Business
So, it's six weeks down, four to go in my first of three trimesters at the Cordon Bleu. Things settled down quickly for me after my previous diary entry, my diatribe about the complications of moving to, and living in, France. I actually have an apartment now, a bank account, a phone, a Metro pass, a residency permit, a satellite dish, two baguettes, a bottle of red, and a wheel of brie.
It couldn't be all perfect, of course, as my furniture is apparently having mad parties back in Madrid. I contacted a couple of movers, but they seem to think that the privilege of moving my furniture to Paris is worth more than the actual furniture itself. In other words, I'm still trying to find a financially responsible way to reunite with my furniture.
But if Pele can go on TV and talk about his erectile dysfunction, I can surely suck it up, tuck into my temporary bed, and quit whining. Things are pretty good, and despite my uncanny ability to focus on and relentlessly bitch about the lousy things, I'm going to give it a rest and just go with it. I'm hardly home enough to notice the lack of furniture anyway.
That's right. I'm busy.
Not "busy," as many of you (especially my former co-workers) have known me to be. To borrow from a brilliant line from my ex-colleague and learned scholar Alick Mighall, busy doesn't necessarily mean twiddling with my mp3 server on the office network so I have to push the 3:30 call back to 4pm.
Who knew?
No, I'm actually busy. As I sit here writing to you on a Saturday afternoon, I'm keenly aware that this is the first time in a month I've had a Saturday afternoon during which I wasn't rolling out puff pastry, stewing veal, or reducing a sauce.
And I'm aware that this update is long overdue. All I can say in my defense is that it's really easy to get your shit together to write a diary entry once a month (or so) when you have nothing else to do. And I've been in school all the time. And, um, twiddling with my mp3 server.
Learning
School, for me, has always been an albatross. I was always angry about the entire prospect of school. It seemed silly to me. Learning to me was always something that came from experience. That is to say, why should I take your word for it when I can learn it the hard way? Or, more directly, I already know everything so what could I possibly stand to learn from you?
Seriously.
Of course, this is the first time that I'm actually in school voluntarily. And I'm figuring that if I'm going to go through all the hassle and spend the time, I might as well listen to what the chefs have to say. They've been at it a while, maybe they know something that I don't.
The chefs at school are absolutely amazing. It's awe-inspiring, the ease with which they glide around the kitchen. It's all second nature to them. Sometimes, you'll see one at work, and you have to imagine he's an octopus -- all 8 arms at work simultaneously. He has one whisking a sauce, another holding the bowl, one pulling a tray out of the oven and another holding the cuisinart. Two arms kneading the dough, and the last two hold tasting spoons.
Perhaps I feel so comfortable among these chefs because their mouths are always moving. If a chef isn't talking he's tasting, and those are two of my personal favourite pastimes.
Pastry vs. Cuisine
In the kitchen, there's a big difference between pastry and cuisine. Since I'm in school, I'll use an academic metaphor. If cuisine is the "art" of cooking, pastry is the "science."
In cuisine, they use measures like "a pinch" or "a dash," mainly because a lot of it has to do with your taste. If you forget something, you can probably leave it out, or if not you can add it later.
In pastry, proportions are critical. Everything (even liquids) has to be weighed out. Each step in the process is of the utmost importance, and if you screw up you have to start over from scratch.
The best way to illustrate this is through the reactions of the different kinds of chefs.
A cuisine chef will routinely make minor errors while preparing a dish. He might forget to add the tomatoes to a stew. When you point it out, he'll make a joke about it having been intentional and then put the tomatoes in. The French term for this is, "C'est pas grave," which loosely translates to "It's not the end of the world."
Pastry chefs have a slightly different disposition. They tend to be a little more tightly wound. For instance, if you ever have a deep yearning to see a grown man scream, try standing in front of a pastry chef and pouring salt on yeast. Or, better yet, take teaspoon of water and add it to a pot of melting chocolate. But be sure to have a psychiatric counsellor on hand to talk the chef down from the ledge.
You may think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. But having had absolutely zero experience with pastry before school, this is the area where I'm actually learning the most.
I've not spoken to anybody about this, but it seems pretty evident to me that the menus we're given to prepare on a given day are designed to slowly help us gain comfort with different techniques, and over time these techniques are reinforced.
The first time we did puff pastry, it was a 2-day, 6-hour process. And it was a disaster. Flour all over the place, mainly on me, butter leaking out of the sides of the pastry. Generally, a totally discouraging mess.
Now, it's a 35-minute process from ingredients to oven. I've never tried, but I could probably do it blindfolded. It's actually one of the least painful things to do in pastry, as it does not require hours of whisking (like whipped cream and sponge cakes do).
And the chefs (for the most part) seem to take a genuine interest and pride in our progress. More than once, on a rough day, I've had a chef set aside his hyper-perfectionist, anal-retentive nature and offer very welcome and much-needed encouragement about how far I've come along.
Time to eat?
So it has been six weeks, and I believe I'm much better at cooking than I was before. Then again, I've still got four months of class left (not including my two-month sabbatical in New Orleans) and I'm certainly no expert. I've given myself time to learn and practice. It's a lot of fun.
Please do let me know if you want to come by for a tasting, and I'll see what I can put together for you. And if you happen to know of a reasonably-pried moving company, please let me know. That way, you see, you'll have somewhere to sit when you come over for dinner.
Bye for now, and bon appetit!
--Andrew