It’s taken me this long to finally come to grips with the fact that this blog has run its course. The main purpose of it was to recount my post-UN life in the South of France. The fact that I embarked upon a culinary adventure directed the course of the blog… to my great pleasure, and that, from what I understand, of my readers. For those who don’t know, I left Marseille over the summer, took a job in a French brasserie in Geneva, got the pink slip there on my fifth week, and returned to the international organization scene. What transpired at the brasserie deserves an entire blog to itself… but given my professionalism and discretion I decided not to write about my first job in the kitchen, at least not while I was an employee! So thanks to all of you who have followed and encouraged me, from Pakistan to the Ukraine (I loved checking my readership stats – cool graphs!), and hope to see you all soon in cyberspace with even more food! W.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

Thrilla in Massilia is undergoing structural and existential changes due to the new job and move. Access will be restricted for matters of privacy so stay tuned... tchuss!

Bidding farewell to the Mediterranean...

Walking over to Malmousque tonight was absolutely magical. It is so close to the city and yet feels like another world, with its tiny port and boats and clear turquoise waters teeming with sea life. Of course now that I’m leaving I can’t believe I didn’t spend more time there.
The boardwalk itself is its own reward, following the edge of the Mediterranean with the islands ahead, among them the Chateau d’If where the count of Monte Cristo was emprisoned. Who do I see along the way if it ain’t Jose the Colombian bartender I worked with. We started chatting and talking about kitchen staff coming and going, making me nostalgic…

In Malmousque, which I would say marks the beginning of the Calanques, the streets are tiny and steep and lead to a breathtaking water-front… as we were walking down a guy carrying an accordion showed up and started serenading us and following us to the shore, he was making up a song about Malmousque and the nice people you meet there, all the way to the edge of the water, where he finally said he came to swim, not to play his instrument! It sort of felt like a Woody Allen movie filmed in the South of France (okay mainly for the accordion). We soaked in the scenery and then went looking for another beach a bit further, right next to the Foreign Legion base, and lo and behold, another guy I knew, this time from when I first got here, and in his arms, a tiny baby! I just couldn’t believe it.
i just hate goodbyes…

Ma bouillabaisse

For my end of year/graduation lunch I asked my teacher if I could make bouillabaisse, which is Marseille’s specialty. I didn’t have a real one since I got here almost one year ago (see Sept. 16, 2010 Bouillabaisse entry) and as I am leaving very soon I thought this was the perfect opportunity to honor the city which welcomed me and was the backdrop for my professional culinary initiation. Anne, my teacher, is not herself from Marseille, as a matter of fact she is from all the way up north in Normandy, home of butter, cream and apples, among other things, so this was a first for her as well. She explained to me what a struggle it was for her to find the right variety of fishes, and even got scolded by one fish monger who told her: “What do you think, that Marseillais eat bouillabaisse everyday? You have to make a special order and I will prepare it for you.” She finally was able to find the majority of required species, though I wish I had been with her on the fish-seeking adventure.

It turns out that it is such a huge deal to make because of 1) the simmering of the soup for the depth of flavors 2) the scaling and filleting of the fish. Also I realized this is not something one can easily reproduce at home because some of these fish have humungous scales that fly all over the place when you attempt to remove them. Or maybe I am just an inexperienced fish-scaler. Either way, it’s great to have a légumerie (ie. place to wash the vegetables) in order to scale your kilos of fish. It’s also kind of fun to examine them and get really dirty so allow plenty of time for this (and picture-taking) and for a thorough shower afterwards to remove any trace of fish slime or scale. Luckily I was not alone in the kitchen – thanks to M for helping with the scaling!

There are actually three parts in bouillabaisse: the soup, which is normally served as a first course, the fish and potatoes (simmered in the soup), and the garlic-rubbed croutons served with a rusty colored garlic and saffron flavored mayonnaise-like sauce called rouille (my daughter loved the potatoes slathered in rouille). Grated cheese is also sometimes served, though in the two restaurants where I worked that served this dish, the cheese was omitted. Because some of the fish which comprise bouillabaisse are rare, it is also a relatively expensive dish which is reserved for special occasions. The ones offered for twenty or thirty euros at the tourist restaurants surrounding the Old Port are mostly cheaper versions of the real thing, which is more likely to cost at least double.

The first photo is from my first restaurant, Une Table au Sud, where chef Lionel Levy concocts a Bouillabaisse milkshake which is shocking to some ancient purists around town… the second photo is the finished product served yesterday after class.

N.B. According to the Charte de la Bouillabaisse Marseillaise, signed in 1979 by eleven restaurants, an authentic bouillabaisse needs to have at least four of the following fish: rascasse (Scorpion fish), chapon (cousin of the Scorpion fish), galinette (Gunard in English) Saint Pierre (John Dory), monkfish and conger eel. So for those of you who have been asking me to make this… good luck on finding the ingredients!

Home life

Since my last entry I left the country twice, returning last Sunday from my last trip. My daughter has been ill since then, and though she went to school on Monday (she came home for lunch for mom’s comfort food and a rest), she had to stay home on Tuesday, Wednesday, and today, Thursday (we saw her pediatrician yesterday and it’s all under control). So both of us have been home pretty much all week, and other than reading, playing, drawing and watching videos, what else is there to do at home but cook?
I thus resumed my gluten-free (GF) baking experiments, starting with a raspberry-yogurt cake courtesy of France’s darling Estelle Lefebure via Elle magazine. I would like to say that Elle a Table is a respectable food magazine in France, though many a French chef might beg to differ. It could be on par with Gourmet (R.I.P.) or Bon Appetit magazines. As for Estelle, she was a famous model in the late eighties and nineties, and was married to French heartthrob David Halliday, son of Johnny Halliday (if you’ve never heard of any of these people, never mind). The point is, France is just waking up to the concept of GF, so I pounce on any recipe that falls under this category, regardless of the author!
Estelle’s cake turned out too sweet, a bit gummy and not raspberry-ish enough. Of course I made few alterations, as any self-proclaimed cook would (don’t give me a sarcastic look, mom!), such as replacing the fructose (um I ran out of that…) with agave syrup (too sweet and caramelly in the end) and adding Xantham Gum (which was not called for). Xantham gum (XG) is used in anglo GF baking in order to replicate the texture of a finished product containing gluten. I have no idea exactly what it is or how it works (Wikipedia proved a bit too technical for me and what with my medium-to-short attention span I lost interest). It’s like cream of tartar. The Americans put it in their egg whites, and the French don’t…. so the cake was underwhelming, but with my daughter unable to keep anything down, I still ate it all up, sugar and XG and all, down to the last crumb.
Unsatisfied and unfettered by that venture, the following day, I dug deep into my kitchen closets and found coconut and chocolate. I had no choice but to bake another cake! This time I scoured the internet for a recipe, returning to the same French GF blogs, found a somewhat convincing formula, added extra GF flour and XG, and ta-da! Overcooked the damn thing.
After my two attempts I had to be realistic – the GF flour I bought sucked (it couldn’t have been about me!). How could so many yummy ingredients and so much TLC turn out so … blah? There was only one thing left for me to do, buy chestnut flour. Having ingested my quota of sugar for the rest of the month, I decided to make a “cake corse,” or Corsican bread (as in banana or zucchini bread, but savory, meaning to say soft and airy and not dense and tough as country bread or sourdough). This was my last chef’s recipe, and even he admitted that I surpassed him in making my version (I think it was the cooking time). It has brousse, a Corsican cheese resembling a light ricotta, figatelli (a Corsican sausage which I conveniently replace with bacon) and of course the chesnut flour. I have never been to Corsica but I imagine it full of beaches and hills and wild pigs and chestnut trees. Now this flour costs a prohibitive 15 euros per kilo, which is about $11 per pound at today’s exchange rate. If find this obscenely expensive, especially since as a kid I used to pick chestnuts off the ground in the forest near Paris for free, but hey, what’s a hungry GF cook to do. So here we are, day 4 at home, getting ready for greatness….

