Just the idea of truffles and beets together sends my pulse sky rocketing. And not because the combo is super sexy (which it is) but because there is a certain off-menu salad at Guy Savoy that is insanely difficult to construct.

Monsieur Savoy’s Truffled Mâche and Beet Salad is a well-loved and simple (though expensive) French combination of ingredients: truffled vinaigrette, caramelized deep ruby red beets, bouncy mâche and the blackest truffle slices you’ve ever seen.

However, The putting-it-together part is pretty much like Jenga — if you’ve ever played that impossible stacking game before, you’ll understand exactly what I mean. The mâche and beets are carefully layered into a mile high tower and then completely covered in a delicate dome of black truffle concentric circles, each truffle slice placed over the one before until the entire salad is wrapped in beautiful blackness. Sounds easy. IT’S NOT! It’s quite often the leaning tower of truffled Pisa.

But, it is delicious. There’s no denying that the creamy truffle vinaigrette is drinkable just on it’s own and paired with the sweet & earthy beets and the minerality of mâche – it is one hundred percent satisfying. It goes nicely with a coupe de Champagne for a light lunch too (just sayin’!)

Monsieur Savoy pairs his famous truffled vinaigrette with a few other cold appetizers as well. My personal favorite is his signature dish: ballontine of chicken breast, artichoke heart and foie gras terrine sliced thick and served with truffled vinaigrette and a little mâche. If you happen to pop into Guy Savoy for lunch and want something different than the 4-hour tasting menu (just a quick bite peut être?) I highly recommend this dish, it is delicious. I loved making it and I loved eating the smaller slices of the ballottine that weren’t big enough for a proper serving.

I’ve put together my favorite truffled vinaigrette combos from Monsieur Savoy’s menu in a simple starter. But I’ve added my own touches too. My focus these days is on relocating to Portugal so of course the beets are lacquered with the sweet wine. And although Monsieur Savoy would most certainly use Poilaîne crostini, I have opted for rye, my personal fav.

The ingredients can be put together as a finger appetizer on a crostini or plated as a starter or enlarged to make a platter for a crowd. Foie gras is exceptionally difficult to get ahold of in California these days and companies like D’Artagnan (in NYC) will ship it along with high quality truffles (and lots of other insanely delicious ingredients). But for the sake of making this dish accessible for all, there are some excellent packaged foie de canard mousse in the markets these days too and you can use that here as well.

If you’re up for making foie gras torchon, making it at home is not hard just time consuming. I open up the lobes and devein, sometimes using my fingers or the back of a spoon to find the web like strands. (buy premium foie gras and it will be easier to devein). Then I sprinkle with a little rose salt and kosher salt, roll back up and create a cylinder with several layers of saran wrap tying each end tight and cook sous-vide. Curing salt needs to be measured and if you are having trouble finding it, ask your butcher, you don’t need a lot! I personally do not add other spices to my torchon but some people do.

I think Serious Eats has an excellent post on making foie gras torchon with clear instructions and since I made mine last year and froze it and I don’t have pictures, this is a great resource. By the way, if you do freeze yours for later use, make sure to take the cheesecloth off, rewrap and cryovac.

Nice fresh black truffles are also difficult to find right now as is mâche for some odd reason but I was able to find some canned truffles – not my preference but will do in a pinch – and some beautiful frisée too!

Bon Appétit!

The post Foie Gras Torchon, Port Lacquered Beets, Truffled Chicories first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I am so excited I don’t even know where to begin. Part of me feels like I just walked out of 1940’s Broadway musical where the leading lady shows up in NYC with two suitcases and a lot of nerve and just dives right in.

Come on, you know that song… “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere..”

That’s me pretty much, except I showed up with 16 boxes (half of which were shipped from France), 2 suitcases, 2 army duffle bags, and my knife case.

And the most important item: a wine opener.

I have learned through living in 6 different apartments, 4 different cities, 2 different countries over the last 5 years that having a wine opener is really the key ingredient.

Everything else can wait. But damn, that glass of wine just cannot wait.

When you’re sitting around staring at an empty apartment wine makes everything look rosy. Or it knocks you out cold so you don’t have to think about the grim reality of starting all over again.

I’m still in the rosy phase, but depending on how my furniture looks when it gets delivered, I might end up in the drain-the-bottle-in-one-whole-swig phase. We’ll see.

But that’s what I love about this city – everything can be delivered right to your doorstep even if it’s on the 17th floor. How cool is that?

No wonder the French love to visit New York. They don’t have to climb up and down multiple flights of stairs all day long.

Today I had 6 bags of groceries from Whole Foods delivered plus multiple boxes from Bed Bath & Beyond and I didn’t even have to lift a finger. I didn’t have to drag my little Parisian wheel-y cart through bumpy cobblestone streets and up five flights of stairs.

Aside from settling in to my new apartment, I’m peddling my resumé around once again. And this time it’s hard. I’m anxious to see what it’s like to cook in a New York kitchen, but not so energized about starting from scratch.

I know things will be different here. I know there are kitchen systems, regulations, cultures that are unfamiliar. I’m sure I will be flung mercilessly to the bottom of the totem pole and then struggle to inch my way back up again.

I’m positive that I will be cooking beside 20-something’s that have boundless energy while varicose veins climb faster and darker up my legs.

Oh well, as everyone says: fuhgghedabowdit. I suppose that’s a little like: tant pis.

The street food alone is reason enough to move. Oh my God is it delicious. I’ve been eating off the streets since my pots and pans have yet to arrive and all I have to say is: I LOVE NEW YORK!

I thought the crèpes in France were tasty, but I’m sorry, they are nothing compared to the spicy stewed chicken tacos I had for lunch today oozing with sour cream and melted cheese or the philly cheesesteak I had for dinner – again oozing with carmelized onions, peppers, and more melted cheese.

Nathan’s hotdog? Yes please. Halal gyro? I’ll take two. Fruit smoothie? I need my vitamins. Salted pretzel with mustard? Yup. Spinach empanadas? Oh hell yeah.

Work-out at the gym? No thank you. I’m too busy stuffing my face right now.

Maybe I should re-name my blog: Ms. Glaze Eats Manhattan. Then again, maybe not.

Just so you don’t get the wrong impression about my feelings about Paris, I should let you know that I’m applying to only French restaurants.

I’m not sure how restaurants here feel about cooks blogging about their kitchen experiences, so I will keep mine on the back burner until I find out what the proper etiquette is.

My former employer was supportive about my writing and I will always be thankful for that and for everything I learned there too (bien sûr!)

So here’s to New York and a new adventure! May it be just as tough, sweaty, and exhausting as the last one and filled with even more grit, grime, and elbow grease.

I’m drinking to that…

The post From Paris to New York, New Work first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

On the line at Guy Savoy

Remember, I said ‘frigate’. You know, one of those ol’ wind powered wooden fighting yachts with square sails and canons? Not Battlestar Galactica.

It’s France, not Mars, after all. And we don’t have nuclear technology aboard ship, we’re still pulling ropes and hoisting sails with blistered hands and feet wrapped in toe holds. In fact sometimes I think we’re still navigating by the stars.

Nonetheless, we gracefully sail onward.

Growing up in the French kitchen is a tough life. Teens sign up around the age of 18 and hand over their youth to indentured servitude knowing full well that the hours will be long, the work back breaking and monotonous, the pay ridiculously low, the camaraderie hearty, and the staff meals lousy.

They willingly do this. And, I might add, once a student is on this trajectory, it’s very hard to jump ship.

What are you going to do if by the age of 24 you realize this is not the career for you? You can’t walk the gang plank the way we do in the States between one career and another. No one wants a dishonorable discharge. Students are trained and tracked in one field at a very early age.

And think about this: spending 60 hours a week in a kitchen. Work starts at 8A.M. and goes to 11 P.M. with a short hour and half break in the middle of the day. There’s no time to go for a workout, take care of personal stuff, see family, or be with friends. There’s no time do anything else but cook and clean.

Is it really any wonder that there are few women in the French cooking brigade? Unless you are bringing your children into the restaurant to cook or can afford day care, kids aren’t an option. And, who can afford daycare on a cooks salary?

So the question remains: Why do French kids sign up for this kind of life? I’m still trying to figure this one out. But here’s some of the perks to working for a famous French frigate: there is an opportunity to travel to foreign countries as the restaurant expands its empire and there is great honor given to chefs in France.

But I’ll tell you life on board the ship can be truly suffocating. There are personality clashes, jealousy issues, cultural differences, language barriers, behavioral problems, and more. And all this gets blown up under a microscope because there is just no escaping. Thank God for le weekend or we’d all be court marshaled. Adults included.

Funny enough as much as we drive each other crazy, when the weekend does roll around, we all go out together and drink ourselves silly.

Well what else would you expect from a bunch of sailors?

It goes without saying that the captains are militant instilling fear while demanding perfection. But doing so only to keep the ship afloat, on course, the kids in check, and ready for battle twice daily. And when the lunch battle is over, after the deck is scrubbed down and casualties accounted for, everyone breathes a deep sigh of relief and relaxes for an hour or so before the dinner attack begins.

It is during these battle times that the ship comes together as one. Everyone has a job to do and everyone knows what it is. There is not a lot of thinking going on, just a lot of executing. In other words, we don’t always know what battle we’re fighting, we just know that its war and we have to rely on each other to win.

I have been asked before why it is that the Grand Chefs of France don’t cook anymore. Why do they just stand around? And I think it’s for the same reason that Captains don’t reef sails.

First of all, they’ve already done that for twenty years or more. The muscle memory of cooking is ingrained into every inch of their bodies. Second, they keep a constant look out over every dish that goes out. Third, they need to drive the team.

And I truly love this part of the battle. All the call and response that goes on makes me feel like we’re all pulling oars at the same time. Like we’re really getting somewhere fast. Without this, it would be a miracle if even one table got their food at the same time.

