Tuesday, May 4th.
8:35 am. Where is the
beef
?
8:55 am. Anyone seen the
tenderloin
9:34 am. WHERE THE HELL IS THE BEEF?
I know very few people these
days are old enough to remember the old
Wendy's commercial, that was I guess as viral as viral could be in '85. For those of you not in the know, these three old ladies just wanted what all
old people want, what they paid for. Today group C of superior cuisine faced a similar dilema in our morning practical. No beef. For the first of our two practical classes of the day we started with a
marinated beef tenderloin dish with beets and
diakon radish . Sounds pretty exciting, I know, but only one thing was keeping us from beefy tenderloin nirvana. Apparently the
school ran out of tenderloin.
When we got to class I guess there was only enough for 3/4ths of the class to get some beef, and to be honest what was there didn't look all that stellar anyway. Me Mike and Jorge decided to give up our pieces and wait for the 2nd batch which was promised to be on its way in a few minutes. Me and Jorge are both dirt poor and basically live of of what we can scavenge from the LCB kitchens. Our plan was simple. We'd make sure the rest of the class got their
meat first, be the heroes of course, then take all of round 2 beef for ourselves to cook for the rest of the week. So we stood around and smiled and waited. As the minutes grew it started to become more of an annoyance and not very funny anymore. See the thing is we needed to marinate the tenderloin in a soy based marinade for at least 45 minutes. Now this is really nothing in terms of marinading a piece of beef, but with the time constraints of our classes we take what we can get. The fact that we had no beef to
marinade just compounded the problem. So we made the marinade and put it in the fridge awaiting something to put inside. The next step in the recipe was to start browning the beef trimmings and
mirepoix to make the beef jus. Of course again we hit a road block. We simply proceeded to do everything we possibly could besides work with the tenderloin, but even with that we found ourselves standing around and scratching our heads a bit too often. Eventually the beef came from somewhere in the depths of the prep kitchen and we had to furiously play catch up to finish on time. The recipe was good and the class ended up fine, but yeah in my opinion it was a little bit annoying.
The problem as we see it is why exactly is the school running out of beef. I mean I know things happen, but it's just something else we chalk up on the "why do we pay so much to go here again" list. This is something small compared to some of the issues at LCB, but kind of annoying when you're
cooking a beef dish and are literally left sitting on your hands. Instead of beef jus I had vegetable soup. Instead of roast beef I had roast beets. Oh well, that's my rant for today.
And now it looks like the rest of the post which I've been typing for about an hour has been deleted! I'm going to blame this one on my lack of a brand new
macbook. I mean im using like the model T of macbook pros right now. 1 GB of ram? what's this, 2007? Anyways I'll try and re create what I had wrote as best I can before I pass out. Were going to
Rungis in the morning, and I need to be up around 4 to watch
baseball and get ready to go. But since I'm always such a studious
blogger and never ever forget to blog for weeks nay, months at I time I guess I'll tough it out. This time. The things I do for the readers. All two of you.
Well anyways before I was interrupted by my lack of a serviceable macbook, I believe I was talking about class. Well for our practical class we ended up getting the substitute
chef. Apparently from our brief conversations together she has a pretty interesting story. The way she tells it, she was living in
Korea well on her way to becoming a doctor. She had finished all her schooling and years upon years of training, culminating in her residency. This is when she discovered that she didn't want to fix people at all, she wanted to cook for them. So she packed up, left her steady career as a doctor in Korea and came to
Paris to study at
Le Cordon Bleu. She finished with her
Grand Diplome, then attended a few more Parisian culinary schools. After she got a job working at the 2 star
l'Atelier de Joel Robuchon.
Putting aside the fact that she is legally a midget, even with her toque on, she is a great cook and a good instructor. She is definitely the youngest chef at LCB (which isn't saying much for the other Chefs) but she's also the only female chef I've ever seen in the place. Shes primarily a substitute chef and never instructs for any of the demonstration classes at school. I think she just comes in and babysits us during our practicals when another chef has an emergency or something. I'd like to have a demonstration class with her sometimes, because honestly I feel like she can relate more to the students. I mean for one she actually went to Le Cordon Bleu, and she didn't start cooking in the 50's like the rest of the Chefs. Sometimes I think our usual chef's think a new recipe is something from '87 or before. It's just good to get a different perspective, and one from someone who's worked in a Parisian kitchen in the last 10 years.
The thing I like best about having her in class has nothing to do with her culinary skills though. I like the fact that she harbors a certain disdain for our super flamboyant Peruvian classmate David. David is a great guy and super nice, but definitely gay as a picnic basket. I mean there is certainly nothing wrong with that, but sometimes David lives in his own world of skipping, giggles, and ooh la-las. It can be a bit grating sometimes when you are trying to get down to brass tacks in the kitchen. He is really hilarious though and seriously needs his own cooking show. I wish I could video tape some of the things that come out of his mouth, along with all of his zany mannerisms. Our petite Chef isn't afraid to put him in his place though and I love it. Below is Jorge and Chef giving him a taste of his own
burre blanc while hes trying to concentrate. Don't worry though, right after these pictures were taken he burst into a fit of giggles and blushing.
For the last practical of the day the recipe called for fish and
French toast. Naturally I got a little excited about this, but it ended up being nothing like I envisioned it. I was thinking of maple bourbon French toast with cinnamon and powdered sugar, but what we got was just fish and croutons. It tasted good though. and was a nice plate visually. Looks like something you might actually be happy with ordering in a restaurant for a change. Although it would be interesting trying to turn those croutons into mini pieces of french toast and then sticking them to a piece of fish, those flavors just seem a bit well, evil. Well that's it for me, as I need to wake up in 4 hours I should start on first going to bed. Over all though it was a good day for us culinary students. A very long day, but a good one. A cooks day, if you will
Ok, well back to writing! Before I forget, I actually Graduated!! We'll not to much of a surprise there, but I did, and it does feel like more of an accomplishment than I thought it would. Nothing against the school, it's just that it wasn't exactly a high attrition rate.I'm pretty sure only one person didn't pass and that's because she bombed the cooking final. Even one girl who was caught cheating still graduated, albeit a big fat zero on her written exam. I think i'm going to come back to graduation and write a bit once I get some pictures. Besides, I just finished my first 2 days at my stage, and I'd much rather discuss that and what I think about working in France. For Those of you who don't know I am going to be working temporarily at Le Chiberta. It's a Guy Savoy restaurant, but certainly not his famous 3 star restaurant with his namesake. It's a medium sized upscale type of place with one Michelin star. As I'm writing my this I finished my second day, and let me tell you, it is very intense! The food, the chefs, the kitchen, it's all extremely fast paced, but yet comfortable at the same time. I just wish I knew more french!
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