crab bisque one day, and clarified beef consomme with vegetable brunoise another. The third day, we made fried shrimp with a nice tartar sauce. :) I was not and still am not a huge fan of bisque -- I think savoury cream soups that are not vegetable just taste kind of funny to me, but this was not bad, in small portions. The beef consomme went well with some noodles, though it seemed like a whole lot of work for just a simple, clear soup... :)

CRAB BISQUE
For the bisque, we used live swimming crabs. Chef said that these crabs were not good for eating, just for making bisque, but I tried some of the meat that came out when we smashed them up, and it was AMAZINGLY sweet... I think that the french are just too lazy to do the work necessary to extract the meat from such small crabs. But it was definitely some of the best crab meat I have ever tasted.

Clean the live crabs. Try not to get yourself clawed. Heat some olive oil in a large pot very hot, until smoking, then add the crabs and sautee until all the crabs have changed color. (the very hot olive oil is for humanitarian reasons -- you don't want to increase the crabs' suffering by cooking them slowly). Remove the crabs, cover a rolling pin in ceran wrap, and smash them with the end. Sweat carrots, onions, celery, leeks, and garlic in the same pot with more olive oil. Don't brown or color. When they are well sweated, deglaze with cognac and white wine, letting the alcohol boil off, add the crabs back (with the juice!), add peeled, diced, seeded tomatoes (tomato concasse) and tomato paste (to give the bisque a nice red color), cayenne pepper, fish stock to cover the crabs, bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain through a solid strainer, pressing hard with a ladle to get as much juice as possible. Add cream to the strained soup, heat, and thicken with a starch-water mixture (we used potato starch), taste, and salt and pepper to taste. You can serve with a spoon of cream and a sprig of chervil, if you like.

BEEF CONSOMME WITH VEGETABLES
This seems like a lot of work. We didn't actually make the consomme, the chef made it for us, but it is essentially many different cuts of beef and bones, with vegetables, in a large stock pot, cooked and skimmed for 4+ hours (anywhere up to 12 hours), then cooled for a day or two. The cold mixture is then skimmed of all fat, the meat and vegetables removed (they can be used for a pot-au-feu), and the remaining soup used for different purposes. During the demo, chef used the beef bouillon to make a wonderful french onion soup (SO MUCH BETTER than the salty stuff you get in the US), and for the practical, we had to practice clarification of the bouillon, which is what you need to do to make consomme. The result is a clear, light soup that is quite good, I think especially for people who are sick.

The clarification technique is quite interesting. Apparently, egg white has great clarification abilities -- when you add it to a broth and heat, it tends to suck up and incorporate all the little bits floating around into the white. In fact, it has such great clarification properties that it tends to suck a lot of the flavor out of bouillons. So, we used a mix of egg white, ground lean meat, and chopped vegetables. The ground lean meat added more color and flavor back to the soup, and the chopped vegetables added flavor. The technique:

Bring the bouillon up to a light simmer. Add the melange (mix) of egg white, ground meat, and vegetables into the bouillon, and DON'T TOUCH. Because the broth is hot, the melange will float at the top, and form a surface covering. Bring back to a light simmer. Little holes will form in the raft as the bouillon starts boiling, where hot water/steam escapes, sort of like a volcano with lava coming through. Use those holes, and start scooping liquid from them, and laying the liquid over the rest of the raft. The raft acts as a strainer for the liquid, and little bits get incorporated into the hardening melange. Keep doing this every 5 minutes for 30 minutes. Then let the bouillon rest and cool -- the raft will sink to the bottom, leaving a clear liquid above it. Then, carefully ladle out, from the top, the clear bouillon through a fine strainer lined with a clean cloth. Get as much liquid as possible, but try to avoid getting the raft at the bottom, or stir up the mixture too much. After you've gotten as much liquid as possible, put it back to heat, but don't boil -- you don't want the liquid to become cloudy again. Season to taste. Add brunoised and blanched vegetables (green beans, turnips, celery, carrots) at the last moment, and serve.

FRENCH ONION SOUP
We didn't make this in the practical, but I love this dish. Chef mentioned how he used to eat it at 5 AM after a long night of partying, and I can see why -- the soup is hot, satisfying, and easy to eat. When I've had french onion soup in the US, it's always been a bit disappointing -- the soup is incredibly salty, and it's often overwhelmed with cheese. In fact, for the liquid, you can simply use chicken stock or beef stock, and it doesn't have to be very salty at all.

First, thinly slice onions, doesn't matter how. Sautee with some butter, sweat, and reduce for a LONG time. Salt and pepper when soft and compact, dust with a bit of flour (to thicken the soup), and deglaze with port and white wine. Let the alcohol simmer and boil off. Add the beef or chicken stock, simmer for 30 minutes, and skim the fat/surface.

On the side, prepare some croutons. These must be DRY, otherwise, when you place them on the soup, they will simply sink. One way is too take baguette and slice thinly, and place into a 100C oven. They won't burn or brown at that temperature, even if you leave them in for half an hour.

The finish should be in soup tureens that are oven-proof. Fill about 3/4 full, put one layer of dry bread on top, and sprinkle one layer of grated cheese on the bread (can be simply mozzarella, or a nice grated gruyere). Put this under the salamander or the broiler in the oven to melt the cheese and finish. Voila! An excellent french onion soup. :)

2004-10-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Braised Brill, Shallot Onion Tomato Parsley Butter Sauce. Turned Potatoes.

Braised Brill, Shallot, Onion, Tomato Parsley Butter Sauce

2004-10-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

This recipe is very similar to the very second dish we made, which was braised whiting fillets. The practical didn't go very well, which means that I learned a lot :) :

Cleaning and filleting the fish was a big part of this practical. When you fillet a fish, you want to keep your fillet knife right at the intersection between the bone and the flesh, the knife angled slightly down into the bone, pulling the flesh away as you cut. It sounds and looks simple when someone who knows how to do it does it, but let me tell you, it ain't so simple. I just pressed the knife flat against the bone, which was a mistake, as I left lots of flesh still on the bone.

Know exactly how long each step is going to take, and plan your time accordingly. In this practical, I was late in getting the fish into the oven AND I used too much braising liquid, meaning that when I needed to reduce the braising liquid afterwards for the sauce, I was already running late, and it took an extra half hour, so I was 45 minutes behind everyone else. I had forgotten that reduction can take a lot of time, and didn't plan well.

Nevertheless, this is actually a pretty darn good recipe -- the sauce, unusual in that it isn't a clean sauce but contains brunoised shallots, onions, and tomatoes, is really tasty, and goes well with the fish.

To the steps of making this dish:

PREPPING THE FISH

Cut off the fins of the fish. Remove the gills. Fillet the fish -- since this is a large flat fish, four fillets are cut, two each on the top side and bottom side, separated by the spine. Chop up the bones and head. VERY IMPORTANT -- disgorge the bones thoroughly (soak in cold water and wash) to get rid of the blood and impurities which will taste bad in the stock.
With the fillets, remove the skin with the fillet knife.

FISH STOCK

sweat some diced shallots and onions in butter. Add garlic, mushroom trimmings, a bouquet garni, and some peppercorns (white or black doesn't matter). Add white wine, allow the alcohol to boil off. Add fish bones and cold water to cover (note -- you don't want too much water! Just enough to cover). Bring to a boil and simmer for about 20-25 minutes, skimming.

BRAISING THE FISH

Take a pan, butter, salt and pepper the bottom. Finely chop shallots, onions, and peeled, deseeded tomatoes and layer it in the pan. Cut the fish fillets into serving portions and lay them into the pan, bone side up (presentation layer is up). Choose a pan so that the fish just covers the bottom without too much wasted space or crowdedness. Boil some white wine (removing the alcohol content), add it to the pan, then add the hot fish stock so that it doesn't quite cover the fish. Butter a paper lid and place it over. Preheat an oven to 170-180 C, place the pan in the oven to cook for 7-8 minutes. (Note: you want the pan to be hot when it goes in, so you can actually heat it over the stove to make sure it's boiling before you put it in the oven. My pan was cold (literally, I put it in the refridgerator to keep the fish fresh before putting in the oven!), and the fish was barely cooked even after 15 minutes).

SAUCE

After the fish comes out of the oven, take the braising liquid and continue cooking it. Reduce it until almost a glaze (TRES IMPORTANT!), then add butter, a small cube at a time, whisking constantly, to make the sauce. Season to taste. Finely mince some parsley, add it to the sauce at the last minute.

