Découvrir le pot aux roses*

I went to class today because if I miss another one, the Cordon Bleu reserves the right to block me from attending the rest of my classes. So I made a cake called "Dacquoise", which consists of two almond meringue cake rounds, separated by a layer of praliné buttercream, decorated with a marzipan flower.

As I beat and beat and beat "énergiquement," and by hand, the sugar and egg whites into a meringue, and as I stood for three hours in a small room that alternated over the course of the class from close to 85 degrees (with all of the ovens on) to 60 degrees (with the windows thrown open, the glacial northern winds blowing in), I began to feel quite sick. It is now several hours later. I feel fever returning, and my throat is, once again, sore and covered in white.

Perhaps I shouldn't have gone to class after all.

Having said that, I'm very taken with this cake. If this is the one that will throw me back into illness, it will have been well worth it. Aside from being perfectly delectable, the Dacquoise is very feminine and lacy looking, and making the marzipan flower reminded me, in the very very best of ways, of the numerous art kits Amy and I usd to play around with. It was so much fun! But take note, everyone: from now on, the marzipan flower will likely become a permanent fixture on my future cakes. I liked it that much.

I particularly enjoyed the feeling of mastering the recipe and techniques we used; cakes I can produce confidently (I am less sure about tartes and croissants). I was even congratulated by the chef at every step of my cake making for having:

1) the tidiest work-station
2) the most well-whippped and glossy meringue : )
3) the smoothest buttercream
4) the most inventive flower (I tried to make a camelia instead of the conventional rose)

The chef (Patrick, this time) came over to my station as I was finishing my flower and assembling the cake. As he peered over the marble, scrutinizing my pastry, I was quite scared he was going to yell at me for something, though I didn't know what. In preparation, I started offering suggestions like "is there too much powdered sugar? Are the rosettes poorly done? are the edges too uneven? Should I not have made a camelia?" I've noticed that if you recognize your error before the chef says something, the ensuing criticism is less explosive. But instead of making a critique, he looked up at me, expressionless, and softly said, "Mais...vous êtes une vraie artiste, madame." Those were the best words of the week, perhaps even of the month, and the ones I'll mull over when I'm feeling dejected.

Nobody's ever called me an artist before, though I can't think of anything I'd rather be called.

I've always wanted to "be an artist" of any kind. The people's lives I envy, the people whose lives I dream about having myself, are successful artists and creators. So though I've never felt like one, I've always wanted to be an artist.

And here the fiery chef has granted my wish.

*Découvrir le pot aux roses=to discover the secret. Literally, 'to discover the pot of roses'

PS Among other things, the blossoms of camelias are supposed to be, in reality, more flat.

Jazz and a teapot

Today I'm especially weak and light-headed, and I don't know why. I can barely stand up without falling over. But an hour ago I decided that I was tired of lying down, I was deafened by the silence of my room, and my eyes were watering from the gray, blinding light spilling through my bedroom window. It was then that I remembered the Chet Baker albums I had uploaded onto my computer in Michigan and the teapot I had bought after class two days ago.

After sipping on several cups of steaming Marco Polo tea, poured from my rustic, ivory-colored théière, and listening to an hour of Chet Baker, I feel less sad, fitful and alone. That combined with my resolution to write letters from bed, I'd say I almost feel cozy here in my apartment.

It's cold outside after all--18 degrees fahrenheit with windchill, 28 without. And the sky is heavy and gray. It's a Normandy coast gray, not a typical Parisian gray today. The Normandy variety of gray is darker, and feels closer to your head--the color is approaching graphite. Parisian gray is lighter usually, more reflective (in my eyes, anyway).

No matter, though; the essential thing is that Chet Baker adds warmth to the gray.

...I wonder if I would grow tired of Paris if I lived here permanently. Or maybe I would just grow to love it more and more. Somewhere in my thoughts it seems a pity that I couldn't have fallen in love with and lived in a more unconventionally loved city like...Kabul, for example.

I don't feel very original loving Paris, you see. According to the World Tourism Website, France has approximately 70% of the world's tourism traffic on its doorstep. So I love Paris along with everyone else in the world. But there's really no sense in my denying it, because it's obvious that I'm a Paris sort of person, and not a Kabul sort of person at all.

Being here, and being so happy here, makes me ask myself quite seriously, "Do I want this life?" When I try to think about what I want in the long term, I find myself trapped between essentially two life models:

1) Working long hours with little vacation or home-time (and potentially larger salary) in a job I might find fascinating, or

2) Working reasonable hours with lots of vacation and ample (but almost certainly not large) pay in a job which at times may be interesting, at others quite tedious.

