Seasonal fruit flan, tartare sauce, shrimp beignets, eggs, eggs, and more eggs

I love when there is a dessert component during demo class. Chef made seasonal fruit flan today, and I can't wait to try it at home.

Chef also made veal marengo, potatoes anglaise (again!), shrimp beignets, tartare sauce, and eggs every which way. The tartare sauce is made by first making mayonnaise and then adding herbs, shallots, and hard-boiled egg. Someone asked why mayonnaise in the store is white but when we make mayonnaise, it is a pale yellow. Chef replied that it was the preservatives in store-bought mayo that makes it white - eeewwww!

At first, it seemed a bit weird to me that they would teach us how to cook eggs but it makes much more sense now. How silly would it be if you attended Le Cordon Bleu but didn't know how to properly boil a hard-boiled egg? During Basic Cuisine, we've been told that we'll learn every way that you can cook an egg. We've already learned the proper way to make omelettes, and today, we learned about hard-boiled eggs, soft-boiled eggs, coddled eggs, and fried eggs (but not the kind of fried eggs we're used to). For hard-boiled eggs, bring a sauce pan of water to a boil, salt the water, gently place the egg in the water, remove the egg after 12 minutes, and place in an ice bath (or run under cold water). By putting the egg in the water after it starts to boil, it will re-center the yolk. By salting the water and placing the egg in an ice bath, it will make the egg easier to peel. For soft-boiled eggs, do the same as you would for hard-boiled but remove after 6 minutes in boiling water. Coddled eggs are placed in ramekins in a hot water bath before being placed in the oven. Fried eggs (in French terms) means poaching the egg in oil - yikes!

I had a 4 hour break in between classes so I met Quinn for lunch in St. Germain at Cafe Mabillon. Thanks to the handy dandy internet, we saw that someone had posted that Cafe Mabillon had the best croque monsieurs and croque madames in Paris. That person must have had too much wine with their meal because Cafe Mabillon was mediocre at best. It was overpriced and the food was below average. At least their fries and the service were halfway decent. The tables are uber-tiny there so when I went to cut into my sandwich with my fork and knife, I flipped my plate (it was hanging off the edge of the table) and knocked over my wine glass. Oops! In a matter of seconds, the waitstaff had cleared our table and poured a bucket of hot water over the spilled wine on the sidewalk. I was impressed how quickly they resolved everything. I guess I'm not the first to have made that faux pas at their restaurant.

During practical class, we made the shrimp beignets and tartarte sauce as well as the cheese souffle that was from one of our first demo classes. The shrimp beignets are marinated in parsley, oil, and garlic and then dipped in a frying batter before going in the deep fryer... pretty easy... I would have liked to learn how to make them without using the deep fryer since that is one item I will never purchase. It's such a shame that the cheese souffles only last just a couple of minutes before they deflate. At least they still taste good after they deflate!

It's dangerous that Deliziefollie has such good caramel gelato and they are just downstairs from the apartment. I indulged in a cone of caramel and amaretto gelato after class since it was such a warm night!

Beef bourguignonne, potatoes anglaise, and heart-shaped croutons

If I had to choose between beef bourguignonne and caldereta, I would choose caldereta in a heartbeat. Everyone was raving about beef bourguignonne but I couldn't get over the fact that caldereta is just sooo much better!! :-)

We finished off the beef borgogne during our demo class this afternoon, and when Quinn and I chowed down for dinner, we had it with some leftover rice... we're true Asians... can't live without our rice.

We're starting to make the same things during practicals and demos that we've already done. I don't know how many times we've turned potatoes and cooked them in salted boiling water... I guess they want us to practice turning our vegetables... At least we don't have to turn mushrooms everyday!

To plate with today's dish, we also made croutons. Chef showed us how to make heart-shaped croutons so that's what I did with my white sandwich bread during practical. The croutons we've made are probably one of my fav things that I've learned how to make. Never again will I buy a bag of croutons at Safeway! Homemade is soooooo much better (and sooo easy!). When we plated our dishes today, we were taught to dip the end of a crouton in the beef bourguignonne sauce and then dip it in chopped parsley. It's so easy and adds a little flare to the presentation. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to do that to all of my croutons during practical class so I threw the chopped parsley and leftover croutons in my tupperware and hurried home.

Cafe Verlet, Red Meat-Part 2, Student dinner @ Guy Savoy's L' Atelier Maître Albert

You really can't go wrong when you get coffee in Paris... or maybe that's because I can't tell the difference between one Parisian cafe's coffee to the next. We saw an online recommendation for Cafe Verlet as the best coffee in Paris so Quinn and I checked it out before my class. It was the first actual coffeehouse that we've gone to in Paris; the only other coffeehouse-type places in Paris that we've seen have been Starbucks chains. While Cafe Verlet had a selection of coffee beans from all over the world, I couldn't tell the difference between the coffee that we had there and the coffee that we'd get at our neighborhood cafe... oh well. Since it was lunch time and I would be in class for the next few hours, I ordered a crumble to tide me over. After Quinn and I devoured it, I realized that I probably needed something with at least a little nutritional value for lunch so I ordered the Quiche Lorraine. It was fluffy, tasty, and yummy!

During today's demo, Chef finished off the beef bourgogne, made potatoes anglaise, croutons, prime rib, and tomatoes provencal. He warned us not to eat too much before tonight's student dinner, but I couldn't help myself!

Le Cordon Bleu holds a student dinner for each 3-month class session. Ours was held at one of Guy Savoy's restaurant, L' Atelier Maître Albert. The menu consisted of a cold pea soup with a poached egg, cod with pureed potatoes and herbs, roasted chicken, veggies, a rhubarb madeleine with ice cream (and poached celery?), wine accompaniments, and coffee. Quinn joined me as my guest for dinner and he had a chance to meet the Chefs as well as some of my fellow classmates.