Put fish fillet on a plate, cover with sauce, and you're done! Yum... :)

2004-10-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Poached Hake, Hollandaise Sauce

Poached Hake With Hollandaise Sauce

2004-10-03T09:54:00.001-07:00

Today's practical was not very difficult -- and the dish is pretty easy to make, except for the hollandaise sauce, which requires constant care. The bouillon used to poach the fish is a vegetable broth, made from chopped onions, shallots, carrots, garlic, peppercorns, celery, salt, and a bouquet garni, all simmered for about 25 minutes. The fish we used is hake -- a fairly large white fish, cleaned and cut into steaks. The only thing we needed to do to prep it was remove the inner black skin of the steak (the piece was one with part of the body cavity) and clean away any remaining blood or dark substances on the inside. The fish is poached towards the end for 5-8 minutes (it's not so easy to overcook fish by poaching) in the bouillon.

The sauce is not actually very difficult, just requires constant attention. Prepare a water bath by taking a pot, adding some cold water at the bottom, and get ready to put on a hot burner. Prepare a bowl that is large enough to sit on the pot (doesn't need to be touching the water), and add egg yolks and cold water to it. Prepare clarified butter kept at a temperature of 45-50 C (I'll explain why later). Take a deep breath, and prepare to be whisking for the next 10 minutes. Put the pot and the bowl on top on the stove, start whisking madly, in a figure eight. As the water heating, the yolks will starting cooking, and you have to keep whisking to preserve a smooth consistency. The mixture will increase in volume, thicken, and change color as it heats up and you continue whisking. You need to control the temperature of the water in the pot to just below boiling, moving the water bath on and off the stove if necessary, whisking all the while. When the mixture has achieved a thick enough consistency to stay slightly in the whisk, take the bowl off the pot, and add the clarified butter bit by bit, whisking all the while. Here's where the temperature of the clarified butter is important -- if it is too hot, it will cook the yolk too much and the sauce will not be smooth. If it is too cold, the butter will fail to mix in properly with the yolk. Once the butter is incorporated, you can add some cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.
Keep the hollandaise sauce covered in a warm place before serving, but it is best if you use it as soon as possible, so make it at the last moment.

The other thing we did here was turn zucchini, potatoes, and carrots. What's cool is that I can tell that my skills are progressing -- I'm much more comfortable and my vegetables are much smoother and more regular than before (though that ain't saying much :) ).

The hollandaise sauce turned out great -- I'm looking forward to making my own eggs benedict. :)

2004-10-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Custard in Three Flavors (Vanilla, Tea, Caramel) With Chantilly Cream

2004-10-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Rabbit with Mustard Sauce, Pommes Beauchamp

2004-10-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Duck Terrine with Prunes, Sliced on a Decorated Plate

Roasted Rabbit With Mustard Sauce, Potatoes Beauchamp

2004-10-03T09:43:00.001-07:00

This is a wonderful recipe, one of my favorite so far. My only previous experience with rabbit, I left half of it untouched -- I didn't like the flavor very much, and I suddenly felt like I was eating the carcass of a small animal (I could visualize the leg back on the rabbit). But this was great -- the meat wasn't gamy or very strong at all, and the mustard sauce was wonderful. The potatoes were simple and GOOD.

The first task was to prepare the rabbit. It came to us skinned and partially cleaned. We removed the liver and kidneys, cut off the head, cut off the legs and arms, then cut the torso into the pelvis, saddle, and ribcage, and neck. The ribcage was cut, and we prepared a tiny rib roast (more for decoration than anything else). The saddle we treated specially: placed a sprig of rosemary in the center, then coated it with mustard. Then we wrapped the meat of the saddle around to make a small package, and tied it to hold it together. The rest of the torso we just chopped up to make the trimming.

Salt and pepper the pieces of rabbit (legs, arms, saddle), then sear on both sides in a hot pan until lightly browned. Add the trimmings. Brush a layer of mustard on the pieces of rabbit (on side is ok). Put into oven at 220 C for 30 minutes. At 15 minutes, add chopped shallots, garlic, and rosemary (and the miniature rib roasts). Check for doneness by cutting into meat and looking for clear juices (and white meat). There should be a nice crust of mustard on the rabbit pieces. If the mustard is in danger of burning, place foil over it and replace in the oven.

When done, remove the serving pieces of meat, leaving the trimmings. Heat over the stove, deglaze with a little white wine and water, strain through a chinoise. Heat the cream, add to sauce, come to a simmer, mix. Mix some mustard and cream to add as a thickening agent. Put it in, mix, season to taste.

Potatoes:

Shape potatoes into cylinders. Cut little circular slices, about 3-4 mm thick, from the potatoes. Wash (to get rid of excess starch). Dry well. Fry in hot frying pan with oil, browning and cooking. Remove the slices, drain the oil. Add butter to pan, put potatoes back in, add minced garlic and parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Plating:

Simply place the rabbit and spoon the sauce over. Put slices of potato around the outside. You're done!

Practical Notes:

This is the first time in a few practicals I *didn't* burn myself. When you take pans out of the oven, it is so easy to forget after they are on the stove that they are still extremely hot. The past few times, I burned myself even after reminding myself -- you just don't think before you grab a pan handle. This time, I made sure to leave my towel ON the pan handle, so when I came around to it again, the towel was there. It definitely saved me. :)

2004-10-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Stuffed Chicken Breast With Mushroom Sauce

Stuffed Chicken Breast With Mushroom Sauce

2004-10-03T09:41:00.001-07:00

In contrast with the previous day, this was one of my worst practicals. One big lesson I took away from this practical is that sauces require attention and precision to make. My sauce failed to mix properly, was too oily, and just wasn't that good. I made it sloppily at the end, trying to multitask and do a bunch of things at the same time, and it boiled over, and I didn't do a good job whisking in the beurre manie, so there were still little bits of flour in it. . Well, it's definitely a good thing to learn now, rather than later.

So anyways -- this dish consists of chicken breasts, with a little pocket sliced into them filled with forcemeat (consisting of ground chicken meat, egg white, chives, cream, salt, and pepper), and steamed/braised in the oven. The technique for inserting the forcemeat is actually quite cool. After cutting a small incision from the top of the breast to the bottom (without breaking through), you put the forcemeat into a pastry bag (think inverted wizard cap with a small hole at the bottom), stick the hole of the pastry bag into the incision, and pipe the forcemeat into the incision. You can watch the forcemeat push the breast meat out and form a little tunnel into the heart of the breast (think of Bugs Bunny travelling horizontally below ground, pushing up the ground as he goes). :) This is then lightly browned, and put in the oven with a bit of mushroom water (water that mushrooms are cooked in), and a bit of chicken stock.

The sauce is created from the remainder of the chicken carcass (from which you cut the breasts), browned, with shallots, bay leaves, and thyme, deglazed with white wine, and left to cook/reduce with white chicken stock, and some mushroom trimmings. This is left to cook/reduce for 45 minutes, and then strained, deglazed, and combined with cream brought to a boil. This is then thickened (if necessary) with beurre manie (mixture of flour/butter), and seasoned to taste.

Mushrooms were done in two different ways in this practical -- turned, and simply sliced and cooked in lemon juice, salt, sugar, and butter. "turning" mushrooms is really for decorative purposes. You take a knife, and cut little curved strips from the top of the mushroom to the bottom of the cap. You do this all the way around. Chef warned us that we wouldn't be able to do this our first time, and that was definitely true. It's really hard! First, you have to be able to slice a 2 mm. thick strip of skin from the top, and then maintain and peel that all the way down to the bottom. You do this by taking a paring knife, holding it like a fan, setting the base of the blade at the top of the mushroom, and turning your wrist. Chef made it look easy. I mainly succeeded to peeling the entire top layer of skin from the mushroom. One funny note -- our translator translated the motion as "supination of the radius and ulna", which I loved. Perfectly descriptive, completely uncommon usage. Talking to him later, I found that he had finished 2 years of a medical degree before going into the culinary field (he was a chef and kitchen manager after that for 17 years, and now was working as a culinary translator). :)

2004-10-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Stuffed Veal Roll, Glazed Turned Vegetables

Stuffed Veal Rolls With Glazed Vegetables (Paupiettes de veau bourgeoise)

2004-10-03T09:37:00.001-07:00

The next two lessons were all about forcemeats, or essentially a mixture of ground meat and fat seasoned with herbs and spices, and used in various ways. In this lesson, we prepared stuffed veal rolls. These are meatballs wrapped in a very thinly pounded skin of veal. The stuffing is composed of lean veal, pork fat, and pork shoulder ground together, sauteed brunoised shallots, mushrooms, and garlic, bread crumbs, armagnac (liquor), and some cream. Oh, and of course, plenty of salt and pepper. :) You take this stuffing, put it in the pounded veal slice, wrap it (it sticks surprisingly well), mending any holes in the veal layer by putting a piece of veal UNDER the outside layer. Then, a piece of fatback (pork fat in a strip) is wrapped around the roll. (I think this is to keep the outside layer moist, but I'm not completely sure). Then you tie the roll like a present with kitchen string, dust with flour, and lightly brown it on a pan. You sweat a mirepoix of fresh skinned and deseeded tomatoes, garlic, onion, celery, carrots, add a little tomato paste, a bouquet garni, then place your veal rolls on top of this mirepoix, add veal stock to just cover, and put in the oven to cook for 20 minutes at 220 C.