Beach life

So it’s been two weeks since my last entry. Have I been lazy? No. busy? Oui. I had visitors, then finished my internship and spent a week end celebrating one of my dearest friend’s hen week end (bachelorette, in American) in Ibiza. Tuesday was my last day at the restaurant, which was sad, but the break is also nice. Since last September I have been working through every school break! Now I can focus on the months ahead, working, honing, refining, redefining… and experimenting. What I am craving right now is Asian food, which makes sense after nine months of very French cuisine. So today I set out to make adobo, the Philippine national dish (soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, laurel, pepper corns), but when I went to the store I saw some beautiful squids and had a vision of Thai basil squid which can be easily found in NYC (alongside pretty much everything else) but not in Marseilles. I also saw this gorgeous matcha-lychee-raspberry tart on the wonderful www.zencancook.com so I was all set. The squid didn’t come out quite as I wanted but the tart was as pretty as it was fresh and delicious (I didn’t have mint so I used basil and made a gluten-free tart base).

As for my meals in Ibiza, I had a perfectly cooked sea bass at Blue Marlin, preceded by a simple but reliable grilled prawn, avocado and mango salad. My cordero (lamb) was unfortunately overcooked at KM5, though my girlfriends were raving about their beef skewers.

http://www.bluemarlinibiza.com/
http://www.km5-lounge.com/

Call me sexist…

Yesterday all our guests arrived pretty much at the same time. The chef was frantic and quickly lost his cool. For someone who’s been doing this all his life I found it surprising. More importantly, I cannot work in a small space with someone who is panicking. My friend once used the term “grace under pressure” to qualify me. At first this made me laugh, because I, of all people, get wrapped up and emotional very rapidly. I have had some heated encounters in the United Nations where I definitely lost my cool. But in the kitchen, truth be told, not even the chef can make me run, and I mean that literally. At my last restaurant, where on my last day my chef told me “elle me prend pour un con” which can loosely translate as my having an attitude problem, the same chef once gave me an order (can’t remember what) and added emphatically: “Cours!” which means “Run!” I did no such thing. First of all, it’s not allowed in a kitchen (and yes, I am selectively anal when it comes to rules – deal with it!) and secondly, there is no way on earth I am going to run because some punk in a funny hat told me so. As for why it is not allowed, it’s really a simple security rule, as one may easily slip on a parsnip peel and end up cut or burnt or worse (both).
So as I watched my new chef stress himself out, I just went on with what I know and am fond of; multi-tasking. According to research this is a feminine quality, which might be why so many chefs (mostly male, I guess) go bezerk in the kitchen. You’ve all heard the anthropological stereotype of the cavewoman nursing a baby while stirring the bison stew, warding off the saber-tooth tiger and watching the toddler all at the same time. In the workplace this can be translated as working on half a dozen applications (in my old office, these would be mostly outdated and bug-ridden) while picking up the phone or chatting with a client or colleague. In the kitchen this means preparing different foods at the same time or all at once as was the case yesterday. But really it’s also a matter of perception… the chef mentioned he was planning on putting more pressure on me so I would pick up some speed (ie. I’m too slow), while the waitress told me: “Heureusement que tu restes zen” (“Good thing you can keep your cool”)!
I didn’t mean this to sound as sexist as it does… what I wanted to say was that it takes more than proper seasoning to run a kitchen, it also takes certain qualities, some of which are typically feminine. Chef Frerard once told me of a young apprentice who could run his station like a pro with minimal training. I don’t think he meant that his sauces were yummy... but that he knew how to multi-task. As to why are there so few female chefs in the kitchen? That’s another issue altogether…

Another vegetarian alert... this is hard-core.

I think there will come a point in my culinary career when I will have to give up meat… that’s how I felt with the pigeons at Les Trois Forts and how I felt at my present job when we made pig feet terrine and veal’s head. To be completely honest I have enjoyed pig trotters in the past (hey, I’m Filipino after all), but this experience was completely disgusting. The chef gave me a dish full of boiled trotters and asked me to tear them apart and throw away the bones but keep everything including the jelly and juices and all that… so like the pigeons, I took this as a challenge, of course I could do it! Let me tell you that pigs feet are more like human hands than I thought. They were literally like soft and pudgy hands. I did my best to stop thinking of them as what they felt like and just tried to complete the task at hand (no pun intended). I remembered what my first sous-chef would say (“You are a robot!”) and tore through the flesh, the smell of death rising up my nostrils. If I remember my biology classes correctly, hands (and feet) are the parts of the body with the most bones. I can confirm this! The freakiest part was a row of bones smack in the middle of the hand, er… trotter, that resemble a row of perfectly aligned teeth. So as I tore into each hand… a row of teeth appeared. I wanted to take a photo because it was the weirdest thing ever but I couldn’t be bothered to remove my gloves to take the photo, but most of all I didn’t want the chef catching me doing that… in retrospect I really should have. All I have is a photo of the untorn trotters.

A few days later when the chef asked me to try the terrine I did… it was really gross and I didn’t finish it.
As for the veal head, I had no idea what that was, but when he reached for an actual whole head wrapped in a net and plastic with the eyes shut, that was really too much for me to bear. I couldn’t even take a picture , it was so horrific. Thank God he cooked it while I was absent… but when he sliced the head to serve it to his clients, I really thought I was going to hurl.

The happy kitchen

As much as I have been enjoying my internship, I have also had some doubts as to whether this was the beginning of a new career for me after all. Sure, I haven’t been very aggressive in my job-search, being still in student mode, and making the most of it till the very end. The thing is, the very end is approaching fast, and it’s time for me to plan out a post-end- of-June road map.
In the meantime, I am into my second week at the restaurant, and it is going as I wish. On Saturday, the chef gave me to honor of leaving me alone in the kitchen throughout the lunch service, while he worked the dining room. It was an exhilarating, albeit sweaty experience. As much as I like teamwork in the kitchen, I am finding out just how much I also like working alone there.
Chef Claude is a heaven-sent mentor. He’s been kind, encouraging, patient and open-minded. I’m not saying he’s the best chef or anything like that; as a matter of fact there are a number of things I would do differently in my own kitchen. It’s also funny some of the habits I’ve carried over from my other experiences – it looks like I am developing my own identity as a cook. This can be seen in the way I work (from left to right on the chopping board), to the way I clean up (I use way too many paper towels) or the way I taste (only with a spoon!) or plate (with metallic circles and lots of chives and squiggles).
A kitchen is really like taking a glimpse into the chef’s mind. Some are shiny and some are cold and others are moldy and out of date. Saturday night, after working Chef Claude’s tiny, modest kitchen on my own, I got a glimpse at Marseille’s only three Michelin star kitchen, and was overcome by a sense of awe and admiration at the quiet dexterity of every cook seemingly in synch with every other one, everything immaculate and shiny, everyone going about their business with perfect precision, without a wasted movement. The chef, Gerald Passedat, the only one without a toque, was working too, not screaming at his staff while feeding his dog foie gras, as I had always pictured him. Did I have any regrets as to my choice of internship? Not for one second.