The chefs call out the complete orders and the whole staff responds, “Oui Monsieur!” loud and strong to acknowledge the command.

If some one doesn’t respond, then they get in trouble. Sometimes they have to scrub the deck after the service, which sucks. Especially when you’re already exhausted.

Perhaps you’re thinking that this is not a crime worthy of punishment, but really it is. The whole restaurant relies on verbal commands – no computer, no written down anything.

It is very, very easy to be concentrating so hard on what you’re cooking that you don’t hear the next order. Responding to the order is supposed to ensure that you’ve registered it.

For example, if the fish station is ready to serve up a juicy piece of turbot, and the meat station hasn’t even begun cooking the roasted veal chop then not only is the client going to be waiting a long time, but the fish will have to be thrown out and another fillet cooked. This costs the restaurant money.

Waste in a restaurant is often what makes it or breaks it. We don’t waste anything.

But I’ll tell you, once you’ve been punished once, you’re less likely to make that same mistake twice. It’s a tough way to learn, but at least we don’t tie sailors to the mast and give lashings. (Although, sometimes I think this might work better.)

And no, I’ve never seen anyone picked up by the scruff of their neck and thrown against the wall or anything like that.

Well, once, but it was more of a peer to peer “discussion”. There were no officers involved. And I suppose the young man had it coming. It didn’t hurt him – just knocked the wind out of sails a little and shaped him up real fast. Growing up in the kitchen, you fall into line, or you fall off the ship.

The teasing can be relentless. One evening an apprentice started crying at the end of a dinner service. These apprentices are young, mostly 16 years old, and still in trade school. Yet, they work 12 -14 hours a day, just like the rest of us and alternate between weeks on and off for school.

I asked him if he was okay, in fear that maybe he was injured. But he just said he was exhausted and couldn’t stop the tears. And believe me, we’ve all been there before. The next day, all the other young guys asked him “What’s the matter Arnaud, you tired?” “Did you sleep well?”.

This went on for a full month. He sucked it up, laughed at it, and never said he was tired again. Lesson learned.

I get teased about my chef’s clothes as well as my hair styles and make-up. We wear our own jackets and cooks pants and mine are designer. Excuse me, but I am a woman and I like to wear chef’s clothes that fit my figure.

I am not square head to toe and my chef’s gear is designed by a woman in San Francisco who knows how to cut cloth for female cooks. I hear a lot of “What are you wearing today? Gucci?” to which there is really no reply but a smile or a quick fashion turn.

It’s all in fun, but lets just say that no one and nothing goes unnoticed. When I cut my bangs, I heard about for a week (it did look terrible). When I braided my hair, a slew of jokes I don’t even want to understand got cycled about. The last time I changed my perfume one of the servers called me on it. There’s just no escaping! Aaaaaaaaaaarrrgggghhh!

But, I think for all of our squabbles, there is a sense of family that can’t be beat. It’s why I’ve never even considered being a personal chef or anything like that. I love the team aspect of cooking. I like mentoring and being mentored. And I love the work.

The funny part about it, is the whole time you’re on the ship you’re thinking of how much you want to get off of it. And then when you get off, you can’t stop thinking how much you want to get back on.

That’s life on board a French frigate.

The post Guy Savoy: Life On Board A French Frigate first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

“Très Soigné” translated means “very neat”.

To me it normally sets off the alarm that the President is coming in, or the owner of Ferrari is dining privately, or the beautiful Queen of Sweden has arrived, or the Michelin Guide Director is lunching with friends (everyone knows the Director since he eats out regularly around town).

And, it also means: if that plate you’re hunched over and trying to finish is not absolutely perfect, you’re dead.

Not that I’ve actually seen anyone murdered in the kitchen, but I’ve certainly witnessed my fair share of deflated egos.

After I hear the order “Très soigné!” called out and all of us respond “Oui Monsieur!” to acknowledge the command, I peek at the reservations list to see if I might have heard of the person. Mostly I find it’s an unknown journalist (to me, that is), but sometimes it’s some one world renowned – this definitely gets me excited.

The funny part of this command, “très soignè“, is that it really isn’t necessary. Everything we make is très soigné. It’s not because you are a tourist from Arkansas that your food will be any less beautiful or the servers any less attentive. We don’t give bad portions to the Americans and beautiful portions to the French. It’s not because you arrived in a Gap suit and left the Channel dress hanging in the closet, that the food will be inedible.

No, every pate is pristine and every plate is watched over by three executive chefs before the servers carry them away on silver plated trays.

Nonetheless, what this command really does is send everyone in the kitchen into a heightened state of awareness because, no one wants to be the person who messed up.

But, there’s something that gets my adrenaline moving even more than when I hear “très soignè” bellowed out by the executive chef. It’s when I check the reservations list, or walk through the dining room before service begins, and I see single reservations or a table set for one person. I always make a point to memorize that table.

Why? Because single reservations are possibly the Michelin scouts coming in to dine under assumed names.

I know that many people (especially in the Bay Area, and rightly so) have their doubts about the Michelin Guide. But, we live by it here in Paris. And, in a way, it ensures that all people are treated “très soignè” whether the order is called out or not.

The critics mostly come alone, but it’s rumored that they dine with other critics too, just to ensure that no one suspects anything. And, they sometimes come in more than once to be absolutely positive that the experience was the same.

In a country where the customer is always wrong, the Michelin Guide sets the bar, and those restaurants that wish to be successful need to climb above it. Far above it.

Of course, to us Americans, where the customer is always right and our competitive culture weeds out the worst, this notion is bizarre. Don’t you want my business? Don’t you want me to come back here again? Don’t you want a nice generous tip and great write-up on my blog?

Tant pis! However if you go to a Michelin stared restaurant you will be sure to have outstanding food and service because once the restaurant has earned its “macarons” the idea of loosing any of them can lead to a significant cut in business (example: Tour d’Argent) or even worse, suicide in the case of the outstanding and widely loved chef, Bernard Loiseau (read “The Perfectionist : Life and Death in Haute Cuisine” (Rudolph Chelminski).

Or if you’re just a lowly cook like me, it can mean your job. I’m just assuming that of course, I’ve never seen any of the cooks fired in the kitchen because I’ve never seen anyone make an earth shattering mistake. I certainly don’t want to be the first!

And we’ve never lost any stars, why would we? The food is outstanding, the cooks are professionals, and the wait staff have trained in universities in the art of how to serve people properly.

But, you can be sure that I put an extra “très” in the phrase “très soigné” when I hear it called out or see that table for one.

And I might add, I always show a little extra love when I know an American is dining in the restaurant – hey, I know how much the exchange rate hurts right now – and I want at least one of the restaurants you eat at in Paris to be truly worth it.

The post Guy Savoy: Tres Soigne first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Translation: In the juice

Every kitchen has expressions for when things are going really really badly. In American kitchens we often say “in the weeds”. But in France it’s: dans le jus.

During the service there sometimes arrives a moment where you have tons of orders to fill all at the same time. This is normal. If the front of the house has booked the whole restaurant for 8:00 P.M. then there is really no way to get around it.

But in America we have this little thing called a COMPUTER where servers can input the orders and then the entire menu pops at each individual station through a little ticket machine. Each course is fired off via COMPUTER when it’s time to plate the next course. You post your little tickets up at your station and then fill them in the order they arrive unless the executive chef wants to go ahead with a different table first.

If you’re a visual learner, like me, then you’ll appreciate being able to see your orders.

But we don’t do that in France. We do everything verbally. The orders come in (up to 8 courses) and you must memorize it on the spot. We often seat 80 people a night so imagine memorizing that many orders. When a long order comes in you have to know what the dish ahead of yours is to be sure to get your plate prepared and ready to go. And mind you, one station could possibly have several different courses to fulfill for one table.

Are you following me here? Because I’m confusing myself already.

So there’s this horrifying moment when one is dans le jus when the chef starts calling out complete menus as well as courses to be finished at the same time. (my French is remedial remember) and you’re trying to finish one plate when another one has to go out before it and then another order comes in and you’ve already forgotten it because you were struggling to just get something to the pass.

Do you see where I”m heading?

And your whole station looks like a tornado swept through it. Shit everywhere. Plates half finished. And you’ve forgotten the rest of the orders that just came in. Did I mention: forgotten the orders that just came in?

Now, I am doubly dans le jus because I can’t count. If you want to be a chef, learn how to count in every language in the universe, because it will make life easier. The French word for ‘six’ which is also spelled the same in French but pronounced: seece, sounds awfully close to the French word for ‘ten’ which is ‘dix‘, prounounced: deece. Oh, and ‘eight’ is ‘huit‘ in French pronounced: wheet.

Seece, deece, wheet.

Need I say more?

But I am dans le jus in more ways than one. I’m training with another Chef de Partie so I can take his station and he can move to another one and a commis (cook) who both have more experience than me. Not in everything of course, but certainly when it comes to vegetables. Give me a rack of lamb, a chicken, a pigeon, a rabbit, a baby boar or any other feathered or fury critter and I’ll school you in preparation, but show me a carrot and I haven’t the faintest idea what to do with it. (ahem)

So basically right now, everyone thinks I’m stupid. No one has confidence in me. And I might as well be invisible because I don’t speak French. It takes me twice as long to understand. Twice as long to prepare everything. Twice as long to re-prepare everything because I’ve done it wrong the first time.

DANS LE JUS!

It occured to me the other day just how behind I am in the French system of educating cooks, when I looked over to see a 17 year old boy chopping mushrooms razor thin for duxelles at a speed and accuracy that would take me years to master. I thought to myself: by the time he’s my age he will be light years ahead. Talk about learning curve.

Dans le jus, dans le jus, dans le jus.

