Barcelona

So I know this post is un peu en retard, but better late than never! A week and a half before school finished, my girlfriends and I figured we should plan a mini trip during the week we have off before our stages began. I know as a stagaire without a real income, I should be pinching every penny so I don't end up broke, but when they suggested a 4 day trip to Barcelona with tickets at 90 euro, I had to say yes!

I've never been to Spain, and my Spanish is a bit rusty, but it was more than enough to order some sangria and tapas! Of course one of us is a native Spanish speaker, so filling up on regional specialties was not a problem.

Our first night we has some tortilla espanola, various pickles and olives, beer, sangria, and bocadillos, which are baguettes with an assortment of fillings.









We stopped by the famous Boqueria off of La Rambla to purchase some food to cook one night. They have colorful and impressive stalls, but its nothing when you compare it to the bulk of the Rungis market.









We also visited Park Guell, Sagrada Familia, and a house that was redesigned by Gaudi. Impressive, yet a bit ostentatious; I think I still prefer Paris.











My favorite part about the Barcelona trip other than noshing on some yummy eats with my girlfriends? Searching for some hot chocolate with churros. Though the churros we found weren't that fresh, we were able to get some super thick and rich chocolate from Escriba bakery. Yum!



For more Barcelona pictures: Linky

Mortification

mor⋅ti⋅fi⋅ca⋅tion - /ˌmɔrtəfɪˈkeɪʃən/ –noun:
A feeling of humiliation or shame, as through some injury to one's pride or self-respect.

So it happened. I did something really really wrong. Well okay, to be honest, I did a few things really really wrong. At least I lasted until the afternoon of my third day before screwing up. At least.

Our chef at Ferrandi was always telling us to never sit around and watch milk boil; there's always something else to do in the kitchen. Usually I pride myself on being able to multitask pretty well, but maybe the stress of a new environment and fatigue was catching up. So, I was asked to make a chocolate sauce for profiteroles. Pretty simple. Milk + glucose + chocolate. Voila. Well, taking chef's advice while my milk was boiling, I went to quickly do some dishes. A few seconds later another pastry cook runs in telling me to go get my milk, as it had boiled over. Ugh. I had to redo it.

My nerves already frazzled, I remeasured all the ingredients and put the milk to boil again. This time as I was prepping my chocolate, another stagiaire splashed some raspberry coulis on my hand... and I was temporarily distracted... and hear a different pastry cook yelling, "THE MILK!! THE MILK!!". NOT AGAIN. Thank god he lifted the pot as it barely boiled over. But it was too late. Our pastry chef looks at me and sternly says, "Thats the second time, Diana... the SECOND TIME."

Okay, so no screaming, but at this point I was feeling completely shitacular. To make matters even worse, someone left a huge hobart mixer bowl full of crap in the middle of the aisle next to a sink where it should NOT have been. Guess who ran smack right into it? Guess?!? I should have moved it... that was the thought that ran through my mind a split-second before the pile of crap teetered and crashed all over the floor. Not even a second later CM comes out of his office yelling in French "What is this f*cking catastrophe?!?!". Sadly, its name is Diana. Mortified, I couldn't stood frozen as my nice coworkers ran to my aid.

It could be worse I suppose. And as my friend and fellow Ferrandi alumni Joan says, "Its ok, cuz you know if you spill stuff now.. then later the chef will be like omg you improved! You are amazing. I'll remember u as the girl that spilled everything but came out a superstar!". Yeah... in my wildest dreams. Thanks for making me feel better though Joan! Well, on an upside, I have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off to nurse my wounds and rest my tired feet.

Jour 1 in the Plaza patisserie

So orientation day was a piece of cake compared to my first day in the kitchen. It's hard enough to drag my lifeless carcass out of a cozy warm bed at 6 am, let alone baking, trying to understand another language, and trying not to mess up and get yelled at.

The first half of the day was actually quite nice. I spent the morning in the boulangerie portion of the patisserie making petit pain, croissants, pain au chocolat, and pain au raisin. Well, technically I helped out a lot. The two boulanger chefs are joksters and not what I was expecting for my first day. They were really nice to boot!

Well, that was the first half of the day. The second was a lot of work, followed by fatigue and a few embarassing moments. I'm too exhausted to think clearly, let alone be funny... so maybe a list will suffice.

First day highlights:
1) Uberfriendly boulangers
2) Coworkers willing to speak slowly in French and motion w/ their hands as if you're 'special'
3) Witnessing amazing desserts take form
4) Working next to CM (though I don't think he works much... more like gives orders and tinkers around in the kitchen)

First day downers:
1) Work from 7:30AM-6:30PM
2) Having to say "Je n'ai pas compris" (I didn't understand)many many times
3) Almost tripping and the Alain Ducasse boulanger asking me if I've been drinking
4) Splattering strawberry juice all over my whites
5) Running into CM after spilling juice all over said whites
6) Coworker telling me I have juice on my face...an hour and a half after spillage
7) Being told I need to remember to work 'intelligently'... but hey expecting someone to use a 2 foot ladle to ladle juice from a huge bucket high up on a countertop into plastic bags isn't quite ergonomic.

Well, I'm sure it will get better with time. My main goal at the moment is to not horribly maim nor embarass myself. I think that's maybe doable. Wish me luck!

