The Meat Scare....Revisited.

I had my first day of classes today. Man, the Cordon Bleu Paris is so much nicer than the one in London. There are altogether 12 chefs, and the facility is really cute. There's a nice little area in the center with a skylight, where they've put little tables and chairs for you to go sit and eat lunch or mingle, or whatever. Anyway, if you've seen the London version, this is luxury.

So we had a demo, in which the chef spoke French the whole time, and this lady translated everything, including his JOKES. Clearly, some of the jokes lost their punch by the time they were translated. The problem is this though, although there's a translator in the demonstrations, there isn't one in the practical. Meaning, if he gives directions, he gives them in French, and if you ask a question, you should be asking in French and he will respond....in French.

But what's inspiring is that a lot of the kids, who had done the last course in Paris as well, have started understanding French just through the class. My problem is mostly that I can speak to get by, but when someone responds to my question, I have no idea what they said.

But you know, you'd be surprised how much you understand when someone is upset and ranting at you. The chef had been constantly complaining about the heat in the room for about the first hour of the class. Halfway through, some genius kid asks "can we turn off the A/C, we're all cold over here." The chef stops what he's doing and goes off about how he will turn it off today, but next time the students who are cold should come wearing their coats, scarves, hats, gloves, whatever. He then proceeded to tell the students that maybe they should come down to where he is and warm up, since he clearly was sweating under his chef's hat. Anyway, I caught all that by myself, because when the translator went at it, she definitely toned down his sarcasm and anger.

So, some of you avid readers of my blog may remember the first day of Cordon Bleu London, where I read the list of things we'll make and thought I was to make chicken. Clearly, it turned out I was and idiot and it was just a fake chicken made from marzipan. Well, this time around, I started flipping through the list of things to make and got to "Chorizo Puff Pastry" (or something of the sort). So my meat knowledge may be less than the average but that seems like sausage to me. So I turned to the recipe page to look at the ingredients, and turns out, that day is when we learn to make the "Petit Fours Sale", basically meaning a selection of salty "treats." (What is that saying, "one man's trash is another man's treasure"?) Anyway, turns out we DO have to make meat. I'm still trying to figure out how to work with that one. Maybe I'll save that for my sick day?