In my opinion, many jobs in the U.S. fall into category 1, while many (let's say most) jobs in France fall into category 2. Although, what am I saying? Most jobs are probably tedious in the US, too. Anyway, sticking with the model for the time being, a perfect example of a category 2 job would be working for the United Nations in Paris. They have so much vacation time it's stunning. And they're quite well paid. Recently I met a man who works for the UN here. He says that the idealism with which he came to the UN was soon lost to the tedium and highly bureacratic nature of his job. Still, he likes working there because, after all, his life is very good and he feels he is doing something meaningful with his time at work nonetheless. I wonder what I would think about that kind of life? The only way to find out is to find out, of course.

On the underside of the cardboard lids of Stila eyeshadow there used to be famous quotes, like "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I hardly ever used the eyeshadow, but I remember the quote for how simple and obvious it was. It was so simple and so obvious that I had never thought of my difficulty with decision-making in those terms. It isn't the journey itself that I find daunting--it's that first, single step. For example, where do I go and what do I do once my classes here have ended? I just need to make one step, to something else, but I find myself paralyzed by the need to make the "best" step, the most "correct" step.

I suppose this is the burden of choice and freedom.

There are no doubt many people in the world whose lives have been pre-determined by their social, financial, and ethnic condition who would love to be in my place. Strangely, my guilty luck does not help me move forward. It just makes me feel guilty.

That being said, I do have one idea for what to do after my classes. Next week I will call a number of chateaux in the Loire valley to see if I could work for the summer with their team of landscape preservationists. Those are the people who, aside from ensuring proper preservation of the grounds and buildings, organize the historical tours and literature for the chateaux. I'm hoping that at least one of these chateaux would like to take advantage of my bilingual status to allow them to give tours in English. I've checked, and many of the more historically rich locations either do not offer guided tours in English, or they offer precious few (one, once a week, for example). My top choice is Villandry.

So there's Saturday's verbose update.

(photo at top is of the grounds of Villandry, early January)

London weekend

I'm contemplating going to London for a weekend if I can find a reasonably priced plane/train ticket. In the event that I do find this, I would love to have some well-informed recommendations for where to go and what to do. In all likelihood, I will be there only two full days, a Saturday and Sunday. If you have any ideas on the most clean, comfortable and not-too-expensive hotels, best places for afternoon tea, cute boutiques or restaurants serving upscale Indian cuisine, please let me know. These are not the only things I am looking for, but they are at the top of my list.

Also, everyone who knows me well knows that I like flowery things and flowery places. Any indications about where to find the most flowery charming corners of London will be greatly appreciated : )

Sick again..or, rather, 'still'

Yesterday I started getting sick again--my throat began to feel very painful, and I began to feel feverish. I've grown skeptical of the intelligence and competency of the doctor I have been seeing, who doesn't really examine me, doesn't take my temperature, and who doesn't ask me many questions. I enter her office, she says, "what's wrong?" I desribe my symptoms, she says "open your mouth" (from across the desk) and then declares "Oh, yes. It's strep throat." So today I went to the American Hospital in Paris to see what I hoped would be an American doctor.

I hoped that I would feel reassured by the familiar American hospital setting, full of American doctors...As it turns out, a good majority of the doctors are French, as are the patients, and the hospital looks nothing like an American hospital. For that matter, it isn't run like an American hospital, either. You have to pay in advance for the services (in my case, medical exam and visit, blood test and throat culture), but you have to pay in cash.

"Cash?" I asked, stunned.

"Yes. But I see you've already been to a doctor here in Paris--I'm sure you payed in cash then, too?"

"I did. I just thought this would be different since it's a hospital, and it's called "The American" hospital. I thought it would be more like an American hospital."

"Eh non."

The ATM was empty and therefore out of service...because everyone in the hospital has to pay cash. And there was only one in the entire facility.

I was instructed at the welcome desk that there was an ATM not far away, only about 10 minutes away, in Neuilly. So with my fever and my aching throat and my eyes watering and my scarf wrapped around my head, I went: down the hill over the bridge across the main boulevard took a right at the light then passed the bus stop to turn right at the next light to finally find the ATM (which, incidentally, instantly displayed an Out of Order announcement after I used it. I wonder where the next closest one is...).

The doctor 50 or 60, very French and made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn't tell if it was because he was a little bit of a lecherous older man, or because I wasn't accustomed to be looked at in such a...kind, smiling way while being examined. I'm accustomed to the doctor looking more at his charts than at me, and am certainly not accustomed to being patted on the back and being told, softly "Ne vous en faites pas, mademoiselle. Je vais m'occuper de vous--tout ira mieux dans quelques jours. Oh, ma pauvre." (don't worry, miss. I'm going to take care of you--everything will be better in a couple of days. Oh, my poor thing).