Déjeuner en Ville

Ever since my traumatic experience at my last restaurant, I’ve been wanting to find out how my next and last internship would turn out… today was my first day, and I am much more than relieved. Not only is the Chef actually nice, he doesn’t scream or swear or smoke in the kitchen, and the food is delicious! I now know for sure that I made the right choice, as I was hesitating between another Michelin-starred restaurant (three stars, actually) where the chef is known to be human only with the one non-human in the kitchen: his dog (not only does the dog preside next to him in the kitchen, he is fed choice cuts of meat, foie gras and the like).
My new chef is bald and round and has a big white moustache. He had a classical training starting at age fourteen in his native Strasbourg, but since has lived and worked as a chef all over Africa. He took over this business in downtown Marseille five years ago, and has a steady clientele who come for lunch from the nearby offices around the Vieux Port. His cooking is very personal, meaning to say he is not interested in trends, as was the case with my last three restaurants. He described his style as “rustic,” which suits me perfectly, as for me this implies authenticity.
Today we served aioli, which is steamed fish and vegetables with a home-made garlicky mayonnaise – his was divine. We also had turkey with cèpes mushrooms, which was probably good, but I personally prefer serving seasonal dishes, and this for me was an autumn dish. There were a lot of salads as well, and Corsican flavors such as bruccio (a fresh cheese, served savory or sweet) and figatellu (a sort of dried pork sausage). I am not working this week end but I can’t wait to see what we’ll prepare on Monday.

Déjeuner en Ville, 3 bis rue de la Coutellerie, near Vieux Port

Petite parenthese parisienne

Nothing like a weekend away to give you a fresh look at your surroundings. Last time I was in Paris in October of last year. The weather was cold and grey, and though I enjoyed my time with my friends, I longed for the lingering warmth of the south and I was psyched to start my cooking adventure. Six month later, my Parisian visit was like a breath of fresh – and very chic – air. Getting off the train the first thing I noticed was the number of women with very short hair, similar to the look I sported on my last visit to the city of lights. I reflected on how Marseille women value their long, dark , Mediterranean locks. I also noticed the color in women’s clothing – Marseille women love their black, another Mediterranean trait. Then of course came the designer bags (loads of Chanel) and the heels, spring-colored eye candy whichever way you looked. Saturday was such a sunny day that all Paris was celebrating and it was a pleasure to sit back and enjoy.
Saturday evening my girlfriend and I made our way towards the Marais to check out a “secret” bar tucked away behind a bright-lit taco eatery. There was no indication anywhere of a bar except for the guy hanging out on the sidewalk, who turned out to be the bouncer. We were about to leave the place, defeated, when we decided to ask him about it, and lo and behold, he showed us the way towards a dark and cavernous back room with flickering candles, a DJ who looked like he was twelve, and a bartender whose beard, glasses and lanky frame made me doubt for a second if I was really in the third arrondissement and not in Williamsburg. The music, décor, cocktails and even the waitress were a perfect end to our day, even though the place was overheated (having only been open for two weeks, they were still working on getting the AC going).
Back in Marseilles on the Sunday, I was amused at the uniform of training suits, mostly Adidas, that most men had on. And definitely, the shoes were different, mostly sports shoes for both men and women, with the first few Birkenstocks appearing – no doubt these are meant to dodge the dog poo on the sidewalks, which Paris, at last, has been able to get rid of.
And today, after class, I took my daughter to the beach downstairs from our house. She played in the sand and in the water while I read and worked on my tan and thought to myself… Marseille isn’t that bad after all!

Candelaria, 52 rue de Saintonge, 75003 Paris

Repent!

…the end is near. In less than two months time my course will be over. I feel like it was just yesterday that I inquired about it and next thing I knew I was enrolled for the following week. I’ve been looking for my first paid job in the kitchen and needless to say that it is a bit intimidating. After working for so many years in an office, which was not satisfying but was comfortingly familiar, I am once again venturing into unexplored territory. Looking for a job is different from looking for an intership; there is much more at stake in the former than in the latter, for obvious reasons. To begin with, my internships have been very short, so no matter how unpleasant the experience, I knew it was temporary and it made the present more bearable. Also there was less pressure since I was not a paid employee; the chefs were mostly cool and flexible with me on many accounts, from schedules to responsibilities.
For my next and last internship, I picked a little restaurant downtown where the chef works alone. The place is open just for lunch and it’s more simple fare than my previous three restaurants. Nevertheless, I like the daily menus and the fact that the chef advertises his home-made foie-gras; that’s the kind of stuff that speaks to me (even if we eat mostly quinoah and fat-free yogurt with agave nectar at home). The chef showed me around today and the kitchen is actually not that small, there is plenty of room for two. There are also two big windows which I was delighted to see… natural light in the workplace is important to me (and possibly one of the many factors that eventually led me to resign from my last job at 580 Madison Avenue). Also, and this will be a big change for me, the chef doesn’t wear a chef’s coat! He told me I was free to wear one if I chose to but that he was comfortable in a tee-shirt.

Just a little story on the importance of a chef’s coat: the other day in class we had to bake about two hundred little palmiers (sugary puff pastries) and since we only had two ovens it was taking a long time, so while I was waiting for them to cook, I removed my chef’s coat and put on my civilian top (which for the record was not a mid-riff, lord have mercy). I proceeded to take the pastries out and put the racks on the counter. At one point I reached over a hot rack and it seared my belly (which was led bare as a result of my leaning over the counter), leaving a deep purplish mark across it ... A painful reminder that I should never be in the kitchen without the proper attire!

The piano

So in the kitchen there is the piano, and it doesn’t make music, thought it does produce delicious food if you know how to play it. I like this lyrical term used to describe something rather heavy, grey and intimidating. The piano is divided by invisible lines than cannot be crossed within the hierarchy of the French kitchen. For instance, during my very first internship, and my second week ever in a professional kitchen, part of my responsibility in the garde-manger was to fill shot glasses with velouté de cèpe or porcini cream, whenever a server announced a new customer. When I heard “deux couverts!” (four-top!) I would have to grab the chinois à piston or siphon with a valve (I don’t know what they are called in English) and reach for the soup which was maintained at the correct temperature in a water bath at the far end of the piano.

