On Monday we had a demonstration filled with fish dishes including: Goujonnettes de Sole, Sauce Verte (Breaded Strips of Sole, Green Sauce); Escalopes de Saumon à l’Oseille (Salmon Escalope with Sorrel); and Filets de Barbue Duglere (Brill Fillets in White Wine Sauce). The Goujonnettes were surprisingly good, especially considering, or perhaps because, they’re quite like fish sticks. It’s not as if I grew up eating frozen fish sticks. I’m sure my mother never bought them, though we may have had them at school from time to time, but the familiar can be desirable, especially when it’s kicked up a notch.

Today in practical we made the Brill Fillets in White Wine Sauce. We had to fillet a fish and make a fish stock for the second time since school began. The whole recipe was very familiar since we had done pretty much the same thing in the 2^nd practical with the Filets de Limande Bercy  (Lemon Sole Fillets in White Wine Sauce), i.e. fillet the fish and make a fish stock and then use that to make a sauce for the fish. I found the Brill to be a bit harder to fillet than the sole, but filleting fish in general is pretty easy and since the stock takes only 20-30 minutes, it is something that I will likely end up doing at home on a relatively regular basis from here on out. The fillets are poached in the fish stock in the oven and then the sauce is reduced from there. We also practiced turning potatoes again, this is still something that I have not mastered. I think part of the problem is that my hands are smaller than average and so I have a hard time cutting the vegetables to the proper size. I also just need to make the time to practice. I keep hoping that there is some magic technique that someone will be able to show me, but it is pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it.

In the final prognosis of the dish, the chef said that everything was very good. I was quite proud of how everything turned out.

We’ve now moved onto meats, specifically beef, in the demonstrations today, so we made or started making: Cœur de Contrefilet Rôti (Roasted Sirloin Fillet) with Pommes Mousseline (Puréed Potatoes); Aiguillette de Bœuf Mode (Beef with Onions and Carrots); and Estouffade de Bœuf Bourguignonne (Beef Burgundy). The Beef Bourgignonne takes several days to make, when you include the time for marinating the beef, and the Aiguillette cooks for at least 3 hours, so that means that we will have to wait until tomorrow to be able to taste the results of those two recipes. The Roasted Sirloin Fillet recipe made for a pretty slim tasting, but we’ll be over-run with beef tomorrow!

I am so so so so so so so excited today because my friend Ray has finally arrived in Paris! I feel as if I have just been killing time until the people who are coming to visit start to arrive. I’ve been staying busy, but there is something so much more magical about Paris when you are with your friends. I have been looking forward to Ray’s arrival for a long time now and I know that the next few weeks will be that much better because he’s here. A little background on Ray, he is a former chef himself, owned several restaurants in Philly in the 80s (including one called Russell’s for anyone who might know it), and he came to Paris in 1980 to go to the culinary school program at a now defunct school called La Varenne, run by a former Le Cordon Bleu Grande Diplome graduate, Anne Willan. I am excited to be able to show him around my school and to get his reaction to the program.

This evening, however, we were off on a culinary adventure to go out to a restaurant. I LOVE going out to eat, but as I’ve mentioned before, there is little point in doing it when I’m by myself. So I’m very happy that Ray will be around and be as eager as myself to eat at the restaurants in Paris. Plus I can leave behind my student persona for the evening and just enjoy being in this wonderful city.

When I finished up with school, I walked over to Ray’s hotel, which was only about 15 minutes by foot. He was awaiting for me in the lobby and it was so wonderful to see him! I have such a great community of friends that I interact with all the time in Philly and I miss them all so much. It’s so much easier to be myself and feel good about it when I am surrounded by people who I appreciate and who I know appreciate me back. Having just a small part of that here helps so much.

We hopped on the metro to the Invalides stop and walked over to where La Varenne used to be and to where Ray’s apartment was when he was attending the school. He lived literally around the corner from it. You can see a picture of him in front of his old apartment here.

Then we wandered down Rue Saint Dominique in search of a place to eat. Ray has compiled a long list of restaurants that he thinks would be worth eating at while he’s here, so we were in search of on called Café Constant, owned by the chef Christian Constant, who is well-known here in Paris. We did stop to look at the menus of other options as we walked along as well. When we finally got to Café Constant, it was completely jam packed. It turned out that the chef also owns two other restaurants on that block, les cocottes de Constant and Les Violon d’Ingres. Les Violon was quite expensive indeed, and les cocottes seemed to be about the middle price range, with Café Constant the least expensive option. All of them except for Les Violon was filled to the brim with people. Since Ray had just flown in this morning he was feeling a bit punchy and wasn’t really in the mood to wait for a table, so we had to give those places a pass for the moment. I definitely want to go back to them at some point though. We talked to several people on the street who said that the food there was really wonderful. It was funny that I heard more people in that neighborhood speaking English than I did speaking French.

We ended up at a little bistro called Bistro St-Dominique with a €25 prix fixe menu for entrée, plat, et dessert. For starter I had Terrine de Saint-Jacque (scallop pâté). Entrée was Confit de canard, pommes sarladaises (preserved duck, sautéed potatoes with garlic [potatoes sautéed in duck fat]). Dessert was a Mousse au chocolat noir (dark chocolate mousse). Ray had Terrine de lapin Dijonnaise (rabbit pâté from Dijon), followed by Escalope de veau sauce Normande, pommes allumettes (veal scallop Normandy-style cream sauce, french fries), and Moelleux au chocolat (chocolate molten lava cake) for dessert. To drink we had a Sancerre aoc Les Brux white wine and cognac to finish. It was definitely not the best meal I will or have had in Paris, but it was very pleasant, and the company was delightful.

Ray and I made plans to meet up the following morning at 9 at E. Dehillerin where we could shop and go to a pastry shop or two. More adventures to come…