But you know what? I have have something they don’t have. I have tons of world experience. I have not lived my whole life inside a kitchen. I’m a trained actor, credentialed teacher, and an accomplished cook. And, I know some day when I have my own restaurant I will use everything that I have learned here, but I will add my creativity and my own personality in a way that represents my background.

I can only say right now, that I am thankful that the chefs have faith in me. It’s not exactly normal to be a thirty-something, still learning, female cook in this environment. And, I hope to live up to their expectations. I will live up to their expectations.

In the meantime I intend to take up swimming lessons so I can paddle my way out of this juice.

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, Chef, chef de parti

The post Guy Savoy: Dans Le Jus first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I’m spending my first day at my new position as Chef de Partie staring at the ceiling, flat on my back, sick in bed. How do you like them apples? This is such a bad joke, it’s not even worthy of a three tap drum roll.

Despite the onset of ma crève yesterday I ironed my chef’s jacket and my chef’s pants too laying them aside for a quick morning exit. I even trekked out in the rain to the 14th arrondissement to get all my knives sharpened.

My knife guy does everyone’s couteaux in Paris including the staff at Hotel Crillon and Le Meurice. He grinds many a galley cook’s knives to razor sharp precision – and he’ll be happy to do yours too. (address at the bottom of post). It’s a lot of fun to see his enormous five foot grinding wheel turning while he holds the blades against it, sparks flying everywhere.

Every time I go he tells me to be careful with my freshly sharpened knives. And every time without fail I slice one of my ten doigts without even noticing it. That’s how crazy sharp they are. You don’t know you’re cut until blood gushes everywhere and you realize it’s your blood that’s making the mess. The nice thing about smooth cuts (as opposed to cuts from serrated knives) is that you really don’t even feel them. Until you start cooking…

I had my first chef’s knife professionally sharpened twelve years ago while working at Ristorante Ecco in San Francisco. I was so darned proud of that knife. It was a beautiful enormous Wüsthof chef’s knife (Global who?) I didn’t have a satchel of knives like other cooks, just had that one German workhorse and at a whopping $64, it was all I could afford. In hindsight it was too long and heavy for me, but I didn’t care. I just loved the weight of it in my hand and the power it wielded.

After a month at the Garde Manger station my trusty steed began to dull past the point of a sharpening rod’s aid. Since everyone’s knives were dull he Head Chef, Wendy, called the knife man to come in and grind all of our blades. She warned me that my knife would be very, very sharp afterwards.

Yeah, okay, thanks for the tip Chef.

Slicing beefy red tomatoes horizontally into rounds, I noticed a burgundy color juice running all over the cutting board. I thought it was the tomato. Nope, it was my finger squirting blood everywhere. I unknowingly swiped the inside of my left index finger, which was holding the tomato steady, with my right hand and the tip of my knife across the inside bone joint down to my finger’s base.

I should have gone to the hospital for stitches right then and there. The cut was deep tearing across the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Wendy came over with wads of papers towels holding them around my finger applying pressure in between my deep gulps for air. We bandaged it tightly and put a finger condom on it. The clock struck 6 – time for dinner service to start.

The restaurant turned out 60 covers a night, with a bare bones kitchen brigade of four cooks. There were no stagiers or apprentis dying to take over and prove their worth. There was no Grand Chef standing at the pass cleaning plates and calling out orders to step in. The Head Chef was also the meat & fish cook and the Sous Chef was also the pasta & vegetable cook. I was the garde manger and pastry cook and there was one pizza guy. And that was that.

I made some beautiful insalatas at Ristorante Ecco: spicy rocket salad with sweet fennel ribbons, bitter endive, peppery radicccio and sliced pears tossed in a tart champagne vinaigrette and garnished with a crisp lacy cheese wafer. Or, my favorite, the baby spinach salad with roasted beets (gold, pink, and crimson) and smoked trout mixed with an aged balsamic dressing. Not to mention our signature Ceasar salad and the butter lettuce with tarragon starter.

But, mixing those salads required the use of bare hands. Each ingredient was dressed separately and then added artistically together on the plate. And plastic gloves weren’t very popular back then – they certainly weren’t practical in the kitchen in any case. Think about it, you would have to change your gloves every time the different beets were dressed in order to keep the juice from staining the shaved fennel or pears. Who has time for that nonsense?

Orders flew in like witches gathering for winter solstice and I was out of my mind trying to get cold entrées finished in time before the dessert orders started up. Whipping together salads in record speed, I felt my index finger bitterly stinging. I looked down in horror to discover that both the bandaid and the finger condom were missing.

Oh fuhhhhhhhhhh-dge.

Waitresses grabbed salads off the ledge of my station before I had a chance to delicately poke through them. And more servers ran back yelling: “Where’s table 5? Where’s table 7?”.

I frantically turned back to the salads I was preparing searching for any remnants of plastic, but none was to be found. I spent that whole night in fear that sooner or later a customer was going to chew my bloody bandages, report it to the server, who in turn would tell the head chef, who would then fire me on the spot.

I waited.

Luckily for me nothing happened. I would hate to think that a client ate the bandage and the finger condom. I dunno, maybe they mistook it for calamari? It must have been awfully chewy. Hopefully it magically found its way to the garbage can, but I still can’t be positive. My finger eventually healed although it took a good long month and I still have the fine white scar to remind me. But, at least it’s a neat bulging line and not some jagged saber tooth monstrosity.

Don’t worry, that was a good long time ago and one of my first real cooking jobs. I would never do that to your food today. Never!

So, tomorrow I intend to start my new position assuming my fever comes down, my throat isn’t blistery, and my head stops threatening to explode. Luckily for me, they only laughed when I called at 7 A.M. to say “I’m sick”. They told me not to worry and that my post will still be waiting for me.

Did you want that knife guy’s address in Paris?

Coutellerie D’Allésia
Affutage & Reargenture
161 Rue D’Alésia
Paris, 75014
Metro: Plaisance, line 13
Tel: 01 45 42 39 67 (you must call in advance to make sure he’s not on assignment)

P.S. If you tell him that “Amy the American” sent you he’ll be happy. I don’t know if it will get you a discount, but I told him I’d mention him on my website. He asked me to send my friends

Technorati Tags: knives, paris, puppy, sharpened

The post The Sharper Your Knives? first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Under normal circumstances this would be very exciting. If I was back in the U.S. I would be shaking up champagne bottles. But here, in Paris, where students start careers in cooking at the age of fourteen and pass their entire lives in clastrophobic kitchens, this is like being handed ten sacks of flour and ordered to run a marathon without having trained properly.

For my age it is a good title. I am old enough to take the responsibility. I know how to run a team and work with people. I’m fun (occasionally). I have creative ideas. And I have trained and proven my love of hard work and French cuisine. But lets face it, my French is remedial. I have problems understanding rapid fire orders in French and I haven’t done my time, so to speak, as many of these derserving French cooks have. Ah well, leave it to the crazy American to stir up the pot.

When I found out my new position today, I could only reply: êtes-vous sûr ? (Are you sure?) I was cautioned that it would be a lot of responsibility, and indeed it will be.

In America we toss around the word ‘chef’ like a used towel, but in France the word strictly translates as ‘boss’. To be a Chef de Partie is to be the boss of a part. In essence this postition will make me responsible for one station in the kitchen. And it is still miles in distance and training from sous chef or executive chef. So don’t think I’m walking around with a swollen head or anything because I’m not. I’m scared.

You know how sometimes you think you really want something and then all of a sudden you get it and you just want to run away? Well, that’s me right now.

Basically this title will mean that if anything goes wrong (as it surely will during my tenure) then I will be the one to catch hell. Not the commis, not the stagiers, not the apprentis – me. It also goes without saying that my role will be to insure all food is accounted for, properly prepared, beautifully plated, and expertly cleaned up at the end of each service twice a day at my station.

I’ve heard new cooks in America call themselves “chef” just after graduating from cooking school, and at one point I wrote “American Chef” under my self-description on this blog. I considered myself one because I had worked in restaurants, taught high school cooking classes, and attended cooking school (in that order strangely enough).

Oh, I was so wrong. In the French world of cuisine ‘chef’ is given with humbling respect. When I call my boss ‘chef’ in the kitchen, it’s because he’s cooked over thirty-two years and demanded perfection each day of his career. It denotes more than some one who can carry around a satchel of knives or pay for a fancy cooking school education. It means you understand food and the business of food with every muscle of your body.

That is why the grand chefs of France are so highly regarded. Because everybody in the business knows how long and hard they have worked to achieve success. The road to French chefdom is not paved with glitz and glamour but with fourteen hour work days two shifts a day, little pay, and ruthless critics tearing you down or catapulting you forward.

And I’m worried about being a measly Chef de Partie! I can’t imagine how it must feel to run a whole kitchen, feed over 150 clients a day, retain three Michelin stars, and open restaurants all over the world, simultaneously. Mon Dieu, the responsibility!!!

For now, I’m only a cook. And being a Chef de Partie is thankfully just that: a cook with a ton of responsibilty. But, I can finally say – jokingly at least – that I am a tiny chef in France.

Technorati Tags: chef de parti

The post Guy Savoy: Chef de Partie first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The other night on one of my days off, I ordered a cocktail at an upscale restaurant that I had never heard of before. It was a mixture of rum and spirits with fruit juice. It sounded interesting but a little too sweet for my taste. I asked the server if it was dégueulasse (deh-guh-lass), which I thought meant ‘gross’.

I hear it all the time in the kitchen and I just assumed it meant bad or unsavory. I just wanted to know if the cocktail was good! I really upset the server who stormed away after correcting my French and telling me never to use that word in public. How was I supposed to know? The word means ‘filthy’.

My French friends at the table burst out laughing after the server vanished and then they explained the word to me. They thought my little colloquial version of ‘gross’ was funny. But there I was totally in the dark wondering why I had just caused such a reaction to the extent that the server was replaced by another young man.