Each time I would do this my arms would burn as I would stretch them over the hottest part of the huge rectangle of fire to fill my siphon. So I asked my chef de partie if I could move the water bath closer and he said no, because the meat/fish guys needed the space. So that whole week I burned the hairs off my forearms because the hotline owned the piano… we in the garde-manger were just squatting it.
Another example comes to mind at my second internship, during my first week at the pastry station. The pastry chef placed a huge vat of cocoa and water to boil for icing, if I remember correctly, over the piano at the fish station (in this kitchen there was a separate one for fish and for meat). Though the pastry station owns the pastry ovens, we only had a little induction pad which we could not use for larger amounts since we did not have the appropriate pots. So we used piano at the fish station (why not the meat station, I am not sure, but maybe to stay out of the sous-chef’s way). Now the chef de partie for the fish reminded me of the sous-chef at my first restaurant (it turns out, they are actually good friends): young, perfectionist, fit, arrogant, talented, and very very hot-blooded. You could see how proud he was of his station and always kept it sparkling clean through a reign of terror and intimidation. So back at the pastry station we had a long list of, well, pastries to bake, when all of a sudden I see the fish chef screamed the pastry chef’s name and barged through our station, through an emergency exit onto an outdoor patio I didn’t know existed. I thought he was just taking a break until I found out that the chocolate mixture had overflowed all over the shining piano down to the floor. Without a word the pastry chef started cleaning up… I think the only reason she didn’t get beat up was because she was a woman. They didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the week, and next time we need to heat something, we went over to the meat station.

Meta-graduation

I got my exam grades two weeks ago and it turns out I passed, so now all I need for my diploma is one last internship. It’s been unexpectedly bittersweet to get my results; though of course I hoped and believed that I passed, in the last six months I had a goal to work toward, and now that I have reached it, well I need to face the reality of working in a kitchen for real and not as an intern, as soon as this summer. Of course I am thinking of starting my own business, but I don’t feel like I’m ready at all; the restaurant business is so vast and there’s still so much to learn, and the more experience I gain the more I realize this.
In the meantime, I am searching for one last place to work as an intern. I sent an email to Le Petit Nice, which is the only three Michelin star restaurant in the area (the next one would be Alain Ducasse’s Louis XV in Monaco). I haven’t heard back from them so I am taking it as a sign to go elsewhere. Basically the chef’s reputation is amongst the worst I’ve heard of… he spends his time yelling insults at his cooks and gratuitously humiliating them. Why, do you ask, would I ever want to work with someone like that? For starters, the writer in me is fascinated by the caricature and simply witnessing him in action. How could I not want to work with him!
On the other hand, having spent two miserable weeks at my last restaurant, which almost completely sapped me of my desire to work in a kitchen, so I’m thinking perhaps that would be the wrong thing to do at the moment. My advisor also told me that I should do something I enjoy, as a present for myself, in French, “fais-toi plaisir” which literally means, “pleasure yourself” (you’ve got to love the French for this- I couldn’t imagine an American advisor giving me this kind of advice). Not to mention that I was reading the blog zencancook.com yesterday and there was an entry on spending a day at Eric Ripert’s le Bernardin in New York City. The author said that “I’ve been in quite a few fancy kitchens over the years and this one strikes me as one of the most kind, human and civilized i’ve seen so far. This is a culinary school of the highest level where everyone is given a chance no matter their background.” This means that you don’t have to be mean to be a great chef! As such, the search goes on, Le Petit Nice will not have the honor of working with me after all…

Of chives and risotto

My research for the next kitchen to intern in has brought me to a restaurant downtown. I had noticed the window several times before but it was always closed, so I set a date with my girlfriend to check it out for lunch. The owner is a Swiss lady and the kitchen seemed small but promising. When we got there we were greeted by the server and seated in the spacious, luminous room. I immediately liked the vibe of the place. I ordered ribs and my girlfriend a risotto with figatelli, a Corsican sausage. We were served rapidly and as soon as I got my plate I winced. There was pork (not ribs, by belly), sweet potatoes and leeks. Though it did not look like what I expected, that was fine. What stood out for me were the chives sprinkled over the plate: they were chopped irregularly, meaning to say some were longer than others. After spending hours over the last few months perfecting my chive and shallot-chopping, I had a moment of indignation, for lack of a better word (it was not revulsion, nor bitterness), followed by a resignation that my view of food served in restaurants (as opposed to homes) was forever altered. Those tiny green bits were like so many mini-Proustian madeleines for me, bringing back hours of concentrated effort in various kitchens spread across Marseille.
The rest of my food was fine, I finished it all, but would never serve such a plate in my own restaurant, no matter how modest the place. As for my girlfriend’s order… What was placed before her was a dish of rice (not Arborio) mixed with a bunch of vegetables and rawish sausage. Simply put, it was not good. Now she and I have had several discussions regarding risotto in the past, starting with my dismay at the French habit of adding cream to it (unlike the Italian way where the starch from the rice combined with the stock and wine is what produces the unctuousness). So when the server asked us how our food was, I refrained from saying that my chives were chopped irregularly, but my friend ventured to say that her food was good (lie) but that it was not a risotto. The server immediately headed to the open kitchen to tell the chef, a skinny woman with a huge head of frizzy hair, at which point we heard some loud voices saying that the food was how it was meant to be or something to that effect. It appeared that the chef was miffed by our feedback and screamed at our waiter who from then on ignored us completely. Welcome to the food industry in France, where the chef is always right…

Where I got paired up with the kitchen jerk

Not only did GG (see Kitchen drama, February 17, 2011 entry) not get fired that day but he stayed on, and I was assigned to work with him. The lesson here is that next time a chef tells you you’ll be working at the fish station, don’t believe him.
I’ve seen cooks scream and yell, but GG is in a whole different category. I knew it from the moment I met him and five minutes later he was telling me – telling, not asking – for my contact info so he could help me find a job – this guy was special, and not in a good way. He also told me that the restaurant was “merde” and that he couldn’t wait to leave, again, within my first few minutes of starting there.
He doesn’t have a foul mouth like the other chefs, no, he’s far too educated for that. He’s super smart (and reminds us every day), but his eldest kid is even smarter. He’s so good at everything he does… which explains why he is stuck at his station and not a chef of his own right at age forty-one and after six years of excelling in the kitchen (not!). I thought of telling the chef several times that I could not work with him, but though he almost did fire him, he’s still my hierarchical superior and the chef is on his side. I can tell that is so overworked and spread thin that it’s a matter of time till he cracks. He has three kids and a wife in a different town and works crazy hours. In the meantime he is as arrogant and pompous as can be, and had taken it upon himself to be my mentor, just like another supervisor I worked with at the United Nations…while we were both new to the office for some reason I was paired with him, and he too just kept doling out career advice on me, as if I wanted to resemble him… what makes these people believe that I want to be anything remotely associated with them? Who told them that when people are friendly it means “please teach me to be a jerk like you”?
Anyway, even though I told the chef at my interview that I didn’t want to be in the pastry shop, it so happened that during my first two weeks, one pastry cook resigned and the other was fired, leaving the pastry chef alone. Given that plus the fact that I was not getting along with my supervisor or Chef de Partie, I told the chef that I was ready to go sweet (I gave him a look that said “anywhere but with that lunatic you paired me with” but I’m not sure he got my subtle message).

