Absolutely shitty day at school yesterday.
Everyone was either off sick (six out of 17 of us), should be off sick (me, Eric, David to name just three) or in a really foul mood (absolutely everyone, Chef included and especially).
We spent the morning from 9 to midday doing about half an hour’s work which we didn’t finish until gone 1215 because Chef decided at the last minute to get us to do some goujons of the merlan fish we’d been preparing, and make a tartare sauce to go with it. By ‘last minute’ I mean five to twelve; we’d spent the morning just cleaning the merlan and making pastry.
This meant that there was a HUGE queue at the canteen for lunch. Luckily I’ve mastered the art of queuing French-style, so I dragged Eric, David and Laurent along behind me and just pushed in at the front; luckily, again, we’re all elderly persons so the teenagers in the queue don’t have the courage to say ‘boo’ to us. And we need to be at the front so we then have time to go and get a coffee afterwards.
Straight after lunch we had ‘droit’, business administration which is the MOST FUCKING BORING class I have ever taken, and I used to get Old Tom for Physics classes, so I know what I’m talking about here. Today, we had to fill in a stationery order form. I am not making this up: here’s a Post-It from your boss (you’re imagining you’re a stagiaire in an office, right? OK, you in the zone?) saying he wants pens, pencils and shit, so fill in the stationery order form.
Bollocks.
Then after that Chef clearly had Something Else he needed to be doing somewhere other than in the kitchen with us, so he loaded us down with a good five or six hours worth of work, recipes and techniques we already knew so we didn’t need to keep asking him how to do stuff.
So we did lemon meringue tart and fish mousselines and braised endives and turned potatoes and made fumet and reduced it down for a sauce and peeled lemons ‘à vif’ and cooked FUCK knows what else and didn’t finish until half-past six. Then he told me my sauce was a ‘funny colour’ and gave me a minus mark for it without tasting it or anything else on my plate, so I just walked away and left him to throw it in the bin. The sauce, let me tell you, was BLOODY DELICIOUS and the EXACT same colour as David’s, which was ‘perfect’.
So I got the bus home (Delphine, bless her, dropped me off at school at 0745 so I didn’t have to ride my bike, I’m still not well), made some pizza dough and then went straight to sleep. I made ham and mushroom pizzas when Delphine got home, we watched an episode of The West Wing (which I like lots) and I slept a solid 9 hours, only to wake up absolutely bloody exhausted this morning.
I know I’ve been ill, but really this is ridiculous. I’m going to have to go see the doctor again.
Still. Nice night last Friday with Bob, Alex and Steve playing pool at the Cadillac Café and then eating at the Vache à Carreaux. And I cooked for Bob, Alex and their spouses on Saturday; unfortunately my Canellonni de Saumon Fumé became boring smoked salmon with a cheesy sauce because I mixed WAY too much fromage frais into the goat cheese to make it sit inside rolls of smoked salmon. But the langoustines and risotto and Sauce Americaine were good, first time I’d done any of them. The sauce USA (as Chef calls it) was not the easiest thing I’ve made but a real classic, and well worth the effort; next time I’m going to Moulinex the bones instead of just bashing them with a rolling pin, but I was running out of time.
Black forest millefeuille for pudding; one day I’m going to get this right, but it wasn’t tonight.