Chocolate, Churches, and Charlottes

I'm already half way done with my course, and yet, find it hard to believe that I still have four more weeks at the Chateau. Last week our visiting chef was all about chocolate, which inevitably meant that I went home with a tooth ache and chocolate all around my mouth everyday of class. They say you only need to "taste" what you make, but how can one turn down praline truffles and earl grey ganache? Any sane person cannot. Job done. Bring on the stomach ache. Chocolate is a very specialized area of pastry, in fact, its a separate entity entirely. Chocolatiers must be like magicians, because merely tempering chocolate to have the right glossy sheen is a pain staking process (unless you have a 67,000 dollar chocolate crystalizer like the school). First you have to heat up the chocolate to melt the fats, then cool it to link the first of five molecules, you then procecced to slightly reheat the chocolate to link all five molecules, and voila you have tempered chocolate. Of course these temperatures vary by brand, amount of cocoa, milk poweder and about 20 thousand other things, and this is only the most basic of skills when it comes to chocolate. I also found chocolate to be unbelievably messy. I came out of class looking like I had used my white chefs jacket as a mop and dragged it all over the chocolate lab due to the incredible about of stains I incurred. Again, however, people that actually know what they're doing with chocolate don't really seem to have this problem. And like many things in the pastry world, wow! is chocolate expensive, a large bag of valrhona chocolate (super fancy French company and what we use at school) costs about 90 euros. Another great example is how a kilo of vanilla beans (roughly two pounds) costs 300 euros. no joke. And we use these things like, no big deal, through a vanilla bean in, practice chocolate writing, yadda yadda.

The desserts of the week included a passion fruit charlotte: a ring of lady fingers surrounding a passion fruit coulis and a vanilla pastry cream, topped with fresh fruits, glazed, and surrounded by coconut.

We also had the opportunity to play with caramel a bit, here's my first attempt at a caramel cage. They say practice makes perfect... Caramel is a lot of fun to use and really easy to make, sugar and water baby.

This is a galette, also called a pithiver. Once again using a flaky pastry dough (layers of butter and dough, etc) filled with an almond cream. We dipped our decorations in caramel and icing sugar.

This is the first step of my baked alaska, something they call Norwegian omelette. My friend that lives in Norway has never seen something like this, however. So two layers of genoise cake (sponge cake) filled with homemade strawberry/vanilla ice cream. Covered in (see below) meringue covered in icing sugar and then put in the oven or blow torched to make a crisp shell. Seems a bit silly I know, but this was so tasty that it now ranks high on my list of favorites.

On a side note, I've started to run again, finally overcoming the stupid torn muscle in my calf and trying to once again get into shape. Running has taken me some pretty interesting places, including the Carmel mountains with a view of the Mediterranean and now here in France through farmlands and tree lined streets. Although it does seem a bit ridiculous to be listening to Rihanna and T.I. when I'm running past a flock of sheep and their old man shepherd wearing a beret.

This past weekend we once again rented a car and attempted to remove ourselves from the isolated village of Yssingeaux. First we headed to Le Puy en Velay, a city only 20-30 minutes away and a fantastic get away from all of the stresses of the castle. We stepped out of the car and it finally felt (maybe for the first time) like I was in France. Le Puy looks how one expects old France to look, narrow cobbled stone streets and tall multi-colored town houses with shutters covered in ivy. Additionally, Le Puy is the home to the oldest church in France, located on top of a giant rock in the middle of the city (you geo majors would have loads to tell me about this formation I'm sure).

(The fantastic foursome: Christos, Lorraine, Craig and yours truly)
Also wonderful about Le Puy is the presence of a night life, where we proceeded to watch a Cuban concert and pretend like we know how to dance the Mamba and the Salsa.

We also ended up spending a day in Lyon, the second largest city in France and the gastronomic capital. Great city, very similar looking to Paris, but much more relaxed, highly recommended.

Here is a shop in Lyon where one of our friends works, people in this country are gaga for macaroons. I knew that they were popular here, but they are sold EVERYWHERE and are not cheap. Thats all for now, but love you all at home!