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.