Anyway, he has presribed me with yet another round of antibiotics (this being round three). He explained to me that infections in France are harder to treat than in the US (where, as it turned out, he worked for 14 years), because French doctors prescribe too liberally antibiotics to people who don't need them. When it comes time to treat a truly ill person, the "bactéries" have become very resistent to normal antibiotics. All of that was to say that he thinks I have had the same strep throat the whole time, but that it couldn't being eliminated by the "weaker" (his word) antibiotics. He says the other doctor should have known from the beginning. He also says he's convinced that it will work this time and that I will be in tip top shape by Monday.

If not...I'll be a disaster.

I'm going to bed now, but if you have medical opinions, or words of comfort, please don't hesitate to call. I'm not very happy today.

(photo is of american hospital)

IMPORTANT PHONE UPDATE!!!

Starting tomorrow, January 26th, you will apparently be able to leave messages on my house phone. If I don't answer, the voicemail will pick up (but I don't know after how many rings). The automated message will only be in French I've been told, so if you don't speak French, just know that it's a recording for a message. So please leave me a message after the operator stops speaking.

If you don't have my phone number, or my cell phone number, email me and I'll give it to you. I'd love to hear from everyone...

My birthday weekend

That was the weekend involving January 14th, of course...I went with Stéphane to Reims and Nancy. On the day of my birthday, Stéphane took me to the oldest "maison de champagne" in the world. It is called Ruinart and was founded in 1729. The first picture I have posted is of the outside of the building, in case anyone is interested. It was built from the beginning to look like a large, fancy carriage house. It's quite humble looking really, given how prestigious its product is and how ornate some of the other maisons de champagne are. But it was beautifully maintained and impeccably decorated--very upscale modern french, complete with halogen lighting, chocolate brown velvety walls...We went on a highly detailed and informative tour of the facility, including the chalk mines which are typical of Reims and which is where much of the champagne is stored.

The next picture is of me and Stéphane's business partner/friend. We are at the market in Nancy where he (the friend called Patrick) is buying the ingredients for the lovely French meal he made us that afternoon.

Palmiers, chaussons aux pommes

Today we made chausson aux pommes and palmiers. Palmier in French means "palm tree" so I suppose it is meant to look like dried palm leaves shaped into a heart. Or maybe it’s supposed to look like the leaf of a royal palm…I remember being in Mexico one time over Easter and seeing many palm leaf sculptures on the street--each time I pass these in the bakery window, I remember Mexican Easter. And so, in this way, "palmiers" have always looked and felt like very Catholic pastries to me.

I had my first bite of one today; I suppose they're tasty enough with a cup of tea or coffee. A palmier consists only of pastry dough (phyllo) and sugar. So the quality of the palmier depends entirely on the quality of the phyllo, which depends on the quality mainly of the butter. We used fancy French butter, which (naturally!) is quite good. The chausson aux pommes is as I mentioned before a croissant with apples inside.

What was most amusing today in practice was not actually what we made, but a little lesson I learned in French culinary pride.

There are a team of 5 chefs who alternate giving the demonstrations and monitoring the practical course. Some of these chefs are pastry chefs, some are highly acclaimed bakers (a distinction made by training and nature of experience). The chef who gives the demonstration is responsible for having the class know what to do, as the “recipes” we’re given are simply a list of ingredients; we have no instructions whatsoever…not even the baking temperatures or times. Unfortunately, you are not guaranteed to have the same chef in practice as in the demo. This results in scenes like the following:

20-year-old Korean girl, 4’11, hunched over her baking sheet of palmiers, meticulously separating the ends of each so that they flare open in the oven…as we had been shown in demonstration. 6’1, roughly 250-pound French chef storms over to her baking station, startling her into dropping a palmier on the floor. She looks up at him with eyes wide, mouth round, hands stunned into the mid-air, fingers spread position they had been in when she dropped her pastry. Beadlets of sweat have begun to form on the chef’s reddening temple, just beneath the brim of his chef’s hat. He swiftly gathers his eyebrows together and bellows, bending toward her, “Mais qu’est que vous faîtes?!!! C’est quoi ce bazaar, ce magique circus?! On ne plie pas les bouts comme ça! Oh la la la la! Qui vous a dit de faire ce cinéma?” [What are you doing?!!! What’s this disaster, this magic circus (the chef’s own language tic; not a valid French expression)?! You don’t fold the ends like that! Oh la la la la! Who told you to do that garbage?]

girl: (silence. She doesn’t move a muscle).

Chef: “Et alors?!” [so?]

girl’s friend: “she doesn’t speak French, chef”

Chef: “oo told you making zis magique circoos cinema tra la la?!”
(indicates the folded out portions of her pastries with a disdainful swoosh of his forefinger)

girl’s friend: “she doesn’t speak English either.”

Chef: “MAIS ALORS TRADUISEZ, NOM DE DIEU!!!” [Then good god translate!!!] (he dramatically rips off his hat and begins to storm down the hallway).

