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!