Bate Bate Chocolate

Whenever I work with chocolate, I would remember my cute little niece, Nicole singing her favorite song by her favorite cartoon character, Dora. Buh-tay, buh-tay, cho-co-la-tay.....buh-tay, buh-tay, cho-co-la-tay. She'd repeat it time and time again, making circular motions with her right arm, stirring her invisible pot of chocolate. If only she knew how difficult working with chocolate can be......
Last week was chocolate week. We spent an entire week on nothing but making chocolate and chocolate desserts. I could never have enough chocolate - I absolutely love them, but tempering chocolate? Now, that's a different beast altogether. I have a lot to learn and work on when it comes to chocolate. Croissants and laminated doughs? No problems. Macarons? Easy feat. Tempering chocolate? Yet another mountain to conquer.
Here's what I made last week:

L'Opera - I tried two different designs and picked one for presentation. Which one do you prefer?

Dark, milk and white chocolate layered dessert:

Milk chocolate layers - does anyone recognize this? It's sold in individual serving pieces in pâtisseries like PH. Hint: sweet pleasures.

Milk chocolate bon-bons

Dark chocolate truffles and bon-bons

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Thé à la mode

I went back to Le Bristol again for tea over the weekend, this time, for their thé à la mode -  fashion high tea. I have not heard of the designer - Avtandil Tskvitinidze and I have a hard time pronouncing or even spelling his name - but I've been intrigued by the whole concept of showcasing latest designer collections and pairing them with delectable pastries. Nevermind that it wasn't  Lagerfeld, McQueen or Mizrahi; I had to go for the experience.

Avtandil's Spring-Summer collection for 2011 was inspired by 

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Angelina, sans Brad Pitt: a behind-the scene tour

As part of the learning curriculum, the school organized a pâtisserie visit to Angelina's this week. Angelina - not the actress but the infamous Parisian tea salon and dining room, with its glorious gilded ceilings, trompe l'oeil walls and classy ambience that was once frequented by famous celebrities the likes of Coco Chanel and Katherine Hepburn.

Despite having two class sessions preceeding the visit, I was psyched about the tour as we will actually get to visit the production area where they

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A Thanksgiving Meal in Paris

Day 13 in Paris.

13th day of a strange nomadic life in Paris, waiting, waiting, and still waiting to move into the apartment. It's really quite a challenge to settle in when you continue to live out of suitcases, having to pack up your things every morning before heading to school since you're never certain when you have to check out of the hotel and move into another place. The program is very intensive, I'm only here for a short time but the situation with my accommodation makes it seem that it's been forever. I missed the great view from the apartment I had rented in summer

But getting to witness the hustle and bustle of the city and waking up to the delicious aroma of freshly baked French breads every morning is not a bad thing either. I'm thankful.

I don't get to prepare my

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MIA in Paris?

Why has Jen been so quiet? What has she been up to? Could it be that she has stopped blogging? Could it be that she’s enjoying the beautiful weather in Paris so much that she’s out and about every minute of the day?

Could it be that she had been so overwhelmed by school, what with 9 hours worth of classes almost every single day that all she wanted to do during breaks was to catch her breath and perhaps find the time to eat some decent food? 5 days, 6 demos, 5 bakes with 6 desserts in total, no solid food in between aside from all the sweets! By the way, we are a quarter-way through the course already.

And what about the in-between class breaks? Jen gets to be a nomad in Paris. 3 moves within a period of 9 days with another move - final one, hopefully - coming up in couple days. Cloud in the silver lining? Well, I guess she should rejoice that she wakes up to different views every other day!

When the last class of the week was over at 9:30pm on Friday, everyone was more than ready for the weekend. Just when you think the weekend is for catching up on sleep, enjoying Paris and blogging (perhaps), you end up having to bring your “sick” computer to see her “doctor”, wasting precious weekend time being in a place that you didn’t really plan to visit in the first place.

Despite not having any appointments, the staff was extremely kind and showed much empathy when I explained the problems that I was having with my Powerbook
and how badly I need to be able to work on it over the weekend. Tapping vigorously on their little iPhone screens networked to their centralized booking system, they put me right on top of their queue list. It took almost half a day but at least I wasn’t asked to come back another day et voila, I’m now back online again! I must say, it was one of the greatest customer service experience I’ve had in Paris by far. The GeniusBar team at the Apple retail store at Opera knows what they’re doing and Sebastian, merci, merci mille fois for your diligence!

I got to stroll around the Opera and surrounding shopping area a bit while waiting. The city is gearing up for the holiday season indeed.

Here’s my favorite photo of the entire week:

Opera de Paris Garnier. Can everyone take a guess at what I’ll be making in class first thing Monday morning?

And in case anyone is wondering how my Mean Chef is doing:

Il est en plein forme, non?!!!