Plaza Athénée.. jour 1

Okay, so I'm technically blogging out of order, but I'm not sure what people want to hear more about.. Barcelona or first day of my stage. I'm thinking the latter, and since the latter doesn't require me to post any pictures, I figure it will be a quick fix for my adoring public. Remember, first hit is free and soon I'll start charging!

Yes I'm still quite on a high from my first day. No I didn't have a baking sheet thrown at my head... no I wasn't locked in the walk-in. It was actually a day full of orientation. I showed up at HR at 9 to be ushered into a room of 8 other soon-to-be stagiaires/employees. We had breakfast together, got our uniforms, had lunch, did a tour of the hotel, and all in all it was very civil! And I think I'm oriented for the most part (though I managed to understand about 80% of the French).

I'm not sure what tomorrow will bring, actually being in the kitchen and messing up left and right whilst trying to decipher French. I'll have to say, touring the kitchens and hotel was quite amazing. I imagined Alain Ducasse at Plaza Athénée, to be much larger, but it was still quite stunning. And it also turns out that AD has his own pastry department, so Christophe Michalak... the resident pastry chef, is actually my boss (or more like my boss' boss' boss). Yippee!! My favorite part of the hotel? The doohickeys on the floor that you step on...and then voila a hidden door opens up!

Most people don't think about how much detail goes into prestigious hotels since, quite frankly, most of us can't foot the bill of a hotel where a standard room is 700 euro a night. From panoramic views of the Eiffel Tower, to Mont Blanc pens on the desk, to ostentatious looking Louis IV style furniture with enough gold on it to blind a person, its no wonder that the larger suites go from 5k to 22k euro a night! There are people who tailor your minibar to your preferences, make sure that your bed is made exactly how you like it, and if you want to get rid of all the furniture and bring in your own? Completely doable.. if you can afford it. Apparently Salvedor Dali used to reside at the Plaza for months at a time and would paint on walls and have his pet ocelot/leopard rip apart the furniture.

I'm still amazed by the Plaza right now... but maybe reality will set in tomorrow. At 7:30 AM to be precise.

Graduation

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

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



My family from Bussy St. Georges (suburb outside of Paris) even came to celebrate!



It was a bit sad saying goodbye to Chef and my classmates, though I'm sure I'll see some of them soon enough. For most of us, its onward and upward. Though I'll be going to Plaza Athénée, my classmates are going to prestigious places such as Hotel Meurice, Pierre Gagnaire, Jacques Genin, Pierre Hermé, Ledoyen, and Hotel Lutetia. It will be exciting to hear about everyone's stages.

Here's a last look at les filles in the lab. Congratulations everyone!



* I generally don't post pictures of people on my blog, so if you have any objection, please let me know and I'll remove it!

Ice ice baby!

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



To carve the ice, we used large chisels and, yes... chainsaws. I think my dad would be rather proud. At least now I know how to hack something into a lot of pieces if I ever need to.





After hacking away at the ice for a good hour or two, my sculpture began to take form. Can you guess what it's going to be?



It's Feathers McGraw from the Wallace and Gromit movie, "The Wrong Trousers"! Yeah I know, I'm a big nerd, but at least he turned out pretty well!

Normandy Day 3

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



We went tromping around in the mud and up and down sand dunes. It was freaking cold, but the scenery was worth freezing my toes off.







For lunch, we dined at what I can at best describe as an Asian fusion restaurant. They had an array of things on the menu including, curries, tempura, nems (eggrolls), thai soup, etc.







I'm not a big fan of any fusion cusine, but I guess in this part of the world people don't differentiate Asian cusine much. For example, I've realized that all eggrolls are called 'Nems' in France. Nem is ground pickled pork (as in nem chua), in Vietnamese cusine. Also, all Asian restaurants seem to serve shrimp chips, which are invariable Southeast Asian. To see shrimp chips served in a Chinese/Vietnamse/Korean fusion restaurant is a bit weird.

On the whole, the class trip to Normandy was really fun, but tiring. Sadly a few of my classmates got food poisoning from... dessert 'Nems' they ordered for lunch. Now that I've got Normandy, Paris, Provence, and the Cote d'Azur down, I still have a lot of France to explore, including Brittany, Bordeaux, and Burgundy to start.

Normandy Day 2

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

We went to the town of Isigny to a butter factory that is collectively owned by cow farmers. The factory makes butter, creme fraiche, cream, and milk powder for baby formula. My favorite was watching the butter oozing out of large agitators and packaged.







After the butter factory, we lunched by the sea on fresh seafood. Of course I opted for the huitres and moules (oysters and mussels). The mussels were served with the obligatory plate of frites. Yum!







We also visited Pointe du Hoc Ranger Memorial, Omaha beach, and drove by the American Cemetery in Normandy. Remember the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan? Yup, these are those very same 'stormed' beaches. With friends who always played WWII video games such as Wolfenstein or Call of Duty, it was eerie to actually visit the memorials. Crazy to think how many people lost their lives and that I was walking where decades ago bloody bodies were strewn about. It was a very humbling visit.

Normandy Day 1

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

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





We then went on to Mont Saint-Michel. Unfortunately it was so foggy that you couldn't even see anything from the parking lot.



Though foggy and cold, the visit to the abbey was still fun. It boasts gorgeous columns, ceilings, and a cloister.

Coming to a close...

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

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

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

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