When the rolls come out, the rolls are removed and the mixture continues to cook, deglazing as much as possible. The fat is skimmed off the top, then the braising liquid is strained. This is then reduced and skimmed, and used as a sauce for the veal rolls. This sauce is very nice -- a slightly tart (tomato) counterpoint to the well seasoned veal roll. :)

The flavor of the veal rolls was very familiar to my asian palate -- I think it was the shallots, mushrooms, and garlic. I actually ate my rolls three ways -- straight up with the sauce, one heated and eaten with ramen (instant) noodles, and the third with the veal roll cut up into chunks, heated with the sauce, and tossed with some freshly cooked noodles, sesame oil, and chili oil. Mmmm... very good. (though probably not what the chef intended :) ).

Practical and Personal Notes on the veal rolls:

This was one of the best practicals in terms of all the different dishes coming together. The serving plate was hot from the oven, the veal rolls were still quite warm, the glazed vegetables hot and perfectly caramelized (well, the onions, anyways -- the carrots were just a little brown), the sauce piping hot. And the taste of everything was quite good. The only problem was that I completed about 15 minutes after the end of the time period -- so I need to work a little faster. But I liked how everything just finished at the same time. :)

The other thing chef demonstrated was the preparation of a duck terrine. "Terrine" is the name of the dish as well as the container in which it is made -- a rectangular tub. What you have in this tub are ingredients placed in horizontal layers, sort of like a lasagna, cooked in the oven, and allowed to mature in the refrigerator for 24 hrs to a week, allowing the flavors to blend together. When it is removed, it looks like a loaf, and slices are cut off. In this terrine, we had alternating layers of well-seasoned forcemeat (a blend of duck meat, shallots, parsley, spices, chicken livers, thyme, pork jowl, pork shoulder, pork fat), duck breast, and prunes (sweetness to balance the saltiness), all wrapped in a layer of duck skin. We didn't observe the cooking (though rumor has it that it takes 2 hours in the oven), but saw and tasted the results at the next lesson. :)

2004-10-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

(picture--my dish) Grilled Salmon, Lemon Butter Chive Sauce, Pommes Byron, Sauteed Spinach

2004-10-03T09:34:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Roast Pork Rib Roast With Herb Stuffing, Pommes Byron

2004-10-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

(picture--demo) Grilled Salmon, Lemon Butter Chive Sauce

Grilled Salmon, Ice Cream Profiteroles, Roast Pork With Herb Stuffing, Potatoes Byron

2004-10-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

This was a great demo -- the food was so good. I love mustard, and I love pork. Freshly made ice cream is much better than storebought.

The pork is a rib roast. The herb stuffing is made from a mixture of pureed herbs (sage, savory, tarragon, and parsley) and coarse mustard (whole seeds of mustard). Make an incision close to the bone and put in a good layer of the stuffing. Roast for an hour (for the piece he had, about 3 kilograms or so, 1.5 inches thick) at 200-220 C. The mirepoix (carrots, onions, shallots, garlic) go into the roasting pan and the rib roast is set on top for the last 15 minutes. If you decide to put the stuffing on the outside of the meat, you should cover it after a crust has formed to prevent the crust from burning. Test for doneness.

After the roast comes out, the roasting pan is placed on the stove to continue cooking and browning. You can add some veal stock and water, and strain for a sauce.

GRILLED SALMON

I won't go into too much detail on how to grill the salmon, other than say that the grill needs to be very hot and clean. Don't over cook the salmon -- two minutes on each side (assuming about 1.5 inches thick), flipping every minute is sufficient to create the cross-hatching. Finish in the oven with fairly low heat to desired level of doneness.

The sauce is essentially lemon juice with butter. A LOT of butter. 200 grams, to something like the juice of half a lemon and 50 ml. of water. Bring the lemon juice to a boil and add the butter, (this is important) a little at a time, constantly whisking until the butter is incorporated before adding the next pat. Season to taste. Add the chives at the last moment before serving, as the heat will make them turn yellow if you cook them too long.

POTATOES BYRON

This is essentially mashed potatoes, shaped so you have a little hole in which to put a white sauce and sprinkle grated cheese (gruyere, in our case), then bake. It's quite good. A few things about mashed potatoes -- you need the potatoes to be still HOT when you add the butter and cream, otherwise it's not as good. In this case, we also add egg yolks so that the potatoes will brown nicely in the oven. Also, mashed potatoes lose their stickiness when you add butter.

Other practical notes -- you want to cut up the potatoes into equal size chunks so they cook evenly and finish at the same time. Also, after you cut the potatoes, you want to rinse them, to remove any excess starch (otherwise, when you boil them, the water will be cloudy).

ICE CREAM PROFITEROLES

I won't describe how you make these, but I learned that ice creams and sorbets are simply
ice cream = dry ingredient (flavoring, fruit, etc.) + dairy product
sorbet = dry ingredient + water + sugar

In our case, chef made vanilla ice cream from cream, milk, fresh vanilla, egg yolks, and sugar. The mixture is cooled, and put into an ice cream maker. The ice maker does two things simultaneously -- (1) freezes the mixture and (2) mixes it. If you don't have an ice cream maker, you can do this by hand, by it's quite time/effort intensive, as you have to keep moving back and forth between the freezer and mixing it up.

Fresh ice cream is incredibly good, though. Chef also made chantilly cream and chocolate sauce to go with it. I think I ate 3 scoops all by myself. :)

2004-10-03T09:28:00.001-07:00

(picture -- my dish) Roast Chicken Au Jus

2004-10-03T09:28:00.000-07:00

(picture-demo) Roast Chicken Au Jus

Roast Chicken Au Jus, Caramelized Onion Omelettes

2004-10-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

Roast chicken -- a standard and staple dish, yet so delicious. Here, much of the learning was how to clean a whole chicken. We singed feathers off the chicken, cut the head off, removed the neck, removed the digestive tract (reserving the gizzard, heart, and liver), removed the tendons from the legs, etc.. (Note, the tendons in chicken are pretty small, and will soften with cooking, so it's ok to leave them in. Turkeys, on the other hand, have horribly thick and tough tendons, which make eating the leg fairly difficult. So you can remove them before roasting, which will remove the problem. The only thing about this is that removing the tendons require the leg to be whole, rather than cut at the drumstick, as most turkeys are -- this cuts through the tendon which retracts into the leg, rendering it impossible to remove before roasting). Then we salt and peppered the chicken, put a sprig of thyme on the inside ("too much herbs on roast chicken is just to hide the flavor of a bad chicken!" says the chef), trussed it, seared lightly in oil in a casserole pan on all sides before putting into the oven to roast (~50 minutes), along with a bunch of chicken wings (to make the jus). Every ten minutes, we basted the chicken -- this keeps the meat moist. (During the demonstration, the chef started the chicken cooking on its side for 20 minutes, flipped it to the other side for 20 minutes, then finished it off on its back for 10 minutes). The mirepoix vegetables should be added (to flavor the jus which you make from the chicken drippings) for the last 20-30 minutes of cooking. Note -- the oven is started between 190-200 degrees celsius, and you can adjust the heat as you get to the end of cooking to get the result you want. Higher heat -- browned skin, but with the danger of leaving the inside raw. Lower heat -- chicken can be overcooked without browning the skin.

After the chicken comes out, you put it to rest in a warm place, and put the roasting pan with the drippings, chicken trimmings, and wings on the stove to continue cooking. After you see the fat and oil on the surface become clear, drain the roasting pan of the fat. There will be all this nice brown stuff stuck on the bottom of the pan -- that is what you make the jus from. Now, just add water and deglaze. After you've gotten all the lovely stuff off the bottom, reduce it down, skimming any fat or scum that comes to the surface. Voila! Wonderful jus for the roast chicken.

Note: don't season the jus until you are ready to serve or stop cooking, and TASTE IT FIRST!

Side dishes -- artichokes are turned and cooked in salted lemon water. The other vegetables are cut into sticks, blanched, and immediately plunged into ice water (to stop the cooking). Then they are sauteed together with butter, salt, pepper, and sugar.

