Thursday, November 28, 2002

Woke up at 6 am today to go on a field trip with the rest of the class to the big wholesale market in Rungis. Here, you can buy the freshest seafood, poultry, meat, vegetables, fruits, and flowers. They also have a dairy section with lots of cheese! They start the business day at 11pm at night! We were there at 8am and most of the buyers were gone -- they were already packing up for the day! The facilities were surprisingly clean, and although you can see pig’s heads, guinea fowl (still with feathers), and giant rabbits (all dead of course), the place wasn’t stinky at all.
Here're some images from Rungis:

The market is only open to members, so we technically couldn’t buy anything, but I managed to charm my way into getting a bouquet of white roses for my mom. She’s arriving tomorrow and celebrating her birthday here on the 30th.

After the field trip I hung out with some of my classmates. We watched Sex and the City and had Greek Food for lunch. It was fun!

Posted by Karen @ 02:23 PM PST [Link]

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

I’ve never eaten this much sugar in my life. Tonight I had 6 servings of dessert. The chef prepared three different kinds of cold restaurant desserts for our demo, so we ate those – then we had our practicals and made the same three desserts – we ate those again. Ugh. I was so hungry because we had class from 3:30pm – 9:30pm, I had no choice!

Today’s dessert cart included (from left to right above):

• Financier Pistache Aux Framboises, Crème au Chocolat et Son Croquant – Pistachio Financier with Raspberries, Chocolate Mousse and Crisps


• Brochettes de Mangue et Ananas Au Thym-Citron et Leur Sorbet – Mango and Pineapple Brochettes with Lemon-Thyme and Sorbet


• Vacherin Fraise, Crème Brûlée À La Noix De Coco – Strawberry Vacherin, Coconut Crème Brûlée (this was the best one!)

Posted by Karen @ 03:10 PM PST [Link]

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

I’m feeling much better in the kitchen – getting into the groove: faster, cleaner, more efficient. We did little restaurant cookies or petits fours. At some restaurants, they serve these with coffee (migniardises), or sometimes with the breakfast buffet.

Not a very clear picture of me and my cookies.

• Croustillant de Praliné Au Grué de Cacao – Crispy Praline with Cocoa Bean “Nibs”


• Moelleux Au Thé Vert, Crème Au Chocolat Blanc – Green Tea Cakes, White Chocolate Cream


• Cookies Au Chocolat et Aux Noix – Walnut and Chocolate Cookies


• Petits-fours en Pâte d’Amandes et Pignons de Pin - Almond and Pine Nut Petit Fours


• Diamand Chocolat – Chocolate Diamonds (not diamond shaped at all)


• Macaron Chocolat – Chocolate Macaroons with Pistachio Buttercream


• Viennois Aux Arômes de Jasmin – Piped Jasmine Shortbread

Posted by Karen @ 03:04 PM PST [Link]

Saturday, November 23, 2002

Still feeling alone here in Paris. I haven’t made much of an effort to make friends yet. I’ve met some cool people in school, but my shy demeanor has kept me out of their plans this weekend. Most people are off to Brittany because we have a 4 day weekend. This is the last long weekend we’ll have until graduation – the schedule is going to be tight, with some days requiring 9 hours of work.

Today was rainy and cold. I managed to sneak into a brasserie for lunch and had a Salade Landaise (greens with gizzards, tomatoes, and a poached egg). It was quite comforting, but more because I was right under the heating lamp. Finished my late lunch with a cup of espresso and a small piece of dark chocolate. Parfait.

Last Thursday we had a different chef – Chef Nicolah, the head of the pastry department. He looks really young to be the head of the department – he probably started baking at 12. He’s more serious than Chef Pascal – he wants everything neat and orderly – I was a bit stressed. We made two cakes, Tropic (joconde sponge around the sides, hazelnut dacquoise on the bottom, banana compote and coconut mousse on top), and Macaron Chocolat Pistache (3 macaron layers, chocolate mousse, pistachio crème brulée).