And then there’s the word ‘putain’ (poo-tan) which means ‘whore’. Every time some one messes up a dish in the kitchen they exclaim, “Oh putain!”. I thought the word meant ‘oops!’ or ‘oh brother!’. I hear the word constantly throughout the day so it’s just become part of my vocabulary. If I drop something on the floor I say, “Oh putain.” If the chefs are yelling at me I say, “Oh putain” and put my head down and work faster. If some one is being a jerk I say, “Oh putain” in exasperation and walk way.

But I don’t think I was supposed to use it on the crowded the metro during rush hour when I dropped my cell phone on the floor. Because when I exclaimed, “oh putain” and then crouched down to look for my phone in between people grabbing onto bars for balance I caused some funny stares, a few giggles, and some downright mean looks.

So now you have two words you can put together into a sentence. Here’s how the chef’s do it in the kitchen: Oh putain! Ça c’est dégueulasse! (oh whore! That’s filthy!)

But wait there’s more. Oh yes, there’s a lot more bad words in the kitchen and I haven’t even begun to really get down and dirty. But first let me fill you in on the obligatory inbetween words that will no doubt pair with the spicier bad ones. Qu’est-ce que c’est ça? (keh-skuh-say-sah) literally translated means ‘what is that there?’. This is one of my Chef’s favorite phrases and he has a way of putting the fear of God into you just with that one rhetorical question.

If you’re being asked ‘what is that there?’ by the Chef, then you already know what is there. You know it is something totally inedible that is an embarrassment to the reputation of the restaurant. God forbid, the Michelin reviewers should walk in while you’re serving that plate of shit. Normally the sentence is accompanied with the rolling of eyes and an outstretched finger-pointing directly to the merde that you have just created.

So here’s the new phrase altogether now: Oh putain! Qu’est-ce que c’est ça? Ça c’est dégueulasse (Oh whore! What is that there? That’s filthy!)

I know you know the French word merde that I mentioned above. Everyone in the world knows that word. It’s a funny little word for dog doo isn’t it? But there’s another way of twisting it into something a little less cutesy. C’est de la merde is like dégueulasse but means ‘it’s of the shit’ or ‘it’s a pile of crap’. Again, this phrase is normally accompanied with the obligatory rolling of the eyes and outstretched finger-pointing to the dog doo you’ve just plated for some famous client. It can be tagged on behind the phrase: ça c’est dégueulasse for added punctuation.

In other words, if you didn’t understand (because you’re an idiot) that what you slaved over for five hours to create is disgusting, you will certainly get it through your thick skull that it’s a pile of poop.

Hallelujah! Now we’re really getting somewhere: Oh putain! Qu’est-ce que c’est? QU’EST-CE C’EST ÇA? Ça c’est dégueulasse – c’est de la merde. (Oh whore! What is that there? WHAT IS THAT THERE? That’s filthy – it’s a pile of crap!)

Now remember that cooking in a French kitchen is like being in the military. Not only is the fact that you messed up your roti de veau (roasted veal) pointed out for the whole staff to witness, but also the fact that you’re a butt hole.

Well you’ve got to be a butt hole if you’ve just messed up something as basic as roti de veau right? And the chefs also have to ensure you clearly understand the pecking order. If you screwed the pooch on the veal then you are definitely in the merde pile. The word for butt hole is conard (coh-nard) or if you’re a female butt hole its connasse (coh-nass). Isn’t that nice and undiscriminating of the French? How kind of them to give women their own feminine version of the word. I think the female version sounds much prettier.

And of course if you’re a gros connard, then you’re a ‘big butt hole’. Now before we put the whole new sentence together I’d like to introduce one last phrase, fait chier (fay-shay), which is truly grotesque. It means ‘to take a poo’, but really it is more equivalent to our “oh f&*k” American expression. This expression can be used in the same way, “Oh putain” is used, but normally expresses a higher degree of agitation.

So here it is, the grande finale, the final sentence that will truly enable you to call it like it is in a 3-star French kitchen: Oh putain! Fait chier! Conard, qu’est-ce c’est ça? QU’EST-CE C’EST ÇA? Ça c’est dégueulasse – c’est de la merde! Oh putain. (Oh whore! Oh f*&k! Butt hole, what is that there? WHAT IS THAT THERE? That’s filthy – it’s a pile of crap! Oh whorrrrre!)

And what do you answer back when you hear this lovely sentence breathed inches from your face by a screaming, sweaty, red-faced French chef that has pulsing veins bulging out from his neck?

Oui chef! (yes, chef)

The post How to Talk Like a French Chef first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Meaning: That’s just the way things are. That’s life. Some things will never change. Yesssirrybob. I told you so. Welcome to France. Tough shit.

Anyone who’s ever taken a linguistics class or traveled abroad knows that the flavor of a language – the essence of its soul – is not in the words themselves but in the unwritten expressions and gestures. Once the point of understanding these sublties is reached, then either you’ve been in that country too long, or it’s too late and you’re in-culturated.

I came back head waggling from living in Southern India for a year. It drove my mother so crazy that she would grab my head to stop me shaking it back and forth. I couldn’t help it! I didn’t even know that I was doing it. That’s just part of talking and listening in Southern India. Studying in London, I picked up phrases that sounded like I smushed every vowel in the alphabet together at one time: “aaoouuw-right mate?” and “aaoouuw’s it going?” From a summer in Ireland I picked up more of a drinking habit than anything else (it’s part of the language I swear) and from a different summer in Spain I learned how to use my hands simultaneously when talking to punctuate feeling.

From France? No doubt I will come home blowing through my lips in exasperation and shrugging my shoulders while rolling my eyes slightly to the heavens above. Ah buh oui uh? Notice that this sentence only contains one word. The rest are sounds.

The first, “ah” is pronounced as written. The second “buh” is really more of an exasperation created by pursing the lips and blowing out. “oui” you know – I’m sure you’ve heard this one before. And “uh” is said with a slight upwards inflection as if asking a rhetorical question.

We’re not done yet.

On the “ah” it is necessary to raise the eyebrows upward and cock the head to one side every so slightly. With the “buh” of exasperation, the shoulders come come up in a shrug. They remain in the shrug on “oui”. And with the last “uh” there’s an optional hand signal, palms outstretched and turned up, to punctuate the shoulder shrug as if asking, “what are you gonna do?”

Let’s say it together now with feeling: Ah (eyebrows raised, head cocked) buh (shoulders come up with explosive lip sound) oui (remain in shrug position) uh (hands come up if you’re really feeling moved by emotion)

Why am I writing about this? Because I’ve just spent the last three weeks trying to do two of the most difficult things for Expats in France at the same time: find an apartment and get my Carte de Sejour renewed. Ah buh oui, uh?

Lets talk about finding an apartment in France. I’m from San Francisco and I clearly remember trying to find an apartment during the Dotcom boom where high rolling geeks lavished roundtrip plane tickets to anywhere in the world on landlords. Or offered to double the rent. Or even paid for a whole year up front just to cinch the deal. You think I’m joking? I’m not.

Here in Paris, it’s not about the extra cash or the perks you can offer, it’s about the paper work. He who has the most paperwork wins!

Ah buh oui, uh?

When you go to see an apartment you must bring a book with you that proves you are a good person with a paying job, you have money in your bank account, and either your employer or your parents are willing to pay the bill if you cannot. If you are an Expat then you also need copies of your Carte de Sejour (oh wait, mine’s expired, hope they don’t notice!), your passport, and any other official looking documents that you can throw on top to make the pile look more presentable.

Once you’ve got this book together then it’s time to start combing the listings because paying for an agency is astronomical. If you want to do it the French way, then it’s necessary to go to the website De Particulier A Particulier and search through listings posted privately. Be careful about leaving telephone messages because often landlords get scared when they hear a foreign accent. Ah buh oui, uh?

And who wants to be turned down, or not have the call returned, before you even get the chance to show off your official looking Book-Of-Self.

One apartment I looked at (for an ungodly amount of money) the young owner asked if I could have my parents sign a paper saying they would vouch for me. I’m American! What was he going to do? Drain my parent’s accounts all the way from France? And, I’m a grown married woman of 34, not a college student. I can afford to take of myself thank-you-very-much. I don’t need my mommy or daddy to sign a permission for me.

Thankfully, I did finally find a new apartment through my connections with the Democrats Abroad. This is the other thing about living in Paris that is a must. You MUST network if you want to get anything here. Ah buh oui, uh? Now I am the proud renter of a tiny cute flat in St. Michel complete with a wood-beamed ceiling and a bed I have to climb up stairs to crawl into. I love it. It’s my new mouse house. And the landlord is an American ex-pat who didn’t even ask to see my Book-Of-Self. Go figure. Ah buh oui, uh?

Finding an apartment is peanuts compared to the Carte de Sejour process. Guess what you need this procedure? That’s right! Paperwork!!! You must also bring the Book-Of-Self that contains everything you put together for the apartment search on top of everything you thought you didn’t need and some pictures. No matter how complete your revised book is they will find some problem with it. I guarantee it.

Yesterday, I went to the police station buried deep in the outskirts of the 17th arrondisement to file for my extended Carte de Sejour, so that I can file for my re-newed Carte de Sejour next month at the Prefecture de Police. Ah buh oui, uh?

It was raining and freezing cold, so just for fun the security guard decided to keep us waiting in line outside the building, letting groups of ten enter in 45 minute intervals. I waited 45 minutes to enter the non-descript depressing building. I climbed the stairs to the room marked for Etrangers (strangers or foreigners) grabbed a number and waited in the holding pattern for my time to visit the clerk who would undoubtedly find something wrong with my revised Book-Of-Self.

I waited another 45 minutes.