CARAMELIZED ONION OMELETTE

This was amazingly tasty -- the flavor of the just firm and moist eggs, brought out by the salt and sugar, with the sweetness of the caramelized onions, and the richness of the cream and slight savoriness of the chives -- delicious. And simple -- I definitely am making this at home. Of course, I think this is probably a lot harder than chef made it look. :) In essence:

Thinly slice onions and sautee over low/med heat in butter (with salt and sugar) until soft and caramelized. Thinly chop chives and add some to the onions. Heat some cream on the side.

Salt, pepper 3 eggs per person. Mix at the last moment, and don't mix too thoroughly (increase likelihood of sticking?). Take a hot, oiled pan and add some butter. Don't burn or brown the butter. Add the eggs. DON'T STIR. When it starts cooking, move the eggs around. Note -- you don't want any coloration. Add the onions in the middle. Use a fork, and fold in 2 sides of the omelette to the center. Tilt the pan, and flip the omelette by bringing the pan up with one hand, and hitting the wrist of that hand with the other. Plate.

Heat the cream, add chives at the last moment, salt and pepper to taste, serve on side of omelette. Enjoy!

2004-09-25T09:32:00.001-07:00

Secluded Beach by Antibes

2004-09-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

Lookout Point On Coastal Trail

A Night On The Beach

2004-09-25T09:23:00.000-07:00

The night out on the beach was really nice. It was not nearly as precarious as the guidebooks made it seem -- yes, there were individuals lounging (alone and in groups) along the boardwalk of the beach, scrutinizing you as you walked by, no doubt assessing how valuable your cargo was likely to be, and how difficult it would be to take it from you. But there were also many groups of young people out, sitting in little groups on the beach, smoking, drinking, laughing, talking, or couples just laying out by the edge of the water. There were no lights on the beaches, leading to a sharp contrast between dark, dark shadows and parts of the beach brightly lit by the lights of the city. Up above, the old city rose on a steep hill, at the very top trees in a park or chateau, with their shadows cast upwards. I had a moment where I had a sharp realization -- I'm in Nice, in the French Riviera,on the beach at night. This is what people dream of doing and being, and I felt gratitude that I could be simply where I was.

I walked down along most of the length of the beach, watching those who were on it. Sharing the beach with the young groups and couples were locals fishing, casting lines far out into the water from the beach, and setting their poles into special cylinders propped on the beach for that purpose. For some reason, I felt the most affinity with these fisherman, or at least felt the most comfortable, and I sat there, watching them for a long period of time. What their stories were, I would have liked to have known -- who they were, what they did, and what fishing meant to them (given that they were fishing on the beach, after midnight). I saw what seemed to be a father/grown son pair fishing together, and I could see a father's favorite past-time being shared, creating a shared bond, and passing down a generation.

I lay back and watched the stars -- there were surprisingly many that were visible, despite the light of the city. At first, I thought some of them were airplanes, far up in the sky, since they seemed to flicker and move. For a while, I watched a few, convinced that they were moving across the sky, but after looking away to another set of stars, and looking back, I realized that they had not moved, only appeared to do so. I'm not sure what causes this phenomenon, perhaps moving air streams, high in the atmosphere, but it did give me the thought that maybe I was seeing UFOs. :)

In a conversation with Felice, she told me that one of her labmates made the observation that when you look at the stars, the photons of light that are hitting your retina have travelled millions of years and quadrillions of miles, managed to avoid hitting any obstacle along the way, just to be stopped and observed by you. When you see the star, you see the star not as it is, but how it was millions of years ago -- a glance back in time. And all we need to do to receive this ancient gift is to simply look up. She found that thought humbling... and inspiring, to make use of the gifts we are given. As an ordinary man enmeshed in the everyday world, I don't think of the stars much. As a rationalist, I shrug and think simply on the enormous quantity of photons given off by all these stars, that it is no miracle that some survive their intergalactic trip to our eyes, and yes, ok, so we're seeing them as they were millions of years ago. That's what simply is. But as a person struggling for meaning and purpose in this life, I see how beautiful and inspiring it is to live a life where one is awed by these things that we can see every day, that we can take for granted.

Beef, Bikes, Birthdays, and Beaches

2004-09-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I've updated this blog -- this week has been super hectic, and I have barely had a chance to access the internet. I'm writing this sitting in a little internet cafe in Nice, in the French Riviera. Yep, I decided to leave Paris and spend the weekend here, given that it will be one of my last opportunities before the weather turns too cold to be a beach bum. But more on that later. :)

This week was red meat week! Some of the dishes -- roast sirloin, beef bourgignon, braised beef. I think I'm beefed out at this point. I love beef, but... every day? And my jaws are a bit tired. No, the meat wasn't tough, relatively -- and I have a newfound appreciation for how well potatoes and steak go together (the French cut a bite of steak, then put some mashed potatoes or fries on the steak and eat them together. Try it sometime -- it's GOOD! The potatoes gives a nice soft flavor and texture to savor while chewing and tasting the juices of the beef) -- but I've been eating a lot of it. I have to say that I love peasant dishes, though -- all the leftover cuts of meats and vegetables, "cooked with love" (as my friend Denise says), and ending up so flavorful and juicy and tender... it's just so satisfying to the body and soul. More details on each of the dishes later.

Unfortunately, I managed to drop my digital camera and break it this past Saturday, running to try to catch a night bus (the metro stops running at 1 AM, and there is no real good way of getting around except by taxi and the occasional night bus). The pictures for the blog were in danger of being interrupted! I couldn't let that happen. So I bought another digital camera on Monday evening, and borrowed a friend's camera to take pictures earlier that day. So pictures are forthcoming, though I haven't had a chance to upload them yet. :) (BTW, if you can help it, NEVER buy a digital camera in Paris. Comparing to Amazon's prices in the US, the cameras here are 40-50% higher in price. I bought one so I could use it right away, but I'm planning on returning it as soon as the other one which I bought from Amazon arrives from the States (via my brother)).

On Wednesday, I went on Fat Tire Bike Tour's night tour around Paris. We were this large, mixed group of mostly Americans and Australians, all on bikes, a giant bike gang hooting and hollering, ringing our bells and blocking up the streets, singing out cheery "Bon soir!"s and "Bonjour"s to the open-mouthed locals on the street (and to the irate drivers stuck behind us). We biked around to several of the major sights/sites, where the tour guide gave us some background on what we were looking at. We went to

- Notre Dame
- One of the best ice cream parlors in Paris, on the island Ile De La Cite
- St. Chapelle
- Louvre (where we circled around the giant courtyard so reminiscent of Stanford's Quad, and observed the back of the Venus De Milo through a lit window and the Winged Victory through a second story, along with people who set up a disco rollerblading rink by the Glass Pyramid)
- a river cruise (after parking our bikes) down the Senne...

Paris is gorgeous by night, especially by the Senne River. Most of the major architechture is lit up, and the reflections of the light in the rippling waters of the Senne, with the lamp lights of the street on the sides and the Hotel d'Ville rising in the background... beautiful.

This past Thursday was my birthday. It isn't a big deal to me, and I haven't been tracking it too closely. But it was really nice. First, a group of friends from Amazon got together (in the middle of the work day) and called me at midnight my time, offering me cake and ice cream (which they were enjoying in my honor, those bastards! :) ) over the phone. It was great, except that they were on a conference phone, and I couldn't understand half of what they were saying (I'm grateful to Sandra, on her office phone, translating for me ;) ). Then, Felice called me in the morning, and we had a great conversation. I went to a guest chef demonstration in the afternoon, had dinner (ramen! :)) at a new place by the opera, and then got a call from Paat in the evening. Not to mention several e-mails. What a great day! I'm a little isolated here in Paris by language, distance, and the cost of communication, but it's really wonderful to know that your friends and family care and are thinking about you. I'm really grateful to you all -- I'm a little awed and humbled that I know such wonderful people. And you care about me! :)

So, I lied. More on coming to Nice later, as I really want to be out experiencing the beach at night here, rather than spending more time (and money) on the computer, as nice as it is to be communicating with you all. Apparently, the beach at Nice is notoriously dangerous at night, as many things are stolen. I plan on dropping off pretty much everything at the hotel, and coming out with just a beach mat and maybe a pen and paper (and even sans wallet). It might be quite interesting to observe what it is like, without the fear of actually having valuable at stake. (BTW, don't worry, it's not dangerous in terms of violent crime, just robbery). I even am wondering what it would be like to be conned... we'll see what will happen. I'll report back to y'all later. :)

2004-09-12T06:38:00.001-07:00

(picture -- my dish) Puff Pastry with Sauteed Leeks, Poached Egg in Two Sauces

2004-09-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

(picture -- demo) Puff Pastry with Sauteed Leeks, Poached Eggs in Two Sauces

2004-09-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

(picture-demo) Various Fruit Tarts (plum, apple)

