‘One week in the village’ was first published on bee-bakes.com, October 2, 2014
It’s one week today since I arrived at ENSP, my new school! I’m feeling slightly broken and sleepy, but happy, too. Here’s a run-down on things as they happened since I last updated.
I spent a fair bit of Saturday trying to make the apartment more homely and then spent the rest of it out with people from school. We all arranged to meet up and try ‘bar-hopping’, as one of the hopeful youngsters called it. But what it really meant was checking out the local café-bars (about two) and then somehow getting roped into walking 60kms (ok, slight exaggeration) to some random destination to go to a nightclub with an English woman and three crazy Russian and Ukrainian girls. Not sure how this happened, but it turned out to be hilarious, with me having a moment of panic, too late, along the lines of what on Earth am I doing here, I’m old enough to be their mothers (ok, another slight exaggeration…slight).
On Sunday three of us decided to go for a wander around the village and we ran into the group of bakers we arrived with. So about eight of us ended up meandering far out into the countryside in search of an equestrian club…? We enjoyed the views along the way and found a farm selling fresh milk products and eggs. We followed this up by doing what we were told on Orientation Day and ‘researching’ at one of the local pâtisseries. On Monday it was preparation for the week ahead. This included resting, ironing clothes, food shopping for the week and catching up with some of the others for a sneaky kebab…about the only take-away in town! Then it was early to bed in order to wake at 04:30am.
I awoke at 03:45am.
After checking a dozen times to see if I had everything I should have, I arrived at school half an hour early and into class at 05:45am—we all did. Chef told us we didn’t need to get there that early. I guess we were all a bit excited—who knew how long it would take to walk in the morning!
After a very detailed introduction to the kitchen and facilities and another nightmare, I mean ‘get to know you session’, we started on our lessons. Just like that and we were making things! I piped something on my first day! Here’s a run-down of what we did in our first seven hours:
- Made pastry for a Tarte au flan (a basic, but tasty custard tart).
- Made crème pâtissière for the flan (which I would have to be about the only person who caught it on the bottom of the pan).
- Filled and baked the flan.
- Made another type pastry for Barquette aux Marrons and Dôme Ganache.
- Made an almond filling, a chestnut filling and dark chocolate ganache. Filled, baked and topped Barquette aux Marrons and Dômes Ganache.
I think that was it? Cue panic to get the kitchen cleaned for the next group without succeeding.
Day two was so much better in the kitchen. I felt like we understood how it all should work and we seemed to achieve so much more in the same time. I arrived 10mins early, but unfortunately so did the 100 or so French CAP students—not good in the locker rooms. However, I had my proper uniform so I felt in the baking mood in my houndstooth trousers and giant clown chef jacket.
We glazed our flan, made two more types of pastry, another basic tart, Tarte alsacienne (an apple tart with an eggy-custardy filling), topped and dipped the Dômes Ganache in chocolate (quite proud of mine), topped an dipped the Barquette aux Marrons in sticky fondant (very tricky) and we managed to clean the kitchen on time! We also got to view the professional student’s work—amazing. I can only hope that one day I’ll be able to make things like that.
Today it was choux pastry and more crème pâtissière with Éclairs à la vanille and chouquettes on the menu (the latter being for breakfast). In the afternoon we had our first non-lab class of Food Science. This class is guaranteed to make us never want to eat anything again, especially eggs, for fear of bad micro-organisms. I also found out that if I want to keep my own chickens and use their eggs I will have to get a business licence for the eggs…so soon I could be operating Bee Bakes and Bee’s Chickens Lay…
So, there we have it—one week of village life down, 21 to go!