Finally my number was called and I had my first encounter with the secretary who asked the reason for my visit and quickly scanned my paperwork to see that I had everything in order. Then I went back to the holding pattern to wait for my chance to see another pencil pusher who would give me the green slip – the extended Carte de Sejour – so that I can repeat the process with the big guns down at the Prefecture de Police.

My number was called again and a disgruntled unfriendly blonde took my book for review. She looked at the photos I had brought and decided they wouldn’t work. What? They won’t work? It’s the same friggin’ picture I’ve used on my Carte de Sejours for the last three years! I showed her my old Carte de Sejour and she took it and the photos to her boss to see what could be done about this.

I was told that even if they did work last time, they wouldn’t work this time because my shoulders were ever so slightly cocked to one side. They needed to be full front. She told me to get new ones and come back. Wait, what? You want me to wait outside in the freezing cold rain for another 45 minutes? She explained that I could just come straight back inside and that it wouldn’t be a problem.

So, I did what I was told. I found a place to get my pictures retaken and then marched on back to the Police station. But the guard had changed and the new guy didn’t recognize me and he refused to call the disgruntled blonde upstairs. He told me that I must stand in line like everyone else. Ah bu oui, uh? (tough shit)

Another 45 minutes elapsed and finally I was allowed to see the disgruntled, blonde, unfriendly pencil pusher. She took my photo and cut it out and pasted in on my new green extended Carte de Sejour slip. 4 hours of waiting for 2 minutes of cut & paste.

Now, I have an apartment and an extended Carte de Sejour.

Ah buh oui, uh?

The post Guy Savoy: Ah Buh Oui, Uh? first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

My brother was the biggest radio fanatic of all of us. He ran the high school radio station and after college rode the airwaves from disc jockey to program director to national radio consultant. He now co-owns eleven popular radio stations in California. My niece, twelve years old, has her own station called School of Pop that she streams live. And before you skip over the link thinking it’s child play, think again, it’s a great station. Don’t ever play Name That Tune with her, because she knows every song in the book regardless of genre and can tell you when it first played, where it was recorded, who recorded it, and more. I guess you could say we’re a pro-radio family.

So when Katie Macpherson, asked to do a radio interview for World Radio Paris, an NPR affiliate, I jumped at the chance. I met her at the metro station close to my apartment and we walked down to my local farmer’s market to shop for seasonal produce and then headed back to my apartment to cook it up while she interviewed me about life in Paris and cooking in a French restaurant. For three hours we cooked, ate, taped, and talked. How she edited all that jammer down to five minutes is beyond me!

If the player is not working try this link: WRP Interview by Katie Macpherson

Something happens to my brain when I have a microphone in my face. The gerbals stop running up there. My own story – my own history – disappears. Luckily Katie is a great journalist and she kept those questions coming for three hours en plus despite fish scales flying around like confetti and various dishes cooking on the stovetop. It’s a little nerve wracking to cook with a microphone a few inches from your face, like rubbing your belly and patting your head simultaneously. Challenging but fun.

I like Katie, she’s quirky. She’s this beautiful young American woman who is petit, cheerful, and smart. And yet despite her diminutive frame and sweet disposition, I can somehow picture her elbowing her way through a pack of crowded reporters and getting the headline story. She’s not afraid to ask questions and she’s not afraid of people. That may sound simplistic, but the reality takes faith and determination. I don’t think I could do it.

I was intrigued with her desire to pursue radio journalism, when clearly she would be equally successful on TV. I know that she has dabbled in television but her heart remains with radio perhaps due to the simplicity of medium – no heavy cameras to lug around, no makeup to put on, no camera shy interviewees or camera-loving candidates. If the story and the relationship with the interviewee are the objectives, then radio, seems to me, to be the purest way of capturing it.

Being interviewed was an enlightening experience. I sometimes interview myself in the shower and I definitely have been grilled during job interviews, but this was different. This was personal. And yet, it was so easy to open up to her. She asked me questions I had never thought about which ultimately helped me to gain some personal clarity. Everybody should be interviewed, it’s cheaper than therapy and gets a lot off your mind!

I couldn’t help but to ponder afterwards, if our world is becoming too visually focused – if we are loosing our oral traditions. When I taught English in India, I used radio plays as a teaching tool. The students loved reading the lines and performing the sound effects. My students always laughed nervously when they heard their first lines played back through the tape recorder but after a few minutes they became entranced with the story itself. They understood the idea of story telling and listening because it is such a rich part of Indian culture. Later, in the Bay Area, I used radio plays again in my theatre classes but my students struggled with the concept. They were unaccustomed to communicating a story through their voices or listening to the story played back without squirming around. They wanted to see everything acted out.

Hope you enjoy listening to this short interview. We had a great time making it even if my brain wasn’t functioning properly. I think the background sounds are especially fun. Wish there was more of Katie’s voice in it. I interviewed her a little during our session, but she obviously cut that out. We joked about starting a radio cooking show. Heck, if The Car Guys can fix engines through the airwaves then perhaps it’s possible to teach French technique. They’re both time consuming and ridiculously complicated. Anyway, hope you find the interview entertaining and please check out World Radio Paris if you’re living in France.

There’s some interesting stories to be heard out there…

Technorati Tags: Ms. Glaze, NPR affiliate, radio, radio interview, world radio paris

The post Interview with World Radio Paris first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Many people have emailed me about the connection between Guy Savoy and the movie. I had no idea that the movie had anything to do with Monsieur Savoy until recently! So here’s the scoop: the Pixar crew came to the restaurant four years ago to study how cooks work in a 3-star kitchen. They took detailed notes on the layout of the kitchen and the social interactions. They also went and visited other famous French kitchens including Procope, Tour d’Argent, Hélène Darroze, Tailevent, et Chez Michel.

Monsieur Guy Savoy has a small part in the French version of the film as a client ordering foie gras. It was funny to hear his familiar voice but see such a different character on the screen. Nonetheless, we applauded his performance. After all, he took his entire staff from his four Parisian restaurants to watch the preview in between lunch and dinner shifts! I’m not back officially at the restaurant yet, but they invited me along anyway. I guess I’m the token American along for the ride.

The movie is fantastic! It is so French – the Pixar team has captured everything that I love about Paris and everything I love about cooking in a restaurant in Paris. The ending for me was a little bitter sweet, only because I don’t want to leave this city and I know some day I will have to. The movie sums up why I love it here. You’ll have to see it for yourself to understand…

Technorati Tags: Guy Savoy, preview, ratatouille

The post Ratatouille Preview! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

However, I’ve become accustomed to not working. I take hour long runs through the Bois de Boulougne everyday. I sip coffee after my runs at the lake in the park and chat with other runners. I stare out and ponder what I might blog about – it’s a perpetual daydream!

I’m constantly thinking up new recipes and seeking out the freshest ingredients in the farmer’s markets to try out my latest obsession. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but just having the time to try them out is a rarity. Cooking in a restaurant seldom provides the time to think about personal style and recipes. Most of the time I find I’m so focused on getting prepared and then cooking that I don’t have time to discover my own style. Just for fun this week I’ve bought an ice cream maker, a pasta mill, and a deep fryer so I can experiment with things I’m not so familiar with.

Aside from my newfound creativiy, my fingernails have grown extra long and I take the time to polish them. The scars on my hands have started to blend in and I don’t have dark circles under my eyes anymore. I’ve lost weight from running – or at least the beefy arms and thighs that come from lifting heavy pots and pan and running up several slights of stairs throughout the day. Lookin’ good!!!

Really, I’m living this fantasy right now and all I want to do is be back in the kitchen slaving away, over a hot stove for next to no money, with people that yell and criticize, in work conditions that only insane people would enjoy.

Well, that’s it. I must be insane.

Sometimes I only have these revelations when I’m writing. Hence the need to continue my blog therapy program.

I did not get the Top Chef spot, but I did make it on the casting director’s radar and received personal email from her. She was very supportive which surprised me – I guess I figured she’d be more appathetic. It looks like they’ve taken the sous chef, Hung, from the Guy Savoy Las Vegas restaurant instead of me. The Top Chef film crew came to test him in the kitchen a week before I arrived in Las Vegas to cook, so I missed my chances. However, she did say she wanted to keep my email for the next round. We’ll see…

I’m enjoying making my own cooking videos at home. It’s fun to combine my two passions: theater and cooking. Then I can yell at my husband too when he messes up the lighting, or my close-up doesn’t look good, or he’s missed filming some part of the preparation that I can’t repeat. Yes, in my own kitchen, I am my own diva, and I like that. He doesn’t like that too much, but he gets to eat the results at the end and I’ve yet to hear a complaint!

For the next two months I plan to chase Moulins (wind mills) through France, drink wine, run, blog, make videos, visit back home, attend my sister’s wedding, sail in Croatia, bicycle in Alsace, and cook for private parties and fundraisers in Paris and San Francisco.

It’s amazing at how one can fill up the calendar without a real job! I’ve never been busier!!! Then come September it’s back to the normal 3-Star grind.

The post Back To Work first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

“Tu as déjà goutée?” (Have you tasted it?).

“Non, je n’aime pas le poulet.” (No, I’m not a chicken fan.)

“Fais la papillote maitenant.” (Make the chicken cooked in a pocket now.)

“Non, je ne peus pas, j’ai beaucoup trop de chose a faire.” (No, I can’t, I have too many other things to do…)

“Maintenant!’ (Now!)

“Oui, chef.” (Yes, chef.)

So I made the stupid chicken and grumped the whole way through it. Meanwhile my boss stood cross-armed inspecting every last detail from the way I butchered the bird to the cooking of it. To be scrutinized by a brooding French chef, is to understand fear. French chefs are not known for coddling their subordinates.