2004-09-12T06:35:00.000-07:00

(picture-demo) Beautiful Apple Tart with Plum Exclamation

Puff Pastry Shell With Sauteed Leeks, Poached Eggs, and Two Sauces

2004-09-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

This dish was made using a shell of puff pastry that we had prepared the previous day. It's quite wonderful -- light, buttery, crispy "bowl" of puff pastry holding a poached egg on a bed of lightly sauteed and steamed leeks in a bit of cream, all of it integrated by a combination of a beautiful white sauce composed of reduced chicken stock, beurre manie (flour and butter paste), and brunoised and blanched red pepper, and a simple brown sauce simply made from reduced veal stock. Buttery, flaky pastry texture, rich egg yolk, and rich (white) and savoury (brown) sauces with the counterpoint of the slight crunch and clean flavor of the leeks. Ahh... so good. :)

In the demonstration (but not the practical), the chef made four different fresh fruit tarts, composed of fresh dough made into pastry shells, a laid foundation of almond paste/cream at the bottom of the shell, and fresh fruits (apples, mirabelle (yellow) plums, red berries) composing the top half of the tart. I'm not a sweets person, but these looked amazing... one of the few sweet pastries that I would make. :) Unfortunately, I didn't get to get a taste as I was rushing out the door to change before my practical (which was immediately following the demo)... :

Personal Notes:
Wonder of wonders, the puff pastry turned out (see previous entry)! The dough was quite cold from refrigeration overnight, but it was amazing how quickly it warmed as soon as it came out of the fridge. I didn't have much hopes for it, but after the bowls came out of the oven -- my pastry had puffed! :)

The chef this time around was younger, a little more impatient, and with a worse temper. He upbraided our class for not listening to his instructions, and being too meek in our responses. It didn't bother me too much, and as he came around to taste our results, I was quite happy and anxious, because he was giving constructive critique to each person's dish (as opposed to previous chefs who I felt were a little too uncritical). He came around to mine. Tasted the sauces. "Bien." Checked the poached egg's temperature. "Bien." Broke into the egg with the spoon, observed the flow of the yolk. "Bien." Tasted the sauteed leeks. "Bien." He nodded at me. "Bien, chef." I was shocked. Maybe he didn't want to try to explain some subtle point of critique because I don't speak French. But maybe... it was actually good? :)

In this practical again, organization and timing was critical. I know that I had started my stocks (chicken and veal) reducing well earlier than most of the people in my kitchen. I can't claim too much credit here -- the professional chef next to me had his stocks reducing, and seeing that reminded me that I should get that started. I think this enabled me to really concentrate the stocks and achieve really good flavor with the sauces. I was also careful with the poached eggs to make sure that they had the right consistency, also I remembered to warm them up in hot (70C) water from their ice bath where they were stored before adding them to the final dish. If I was frantically running around -- "oops, I forgot to start reducing the stocks!" -- I'm sure that such little details would have easily been forgotten.

Making the puff pastry "bowls":
Cut squares out of the evenly rolled out puff pastry dough.
Fold one corner over to the other to form a right triangle.
Along the non hypotenuse legs of the right triangle, cut a 1 cm border starting from the fold or hypotenuse of the triangle.
Reopen the triangle to reform the square, now a square with sides 2 cm. smaller and a 1 cm. frame.
Lightly brush the dough with egg wash.
Take one corner of the frame, fold it over and firmly press it to the opposite corner of the square.
Repeat with the opposing corner of the frame. Brush the tops of the dough with egg wash.
You should now have a little square dough "bowl", with artistic "twists" at two corners. When this comes out of the oven, it will have puffed up to form a nice bowl for whatever you want to put in it. :)

Note: the egg wash is to help the dough stick, and also to give a nice golden color to the resulting pastry. Otherwise it'll be pale and not so appetizing looking. :)

2004-09-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

(picture -- my dish) Quiche Lorraine -- not quite as pretty as the chef's, but still quite tasty... :)

2004-09-12T05:54:00.000-07:00

(picture -- demo) Quiche Lorraine + Mushroom Quiche. The mushroom quiche was simply divine...

Quiche Lorraine

2004-09-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today was the second day of common doughs. With a savory short dough, two dishes were demonstrated: quiche lorraine, and a wild mushroom quiche. How to prepare puff pastry was also demo'd, and in the practical we did quiche lorraine and initial preparation of puff pastry (we'll use it tomorrow).

I never enjoyed quiche that much -- I thought it was heavy, oily, and salty. But something about the quiche that the chef made today just was so much better than any other quiche I've had -- it was nicely eggy, light, and had just a really nice savory flavor. Quiche Lorraine is made with cheese and smoked ham (bacon), and I liked it. What I really liked, however, was the wild mushroom quiche -- three types of mushroom (chanterelles, black chanterelles, and white button). Wonderful fragrance, wonderful flavor. :) I'm definitely making this when I get back to the states. :)

My quiche lorraine turned out pretty well in the practical -- not as salty as the French taste, but I definitely enjoyed it. The puff pastry, however, was a nightmare. The way it is made is to sandwich butter between two layers of dough, and then doing 6 "turns" on this sandwich. A "turn" consists of rolling out the dough and butter into a long rectangle, then folding it in thirds back inward, and rotating it 90 degrees. Then you do another "turn", rolling that out, then folding in thirds again. At the end of 6 turns, you have 3^6 layers, or 729 layers in the your eventual puff pastry. Cool, eh? And simple enough... in theory. The major problem is controlling the butter temperature and trying not to break the thin layers of dough. While you're rolling it out, the butter is increasing in temperature, and warm butter will melt and break, thus causing the layers of dough that are separated by the butter to combine again. On a hot day in Paris like today, it was nearly impossible to keep it cold -- we kept putting the dough back into the fridge between turns, but still, I had some badly melted butter that was coming through the dough. My dough was also fairly sticky, and not of a uniform consistency -- we melted butter when we first created the dough mixture, but my butter was too hot, and formed clumps when I added to the flour and water, which I had a hard time working out (we also weren't supposed to knead the "de trempe" (as the dough mixture is called) very much). So between these two factors, my puff pastry dough is probably in pretty bad shape. I'm not looking forward to dealing with it tomorrow... but at least my quiche was pretty good. :)

The chefs have different styles while overseeing the practicals. Our chef today pushed us to work faster, faster (our normal chef is more laid back), and at the same time, exerted a lot more control over our dishes. He put the pastry shells to cook in the oven, and also timed the baking of the completed quiches for the entire class. A few people had large handfuls of shredded cheese added to their quiches (he apparently felt that they had added too little), and others got more filling. Our quiches probably turned out better than they would have otherwise, but it is still somewhat disconcerting to have your personal creation taken over by the chef.

On an unhappy note, I left my locker at the school unlocked, and had my monthly metro pass stolen from my jeans that I left in the locker. This really bothers me -- not only is it $60 to replace, but the person who stole it is likely to be another student here at the school. Somehow, I just don't understand which person, as a student paying a lot of money to be at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, would have the attitude, or the mindset, or the desire to steal from another student's locker. It's just incomprehensible to me. Thank goodness that I didn't have anything else valuable in the locker.

2004-09-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

the picnic from our market expedition...

2004-09-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, we went out as a class on a trip to the local market with the chef to learn about available foods and ingredients. We picked up all sorts of breads, cheeses, fruits, and meats (including boudin (blood) sausage and andouille (tripe) sausage), and brought it back to the school to enjoy with some rose wine...

2004-09-07T06:24:00.000-07:00

The most distinctive part of my studio -- a deep, jacuzzi-style tub complete with full-length wall mirror and faux-tropical plastic plant. My friends who've seen this are convinced that I live in a former 70's porn set.

2004-09-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

My studio -- this, plus a _tiny_ kitchen and closet toilet, is my complete space. Small, old, but functional, and definitely at the right price. :)

2004-09-07T06:06:00.000-07:00

(picture) The light show at the Eiffel Tower

Medieval Garden, St. Chapelle, and the Eiffel Tower

2004-09-07T05:44:00.001-07:00

The first Sunday of every month in France, the national museums (including the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, and others) have free admission. This also means that there are huge crowds at the largest exhibits. To avoid the larger crowds (and to indulge my fascination with all things medieval), I visited the Museum of Medieval History, which has manuscripts, badges, ceramics, sculptors, jewelry, tapestries (the very famous "Lady and the Unicorn" Dutch tapestries are here), paintings, armor, and weaponry from that period of time. Not surprisingly, most of these are religious in nature. While I enjoyed these, the best part of the visit was the medieval garden. Here, the creators produced a garden such as you would find in a medieval pleasure garden, with the layout, themes, and plants from that period of time. While the shade and the places to sit were enjoyable, what stood out to me was the subtle fragrance; the garden is designed to appeal to the sense of smell as well as touch and sight. Thyme, camomile, sage, mint, as well as many I don't remember. Perhaps this was also a welcome change because much of Paris does not smell particularly nice -- Parisians love their dogs but don't love the dog litter laws. It is also somewhat difficult to find publicly available restrooms. I leave the conclusions up to you.

