Lesson 1 & 2: Sablés et Pate Brisée

I feel like I’ve been in school for a month, despite the fact that it’s only been a mere seven days. That’s always the case though, the beginning feels long and suddenly two seconds later it’s the end. My friend once sent me a birthday card that said the first twenty years of life are the longest, which made me incredibly sad because I had just turned nineteen and thus, only had one more year until everything would start moving ten speed. However, as much as I wish it wasn’t, that statement is so very true. I’ve already been here for over a month, school has started, and I’ve started to worry about final exams. I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but the thought of having to memorize recipes and execute them under time and pressure makes me nervous. Actually, just being in the kitchen with a short tempered chef makes me nervous (and stressed), so maybe I should think about getting over that before thinking about exams.

Besides the angry French chefs, classes have been very enjoyable. Lessons are broken down into two parts: a demonstration and practical. During the demonstration, one chef makes a couple of recipes that highlight the theme of the lesson. Then during the practical session, we make one or two of the demo-ed recipes. The first lesson was on sablés or shortbreads and the second was on apple tarts using pate brisée or sweet short pastry.

Sablés are pretty versatile and can be made with liquid (eggs and cream) or without.  The chef baked (I think) ten different variations of cookies using one base recipe: vanilla, chocolate, with orange zest, marbled, pistachio crusted, etc.  During the practical we baked diamonts, diamonds, or slice and bake shortbreads with a white sugar rim.  They’re called diamonds because when made with crystal sugar, they shine like a giant diamond rock (corny, but cute).

For the pate brisée lesson we learned about tarte aux pommes, or the classic French apple tart, tarte tatin, and tarte Normande. Each crust was made with the same recipe but executed in a slightly different way.  For the tarte aux pommes, the dough was chilled, rolled, and shaped in a tart ring.  In the tarte tatin, the dough was rolled, cut into a large circle, then placed on top of the oven cooked apples towards the end of baking.  And lastly, for the tarte Normande, the dough was shaped in a tart ring and prebaked.

During practical, we made the tarte aux pommes, which consists of a cooked, diced apple filling, decorated with thin apple slices, then baked.  The hardest part was formed the crust, which had to be done in a specific way, using certain parts of your thumbs during different steps of the process.  Then afterwards, the rim had to be carefully pinched with a pincher/tweezer type utensil, which also required extensive finger action.  My crust turned out to be imparfait as the chef critiqued, and the apples didn’t reach edges of the crust which was bad, but he said the arrangement of the slices were très jolie.

By the end of my second practical, which ended at 21:30h (LCB runs on military time), I was really glad it was the weekend and I had a drink and friend waiting for me at a cafe.  I’m still getting used to French people/chefs who make it a point to embarrass you when you get something wrong, and making it even worse by talking super fast and extremely loud in French even though they know you don’t understand.  They said there was going to be a translator, but they failed to mention that the translator would not be in the practical session.  It’s fine, maybe my French will improve faster this way.  Chefs are supposed to mean, haughty, and insulting anyways.  I’m sure they’re perfectly nice and normal outside of the kitchen.