Posted by Karen @ 12:48 PM PST [Link]

Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Just in time for Christmas, we learned to make different 'buches' or log cakes today. We made two types of buches -- Bûche à la Mangue et À la Framboise (with mango and raspberry) et Bûche Suprême Chocolat-Vanille (chocolate ganache and vanilla mousse). Today didn't go extremely well. I was in charge of the mango mousseline, and I was ahead of everyone in the beginning -- everything was going well. As I was about to freeze the mousseline, my chef took one look at it, dipped his finger in and tasted it, and had this ridiculous look on his face. "Am zorry, bat you av to repeet. Zer iz zomezing wrong wiz it." True enough, I had put too little mango puree. We were supposed to triple the recipe since we were working in groups. I tripled everything except for the mango puree. This is just one of the many disasters our group had experienced today. Our chocolate mousse hardened too quickly and my groupmate had to redo that as well. We forgot to make the crumble for our buche so we had to scrounge for some from other groups. Then our buche was falling apart as we were decorating it. So I'm not so happy with this -- as you can see from the picture, it is quite messy. We didn't really have time to make it really nice. I only have one buche here because we're not done with the chocolate one yet. On a happier note, I was able to open a French bank account today, using my primitive French skills! :)

Posted by Karen @ 03:20 PM PST [Link]

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Today was a 'tart' day. The chef made 3 different types of tarts during the demo -- Tarte Seville, Tarte Normande, and Tarte Creole. All tarts have a sweet pastry crust, but have different fillings. The Tarte Seville is filled with chocolate almond cream with apricots and apricot ganache. It has a chocolate circle on top. The Tarte Normande is filled with caramelized apples and clafoutis, topped with a vanilla chibouste (pastry cream with gelatin and Italian meringue). The Tarte Creole has a sponge cake on the bottom, coconut mousse and decorated with Italian meringue and fresh pineapple. For our practicals, we just made the Normande and the Creole. Still a LOT of work. We already worked in groups and still finished late! Here're my tarts:

Posted by Karen @ 03:54 PM PST [Link]

Monday, November 18, 2002

Bonjour à tous! Je suis à Paris enfin. :) I arrived last Thursday, everything went pretty smoothly, except that my landlady was late so I had to wait outside the apartment for an hour. She’s nice though. I thought my French was good enough, but that confidence level dropped pretty fast the moment I arrived. It’ll take a while to get used to speaking again. I spent more than an hour trying to get my phone line installed. One thing you have to learn here in Paris is PATIENCE – especially if you don’t speak the language. Anyway, today marks an achievement, I now have a phone line, a cellphone, and an internet connection. Yey!

So today was my first day of school, and it was far from perfect. Everyone in my class spoke excellent French, so they didn’t have any trouble with our chef’s demonstration (which was all in French). During our practicals, I came in a bit late (but they actually started early, wasn’t my fault!), so I was a bit behind all throughout. I’ve always been the slowest one in class though. In addition to being slow, I screwed up a lot today. Oh la la! C'est n'est pas bon.

We made 3 soufflés chaud (hot soufflés): chocolate soufflé with orange confiture and orange segments, coconut soufflé Malibu with pineapple garniture, and apple soufflé with crème anglaise and caramelized apple balls. For the apple soufflé, we baked it in the apple shell. Pretty cool. Forgot to bring my camera to class though. Ugh. Here's a picture of me in my apartment...

Mon Appartement À Paris

Posted by Karen @ 03:39 PM PST [Link]

Sunday, November 3, 2002

For the long weekend, my barkada and I decided to go to Tagaytay to catch up with each other and reminisce about old times. We stayed overnight at Tara's vacation house, talking nonstop about everything from shoes to shampoo to boys, relationships, and how we all dreaded turning 26 and beyond.

Sheryll brought some Arctic Melon Vodka and Ge brought the 7up -- nobody got drunk this time though. We all fell asleep like old hags before that happened. Lightweights. We spent the earlier part of the night watching a pirated DVD copy of Sweet Home Alabama -- a good movie to watch with girlfriends, except that we kept hearing laughing noises from the audience; whoever created this DVD copy must've been taping it inside the movie theater. Towards the last half hour, the film quality started getting worse and we could barely hear anything. Straining to read the subtitles, we made out two words... THE END. The movie ended right there, without us knowing who ended up with whom and how. That's what you get for 2 bucks.

It was Poky's 26th birthday today and we surprised her with a cake. There, in the center of it all, two candles, one a 2, the other a 6, staring at us -- the big 26. Sheryll and I will be its next victims. We were talking about how sad we usually are during our birthdays. It was so much better when we were kids, balloons and gifts were enough to make our day. Very different now, too many worries and fears about life.

I'm leaving for SF in 3 days. I feel sad about leaving home again. Weird how I always feel sad about leaving, whether it's from San Francisco or from Manila. As Reese Witherspoon said in the movie, "I'm happy there, but this fits too."

Posted by Karen @ 04:49 AM PST [Link]