So I spent my third and last week at the pastry station and it was like heaven. The chef was communicative and patient, sharing all his knowledge with me about melting points and oven ventilations and what not. He also made me do pretty much everything, so by the end of the week I was able to assemble and send out every single dessert on the menu, not the mention the after dinner sweets or “mignardises” (every French fine dining restaurant serves these at the end of the meal, after dessert). On my last day he let me bake a Fraisier (a lighter version of strawberry shortcake made with genoise, strawberries and cream filling), because I had mentioned to him that I liked it… I was truly sad to leave him.

The lost star

Monday morning I went to see chef Frerard at my previous restaurant (Les Trois Forts at Sofitel) to get him to sign some papers, and when I told him where I was interning he told me they must be really upset… that’s when I found out that Michelin’s list of restaurants for 2011 had just come out and that le Peron had lost their only star.
I couldn’t start to imagine how the chefs (there are two) must have felt like. Michelin stars are a huge deal in the restaurant world, and losing one can be devastating. I was in shock for the rest of the day, glad that I wasn’t working to witness the effect it might have on the staff. On the other hand, they probably must have had some idea that this would happen. I overheard a conversation about losing the star last week; talk about it was in the air. There are many reasons one might lose a star, and everyone has their idea. Someone mentioned not changing the menu often enough, someone else, that the tables were too close together... I also have my idea.
So yesterday when I came in, it seemed like business as usual, with only the pastry chef asking me if I heard the news. There was only one chef out of the two present, and he didn’t mention a word about it all day. All in all, there was no hysteria or bitterness or even sadness, the staff seemed blaze about the whole deal, some joked about it. Somehow, we had noticeably less clients than the week before.

Early influences

I have been thinking a lot about my style of cooking ever since the chef asked me what my specialty was. Also, I have been getting more and more requests from friends for me to cook for them. I imagined what I would cook, and the images that came up instantly were of dishes I had not studied in class or observed at work. It dawned on me that all the stuff I have been learning did not translate easily into a home-setting. In conclusion, cooking in a professional kitchen is far removed from cooking in a home kitchen (especially mine!). Of course this has to do with the fact that I have so far been to “super fancy,” as my daughter would say, restaurants, where the food, if not pretentious, is definitely trendy and very sophisticated. For one thing, I would never serve and espuma or foam to my friends. Though I can enjoy it while eating out, I find it grossly overrated. Another ingredient often used in the kitchen which I don’t like at home is gelatin. If they are not folding cream into a dish, they are adding gelatin. So yes, it holds better, it’s shinier, it’s more manageable. I think it’s gross (except for sugar-free strawberry).
So to answer the chef, I told him I liked Asian flavors. The truth of the matter is that I don’t have a specialty per se, and I think this is due to the fact that I get easily bored always want to try new things. This means I have phases. For example I bought matcha, which is intensely flavored, finely ground Japanese green tea. For a few weeks I tried different things with it. Then I bought chestnut flour and tried to cook with that as well.
The food I cook is beyond fusion – I don’t like that term because it conjures a passing trend, whereas what I produce is what I would like to think as more authentic, though it comes from different parts of the world all at once.
As a child in Paris, my most vivid culinary memories can be summed up in two words: Japanese food and Fauchon. Back in the eighties there was no Bon Marche gourmet deli, there was Hediard and Fauchon near the Madeleine, and one of my favorite treats was the marron glace ice cream from Fauchon. I can see myself in my daughter who gushes with pleasure when she bites into something she finds delicious; she has the same taste for good food that I had at her age.
Other than that, I was a big fan of Japanese food. We didn’t eat out much, but when I had my holy communion at age seven or eight, I was given the privilege to pick a restaurant and it had to be at Benkay, the restaurant of the hotel Nikko, a few minutes from where we lived. At the time, the hotel was the epitome of minimalist chic for me (my daughter and I differ on this point – she prefers baroque) and the restaurant with its Japanese chefs at their grills was heaven. No sushi for me there, what I wanted was tempura, light, crisp and airy. Other than that, there was Toraya, a Japanese tea salon where they served the simplest summer delight of thinly shaved ice, green tea syrup and sweet azuki beans. So simple, three ingredients, and so perfect.

Kitchen drama

Finding my third internship was not easy. For starters, I am much pickier than I was four months ago when I was looking for my first internship; at that time I just looked at a list of top Marseille restaurants from a NY Times article and went to the one which appealed to me most; I was hired on the spot. For my second stint, I visited one restaurant where I felt the chef welcomed me hesitatingly before suggesting the Sofitel, which is where I ended up. Having worked at two fine-dining (or “restaurants gastronomiques” as they call them here), with large kitchen crews, I thought it would be nice to try a smaller restaurant, to work more closely with the chef and get a more intimate feel.
A classmate had been interning at a medium-sized restaurant not too far from my house, and when she told me she was too tired to work extra hours one Saturday morning I told her I would fill in for her (her chef had seen me and asked about me a few days before), which I did. Not to enter into too much detail, but I realized that I had probably been spoiled by my first two experiences with the beautiful, spotless kitchens and all the top of the line toys, and I knew from the moment I stepped in that I could not work there.
Next I ventured into another restaurant in my neighborhood and told them I was looking for an internship in a small kitchen. The chef offered me to try out one lunch service which I did – that didn’t work out either (cf. my entry on the smoking chef).
I also tried a small restaurant with one Michelin star and left my contact info with them; they never called me back, which I take as not an encouraging sign, so I did not really follow up.
Then I contacted two highly-rated restaurants along the coastline, though that implied that I would be back in the fine-dining/large crew mode, but both were closed for one week in February in the middle of my internship! I really felt like I was running out of luck.
Finally I called a restaurant which also has one Michelin star near my house… spoke to the chef a few minutes after I was taken. I guess it was meant to be. The reason I didn’t want to work at this place to begin with is that I heard a few negative things from several people about chaos reigning in the kitchen because there are two chefs instead of one…
My first day was bitter-sweet; sweet because I like the food I saw and the way the kitchen was laid out; all in one room (except for the pastry and fish shop), so that everyone gets a feel of what is going on. Also the view from the kitchen is amazing, with windows all along and the Mediterranean right below. The bitter part came as a result of the drama I was indirectly caught in on my first day.
Though I had mentioned to the chef who interviewed me that I was interested in working the fish station (the request was bold, but my cooking instructor had suggested I mention it, since did not want to spend a week in pastry and garde-manger again), the fish guy was not in and I was paired with the “garnitures” guy. His job is to prepare all the sides for the dishes, which requires constant coordination and perfect timing with the guys on the hot line. So Garnitures Guy, as I will call him, seemed really stressed out and unsatisfied with his job. In a few minutes he had told me all about himself, that his wife was Korean, that he had three kids and his eldest was fluent in four languages, that he had worked with Ducasse in Paris, etc. This guy was quite a piece of work. As the morning went on I saw that he was getting more and more stressed (he couldn’t even get family meal out on time), exhausted and overwhelmed and generally unhappy. Meanwhile I was just doing what I was told, namely peeling and chopping vegetables. At one point I was asked to prepare the salsifis (oyster plants) which are a bit tricky to handle, so the chef came and showed me what to do. A few minutes later, GG came to see me (I was stationed at the empty fish post at this time, a little bit removed from the main kitchen) and showed me his way to do it, which was slightly different from the chef’s. Of course this put me in a very embarrassing situation, and I just continued doing what I thought was the best way, half-way between the two instructions. A few minutes later I hear the chef shout my name, so I go to see him and he asks me: “Did you understand my instructions?” I hesistantly reply in the positive… “So why did GG have to explain it to you again?” I knew I was not in a good place at that point. I sort of mumble something and quickly went back to what I was doing. I realized that he was not angry towards me but towards GG. Apparently they had been experiencing some tension lately. After lunch everyone was cleaning up but GG was not in the kitchen. He was talking with the chef. At one point I heard him shout “What am I gonna tell my wife?” That was on Valentine’s Day.
The following day GG was no longer there – of course I didn’t dare ask if he had been fired. I checked the work schedule and he was indeed on leave that day and the following day. I ended up with someone else, still at the same station. Everything was fine until lunch time. I was chopping away by the window, with my back to the stove, thinking how distractingly beautiful the view was, when I suddenly felt like I was about to pass out. I had felt a bit under the weather for the past two days but could not afford not to show up on my first day… nor my second. Of course feeling a bit under the weather and going to work and sitting in front of your computer (which is what I did at my former job) is not the same as feeling that way and going to a kitchen where you are standing all day, cutting and lifting heavy containers and alternating between the cold of the walk-in refrigerator and the violent heat of the hot line. So I started feeling feverish and nauseated and I rushed to the basement to cool off in the walk-in. I did this twice before I started to feel better, at this point I didn’t care if they wondered where I was off to in the middle of the service. I don’t know how I managed the rest of the day but after work I went straight to the doctor and sure enough I had an angine or a throat infection. She prescribed me some antibiotics and told me to stay home for two days. Tomorrow I’ll be back in the kitchen, insh’allah.