With a mixture of adrenaline and angst pumping through my veins, I hacked the neck off with my cleaver and defiantly chucked it into the trash can, cut off the wing tips, removed the wishbone, and portioned the darned thing quicker than a bat out of hell. He studied my chicken carcass carefully to make sure that I had taken off the breast correctly and removed the legs along with the special back divets that once King Louis IV coveted as his favorite part. I passed the test.

After my portioning was deemed acceptable, then came the toughest part: la cuisson (the cooking). I put the breast into a pocket of aluminum paper that I carefully folded like an origami letter. Inside the pocket I added a stalk of lemongrass, some legumes, and a few spoonfuls of homemade chicken stalk. I placed the origami papillote in an aluminum dish filled with water on the burner to boil and popped it into an extremely hot oven.

As we waited for the chicken to cook, I continued with other chores while my chef continued to stand cross-armed watching my every move and pointing out my every mistake. This was embarrassing, because frankly, I don’t like to be wrong. Anybody that knows me well knows that I really hate to be wrong. But even more frustrating is that I am wrong probably 80% of the time that I insist I’m right. My chicken debate was no different.

Finally my chef announced: “Essayes!” (Try!) I pulled the chicken breast out of the aluminum and looked at it. Admittedly, it was pretty and glistening a pale ivory innocence. I shuddered a little at having to eat the rubbery skin that wasn’t crispy the way I like it. But, I have learned the hard way, when cooking in a French kitchen with big French chefs, you don’t think you just do as you’re told. “Oui chef” I replied.

And then there was silence as I chewed and swallowed…

“Oh! C’est bon ça” (Oh! It’s good!). I quickly inhaled the remains of the most tender breast I have ever eaten. Yes, my French chef against my will, taught me another thing about food: chicken is good. Sometimes I’m such a Bay Area snob that I think the French are totally outdated when it comes to food, but then again, that could fall into the 80% wrong category.

To end our chicken debate, I humbly thanked my chef for allowing me to eat the fifty euro chicken breast because this is never ever allowed in the kitchen. He replied in his funny sounding English mimicking my California valley-girl accent, “Whatever”. Obviously an expression he’s learned through my responses to his sometimes-querulous orders.

By now, I have plucked, gutted, de-boned, filleted, cooked whole (once for the Michelin guide director), stuffed, sous-vided more chicken than most people will ever eat in a lifetime. In fact, I am sure that if challenged, I could do any of the above blind folded. And from all this chicken handling I can say that in France, chicken is turkey. Well, not literally, but it is served just as ceremonial during the holidays as it is for a weeknight dinner. I know many Americans will probably scoff at the notion of serving a chicken for a special feast but here in France even Le Guide Michelin applauds a properly cooked poulet.

Have you ever eaten Poulet de Bresse? It tastes like it looks – deliciously proud. It arrives daily to the restaurant with head still attached: coxcomb bright red with a whitish brown collar of feathers clean and soft. Around it’s downy neck it boldly boasts a certified necklace, which clearly states the birds’ credentials including place of origin and social security number. Sometimes the chef hangs these medals around my neck, which causes everyone in the kitchen to fall about laughing for reasons I still don’t understand. The birds are juicy, range fed, delicious, and fattened up with some corn and milk during its final weeks. Wait a minute – the necklace – is he saying I’m fat? Oh la la la la.

Poulet de Bresse is also the only poulet in France to have it’s own Appelation Origine Controlée (A.O.C.). This means there are strict laws governing how and where these birds are raised. After thirty-five days exactly, the birds are range fed in a grassy area. This diet is supplemented with cereals and skimmed milk for a specific time. Each chicken must have ten square meters of space and one flock cannot exceed five hundred birds. The last phase of production is completed in ventilated wooden cages that are in a quiet and low-lit location in order to keep the chickens happy and calm. The chickens are caged for at least 8 days and up to 8 weeks. No wonder they’re so expensive!

We also have something else in France that most American supermarkets and restaurants don’t have (yet). We have variety in the type of chicken we purchase. I’m not talking about the breed, although there is that too, but the age and sex of the chicken. For instance farmers raise chapons (castrated roosters) & poulardes (hens) to sell to the restaurants and markets during the winter holidays. These chickens are raised from November to December. We put these birds on the menu in December when Paris is cold and customers come in wanting to eat some holiday novelty. Because they are only raised for a short period of time each year every French man and woman knows to order them quickly.

Once we run out of these special birds at the restaurant, we run out. No more are ordered and they can only be served to a table of four or more because we cook them whole and serve them whole to be carved tableside by one of the highly trained servers. In fact when the Michelin Guide came into eat (there were five of them), we cooked up a large chapon. The trick in cooking them whole is to make sure the skin evenly browns and remains un-cracked or torn. This is harder than it might appear. Especially when you’re also cooking for sixty other tables with multiple course meals and there are only two ovens.

I will never forget cooking these whole birds throughout December and watching waiters and chefs bicker over any extra tasty bits as the carcasses returned from the floor. It was like watching a sea of pigeons descending on the last grain on earth. There I was, observing the feeding frenzy night after night in total disbelief. “It’s a frickin’ castrated rooster, how can it taste that good?” Once again, I ate my words.

My chef, annoyed that the servers were eating all the good parts that clearly only cooks deserved, put a stop to the mobbing and declared that all chickens would be returned pronto to the meat station after carving. After this declaration the carcasses were returned to us immediately. Only the head chefs and myself would eat the remains – how’s that for pecking order! So I learned that these birds are delicious and different in taste. They are more mature in flavor then the young chickens and yet still juicy. The albufera sauce blended with foie gras that we made special to accompany the birds didn’t hurt the flavor any either. Needless to say, it was impossible for me to resist dunking my tidbits in.

I know there are many people out there (including myself and my friend George) that think chickens are dirty birds. From experience with my Grandma’s chicken coup I can say they are mean nasty little devils that deserve to be spit roasted. I’ve never thought twice about butchering chickens.

However, the chickens here in France seem to have some kind of elegance that our American one’s do not. I could be overly romanticizing but it’s hard not to when you live in a city of unparalleled fashion. Prada for Poulet! Seriously, some restaurants actually serve the chicken necklace alongside the dish to prove its authenticity. You’d think it was a Cartier gold chain or something.

Well, I suppose for the French, it practically is. At least they have their priorities straight: range fed chickens brought up in humane conditions taste better and are worth paying for. And also: age and gender don’t matter (it’s the mileage baby, it’s the mileage). These last two statements, I think, would go in the 20% right category.

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, birds, chapon, Chef, chicken, paris, poularde, poulet

The post Guy Savoy: Prada For Poulet first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Although it was sometimes emotionally difficult to work with cute and fury animals, towards the end of the season I felt more connected to the food I was preparing. I prefer eating food that I know has lived a healthy life free from chemicals, pesticides, steroids, and unnormal/unnatural diets.

Meat does not come from the super market. It is bought at the super market. Funny how French kids inherently understand that while American kids are convinced chicken is born boneless and skinless. The other day while I was enjoying some sunlight at Le Jardin de Tuilleries, a toddler caught my eye running around one of the fountains. He was waddling after a little duck but eventually gave up his chase, pointed at it, and said, “mmm….” Then his mother reinforced this, “Oui, ça c’est colvert, mmmmmm…..”

In the States, we tend to think of Daffy Duck before we think of dinner.

If you’re ever lost in the woods, stuck in Appalachia, looking to impress a new date, or wanting to reconnect with the food chain here is my video on HOW TO SKIN A RABBIT. This is a wild rabbit or hare (not the petstore kind) and they are very big and have lots of lean meat. The French word is “Lievre”.

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurants, butcher, french, How to, how to video, lapin, lievre, Ms. Glaze, rabbit, video

The post La Chasse au Lièvre: Hunting Rabbit first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Why is this? Why are women leaving the profession or opting to take culinary careers that aren’t restaurant related?

Last night I had an interesting conversation with my Dad about what life is like as a female chef. (I have one day at home before heading off to cook in Las Vegas). He asked me if I wouldn’t prefer catering or private chef-ing over working in a restaurant.

I love being a restaurant cook for the same reason I love acting. I love living in the now. Nothing excites me more than working with other talented people to create something bigger than myself.

When you spend hours prepping and then that first order comes in and the executive chefs begin calling out the menus, and all the cooks call back in response, and beautiful plates fly out with different items created by different cooks – to me that is performance on a plate.

But that performance comes with a steep price. Just like in theater weekends are taken, nights are taken, exhaustion is constant, and relationships suffer. In Paris we start cooking at 8Am and finish at 11Pm or later. We take a short two hour break in the middle which normally means running home, taking a shower, a quick nap, and trying to get one or two chores done before returning the restaurant.

Often we are required to work 6 days a week or come in early depending on the season. It’s no surprise that there aren’t many female French chefs. I don’t see how it would be possible to have a family and keep that kind of routine going. But here in the Bay Area where restaurants often employ two different teams to cook lunch and dinner along with prep cooks it seems a little more plausible to have a life outside the kitchen.

I don’t know where I’m going with this post, except to say that the Bay Area has historically been a place where women can pursue their chef ambitions without coming up against the proverbial glass ceiling.

I’d like to offer up some of my favorite female chef run/owned restaurants in SF. If you have any to add please do so!

Citizen Cake
Jardiniere
Acme Chop House,
Zuni
Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack
Chez Panisse
Stars (pastry)
Le Tartin Bakery

Technorati Tags: Chef, Cuisine, female chefs

The post Performance On A Plate first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I arrived at 8AM in the morning and began my daily routine. As I was hacking apart wild bird carcasses for the gibier jus tears started coming uncontrollably. The more I tried to hide my feelings the more I cried. At one point I had to crouch down beneath the counters so the rest of the kitchen couldn’t see me sobbing away. Then, of course, everyone in the restaurant including the waitstaff started coming by my station to ask if it was true that I was really leaving which brought on even more tears.