Red Meat-Part 1, the search for the perfect pastry cream recipe continues

Our series on red meat started today. We learned the different parts of the cow and what cuts they produced, and during demo, Chef made the marinade for beef bourgogne, roasted sirloin steak with jus, beef with onions and carrots, and pureed potatoes (mashed potatoes!).

I had a lengthy break between classes so I walked home to meet Quinn for a quick lunch before his boxing lesson and then continued my search for the perfect pastry cream recipe. We had FIVE different pastry creams as part of our tasting: the one I made two nights ago, the one I made last night, the two I made this afternoon, and the pastry cream in Stohrer's millefeuille. I also made another batch of choux pastry to accompany the various pastry creams I concocted. I varied the amount of eggs, vanilla, butter, sugar, cornstartch, and cooking methods in my different recipes and I found a winner! Thank goodness! I'm on the verge of pastry cream overload. For three days in a row, I have had pastry cream and/or cream puffs for dinner... probably not the best thing for my girlish figure.

When I got home, Quinn gobbled up the sirloin steak, jus, and mashed potatoes that I made during practical. I've made mashed potatoes a million times at home with some success, but never have I made mashed potatoes like I did tonight. They were delicious! This recipe's a keeper!

Le Relais Gascon

Le Relais Gascon, "the salad joint," has been on our list of to do's since we got to Paris. I read about their amazing salads on some online reviews and it definitely lived up to the hype. My salad came in a large bowl with greens, foie gras, smoked duck, lots of potatoes, and tomatoes. It was, by far, the best salad I've had in Paris (and maybe ever). The dressing was light and tasty, the potatoes were perfectly crisp, and you can never go wrong with foie gras! We had a long lunch accompanied with a carafe of wine and followed by cafe creme.

Deep in thought...

A lot of our time in Paris has been focused around mealtimes. I'm not quite sure if it's because of the lifestyle here, the great food, or both. Only in Paris will I hardly think twice about spending $60 on lunch. Lunch is now my fav meal of the day. Only in Paris can I have a 2 or 3 hour lunch any day of the week. Splurging on lunch and having a more reasonable dinner (i.e. last night's dinner of cream puffs :-)) is one way we've managed our budget in Paris. Paris can be a very expensive city, but you can still experience all of the great food at a more reasonable price if you splurge during lunch instead of dinner.

Pho 14, Dalloyau, cream puffs

A lot of our restaurant picks are from our research on the internet and the guide books that we have. Most recommended place are pretty decent or outright delicious so we took a lengthy walk over to the 13th arrondissement to try Pho 14 on Avenue de Choissy. The place was packed and there was a line of people waiting outside to be seated. We both ordered pho, their signature menu item, and were incredibly dissapointed. It's only in France when "average" equals dissapointment. It was an average bowl of pho, nothing special, and not too tasty. At least it
was cheap (in Paris standards!).

We made a repeat visit over to Dalloyau to try their Opera cake. After the last time we went to Dalloyau, I did some research online and learned that Dalloyau was the original creator of the Opera cake so of course, we had to go back and have it there. Quinn had the millefeuille, which is inching up on our favs list. One thing that I love about the cafes in Paris is that you can order just coffee and/or dessert and sit for hours on end. The waitstaff won't bring you your check until you ask for it since they consider it impolite to give a guest the check before it's asked for. We sat for a good 2-3 hours enjoying our cafe cremes while I studied some of my notes and Quinn was on his laptop.

We've been eating a lot of pastry cream lately in the different desserts that we've been eating so I decided that it was time for me to do a little bit of baking. I made choux pastry and pastry cream to make cream puffs, which is what we ended up having for dinner (oh so healthy). I was also going to make caramel sauce but ended up burning it so I made a sugar decoration instead. I am now determined to make the perfect cream puff. It might take me a couple of times, but I have some ideas on how I want to tweak the recipe I made.

Le Grand Epicerie picnic, Giverny

During one of our first weeks in Paris, we visited Le Bon Marche and what we thought was Le Grand Epicerie. It turns out that we had gone to the cafe of Le Grand Epicerie instead of to the store itself. It's a gourmet food store the size of a supermarket. It reminded me a little of Marche in Toronto but a whole lot bigger!! Any foodie would love strolling the aisles of Le Grand Epicerie.

They had food aisles that represented the different parts of the world. For the U.S. and Canada, they had peanut butter, Dr. Pepper, Kraft Mac & Cheese, and lots of marshmallows. It's too bad that they didn't have any ketchup chips!! It was interesting to see what was considered "American" since the one "American" meal I can think of (hamburger and fries) isn't even really American (origin was from the German port of Hamburg).

Le Grand Epicerie has everything you could think of. They carry 5kg jugs of Nutella, duck confit in a jar, and have huge sections for the usual French staples (bread, pastries, fish, meat, different ethnic deli stations, produce, wine, etc.). I guess the sections are much like any other supermarket but the food is just so much better!

We went shopping for a picnic lunch and picked up Bordier butter (beyond delicious - recommended on David Lebovitz's blog), a baguette, comte cheese, wine, chocolate croissants, foie gras, and prosciutto. We had an amazing time sitting in the park, being goofballs, and feasting on our picnic. Today's picnic was one of my most fav experiences so far in Paris.

After we were all stuffed full of French goodness, we headed towards Gare St. Lazare to catch our train to Giverny. Giverny was the location of Claude Monet's garden and home. The water lily pond in Monet's garden was often the subject of his famous painting. The gardens and the pond were beautiful. I got a little snap happy with my camera!

Gelato pit stop (as we stood in line to get into the gardens and Monet's house)

Monet's beautiful gardens

Reflections on the water lily pond