The Epic Battle of Bonneveine – 4 February 2011

Last week was my week of exams which culminated in the four-hour practical test on Friday morning. We had to be at the other side of town at 7:30 am with all our cooking gear. The event was held at the Lycee Hotelier which is a high school where kids train for a career in the hotel and restaurant business.

There were about forty of us taking the exam that day, with a majority of adults. We were given numbers to identify us and were separated into two large kitchens where each of us had a full post with our own oven, burners, pots and pans and sink. It was a change from the small kitchen from my school, where we work in groups of five to seven, the other group rotating on theory. I was surrounded by people from another school I didn’t know.

Throughout the week I had been reviewing the exams from the past years; for the practical, you are asked to produce two dishes (plus side dishes), a first course and a main course or a main and a dessert. I noticed that there had been a lot of tarts (there are no pies in French classical cuisine with the exception of the Pithiviers which is a puff pastry pie filled with almond cream and only served during the Epiphany or Three King’s Day in January) so I practiced my crust all week. The two courses that made me nervous was the rabbit, since we had not seen it in class, and also trussing a chicken, which I had no idea of how to do (I tried to do it on my own with the help of the manual but it was a catastrophe).

Sure enough, when I saw the instructions laid out on the table alongside my identification number, there was a tart for dessert and a chicken dish for the main course. I immediately gained confidence since these were dishes I was familiar with. We were required to produce the following: Fricassee de volaille, champignons a blanc, riz pilaf et flan de carotte (Chicken fricassee with mushrooms, pilaf rice and carotte flan) et Tarte Alsacienne ( an apple tart with a flan filling). Being in an exam situation surrounded by chefs walking around observing you and taking notes is a nerve-racking experience. I did my best to keep my cool as I had heard of horror stories of candidates unable to perform because of the stress of the situation. I had to remind myself that this exam was normally taken at the end of a comprehensive two-year course, and that I had only been through two months of class and two months of interning in a professional kitchen. Still, reading over the recipes, my mind couldn’t help but racing with all the blood rushing to it, organizing the steps of my production, which I had to serve to the jury at the required temperature in time for lunch.

The crust

I knew without hesitating that the first thing I wanted to get done was the pie crust. Crusts have to rest to get firm and in some cases need to rest again once they are placed in the pan (I don’t know these technical terms in English, will need to look them up at some point). In certain cases, they also need to be baked empty and cooled before being filled. So I proceeded with my crust. Though I was confident overall, the pressure of the situation visibly clouded my senses, making me hesitate over things I normally wouldn’t. For example, it took me a while to decide whether to make the crust in a bowl or directly on the marble. I mentally performed a rapid scan of all the crusts made in class and in the restaurants and also the techniques described in the manual, which is our Bible. I opted for the bowl, a bit annoyed of wasting precious time on such a minute decision. Though the proctors advised us to focus on our work and not pay attention to what the others were doing, I couldn’t help but glancing around. That’s when I saw that everyone was chopping up their chicken! I was the only one doing my crust. This made me a bit nervous and undermined my self-confidence, so I read the two recipes over again. Yes, there was a chicken stock to make, but the clear chicken stock required in the dish only needed to cook for one hour (cooking times were not indicated in the exam recipes, we had to memorize them), this I remembered clearly as it struck me as rather short. So I continued what I was doing, a little destabilized. Like I said, I had done crust after crust over the past few weeks since this is one basic notion that comes up again and again and that we should know how to do by heart and blindfolded. As I started crumbling the butter into the flour with my finger tips, I realized how tense I was… almost to the point of shaking. It was the most tedious crust I have ever made, with each pressure of the still hard butter between my thumb and the rest of my fingers demanding seemingly the strength from my entire body. And this only a few minutes after the start of the exam! After a tremendous amount of effort, my crust came together. What a relief it was to put it away and start my chicken.

The stock

Stock is one of the most basic elements in the French kitchen (alongside pie crust!) and I managed to completely mess it up. First when I started carving the chicken, I couldn’t find the little fleshy part at the top of the leg (le sot-l’y-laisse) which is presumably one of the tastiest parts of the bird and which needs to be carefully carved away from the bone and attached to the leg. So here I was panicking, feeling the chicken up and down, not finding the damn thing, which is the size of a quarter! Till now I am still not sure I was able to find it and cut it correctly. Nevertheless I managed to cut off the legs and breast quite nicely, but it all went downwards after that. For some reason, I knew I needed to chop up the carcass (it was indicated in the recipe!) but I didn’t. I plopped it in the vat after only cutting off the wings. Then, I proceeded to chop the onion and the carrot. One of the inspectors was looking at me and I knew I had done something wrong (there is nothing worse than chopping something while someone with a notepad is staring at you and taking down notes; there were about half a dozen inspectors going around the kitchen observing us). That’s when I realized –the onion goes in whole with the clove stuck in it. I also forgot to add the leeks… in other words, my stock was not according to the book. I wonder how many points I lost for that.
Funny how when you’re in a stressful situation you can read a sheet of paper over and over and not take anything in. I didn’t know what to do next… should I start the flan or the rice? They both need to come out hot and it was still very early… I knew at least that I would do the chicken and the sauce last minute. So I continued with my tart.

