My first practical class!

Today, I had my first practical class where we made the rustic vegetable soup that we learned during our demo the previous day. It was a pretty stressful 3 hours in the kitchen especially considering that I couldn't understand what the chef was saying. The practicals are only taught in French, and there is no translator in the room - eeeek! The worst was when the chef was speaking to me directly, and I had to try my hardest to figure out the gist of what he was saying. It's time to dust off my good ol' Rosetta Stone and start doing more lessons.

The Basic Cuisine class is split into smaller groups for the practicals. In my group, Group D, there are only 8 of us (3 of us from the States, 2 from Turkey, and the others from Netherlands, Chile, and Russia). I seemed to be the slow one of the group. The chef even helped me shell my green peas since I was behind the group. I finished last out of everyone in the group, but when the chef came by to taste my soup, he said my veggies were cut well, the seasoning was good, and it was "Très Bien." Phew! Cutting up all the vegetables was good practice, and with our new, sharp knife sets, it was so much easier than it usually is at home! They gave each of us a cake-size tupperware box with our equipment so I took home my rustic veggie soup, which is what we'll be having for leftovers for the next couple of days. :-)

We also had a "conference" today, which was basically a lecture where they don't cook any food. The Chef went over all of the equipment we would find in our practical rooms, some history on equipment and being in the kitchen as a chef, and also the who's who inside the kitchen of a typical restaurant. I looked around the room during the conference today and quite a few people had bandages on their fingers from the first practical - ouch!! I'm glad I wasn't one of them!