On top of being upset I was tired too. I woke up at 3AM the night before and couldn’t get back to bed so I was working on 4 hours of sleep. Anyone who knows me, knows that I turn into a monster without sleep. As the morning preparation continued my sadness strangely turned into general annoyance.

I was irked that one of my comrades wouldn’t let me use the large skillet I needed to cook the staff lunch. He claimed he was “about to use it” but didn’t touch it for 45 minutes. (I noted the time on the clock) Normally I would have let this go, but instead I found myself outrageously angered. I threw the steaks I was cooking for our lunch into a smaller skillet of smoking hot oil like a crazed mad woman and seasoned it like a maniac – I’ve never twisted the pepper mill so furiously in all my life!

I went to make coffee after our staff lunch, but the barista wouldn’t let me use the two prong espresso grip, only the single grip. I asked for the double and he said no. I saw his lunch that he was happily eating and asked if it was good. “Ah oui, j’aime bien ça”. In French I reminded him that I cook him lunch and dinner every single day, and it’s my last day, and I would like the double espresso grip so I don’t have to spend 15 minutes to make my coffee. This sent him into a temper tantrum that far surpassed mine and sent me back to my station crying…again…

Service began and we were full to the maximum capacity. All though I wasn’t in the mood to work hard, the fast pace kept my mind off leaving. I was able to channel my deadly mix of emotions into cooking the food instead of fighting with everyone around me.

I came home after lunch service and slept for one hour and then returned for dinner with 4 bottles of champagne. Traditionally the person leaving buys champagne for the staff and everyone shares a glass together at the end of service. To me this is a strange custom because one would think the restaurant would provide the beverages. I really did not want to do it. Not because I didn’t want shill out the big bucks for a couple bottles, but because I knew I wouldn’t emotionally be able to handle it. I’m a big baby when it comes to saying goodbye – what can I say?

The night service was not as busy as lunch and my emotions ping-ponged back and forth between sadness and anger. At the beginning of the shift I had received a letter that simply stated my employment for eight months. This letter sent me through the roof: “Eight months! I’ve worked here for eight months 14 hours a day often 6 days a week and all I get is a lousy letter confirming my employment? Why am I buying champagne? This is outrageous! Don’t they care that I’m leaving!?!?! Don’t they care about all the personal sacrifices I’ve made for almost a year now???”

The last order came in and again I started crying. But finally, I opened the champagne and drank with the chefs and all the cooks and after two glasses my tears subsided and I was able to laugh again. It was a little funny to me to see the young guys vocalizing their desire for my position. As soon as one of them said he would be interested in my job, they all jumped in to make their interests known. Just as I expected, all the guys want to cook meat. For now no one will take my place. I’m not quite sure why …

To finish the evening, my boss on behalf of the entire staff gave me a chef’s jacket signed by everyone and two huge global knives. Everyone knows that I’m tired of meat and so the knives are for the next two stations that hopefully I will get to work at when I return (after my work visa is sorted out). They are the most expensive knives I will ever own: a 24cm filleting flexible global knife for fish and an 18cm global knife for vegetables. A Very cool and unexpected present. And yes, this brought on another flood of tears.

But wait till I tell you about the lunch I had the next day…

I have some friends in town that wanted to eat at the restaurant so I agreed to accompany them. It felt a little strange to be returning to work to eat and not to cook. Especially knowing that my boss was going to be working alone and probably pulling his hair out without help. Also, I had cried so much the day before I felt like an idiot returning. Eyes swollen, I met my friends at the restaurant. When I arrived all the servers and everyone greeted me like I was an old friend. Even Guy Savoy gave me two kisses!

We sat down and awaited our menus which never came. Instead Guy Savoy created a menu for us that was extraordinary. We began with a truffle millefuille and then ate our way through caviar, sea bass, artichoke soup, and finally truffle foie gras sausage ( that I had made just the day before with the sous chef John Baptiste). He ordered us an array of desserts including the blood orange gelée/sorbet and ending with a dessert called “noir” which is an ode to dark chocolate with zest of lime and black pepper. Delicious. And the sommelier brought us wine to taste with every course and reflilled our glasses as soon as we had finished one.

I was so entranced with the food and my company – okay and all the wine too! – that I failed to notice that we were the last table. I finally asked for the check but the Maitre D came back and whispered in my ear that is was a present from Monsieur Guy Savoy.

We left a little tipsy but positively glowing from our outrageously delicious meal. When I arrived home, I threw my high heels on the floor and climbed into bed. Pulling my duvet up to my ears I drifted off into a happy food comma. Feeling like a well fed princess I couldn’t help but to think: that meal was worth those eight months of work – that meal was worth everything…

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The post Guy Savoy: Le Dernier Diner, The Last Supper first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

But on the other hand, I love what I do…

Just when I was really beginning to understand the food at Guy Savoy on a deeper level this has to happen. I have seen three seasons come and go and with them some of the most beautiful traditional French cuisine in Paris. I have made it through the hunting season preparing and cooking game that is rarely served in America. And, I have braved out the traditional French mostly male kitchen environment permanently leaving my mark (I hope!).

Moreover, it’s become my second family and I know that when I go I will never see any of them again. The kitchen is it’s own underworld and once you leave it you’re gone forever – like a man overboard – gone. This saddens me the most.

Funny how you start to see things differently when you know you are leaving. I sometimes look at the piano – the 15 foot stove – and wonder how many cooks have lit it’s burners, spilled various liquids upon it, seared meat, blanched vegetables, plated hundreds of meals upon it’s hot plaques. It’s like a ship that rides out the changing of the seasons with different crews of cooks succeeding or failing miserably under the pressure. And trust me, I have seen more than a few cooks fail.

I’ve been very lucky to receive the training I’ve been given at Guy Savoy. There were many times that my training was as painful, embarrassing, exhausting as it was rewarding but that’s the breaks in a 3-star restaurant. My boss, Chef Damien Le Bihan, gave me the opportunity to work the viande station with him and prepare and cook all the meat for the restaurant. I know that all the young guys wanted my position and I’m sure they will be scrambling for it when I go.

Who wouldn’t want to work with the sous chef of the restaurant and learn how to cook meat, meat, meat? But chef Le Bihan decided that a woman could do the job for the first time in the restaurant’s history – merci par tout chef!

I have a lot of respect for the stamina it takes to be a true Chef. I know my training has been excellent. If I can take the heat at Guy Savoy, I can take the heat anywhere in the world – Bring it!!!

Technorati Tags: Guy Savoy

The post Au Revoir? first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I wanted to come back to work at the 3-star Parisian restaurant I cook at well-rested without triple bags under my eyes, glowing of golden California sun, floating around the kitchen as if Cinderella’s fairy godmother had made it possible for me to go to the ball too.

But no…

I came back the day before the re-opening of the restaurant so I was jet-lagged. The 9 hour time difference made it easy to start work at 6AM but difficult to finish at 11PM. The color in my cheeks came from a powder compact of bronzer because San Francisco was sunless and freezing cold – colder than Paris in fact! No floating around the kitchen either due to a major snowboard injury while I was home. I fell smack on my knees while boarding an icy slope and then was shish-ka-bobbed in the back by a skier.

One might say I like to start the year out on the right foot. Especially since my left one is incapacitated. (duh-dum, dum)

Regardless, I was super excited to see the whole crew again. In fact, I think everybody was happy to see one another given our fatigue and ill-humor the last time we all parted ways. Even the executive chef who I had once nicknamed the Nazi Chef (but I’ve revoked for now) gave me four kisses on the cheeks and wished me a bonne année!

I started back to work at the viande station hacking apart little forest creatures thanking God quietly that the hunting season will be over soon and the extra 7 plates on our menu along with it. I’ve become so desensitized to feathered and fury animals with their little eyeballs peeping out that one might think I was the executioner for Henry VIII reincarnated. Just kidding, my boss is worse anyways.

me very very very tired with wild pigeon

But I was so dans la lune while I was filleting my pigeons and de-boning their little legs that I had completely forgotten we changed the recipe. Ooops – no need to debone and stuff the legs anymore! My boss looked over at my work and exclaimed

Chef: “Oh la vache! Tu es vraiment dans la lune!” (Holy cow! You are really in the moon! )

Amy: “Ah, buh oui Chef, il est deux heure dans le matin pour moi maintenant!” (It’s 2AM for me right now)

Chef: “Ah, buh oui Amy, mais ça c’est de la merde” (your work is shit)

Amy: “Ah buh oui Chef, ça c’est claire” (yes, that’s clear)

Chef: “Ah Amy, ‘ow could you do zees? I told you zees morning not to forget zee new recipe. Peel zee onions and carrots instead. I finish zee pigeon.

Despite my costly little preparation error, I somehow made it through the afternoon service without any problems. In fact I was surprised at how easily our rhythm came back. We flowed through orders for pheasant, palomb, colvert, ris de veau, pigeon, lamb, veau, volaille de Bresse, pintade and more as if we had been cooking it for a hundred years. As if there was no mystery in turning out perfectly browned crispy skin with juicy flesh or sweetbreads ever so crispy on the outside and meltingly delicious inside. It was a good lunch service.

But then I did something not so smart. I went home and took an hour nap during the break and I could barely wake up afterwards. I felt like some one had secretly drugged me with a whole bottle of Nyquil. It took every last drop to muster myself out of bed, throw on my chef’s whites, and hobble out the door, up the street, and back to work. I had two strong espressos once at work to get me through the preparation and two more after the staff dinner to get me through the service. I couldn’t even see straight by the time our first order came in. Then I started making mistakes…

Chef: “Palomb! Pas pigeon! Le command etait pour palomb!” (Wild pigeon, not pigeon, the order is for wild pigeon!”

Amy: “Oh merde!” (oh shit!)

Chef: “Exactment Amy! Tu es vraiment, vraiment dans la lune ce soir!”