The tart

All those tarts made at home really paid off because I rolled out my two shells (we had two to make in different pans) turned out beautifully. I was the first to pop them in the ovens and have them done, only to be told by my neighbor that they were meant to be eaten warm… I stand by my decision to serve them room temp to the jury and hope they agree.

The rice

The first time we made what they call rice pilaf in class I was appalled by the amount of butter that went in it. So I knew, I would put a ton of butter in this rice, as that is how the Gods of French Gastronomy like it. I kept thinking to myself, I have never, nor will I ever make rice like this at home! I followed the recipe to the letter, cutting out a wax paper circle to go over it, making a bouquet garni of leeks, thyme, and laurel to pop in it, and finishing it in the oven. It had to be all dente, salty and full of butter, nothing to do with rice in the Philippines…

The carrot flan

We made these little timbales of molded vegetable puree, eggs and milk in class and I thought they were the sorriest side dishes ever, bland and soft like hospital food. But here they were in my exam, and I knew how to do them. What I completely blanked out on, was how to kick off my bain-marie… I wanted to boil the water before pouring into the cooking dish and into the oven, but one of the inspectors was staring at me and made me so nervous that I just popped the damn thing in the oven with cold water. Sure enough, it took the longest time to cook, and my issues with my oven temperature did nothing to help.

The mushrooms

I am a big fan of one-pot cooking at home (everything cooks together, like in a curry or a chili con carne), but most of the garnishes in the recipes we do in class are cooked separately, which means if you have three different garnishes in your stew (say carrots, radishes and pearl onions), you need four different pots. Not the most energy efficient if you ask me, but that’s how it’s done. As this was a white dish, the mushrooms had to be white. So I scalloped them as per the recipe (cut in quarters diagonally) and then cooked them with lemon and butter. The result was appalling; they cooked unevenly and ended up browning in spite of the lemon. In French cuisine sauce classification is a big deal; it almost reminds me of United Nations Human Resources rules in its rigidity and detail. Let’s just say that in my case, my white sauce was very, very tanned.

The oven

Another thing I never did at home was to finish cooking my food in the oven. That’s how stuff is done here – whether it be duck breast, rice, chicken parts, what have you, it’s finished off in the oven. Thank god that in only four months of intensive cooking, my sensitivity to heat has greatly diminished. One hour into the exam I was overheating but that was normal. But what happened next really surprised me and it was both not so pleasant and very pleasant at the same time.

By the time my carrot flan and rice were in my oven (the tarts were in a separate pastry oven at the far end of the kitchen) I noticed that it didn’t feel hot (the oven, that is!). Normally when you open a professional oven you get a gush of hot air in your face which is unmistakable. I asked one of the proctors to check it and sure enough it was not heating well. He had to fiddle with it several times to finally end up setting it on full blast to get a semblance of a result. In the meantime, I had to take three of my dishes, the rice, the flans in the water bath and the chicken with the stock, in and out of the damn thing time and again to check them for doneness but most of all rearrange to fit everything inside. Now the oven was not enough to get things going but it was certainly hot enough so that all the pots inside were burning hot. After checking my chicken for the Nth time, meaning to say placing the burning pot on top of the stove, then back in the oven, then back on top, my arms were literally shaking. At one point I was so overheated, exhausted and exasperated that I took out the pot without carefully wrapping the handles with a rag… I immediately felt a searing sensation on my hands but I knew if I wavered the whole thing would end up on the floor, so with my arms shaking and my hand burning I managed to place the burning pot on top of the stove.

Now this act which happened in about a split second seems completely meaningless but meant a great deal to me. To put things into context, six months ago I had no idea I would be doing this and even less taking this national exam. For me cooking, at least professionally, was my mother’s territory. I loved cooking at home and entertaining but never thought of doing it as a job. When I visited my mom’s kitchen, there were three things I feared: the walk-in refrigerator, since I don’t like the cold and had nightmares of getting locked in there for hours, nobody knowing where I was, the deep-fryer, and the oven. I coiled from contact with extreme temperatures. And now, lo and behold, I could lift a burning pot out of the oven filled with chicken and stock and just tell myself, hey this is really hot. I feel like I’ve come a long way in the kitchen.

The girl next to me (who had destabilized me by saying that the tart had to be served warm) burned her arm and one of the proctors was attending to her with some white cream. As I ran cold water over my burning fingertips I realized that I needed them to cook and so could not ask for first aid myself. Funny how mind can overcome physical pain in certain circumstances. I still had a lot to do and so could not focus on the pain in my hand.

In the end I was the second person to serve my dishes at the correct time. My white sauce was brown, my tart was room temperature, my stock was leek and clove free… but overall I think I did okay. Two days later my body is still sore from the event, as if I had run a marathon. My hand doesn’t hurt so much so it must not have been such a bad burn after all. But in the midst of Friday’s chaos, I was able to pause and tell myself that there was no other place in the world I would have rather been, and no other thing I would have rather done at the time. With my sore hand and my greasy rice, I couldn’t help indulge in a moment of unadulterated cheesiness and smile, out of pure love for it all.

Like a firefighter

Of course I would have to pick the week before my exams to try out a new kitchen for an internship and volunteer to accompany Sara's class on a field trip.

There are many things about the restaurant I just came from that would make it an ideal place for me to work in: it's near my house, it's small (there is only the chef in the kitchen and his partner in the dining room), it's super clean, the food is decent, the interior is minimalist. However, of all the little reasons I would not work there (they put cream in their risotto, the dessert I had was underwhelming), the main one would be that the chef smokes "like a firefighter" as they say here (comme un pompier). All morning, it was cigarette after cigarette. Granted, there were not a lot of clients today so he had more time to smoke that usual. But when I saw the lit cig a few inches behind my back as I was applying myself with a pail of jerusalem artichokes (yes, again), I knew I could not work there. I guess I am getting picky, or perhaps I was spoiled with my two first experiences where the kitchens were spotless and everything was by the book. So yes, I can be "psychorigide" in the kitchen, which vaguely translates as ... anal (in the Freudian sense of course). I just believe that if there is a proper way to conduct a particular operation, then why not do just that and augment your chances for the best possible result. I realize that this is not brain surgery and that no one will die if a vegetable is peeled over a chopping board and not a poubelle de table (table trash bin) but I think that there are a few good habits I have picked up and don't want to compromise.

Warning: do not read further if you are vegetarian!

