Le Weekend

The schedule at LCB is not terribly taxing for those of us in Basic Cuisine (and not also in Basic Pastry) -- we have three to six hours of class a day, four or five days a week. But because our first day was an orientation, we had class on Saturday of our first week.

So I woke up at 6:30 Saturday morning to cook chicken.

I think this may have been my favorite day so far (but, I may find myself saying that often ... it's still such a new experience that every day seems more exciting than the last). I generally walk to school -- it's about an hour walk, but the weather has been gorgeous here, and I find it a nice way to start my day -- but that morning, I decided I wanted an extra half hour of sleep, so I took the metro. When I emerged from the metro at the Vaugirard stop, I saw a couple of my classmates sitting at the corner cafe, enjoying a noisette before class. They beckoned me over, and I remember thinking how great it is that, after only one week in a new city, I feel like I'm developing a life for myself here. Paris is a big city, but it's a city of neighborhoods, and I'm constantly pleasantly surprised when I run into friendly and familiar faces.

So after a caffeine jolt, we headed into the kitchen to prepare chicken au sauce supreme, avec riz au gras. The chef in demonstration had explained to us that this is a French classic ... one that must be made just so, with little room for creativity or improvisation in plating. The chicken is dressed with sauce, placed on a bed of rice, and surrounded by a moat of sauce supreme.


So I started by blowtorching my chicken. Really. It had already been plucked, but we had to remove the remaining down by burning it off. I then finished cleaning the chicken, and trussed it. Then, into the pot it went, along with some extra chicken wings we had, to be blanched. After discarding the blanching water (filled with impurities that boiled off) and rubbing the chicken with the juice of a lemon (not for flavor, but to make the chicken stay as white as possible), the chicken went back into a pot to make stock (and to be poached).

Next, I started my rice. I sweated my shallots in butter, and then added the rice to pearl (in French, nacre). In goes some freshly made chicken stock, and tada, riz au gras.

All that's left is the sauce. "D'abord, vous faites un roux," said the chef. First, you make a roux. Now, there are only a couple of people in the world who will know why this made me laugh, out loud ... but it did. Gotta love my Louisiana upbringing for giving new meanings to classic French culinary terms.

So make a roux, I did, combined it with stock, cream, butter, salt, and pepper, and cooked my sauce until it napped (seriously, that's the word for it -- a sauce is nappant when it coats the back of a spoon, and running your finger down the back of the spoon leaves a streak).

I plated my chicken, and waited for chef's grading. "Parfait!" he said, after testing the chicken for doneness, and tasting the sauce and rice. "Really?" I thought. But then I carved my chicken so I could take it home, and tasted a bite while packing it up. And it was parfait indeed.

After a walk through my neighborhood, and a drink with Anne, I headed home to enjoy my leftovers. While eating my delicious (perfect, some might say!) chicken and rice, I turned on my television for the first time, to see what my options were. Skipping past BBC, CNN, and al Jazeera (really, I'm on vacation here), I settled on cuisine tv (the French food network). Call me a geek, but it's a really good way to reinforce the language I'm learning during the day at LCB -- the vocabulary overlaps far more than it would if I were watching any other French television channel. I love that I can have it on in the background, and be doing other things, but can generally follow what's being done -- guess I'm absorbing more vocabulary than I realized!

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Sunday was my first day off, and I spent it on a walk through le Marais. The last time I was in Paris, seven years ago, I had a book of neighborhood walks that I absolutely loved -- we would pick a walk, head to that neighborhood, and explore the streets with a purpose and a guide. Of course, we'd stop if we saw something that caught our eyes, but having the tour to guide us made us notice things we might otherwise have passed by.

So I was excited when, in preparation for this trip, a friend gave me City Walks Paris -- a set of cards, each one detailing a 1-2 hour neighborhood walk. And Sunday, I pulled out the three Marais walks, and set out to explore what I remembered being one of my favorite Paris neighborhoods. Wandering the streets I saw what I remembered loving about the area, but learned an important lesson -- le Marais on a Sunday afternoon is busy! I told myself I'd return on a weekday for a more leisurely experience.

But I did get to stroll down pretty rue des Barres, behind the St. Gervais church.





And see some exposed-beam houses from the 15th century along rue Francois Miron (note the Japanese sign across the way). Along the way, I stopped into Musee Carnavalet, a museum dedicated to the history of Paris.


I also saw Hotel de Sens, the oldest medieval mansion in the area, dating back to 1475.

As the afternoon wound down, I got a phone call (yes, I have a French cell phone ... I am so very Parisian) from my very first visitors from the States (the first of many, I hope!), Garrett and Laura. Although they had experienced travel woes much like mine, they were up for a drink and dinner, so I met them in Montparnasse for some bouillabaisse and wine. And headed home to get some sleep in preparation for week two -- doughs. Time to break out the electronic scale for precise measurements!