Other thoughts from the weekend:

St. Chapelle, a church built to house holy relics, is gorgeous. Floor to (70-foot) ceiling stained glass windows that almost take the place of walls.

The lightshow at the Eiffel tower at night, despite having no more substantial purpose than to entertain tourists, is quite beautiful. It's really nice to spread out a blanket on the Champ Mars (grass lawn stretching from the tower), enjoy some wine, and watch the show.

2004-09-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

(picture -- MY dish) Onion Tart -- note that my onions are darker because I'm using red onions (and I probably over caramelized them :) )

2004-09-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

Spinach-filled Cannelloni with Pesto, Mornay, and Tomato Sauces

2004-09-07T05:41:00.000-07:00

(picture -- demonstration) Onion Tart

Onion Tart and Spinach-filled Cannelloni

2004-09-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

This was the first of our classes on common doughs. The onion "tart" is like foccaccia bread or a pizza sans tomato sauce. On the bread is a layer of really well-sauteed, caramelized onions topped with capers, anchovies, garlic, and tomatoes. Very light, very tasty -- a wonderful apertif or afternoon snack. And really, not that much work. The dough is made from 200g flour, 10g live yeast, an egg, a pinch of sugar and a pinch of salt, mixed, and allowed to sit in a warm place for 30 minutes before rolling out and topping. I think I'll make it for an appetizer for a future dinner party...

Though we didn't get to make it in the practical, in the demo the chef also made fresh pasta dough out of which he made cannelloni, filled with spinach and cured ham, and topped with three different kinds of sauces: a fresh tomato sauce (which he made in the demonstration), a pesto (or "pisto", as he likes to call it, to differentiate it from the Italian-style "pesto" sauce which includes parmesan and pine nuts) sauce, and Mornay sauce (a white cream). The ham was a bit heavy and salty for me in the tasting, but mmm.... the sauces, spinach, and fresh pasta were divine. I would love to make this at home -- just need to get a pasta roller. :)

Personal Notes:
This was a much more relaxed practical session than previous, and I also felt much more organized than I had been at any other previous practical. The end result was that I was one of the first to complete this dish, easing the fears I had harbored about being so much slower than everyone else. Yes, I do cut more carefully and slowly than other people. But it's not a problem. The greater challenge is simply to be organized, get things done in the right order, not forget anything, and be efficient. Speed will come with time.

Oh -- and this was also my "first blood" -- while peeling onions, I managed to slip and cut my finger. No problem -- I just got a bandaid, put it on and kept working. :)

2004-09-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

(picture) me in partial chef uniform (jacket, trousers) sans apron, tie, and hat.

2004-09-04T08:20:00.000-07:00

(picture) A restaurant named after one of my favorite people... :)

2004-09-04T08:18:00.000-07:00

(picture) Beef Bourgignon -- I've been wanting to try this since I read "Kitchen Confidential". Anthony Bourdain's answer to the question,"What do you want to eat at 2 AM in the morning, after a long day in the kitchen, and a longer night with a few too many drinks in you?" Hearty and richly satisfying. I sopped up the sauce with my bread. :)

2004-09-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

(picture) Kalil, Jon, Joel, John (left to right)

2004-09-04T08:15:00.000-07:00

(picture) Andrea and John

Hostels and Travelling

2004-09-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about travelling in Europe is meeting your fellow travellers; they tend to be quite interesting people. They tend to be young, intelligent, well educated (many of them are students), multi-cultural or culturally sensitive, courageous enough to take the initiative to go travelling outside of their comfort zone, multi-lingual, and interested in learning, exploring, and experiencing new cultures.

One of the best places to meet these people, and I highly recommend it to anyone travelling in Europe, is in a youth hostel. When I first came to Paris, I stayed in a hostel before I found my studio, and I met a bunch of interesting people. John, who's from Oakland, CA, has been travelling for almost a year. His first 10 months were in Africa, and he's spent the last 2 in Europe. He lives to travel; he goes home to work for some period of time and save up some money, then goes travelling and spends it. When he's out of money, he goes home and work again. He's been doing this for the last 12 years... amazing. (a side note: he was so happy after he did his laundry and had clean clothes again -- it made me happy too, and think that clean clothes, like a shower, must feel like such a luxury if you're in circumstances where it's not possible to obtain them regularly :) ). Andrea, a Korean girl born in Colombia, raised in Mexico City, and now going to school at Berkeley, is here in Paris for a semester abroad. Before coming to Paris, she spent the summer travelling in Europe.

I also learned the mistakes that come with first impressions. On the first night, I had just gotten into the hostel, and was sitting in the common room with John and Andrea when three guys came in. One look at them -- jeans, chains, various pierced body parts, heavy metal t-shirts, goatees -- and I was convinced that they were punks, or euro trash. Well, I was dead wrong. They were extremely nice, thoughtful, well-educated, knowledgeable about world history and politics, and we had a great discussion about the struggle for french culture and identity in Quebec, Canada (they were canadians). Two of them were going to study industrial design in Barcelona -- the third was a relationship/sales manager for a large Canadian telecom. We hung out in the time that we were in Paris together, and exchanged contact information. I'll probably go to Barcelona to visit them one of these weekends.

BTW, if you come to Paris, I would highly recommend staying at the hostel I stayed at -- the owner and proprietor, Madame Maryse Colombo, is extremely nice. She can fuss and complain, and maybe talk a little too much, but she has a heart of gold -- if you have some trouble or need, she'll go out of her way to help you. She gave me two great maps of Paris that I still use now, helped me find an apartment, suggested where I could go to buy various items, told me which bus lines to take to get to various locations, and was generally just a great friend and resource. She used to teach German, is fluent in English, French, and German (and maybe other languages I'm not aware of), and keeps a very comfortable (if messy) place. All for 16 euros/day. :)

Initial Notes on French Cooking

2004-09-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm amazed by the amount and ubiquity of BUTTER in French cooking. Starting a stock, sauteeing or reducing anything, creating sauces, cooking rice, butter goes everywhere, and in large quantities. And I'm equally amazed by how good it makes everything taste. :)

French cooking feels very wasteful to me. So much of how ingredients are "used" is just as flavoring -- the vegetables that go into stock are thrown away after the stock is made. Wings used to add flavor to a chicken stock are thrown away afterwards (how many chickens lost their wings so that a stock could be more flavorful?? And the meat isn't even eaten!). Parts of vegetables that don't lend themselves to being cut into the desired shapes get cut away and thrown away (or thrown into making stock). When we cut the cabbage for the stock, we threw away the outer leaves, and even the inner leaves we cut out the offending veins (sometimes up to 70% of the leaf), because they were "too tough". All this got thrown out. Wow.

It's labor intensive. The first dish, where we cut 7 different kinds of vegetables into tiny triangles for soup, took 1.5 hours for preparing a dish of soup to feed 3-4 people. We handshelled peas, hand plucked the heads and bottoms off of green beans. We use a paring knife to hand-skin garlic, onions, and shallots. We cut one strip of vegetable at a time (instead of lining them up in parallel), because we wanted the control to create precise shapes.

More to come -- I've only made 3 dishes!

2004-09-03T07:31:00.001-07:00

(picture -- MY plate) Poached Chicken in "Supreme" Sauce

2004-09-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

(picture -- demo plate) Poached chicken in "Supreme" sauce

Poached Chicken, "Supreme" Sauce

2004-09-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

I never liked poached chicken -- I always thought it was dry and not very tasty. Well, this changed my mind. When the chicken is cooked just right, the meat is juicy and tender, not at all the tough, overcooked meat that I associate with this dish.

The sauce here is made from a combination of cold, white roux (made by cooking flour and butter in equal proportions in a pan over low heat, whisking madly all the while) and hot chicken stock (the poaching liquid of the chicken). You add butter and cream while continuing to whisk madly, check the thickness of the sauce, and salt and pepper to taste. This is a super rich sauce -- I have to say that I don't think I can eat much of this dish, because it's just way too rich. This is a very classic, typical white sauce.