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Back to School Again

Here's Chef JJ in action right at about 8:32 am (classes started at 8:30 am). Unlike that first day, we sailed right into the first demo class - sans the meet-and-greet-at-Jardin d'Hiver, sans the welcome speeches, school tour, introduction to les chefs  - skip all of that and get right into action while the rest of the visitors nibbled on LCB's signature croissants and enjoyed morning coffee downstairs. Due to jet lag, I've probably slept only a total of 10 hours over the past three days,  was wide awake since 1 a.m this morning and was so looking forward to a welcome breakfast in school.  There wasn't even any student introduction time this round. Since it's not a cohort system and depending on the program selection, you don't necessarily end up with the same group of students whom you started the course with, over 80% of us were new to each other. The group this time is pretty small - only 20 of us - and from the several students I've had the chance to talk to, they are all from the industry. I did, however, get to meet a student who's still in the corporate world and just taking some time to be in Paris, work from Paris and continue the advanced level courses as a "hobby" simultaneously. So see, to all you out there who's thinking of making that jump, perhaps there's a way to work out an arrangement with your bosses to still keep your jobs - be it to take a no-pay leave of absence or offer to work remotely, then sign up for culinary courses in Paris. I'm not sure how much real work one can actually do while living here, but hey, it's the best of both worlds, really.
Back to reality. Chef JJ demo'd a rather strange mix of pastries to us today, nothing like what I thought we'd be learning as a first lesson at this level. We made two types of pastries for our practical session that immediately followed the demo class today:
Streusel - a base of puffed pastry (which was purposely not allowed to over-puff) layered with fromage blanc (a white, creamy similar-to-but-less-tangy-than yogurt dairy product), apricot halves then topped with mixture of butter-flour-sugar pushed through a wire-mesh strainer to get spaghetti-like streusel:

 Almond cake - a moist, decadent cake made with three simple ingredients: almond, butter and sugar, our first gluten-free dessert from LCB,  I believe.

And guess who was le Chef for our practical session? The gentle, kind and lovable, my most absolute favorite chef in ze worl, Mean Chef! I didn't think he'd still be so involved in the advance levels but there's a food and beverage convention going on so Chef MOF probably had bigger fishes to fry. Mean Chef was in a particular jovial mood today, even gave me a cheek-to-cheek kiss when he saw me, and looked seemingly pleased to see some familiar faces. An occasional yell here and there, pushing us to speed up but no ridiculous tantrums so far. All in all, a good start and thank goodness it's been a bit mellow day as that's what this sleep-deprived body needs. That, and sleep. Bonne nuit à tous.

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Shooting for the Stars

I spent the evening at one of my favorite neighborhoods in the City - St. Germain des Prés - with my favorite girlfriends from school whom I haven't seen over couple months. I picked our rendezvous point: Café Germain because I wanted to meet her - yes, the lady who's literally shooting for the stars that you see in the photo above.

The fashionably chic, high-heeled, yellow trench coat and ridiculously tall - towering over two whole floors - Miss Sophie

This award-winning design stylish Parisian café in St. Germain des Prés is a popular gathering spot for the chic and trendy locals - the place to  see and to be seen and sometimes if you were fortunate, you might spot a celebrity or two hanging out at the bar. There weren't celebrity sightings this evening but we did have a wonderful dinner there. The place was not packed for a weekend but granted, it was a Sunday evening and our waitress told us that had we been here on Saturday evening, we would not have had a chance to even enter the place for drinks and those with reservations had to wait a good hour before seats were available.
The service was good - it took less than twenty minutes for us to be seated, orders taken, drinks and entire meal served for a party of four, which come to think of it, is très, très excellente by Parisian standards. Hamburgers on Poilane bread, Fish and Chips, BLT sandwich with roast chicken; the menu is distinctly non-French but has a playful French flair on popular Western dishes. The staff spoke good English, but that's quite a norm in this expat-friendly neighborhood. I had a melt-in-your-mouth salmon confit with lime aioli, arugula salad on a bed of potatoes while the girls had - oh why must they - Fish and Chips! The portions were reasonable, as was the price (at Euro 19 per item)

I would certainly recommend this place for casual dinner or drinks - the lounge upstairs offers a warm ambience for private group gatherings or small parties.

A perfect ending to a welcome-back weekend in Paris. Now let's just hope the espresso doesn't kick in until tomorrow; time to get some sleep and get ready for first demo in the morning. À bientôt.

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Paris Encore

Wet. Cold. Overcast. This, was the Paris I arrived in today. Clothed in gray, there was a certain gloominess that blanketed the City as the cab drove into the périphérique intérieur, markedly different from the warm, sun-struck days I had spent here just this past summer. 

Has it really been two months already? I've been enjoying the time at home tremendously so much so that I dreaded leaving for Paris again; 

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