We’re going out to eat now, not because I have the energy for it but because I don’t have the energy to cook something here.
Up at 5 am this morning to leave at 6 for a 0645 exam start – which didn’t get underway until 0830 because they were waiting for one of the examiners and two of the students. Same story on Monday for our English exam, people turning up late and being let in and in front of me to do their stuff. I think I’ve eaten too much Swiss cheese because frankly, you ain’t there on time for your exam? Then 0/20 and tough shit, organise yourself idiot. It’s a big part of cooking, you know, organisation. If you can’t organise yourself out of bed I don’t want to have you mucking about with my millefeuille d’asperge, thankyouveryybutch.
So today we did fricassée d’agneau hongroise (i.e. with paprika in it) with riz créole and choux chantilly.
I had a really panicky moment at the start when I thought I wasn’t going to have enough time. I tore, almost literaly, through my lamb shoulder (thankyou, Chef, for making me practise on so many at work), turned all my veg for the stock and the service, got it all squared away and the stock on the boil and then turned around to see the other 4 in my workshop deboning their lamb shoulders. Eh? I thought, what have I forgotten to do first, how come they’re only doing their lamb shoulders now when I finished mine half an hour ago? What should I have done first that they’ve all done instead?
Turns out they were taking 30-45 minutes each to debone a single shoulder, and hadn’t even thought about veg. Which was a relief.
I had also thought to check my ingredients – we get given a box of what we need at the start, I was missing an onion and the paprika so called for them, then asked for a couple of rondeaux (large, shallow saucepans with lids) for my fricassée and rice. Two hours later some Nana comes along and tries to snaffle one, on the grounds that she needed it. Get yer own, I said, think ahead. She wasn’t happy, well tough shit.
In the end I had to send my stuff out first so I sent it all too quick, didn’t add salt to my rice and didn’t put enough sauce on the plate. And my choux buns weren’t dried enough so I should have cooked them longer. Huh.
Still. Eh?

So, yes, a month or a bit less since I last wrote anything other than ‘Two pints please’. Where does all the time go?
I’ve been working most days, usually mornings only, but even that has been tiring. But then I went to school yesterday, worked last night and worked this morning and feel OK now. Mind you I’ve just had a 90 minute nap, so that may have something to do with it.
School’s good now; we had our second ‘examen blanc’ – mock exam – last week, and I got 14.5/20 for the practical, which was OK. I was aiming for 16, but lost at least one and possibly two marks because I turned in my tricornes late – choux buns baked on a small tartlet base of pate brisé (pastry) filled with sauce mornay (cheese sauce). They were late because I put them in the oven at exactly the right moment to pull them out and have time to stuff them, but some asshole put her buns in the oven after me and left the oven door open. They were fine after 10 minutes, then she put hers in and when I came to take them out 10 minutes later were still unfinished, so I was 10 minutes late presenting them.
She, the idiot who did this, thought the whole affair extremely funny and told me not to take it so seriously. So I treated the whole thing as a slapstick comedy and put the remnants of my sauce mornay in her handbag. There – now that’s funny! And she only got 8.5/20, serve her right.
14.5 was top equal mark, two others got the same. I fell down a bit on ‘presentation’, as in talking about the stuff I was presenting as if to a potential client; School Chef discounts my charming English accent automatically, which isn’t fair – it’s a great selling point.
No, really.
Anyway. Yesterday we did sauté de poulet au paprika (oh, you can work that one out yourself) in the morning and tiramisu in the afternoon.
Now, I know a thing or two about tiramisu, let me tell you; when I worked for Frank all those years ago (well, two) at the Grange de Labahou (my first restaurant) I made two dozen tiramisus a week, and they sold like hot cakes (or cold cheese, which is what they are). So I was looking forward to a gentle cruise when Chef made us start with a Genoise, which I hate making. I cannot, for the life of me, make the damned things rise. He examined my batter and pronounced it overcooked, so I made a second batch which worked fine – although Pascal, my schoolchum, made his rise twice as high.
Then we made an appareil à bombe, which is egg yolks montés with heated sugar syrup – heated to 120 degrees Centigrade so don’t try this one at home, children. It worked in the end, but what a bloody faff.
Then whip up some cream.
Then mix the cream and appareil à bombe.
Then slice your genoise horizontally twice and stack it up in the mould with mix between, chill the whole thing in the blast freezer and decorate the whole with piped remains of the mixture.
Still, gave me a chance to practise my piping skills after f-ing up 36 little chocolate tarts the other day at work. I didn’t let the choc mix warm up first, so ended up with 36 chocolate squidges instead of 36 chocolate swirls.
In fact I seem to make a stupid mistake every day; I’ve left the mixer running while trying to warm up some butter and then had the whole machine waltz across the floor, spreading goodness (as in cake mix) all over the floor; yesterday instead of thinly slicing up some kiwi fruits I cut them, as Chef described it, into ‘Escalopes’; I forgot to put the baking powder into the cakes I was making, although did remember before I put them in the oven so was able to re-mix them. It goes on, and yet Chef still wants to employ me as a Commis. We’re testing two new potential plongeurs next week over Easter. Which is a good thing, really, I need to move out of the plonge if only because I have a hankering to end a shift not completely soaked to the skin.
Last Friday I worked most of lunch just in the kitchen, cranking out 37 covers with Chef. Which was fun and I coped, but because there’s only two of us it’s really hell on wheels (well, from my point of view anyway; for him it’s a stroll in the sun). I kept up with the orders and remembered how many to turn out and plate up (not difficult, with only two starters on the lunch menu). I do have difficulty with things like cutting up tomatoes (and kiwis)into slivers of exactly the right size, which is I’m hoping an experience thing. I used to have problems keeping up with orders, but even listening in from the Plonge I can keep up now.
We’re still looking for a new Second de Cuisine, if you know of anyone looking for a job; we had a young chap lined up but he decided to stay where he was one hour after he was due to sign a contract with us – we were just a bargaining chip, in my opinion.
Apart from Work, Delphine and I went to Saintes Maries de la Mer for a couple of days last weekend, staying in the very nice Hotel Méditerrannée (delete rs, ns and es as appropriate). I had fish soup and moules frites two nights in a row, which was nice, and amusing to see how they’re done now I know how to do them professionally myself; the first moules were excellent but the soup was tinned and thinned with too much water; the second soup was very good but hadn’t been écumé – skimmed – enough during the cooking process, leaving a film of oil on the surface. The second lot of chips were too well done, and the moules hadn’t been cleaned properly – there were bits of beard all over them.
Nice little town though, a real end-of-the-world place which will disappear one day if global warming isn’t nonsense after al.

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.