pardon my french

Week trois: things I will never make!

As in most educational settings, you begin by learning easy things to build confidence, to get to know your teachers, classmates & learn general rules. Then you start to actually do stuff. LCB is no exception, and in our third week (or is it four?), we have made chocolate eclairs, are about to make veal stuffed with veal, pork and three different kinds of fat, and watched a duck terrine be prepared. All are things I will likely never make again. (Unless you really want me to make you eclairs…I could be talked into that.)

Yesterday morning, we watched the chef prepare chocolate eclairs and a few other recipes that use choux pastry. When it was our turn to make them, we were asked to prepare only seven, and I was honestly surprised at how much work those little things take! Choux pastry, no big deal. But then you pipe out your eclairs, eggwash them, score them with a fork, bake. Prepare the pastry cream, let it cool. Melt your chocolate with cocoa paste in a hot water bath, then add chocolate to pastry cream and pipe into your cooked choux pastry. Melt fondant (which is a whole other ordeal to make) into chocolate with red food coloring and top the cream-filled pastry and voila, you have an eclair. And the chef in our practical class said they have to be roughly the width of a hotdog bun. Really? To me that's too much of everything! Too big, too sweet, ick!

To add cream to the clogged artery…we watched the adorable Basque chef prepare pounded veal stuffed with, veal, three different kinds of pork, goose fat and cream. Oh-and mushrooms and shallots to get some veg in there! Then chef pulls out these huge sheets of pork fat…and hangs it across his back to demonstrate where they shave the huge slices off the pig. He cuts the sheet into one-inch strips and wraps them around the packets of veal to hold them together and add flavor in cooking. Then, braises them in veal stock (which takes about 4 hours to prepare in itself). Had I not seen how it was made, I am sure I would have enjoyed a few bites of this dish. But, I've never purchased large sheets of pork lard…and I'm happy to keep it that way, so this won't be going into me personal recipe repertoire!

Then, as the veal was braising in the oven, he began preparing the duck terrine. Basically a big loaf of duck meat, and of course wrapped in sheets of pork fat! The poor chef dutifully demonstrated how to make this antiquated delicacy with sauteed duck breast, ground duck leg meat, ground chicken & duck livers, prunes…and I'm to even sure what else (half way through I stopped taking notes). To top it all off he mixed milk with gelatin and poured a thin layer into a large silver platter. "Zis is not for eating, it is jus for presentation," he explained. Once the duck loaf is baked for four hours, and sits overnight with weights on top of it, it's unmolded, peeled of it's outer layer of pork fat and sliced. Those slices are arranged on the white milk jelly…because that makes it more appetizing?

Again I say, poor chef. He makes this dish that none of us are interested in making, and he knows it…but he does it with ease and a professional pride. He started by butchering a whole duck beautifully, and then moved through the dish relatively quickly, knowing he didn't have to be slow for us to keep up. Its like watching an artist paint, a math whiz breeze through an equation, or a virtuoso perform…it's just fun to watch someone do what they are good at. So, even on the days I don't want to taste a loaf of duck on a bed of gelatinous milk…I take comfort in the fact that I get to watch a master chef doing his craft.

As for the eclairs, I realize they are a staple in any French patisserie. They are yummy (when petite) and I am glad I have made them. It definitely made me appreciate all the little pastry shops that churn them out day after day. There's a lot of elements going on in those little guys, and it takes a lot of care to make them beautiful.

Many things take a lot of work, and I am happy to do it. But if you were hoping for a duck terrine in your future…sorry, not from my kitchen : ) I will be happy to prepare the salmon we made earlier this week. As chef said, "the girlz love zee salmon!"

Tomorrow, bright and early it's my turn to make the veal stuffed veal. I should get some rest!

Bon nuit!