A moment later we hear, “C’est un truc de BOU-LAN-GER, ça! Et moi je suis PA-TI-SSIER!” [That’s a baker’s trick! And I’m a pastry chef!!]

Apparently, our demo chef had been a humble baker from the south of France.

None of us will ever fold out the ends of the palmiers again. Except maybe for the Korean girl, because her friend never translated for her.

Oh, and just so all interested parties know,

this is pretty much *the* hot bag for pretty parisiennes right now.

UPDATE: I went to a Gerard Darel boutique today and was informed that this bag is the perfect emblem of the modern French woman: sophisticated, sleek and subtile. Those were the three words the manager used. She also pointed out that although Chloé tried to "copy" this bag, that version is much more gaudy (un sac qui se voit plus) and therefore much more un-French. I couldn't agree more : ) Also, lighter colors will be coming out in the summer, at which time the darker colors will be discontinued until next winter. So if you want to have me get you a dark one, act now, or forever hold your gaudy, non-French bag : )

Pastry update

Just in case anyone was wondering why I don't have any more pastry pictures, I thought I should let you know. Because I had strep throat twice, I missed two classes: French shortbreads and Parisian cream cakes (such as the St. Honoré). I don't know what anyone else thinks about those, but I'm not at all disappointed about having missed either; shortbread is easy and cream cakes are...yuck! In the meantime I have made some things which, though fairly tasty, are not photo-worthy in my estimation.

We made French fruitcakes (which do, in all fairness, look and taste different from their popularly hated American counterpart), madeleines and a Gateau Basque. The recipe they gave us for madeleines was much more buttery and moist than the recipe I have used before, so I'll have to have an official tasting with some of you when I get home : ) The Gateau Basque is a cake with a thin layer of pastry cream and prunes (or sometimes dried apricots or cherries) in the middle. It's part of a classification of French cakes called "gateaux de voyages" or travel cakes. These are sturdy cakes that can be shoved in bags, boxes, cars, rucksaks and what-have-you and can be eaten without forks and plates if necessary. The one in question was a cake eaten by pilgrims going from Bretagne to...that really famous Catholic pilgrimage destination in northern Spain whose name I have forgotten...something or other compostela (?).

Tomorrow morning (Tuesday, January 24th) we will be making chausson aux pommes. Those are essentially folded over croissants with largely unsweetened apple compote inside. I am very excited to try my hand at croissant making, though I'm VERY nervous for tomorrow. The demonstration was excessively complicated and underexplained. In fact, the chefs in general do not really give much explanation. They speed through the recipe and then voilà! they have a beautiful result.

But when a student asks, "So how long exactly should we bake it for? And I noticed that you changed the temperature of the oven in the middle of cooking--when should we do that and to what temperature?" The chef, wide-eyed, his mouth opened into an incredulous French "o" shape, will say "Mais...il faut regarder la couleur du gâteau!" (Well...you have to look at the color of the cake!).

Apparently the term "the ART of French pastries" is aptly given; like art, no concrete explanations can/will be given....

(pictures are of chef Xavier Cotte and his fruitcake: )

My apple tart

It was more tasty than your average French apple tart because the chef we had that day in class had us put a hefty dose of Calvados in it (Normandy apple liquor).

Johannn I'm sick!!!

The week before last (the week of my birthday, incidentally) I got strep throat for the first time in my life. It was on the left tonsil, and came complete with fever, inability to swallow, etc. After several days of antiobiotics, it went away. But then...it came back again! On the right tonsil! It came with a fever the second time, too, and more antibiotics. The only difference the second time is that I fainted in the doctor's office and she "prescribed" me some vitamin C tablets.

It's no fun to be sick and alone here. But my apartment is very quiet and calm, and I can sleep all that I want without any noise disturbance. Well, almost without any noise disturbance:

a Chinese woman, who works at a Chinese take-out place on the corner of my building, comes to sit in the echoey space between my building and the next every day at noon. Clearly I don't know what she's saying, but she seems to be screaming at the other workers who are taking breaks in the little alley way. Her voice is loud, nasal, metallic, and fairly monotone. The sound of her screeching was, in my feverish state, incorporated into my nightmares. I picture her (as I've already told Anna) as the nicotene saturated landlady in Kung Fu Hussle (or is it Shuffle? I can't recall).

Other than her noise, my apartment is quite silent. I find this impressive for a crooked, narrow building built in the 1700's.

Birthday present

Since the only person I really know here is Stéphane, the only tangible birthday present I have received for my 23rd birthday is this necklace from him. It's a pretty typical kind of Parisian, I would even say French, necklace...bright colors, geometric shapes...you all know that it doesn't look like something I would wear, but I'm not sure what I think of it yet. It was a very nice thought, anyway. That much I know : )