Learnings:

How to prepare and truss a chicken (you run a propane blowtorch over the chicken to burn off any little feathers remaining!)
How to poach a chicken/make a chicken stock (blanch the chicken, always starting with cold water, and dumping the water after the first boil)
How to cut a chicken
How to make a white sauce

Personal Notes:

I managed to lightly burn my hand while dumping out the blanching liquid -- the steam from the sink probably managed to take off the outermost layer of skin on my left hand. It wasn't too bad, it looks normal now (it was red before), but definitely taught me to be careful.

I'm also learning to be a little less perfectionistic in my cooking -- to get the big parts right and not worry too much about the little pieces and how "perfectly" they are done.

As part of any stock, you throw in a "bouquet garni", which is a little wrapped package of herbs and spices that you put into a soup or stock to flavor it. Inside, you put thyme, parsley stems, and a bay leaf. The "wrapping" of the bouquet garni is the green of a leek -- you take two of them and put the herbs inside of them, and then tie it together with kitchen string. Voila! A neatly wrapped aromatic package where you won't have to worry about fishing out little pieces after you're done making the stock.

2004-09-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

(picture) Braised White Fish with Butter Parsley Sauce

Braised White Fish with Butter Parsley Sauce

2004-09-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

This is a beautiful dish, extremely tasty. Essentially, you have white fish fillets braised in white wine and fish stock, with a white butter sauce made from the braising liquid and a whole lot of butter, with fresh herbs (parsley, in this case) added. Amazingly tasty. The melting texture of the fish (not overcooked!) and the richness of the butter sauce... wow. When we tasted this dish at the demonstration, I couldn't believe how good it was -- the chef said that you would never get a sauce this good in a restaurant -- too much butter. I could feel my arteries hardening and my heart beating faster, but I couldn't wait to make this myself. :)

This was my first experience (besides a small abortive one with Mike and a fish he caught) with a whole fish. We took three whole fish (gutted) and filleted them. This involved making cuts along the back of the head, and then down along the backbone. An experienced chef will remove almost all the meat in two beautiful, whole fillets, only leaving the skeleton. I probably left 20% of the meat on the bone, and my fillets were ragged with little bits of torn meat. Then you skin the fillets (which thankfully, I was more successful with). Then we took the remaining bones, removed the eyes and the gills from the head, chopped them coarsely, cleaned them well of the remaining guts and blood, and then threw them into a pot to make stock with white wine, vegetables, and water, for 20-25 minutes from the point of boiling. (I'm skipping a few nuances here)

You then prep a large pan by coating the bottom with butter, then taking finely brunoised shallots and sprinkling them over the bottom, and add the folded fish fillets to the pan. From here, you'll add some white wine, then the fish stock, before putting pastry paper (as a sort of "lid") over the preparation, then putting it into an 200 C oven for about 10 minutes. Then, when it comes out, you put the fillets on a plate in a warm place, strain the braising liquid, and reduce it down to a thickness where the sauce coats the back of a spoon. Then you add butter (lots of butter!), and let it melt, and add the finely minced parsley in the last minute. Salt and pepper to taste. Remove any liquid that have come out from the fish fillets, spoon sauce over the fillets, and serve immediately. Mmmmm.... this is one dish I'm making again.

On a side note, I was washing my hands and removing fish scales from my skin for the rest of the day -- the downside to working with fish. =P

(picture) "Peysanne" cut vegetables

2004-09-03T06:06:00.001-07:00

"Peysanne" cut vegetables

(picture) Rustic Vegetable Soup

2004-09-03T06:06:00.000-07:00

Rustic Vegetable Soup (picture)

Rustic Vegetable Soup

2004-09-03T05:51:00.000-07:00

This dish was our first dish ever, and it was all about learning cutting skills. All the vegetables in the soup (leek, onion, carrots, potato, celery, turnip, cabbage) had to be cut into tiny triangles (the "peysanne", or "peasant" cut) roughly 3 mm. thin. It was incredible how long this takes -- just preparing the vegetables in the practical took about 1.5 hours! And the quantity of vegetables is not that large -- it's amazing how many thin triangles you can get out of a single potato. ;)

(A side note -- I would estimate that 15% of people cut themselves this first day. We work with sharp knives! Even our overseeing chef cut himself while demonstrating a cut to a student. I was observing the chefs' hands on the first day, wanting to see if they were discolored, scarred, or otherwise misshapen, but they seemed fine. Wounding yourself, though, is just part of the profession)

After completion, though, this soup has a very pleasant and comfortable taste, and is extremely easy to eat. It's flavored and started by sauteeing diced pork belly with plenty of butter, then adding the vegetables, bringing to a boil, then slowly simmering for 30-45 minutes. 6 minutes before completion, you add the brunoised french beans and fresh (hand-shelled) peas. Add some cheese at the end, heat (but not toast) some bread, and enjoy. :)

Le Cordon Bleu -- the beginning

2004-09-03T04:57:00.000-07:00

It's been a little while since I've written anything on this blog -- I've been busy getting an apartment, getting settled, exploring Paris, and starting cooking school. There are many things to write -- many observations to record, but I'll try to take them one at a time here, so the entries don't get too confused.

Cooking school is intense! And not only that, it's fun! :)

The way the education is structured: we have a demonstration class, where the chef demonstrates how to prepare several dishes, starting from scratch, providing tips and commentaries on different techniques and pitfalls. After the demonstration, we split into smaller groups for our practical, where we prepare one of the dishes we observed under the supervision of one of the chefs. Each class and practical is 3 hours long, and for basic cuisine, we have 3 sets of demonstrations + practicals, so a total of 18 hours of classes a week. This week, our menu consisted of

- rustic vegetable soup (with cured pork belly)
- braised white fish fillet with a white butter parsley sauce
- poached chicken in sauce supreme

Each dish has a set of techniques associated with it; the rustic vegetable soup was intended to learn and practice cutting skills; the fish taught us how to clean, fillet, and create a fish stock out of a whole fish (as well as make a simple sauce out of fish stock); the poached chicken gave us our first experience cleaning, trussing, poaching, and cutting a chicken, as well as create a chicken stock and sauce out of stock and roux. I'll comment more on each individual dish later.

Our chefs are incredible -- we have their bios, and their resumes are quite impressive. The one who teaches the basic cuisine, Chef Strier, was the executive chef as several Michelin starred restaurants, as well as executive chef at Maxim's, a legendary historic restaurant. They are a little older -- my guess is that they're tired of the hectic lifestyle of running a restaurant, and enjoy teaching new generations of kids who want to become chefs, imparting their philosophies and love of cooking and food. You can tell (by their sneaking little bits of food during the demonstrations, by their eating whole fillets of fish during the "tasting" of our cooking efforts) that they love food, and it's great to be taught by people who love the food we cook. :)

Our equipment is great -- we are each issued a set of cooking utensils, manufactured in cooperation with Wusthof. It's complete -- chef's knife, paring knife, fillet knife, boning knife, bread knife, spatulas, whisk, curved knife, sugar thermometer, trussing needle, cleaver, peeler, sharpening steel, ... and it's all of the highest quality (note -- many of these things can and will cut you).

The school has strict regulations. If you don't make the demonstration, you are not allowed to go to the practical. If you miss more than 4 classes, you are dropped from the course. And during both demonstration and practical, you are required to be in your chef's uniform. Jacket, trousers, security shoes (specially designed to be non-slip, good for standing for hours in the kitchen, and reinforced toes for those times you drop a pot or a knife), tie, chef hat, apron, side towel (the last three only necessary for the practical). It's quite an impressive getup. :)

The students are quite varied. There are actually almost no French among the students -- from what I hear, most French who want to learn how to cook go to other state schools, where tuition is free/little. Le Cordon Bleu, by virtue of its name and cost, is almost exclusively attended by foreigners. A bunch from the United States, a bunch from Asia (Japan and Korea primarily, but also from Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong), and others. In my small group alone, we have 5 Koreans, 1 Taiwanese, 1 South African, 1 Brazilian, 1 Israeli, and 1 US person (me). There's a wide variance in cooking experience -- most are amateur cooks, but a not small number have professional cooking experience behind them. I would estimate that the average age is 25 or so, but it might skew slightly younger. There are definitely also those who, like me, have worked for several years, and now are pursuing this as fun and also to explore the possibility of doing something with it in the future.

It's quite intense, and quite fun. I find myself taking (typing) notes furiously while the chef is preparing the dishes and talking during the demonstrations, as almost all of it is new to me. During the practicals, there are no instructions, just a list of ingredients (and amounts) for the dishes to be made that day. The instructions have to come out of your own memory and the notes that you took during the demonstrations. This can be quite difficult, and that is why the chef is there to oversee what you are doing and make sure that you are doing it properly, or show you little tricks to do things more quickly or effectively. (But during the exams, we won't have any chef to oversee our progress -- just the list of ingredients for the dish we are to make). I find myself struggling with speed -- I try to get every little nuance right, and this is extremely slow. And I make mistakes all the time. But what has been amazing so far is that, despite all the mishaps and botched attempts I've made, the dishes have actually come out pretty decently. At least to my untrained palate. And maybe the chef is just being nice to the newbie when he says "Tres bien!" after tasting the dish, but then again, maybe it really is quite good.