I asked around and few of the others in my class if they were at the hotline. In most of the restaurants, the chef or the sous chef are the only ones who supervise the cooking of the meat, not the lowly interns (usually right below the apprentices and above the dishwashers in the kitchen hierarchy). So I guess I should be honored that the Chef last week granted my wish to spend my last day at the grill. He sent me to the meat, and not the fish station.
Working at the meat station implies handling raw flesh. After lunch was over, I was given the task of preparing the pigeons that I had just seen being cooked and served. I was enthusiastic at the idea of doing something new, and thought I was really tough, working the meat station with my own knives. I had no idea what I was in for. I was given a huge box which contained over a dozen birds with their feathered heads still on, their sharp beaks and eyes tightly shut. This must be some kind of sign of freshness, to keep the heads on, as the Chef had once paraded a headed chicken wrapped like a papoose around the kitchen like a proud father with a newborn baby. The cook who was showing me what I had to do took a bird, stretched it a bit, grabbed some shears and cut off three of its toes, leaving the middle one intact. This one he shortened with a swift snap. Then with a cleaver, he clipped the wings, and the tail. Finally he pulled the head, performed a precise incision along the neck, lifted the skin covered with pristine white feathers off and gently tugged on the skinned neck, cut the skin, and then brought his cleaver down over the neck, beheading the animal.
So I tell myself (the cook has already left at this point, without noticing my bewildered look), “well, you’re a cook, you like challenges, you can do this, it’s not as bad as that box of furry rabbits at the other restaurant.” I grabbed a pigeon and started pulling. The sight of the intact head was appalling but so were the feet with their granular surface and the hooked nails. I cut the toes off, then the wings, then the ass. I made a cut through the skin of the next, through the feathers, and loosened the skin. I cut the skin, then the neck. At that moment, the most ridiculous and disgusting thing happened: grains of corn started falling on the chopping board. Whole, dried, bright yellow kernels and some wheat too. I don’t know why, but I found that more revolting than anything else, almost obscene in an indescribable way. Almost all the birds had them, their not yet digested food tumbling out of their dead bodies.

Back to school

I was happy to go back to class after my three-week stint at the Sofitel’s restaurant. What made it even better was the fact that we were in the kitchen for the full day, instead of half-day as usual (the other half of the day is usually devoted to theory, eg. categories of sauces). Everyone was ebullient with questions and ready to share their experience of the past month. Our teacher expressed her disappointment at the number of absences; a portion of the interns happened to get sick between Christmas and New Year, at the dismay of their respective chefs.
Yesterday the class successfully prepared a hundred-guest new year luncheon for the staff of the school and the region’s administrative offices (whose funds we are enjoying). Having confirmed my preference for savory over sweet both at home and at work, I was able to do the stuffing for the cherry tomatoes (goat cheese, fresh cheese called faisselle, olives and chives), flip a couple dozen crepes, to be filled with caramelized pineapple and secured with orange zest ribbons en aumoniere, and finally, prepare and cook the guinea fowl in orange sauce. Being by the fire, facing the heat, is what I like best.
All the guests were extremely surprised and pleased by our performance. We had had puff pastry with different savory fillings for appetizers, then the stuffed cherry tomatoes, tuna-zuchini roll-ups and foie gras with onion chutney for first course. Next came the guinea fowl in orange glaze with orange supremes (everthing was bite-sized) and white fish with balsamic cream and alfalfa sprouts and spinach leaves. There were slates covered in a variety of fine cheeses… and to end, the Galette des Rois or Pithiviers (puff pastry filled with almond cream, typically served during Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day), chocolate cake with crème anglaise (vanilla cream), and the aumonieres with their caramel sauce. At the end of the day I felt a bit sick from all the food. I have never in my life had so much foie gras or galette. On the other hand, I was happy with our team work and felt ready to take on more!

Kitchen characters II

This week I met another kid, at the hotel’s café, where the chef sent me to help out. The café is in the lobby and has its own kitchen, except without an oven. It has a full view of the old port with its magnificent forts (which give their name to the hotel’s main restaurant). Kevin was alone when I found him – or rather when he found me waiting for him - and looked very surprised to see me; as a matter of fact he immediately called the chef who confirmed to him that I would spend the day there. I joked that I was sent to keep an eye on him… It turned that we had a very good day together, though I did more mise-en-place (that is, preparing the ingredients for the dishes) than actual cooking. I don’t mind – actually I relish any job I am given, since I consider any task a learning experience. I often think of Helene Darroze, a top chef in Paris and chef to my former sous-chef – whom Alain Ducasse sent to “sort salad” for six months in Monaco, though she comes from a lineage of famous French chefs.
Kevin is one year older than Petit Jean, and has worked in the kitchen since he was sixteen. He told me about his work at the fish station in Avignon and how much he loved it. When I asked him why he left, he told me the hours were too long and he and his girlfriend wanted a change of scenery. So while he was hired by the Trois Forts’ chef, he was sent to the Carré. He missed the hot line and the fish. Apparently he had a similar disappointing experience in Lausanne, where he applied at the hotel Beau Rivage where Anne-Sophie Pic, the most famous female French chef, held court. He was so excited to be working with her, but when he reported to duty he was sent to the café, and had the frustrating experience of making salads and club sandwiches while watching the chef work her magic on the other side of the glass in the main kitchen. He told me he would have stayed on had he found housing.I think these kids would do great in the States... they are so young but already so knowledgeable about classical French cuisine and techniques. I really need to catch up!

Kitchen characters

Working in the kitchen, you meet a whole different type of profile than at the UN, but somehow, people’s stories and lives are just as interesting. As previously mentioned, the average age encoutnered is roughly twenty years old, without counting the chef of course (thank god they are older than me, at least so far). As such, I have met two very interesting eighteen year olds, whose stories, for their young age, really captivated me. First was this little kid in the garde-manger, and when I mean little, he is shorter than me and they actually nickname him “petit” Jean (not his real name). I met him while I was still working in the pastry station, which is adjacent to his station. He flattered me by saying that he was convinced I was his age (yeah right), and then made me wonder about his life when he said he spent Christmas with his cat eating McDonald’s take-out. I thought it that was strange, for a kid his age, from here, to be spending the holidays like that. I got to know him a bit more during my second week which we shared at the same station. When he came in late last Monday the chef de partie (boss of the garde-manger) was worried because he was not picking up his cell phone. Later that day he showed up with bandages and scratches on his face; he was in a car accident, his friend was driving him home when a car collided with them head on; the driver was drunk and was driving in the wrong lane without his headlights; Jean’s friend did not survive the crash. Jean told me it was the fourteenth person he had lost over a period of two years. I could not imagine how at eighteen years old you could lose so many people, except of course in a war or disaster situation. I wanted to know more but of course left him alone.
It turned out that Petit Jean was my neighbor. He lived alone with his cat in an apartment close to the hotel where he had been working for over a year as an apprentice. When he first started he was working the hot line, the meat station to be more precise. One day he was cooking next to the sous-chef and there was a huge vat of hot oil on the stove for potatoes. As the kitchen got busier, the oil started to smoke, and so petit Jean picked it up to carry it away somewhere out of danger. As he was going through a doorway and shouted “chaud devant” which is what you do to warn someone to get out of your way in the kitchen, another cook didn’t hear and showed up in front of him. Petit Jean froze, and the burning oil made one slow wave which covered the pot’s handles and his hands which were holding them. As he let go of the pot in shock, the skin from his hands stuck onto the handles. He had to be treated for four months for burns at the hospital, and cannot tolerate being near heat anymore…