First week

The first week has gone by and I barely had time to write anything on this blog. Mostly because I was too tired but also because I've started "feeling the Intensive burden" (as people say around school). I'm doing the intensive program at LCB, so the classical program of 3 months is packed up in 5 weeks, and that way we have between 9h to 12h classes per day (on some lucky days, only 6 hours).

Here's some pictures of what we've been cooking.

French onion soup & Grilled Salmon in bed of spinach and a chive butter sauce

Puff pastry filled with leek fondant, poached egg and sauce Albufera & Omelette aux Champignons

Canelloni aux Épinards and Poached Chicken with Riz au Graz and Sauce Supréme

The stock for the consommé is cooking on the left and on the right you have Roasted Chicken served with its Jus and a turned artichoke with Jardiniére de Legumes

And here are some of the dishes plated by me. I always seem to manage to forget taking pictures of what I cook in practicals, unlike Alla in our practicals that does a whole photo reportage on our cooking in practicals. :)

Pissaladiére (on the left), Quiche Lorraine (center) and Consommé with a Brunoise de Légumes

The reviews have been mixed. On most of the dishes I did one thing very good and other things so-so.  When we did the salmon today, I managed to have a good sauce (good consistency - the flavor was too acidic) but the spinach needed more salt and the fish was overcooked - probably because some of the ovens on the practical rooms are a bit off. Oh well, but I'm here to learn and I'm slowly noticing a progression in the way I organize myself in the kitchen. Today, I was pretty fast with the salmon but Chef Xavier Cote also helped by keeping the pressure high and I thrive under pressure.

On other subjects, let me give you an idea about our group. The Basic Cuisine Intensive group is made of people from Canada, US, Singapore, Taiwan, Turkey, Russia, United Kingdom, Indonesia, China, France, Spain, Greece and Portugal (me, of course - although there's a girl from Portugal doing pastry). Throughout the rest of the school you have as many nationalities as you can imagine, which makes the school a very interesting place to be and meet new people. Throw into that the fact that the ages range from 18 to 50 and you've got a pretty eclectic mix. In practical classes, we're divided into three groups of ten and I was really lucky to end up in a nice group. I instantly bonded with Alex (USA), Erdem (Turkey) and Diane (Singapore). We usually hang around together and help each other out during practicals.

This last weekend my friend Gonçalo was visiting and we went around to do some sightseeing and mostly... eat. We ended at this really nice place on Saturday, that Alex suggested. Since he suggested it, he got to trail along. The place is called Les Galopins, it's in Bastille and they serve this amazing shoulder of lamb with potato chips and mustard. I died and went to heaven. It was delicious.

Alex is ready to dig in the lamb shoulder

Now, time to stop writing, iron my uniforms (class photo tomorrow), clean the apartment and go through my notes since we start practical at 08h30 to cook this:

Paupiettes de veau bourgeoises

Life at Le Cordon Bleu is not a piece of cake.

À demain!

P.S: Injuries so far have been only some cuts and some burns, but that's part of the job.