I'm doing things I've never done before, and it's great. :)

2004-08-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Sunset on the way to the airport from my house. This camera and my skills don't do justice to this stunning sky.

2004-08-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

I walked out to the edge and took this photo of the coastline...

2004-08-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

The mess of my room while unpacking from Seattle and packing for France

...and Beginnings

2004-08-21T00:32:00.000-07:00

So here I am simultaneously unpacking my stuff from Seattle, and packing for Paris. I've left (at least temporarily) my high-paying, career-advancing position to spend 3-4 months training to be a chef at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. I'm excited, but/and scared. It's a new city where I know no one, and even worse/better, I don't know the culture or even speak the language. I can see it being a totally exhiliarating experience, as I embrace the unknown and am open to experiencing new things and building relationships with new and different people, or a painful experience, where I am homesick and totally uncomfortable. It's pretty clear to me that this is something which is my choice; I want to choose (and continue to choose every day and every moment) the life where I am really living and open to experience all that is around me. Cliche, but... carpe diem. I leave in less than 48 hours. :)

Endings...

2004-08-20T23:04:00.000-07:00

After 2.4 years, I left Amazon.com and Seattle. My mom flew up from Los Angeles, a bunch of friends came and helped me pack up my apartment and load the u-haul, and my mother, brother, and me drove down I-5 1200 miles to Los Angeles over a few days. I'm typing this now on a laptop in the midst of boxes in my one-time and once-again home. I'm going to miss Seattle, and Amazon, and my friends. I started from moving from the Bay Area, where I spent 7 years of independence and growth, to Seattle, a city where I knew no one and nothing. I still remember the first few days I was in Seattle, staying at Harbor Steps. It was bitterly cold and gray, and the wind seemed to pierce the multiple layers I wore as I walked around downtown and the waterfront. Some of memories from that time were surrounding comfort food: discovering Beef Noodle King and ordering both the szechuan beef noodles and the dumplings, taking them back to the apartment and devouring the food; trying the horrible chige (Korean tofu) from Shilla; my first (and only!) attempt at pasta carbonara. And as the summer came, new people came, and a community started to build. Through the years, ties waxed and waned, but this was a period of time with experiences that I will always remember and treasure: (in somewhat chronological order, feel free to ignore)
- hanging out with Li at the bars and clubs when I first came to Seattle -- the first person we picked up was a guy (Aaron). ;) Little did I know, that Li was starting to form his posse...
- visiting Hemant and Dylan in US1 and swapping brainteasers and puzzles
- spending all night talking at the intern rafting trip with Mike
- intern basketball games at Denny Park, where I first met Brendan (I believe that our friendship was established when I massaged and stretched his cramping calves ;) )
- shopping for groceries with Mike and Sandra for our first cooking dinner together, Brendan calling me on my cell from across the street and joining us for dinner -- thus began the "Fab 4" and an intense period of hanging out every day into the wee hours of the night (the usual scene at 2 AM: Brendan, Mike, and Sandra passed out on the couches in my apartment, followed by shaking a red-eyed (contacts still in!) Sandra awake and taking her home, then tumbling off into bed myself. Sometime during the night or morning, Brendan would wake up and go into the guest bedroom to sleep, but Mike would be in the same position on the lazy boy in the morning.
- Hmm... that girl looks familiar. And she's looking at me too, like I'm familiar. I meet Aileen at the Amazon newgrad dinner at... um... the brewery at Pacific Place, and we discover that we were both section leaders at Stanford together. She's cool. :) (Oh yeah -- I record her name as "Eileen" in my cell phone, and she's still that to this day =P ).
- big and small conversations with Audrey; going salsa dancing with her and Felix
- dinner with Hemant, Dylan, and Hemant's mom. Hemant has a really interesting background -- his parents lived in different countries when he was growing up (I think he did most of his schooling in Singapore, but he's seriously travelled all over the world), and his mom had all these interesting stories... including Hemant as a little boy throwing up on the snow. =P And I still remember the spicy chicken curry... mmm...
- randomly calling Sandra on her Berkeley recruiting trip, and she being glad to talk to someone because she had just watched a scary movie on TV ;)
- Mikhail's movie nights -- some very interesting selections (Donny Darko, Requiem for a Dream are the ones I really remember)... with an ever varying assortment of goodies offered up for consumption. :)
- Mikhail teaching me to play the guitar, and my deciding to give it up after losing sensation in my fingertips for weeks afterwards.
- having the first dinner cooked by Laurel, where I realized she was a serious cook (growing her own herbs, and having the global knives), with the tasty fish
- Paat -- all sorts of conversations surrounding work, life, love, and working out. My work-out buddy (I swear, you're a masochist -- never knew someone so happy to be so dead and sore). One of a kind -- kind, considerate, and polite to a fault, yet so impatient and ambitious and hungering for accomplishment.
- Andreas -- probably some of the roughest times I've had workwise and a rough time personally. But a great and loyal friend, who brings so much color to his and others' lives. No other person I know lives life so vividly and brings so much of himself into everything he does.
- driving with Huat for 7 hours round-trip so we could hike for 2 hours in the Olympic Peninsula. Oh yeah -- the trail was still snowed in, which we didn't expect, so it was much more difficult (in our boots) than we expected. Plus, Huat was still recovering from the stress fracture in his foot, making walking that much more difficult. But we talked the entire time, both hiking and driving, which was simply awesome.
- being office-mates with Selly. Tons of conversations, work and personal. Listening to him rehearsing a song he was going to serenade his girlfriend with at her birthday (with all her friends watching). (Note: Selly has some issues with pitch).
- Moving to having Selly as a manager, and learning so much from him and the way that he interacts with people and the business. I've never met anyone else who so quickly plumbs the depths of those things he is interested in, and thinks so much about the choices he makes and the life he is living.
- karaoking with Eric, Christina, Jed, and Audrey (the regulars)... later, finally getting to hear Roger and Paat sing, and Huat letting his inner diva out... ;)
- shooting hoops with Roger on the Amazon courts, betting lunches... and ending up owing him 10 lunches. :(
- hanging out with Weihua, Chi, Yushan -- making dumplings, having hotpot, playing taboo (interesting when three of the four are not native english speakers =P), playing basketball, tennis, moving Weihua (x2 (or was it 3?))...
- going swing dancing with John and a bunch of folks at the Russian Club ("she's how old?? 18??")
- following Huat around in all his interests -- whatever he likes and reads and participates in, is a good enough recommendation for me.
- enjoying many, many of Mike's dinners
- karaoking until the wee hours of the morning, then (semi-drunk), heading back to my place and cooking one of the most satisfying meals I can remember -- dumplings and stir-fried "empty-hearted" vegetables -- discovering the secrets of the "special spice packet"
- discovering the joys of snowboarding
- weddings, weddings, weddings -- Gray and Aileen, Paat and Tiffany
- watching "Much Ado About Nothing" on Mercer Island with Nick; picking the blackberries in the park...
- being awed and inspired by John Rauser's juggling skills.
- being inspired by the great people I work with: Toby, John, Shenghuo, Paat, Selly
- in my last month in Seattle, meeting Felice at Mike's party, and somehow, through her schedule of conferences and experiments and my schedule of closing things up in Seattle, starting something special...
- and much, much more...

You, my friends, are dear to me. It saddens me to leave you, to leave Seattle, but the rich memories of this time, and the relationships we've created here I will always hold dear in my heart.

This blog

2004-08-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

has multiple purposes:
(1) Chronicle my experiences and what I'm learning as I go to Paris and spend a quarter at Le Cordon Bleu (the cooking school), in pictures as well as text
(2) Record personal observations and musings throughout this period
(3) Provide an (one-way) communication channel for those who care to keep track of my journey

I think that blogs can easily be self-absorbed and narcissistic -- they are primarily a monologue with the presumption that what one puts in them is worth preserving and making available for consumption. And it's easy to fall into the mode of simply relating what one did in a given period of time. I'll try to avoid that here and provide good substance -- but at the same time, I think that this is one of the rare places in between throwaway notes and published writings, where much more unfettered exploration of writing styles and thoughts can happen. This is as much for my own exploration as for you, the readers, to enjoy. I intend to take advantage of that. So. Read at your own risk. :)