Chef: “Oh putain! Qu-es-que c’est ça? Plus de coloration pour la ris de veau! Oh putain!” (Oh f#$ck! What is that? More coloration for the sweetbreads. Oh f@#ck!”)

Amy: “Excusez-moi Chef, je suis dans la lune maintenant” (Excuse me Chef, I’m in the moon right now)

Chef: “C’est clair” (That is clear)

We managed to finish the service. Or rather my boss managed to finish the service while I began to slowly unravel at the seems. I was thankful when the executive chef announced the last order and it was for the fish station. I started to clean…

We empty all the grease from all of our pots and pans into a bucket and then dispose of it after dinner service. I’m normally the one who has to carry it downstairs while trying not to gag from the smell. But my boss, in order to save me the trip, put the bucket on a shelf so that I could take it down in the morning after it had hardened – so as not to risk spilling it since I was such a cross-eyed mess that evening.

Instead of taking the bucket off the shelf to pour some remaining grease into it I brought my pan up to it to empty. Big mistake. With the biggest crash I’ve ever heard in my life, the huge bucket slid off the shelf hitting the shelf beneath it and turning in the air spilling rancid grease all over our huge fifteen foot kitchen stove and bouncing on the floor splattering grease over two different stations.

The kitchen fell silent.

I saw the three executive chefs stop what they were doing and turn my direction with eyes as big as saucers in wonderment. All the new stagiers and apprentices looked over and I could tell were fearfull for what my punishment would be.

I looked at my boss and silently begged for him to get me out of this one before the executive chefs assigned me some ungodly task.

Chef: “Ah Amy, tu es vraiment dans la lune ce soir. Tu as besoin bien dormir. Nettoyer et go ‘ome!”

(Ah Amy, you are really in the moon tonight. You need good sleep. Clean and go home.)

Ahhhhh….To sleep perchance to dream……

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, 3-star restaurants, Food, french, Guy Savoy, Paris restaurants, pigeon

The post Guy Savoy: In The Moon Dans La Lune first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I know that if I was to die and go to hell that I would surely wake up in the kitchen of this restaurant. I continue to battle the heat in the kitchen. I am never comfortable even when I’m wearing the lightest of chef’s jackets. All the boys pour sweat while cooking and I just swell up and turn red – la petite tomate. The heat can rise anywhere from 80˚ to 100˚ during service. Have you ever tried to think in temperatures that hot?

The long hours which start at 8AM and end at 11:30 PM with an hour and half break in the middle leave me constantly fatigued. The devil himself designed this work schedule, because I know the French and their love of the 35 hour work week, did not. Then there’s the twisted idea that one must work 6 days a week to “make up” for vacation time, another sure sign of the devil.

And then there’s the militaristic structure of the restaurant. We come on time dressed and ready to work. We work all day with minimal breaks. We endure being yelled at point blank and answer “Oui monsieur” to anything we might be getting yelled at about. There are no excuses for anything – no one cares – if the executive chef tells you you’re food tastes horrible you answer “Oui monsieur, excusez-moi monsieur” and you redo it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been cooking for 1 month or 10 years. C’est comme ça.

So what is it that I love about my job? I know you must be thinking that – as I am thinking that too – after reading what I have just written. I have learned how to cook and I mean really cook. Not just read a recipe, not just grasp techniques, not just butcher small woodland creatures or brunoise carrots or peel potatoes. But I have some how managed to make my way to the fire at the heart of this very traditional French kitchen. Where once I stood nervously around the flames of the stove not wanting to appear novice, now I flick on the fire to it’s maximum btu capacity and sizzle away.

When the restaurant is at full capacity and the chef’s are calling out the orders and my boss and I running back and forth to the burners and stoves with legs of lamb, ris de veau, poularde, pigeon, veal, pheasant, and filet de beouf and everyone is doing their job and we are all working together to make beautiful food – then I know that I love my work. It is in these moments, that I understand why all the structure is in place and why it is necessary for us to work together 14 hours a day.

We are a family. Kind of like a dysfunctional Partridge family only we make food and not music. And we do love each other. When one of the young women (the only other woman right now) came in with a black eye – which she swore was an accident – we all vowed to kill her boyfriend if we ever saw him. When François, a beloved and well respected Chef de Parti, left to become an executive chef at another restaurant we drank champagne in his honor and begged him to stay.

And sometimes we do extraordinary things for each other. Like making Cassolet for the entire staff for our last meal together before vacation (a two day process) or eating Bouche de Noel baked special from the pastry kitchen. I will never forget drinking Champagne together as a team after our last service with the Famous Chef that owns the restaurant. These are the moments I treasure.

And whenever I get really hot, really fatigued, really upset, and really tired of my extended familly I think to myself, “You are cooking in a 3-star restaurant, they are letting you cook in a 3-star restaurant, they are letting an American non-French speaking woman cook at a 3-star traditional French restaurant “. Then I feel like a spy who has infiltrated the iron curtain of Gastronomy. And that gives me great pleasure.

Some out-takes on the last day before vacation…

Cleaning:
We didn’t just get to break open the Champagne after our last service. No, we had to clean the whole entire restaurant first and no one could leave or drink champagne until everyone was finished. A huge bummer for me because I started cleaning the day before to ensure that we could leave at a decent hour.

Everything in the restaurant, pots and pans included, are cleaned with the same green colored liquid. I don’t know what exactly it’s supposed to do, but I question it’s ability to truly remove bacteria. So, I brought my own materials: Monsieur Propre (Mr. Clean) and Ajax industrial kitchen cleaner. I used these to clean the meat section of the walk-in refrigerator and all of our small refrigerators, prep areas, and tiled walls.

One of the Executive Chef’s (who i adore) walked into the fridge and was so impressed by the sparkle and clean fresh smell that he told my boss he had never seen it like that before. At first I thought I might get in trouble for bringing in my own supplies, but when he asked to borrow my products I was happily surprised. Needless to say the rest of the kitchen asked to borrow my supplies shortly afterward. The whole kitchen smelled spring fresh and shined. Thank you Monsieur Propre and Ajax cleaning products for getting us our glass of champagne quicker!

Technorati Tags: Chef, Food, french, paris, paris cooking school, Paris restaurants

The post 7 Months In Review: Fire Seekers first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Then of course there’s me in the corner at the viande station cleaving apart game while my boss hacks apart sides of veal. It’s like a symphony with each section contributing their own specialized music.

When you cook in France you learn to cook with your ears. As I’m filleting pigeon at my cutting board I’m also listening to the jus simmering on the stove or my steaks sear that I’m preparing for the staff lunch. Of course we use our other senses too, but our ears are extremely important. When you stop to hear your food sizzling on the stove – that’s when you know you’ve messed something up.

But the real show – the real symphony – takes place during service time. In traditional French kitchens all the orders are called out by the executive chef for the whole kitchen to hear. Then each dish as it is “réclamer” (order up!) is called out. For each menu and each plate ordered the kitchen shouts out: “Oui monsieur!” to confirm that it has has been registered. I often feel like I’m in a Southern Baptist Church with all the call and response.

Chef: “Cote de veau rosé réclamé!”

Viande Sation: “Oui Monsieur!”

Chef: “Menu prestige: l’etrille, St. Jaques, hommard, sabayon caviar, soupe artichaut, pigeon saignant!”

Entire Kitchen: “Oui Monsieur!”

Every once and awhile some one doesn’t respond and then the executive chefs get really ticked off. I often hear the chefs yell to one of the young commis when he forgets: “Repondez Marius! Repondez!!!” to which he quickly answers “Oui monsieur!” for fear of being assigned unwanted tasks like ‘la raclette‘ – scrubbing the entire kitchen after service is finished.

It is this call and response that drives our 3-star machine through the fourteen hour day. When I feel like I’m going to die of exhaustion before dinner service, it is the rhythm of the calling that revives me and gets my adrenaline pumping to make it through. I often complain that we don’t use computers like all restaurants do in the U.S. because it’s difficult for me to understand the orders since they are in French.

Sometimes the chef’s yell too quickly and I hear “deux pigeons” instead of “Un pigeon” or other similar mistakes that drive my boss crazy:

Boss: “One pigeon Amy! One pigeon – it’s menu prestige not carte!”

Amy: “Well, if you had a friggin’ computer system here – like everyone else in the world – I wouldn’t make these mistakes!”

Boss: “Listen Amy! Ecoute, huh?!!!”

Amy: “I am listening! I can’t understand your friggin’ language!”

Oh how I wish my French teacher in High School taught orally instead of visually! But then there are these rare moments of silence in the kitchen. Sometimes after an extreme cacophony of shouting and cooking and clanging there are these bizzare moments of peace. I like these moments. They are few and far between and momentarily relaxing. It is in these moments that I realize how our machine is like a fine tuned engine able to quickly speed up or halt to a screeching stop in seconds flat.

The hardest part about the call and response method is memorizing the orders. We have very loooooong menus at the restaurant (that take several hours for the customers to eat!) and there are often many changes to the normal tasting menus. When an order is ‘reclamer‘ it should already be cooked. For instance, if a leg of lamb is ‘reclamer‘ then it should be ready to be presented tableside and carved.

The hardest part is knowing when in the different menus to cook the different items and keeping them all in your head. C’est difficile! I haven’t been able to manage this one yet because half the time the orders sound like mush to me. Thankfully my boss is able to memorize everything so I just rely on him to tell me what to cook and when.

Perhaps those of us that enjoy cooking under pressure listen to a different drummer, but in this Parisian restaurant we each contribute our own music to make something that I know Mozart would be proud of…

Chef: “Ris de veau reclamé!”

Amy: “Oui monsieur!”

Fini

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, 3-star restaurants, Chef, Cuisine, Food, Guy Savoy, paris, stage

The post Guy Savoy: The Sound of Silence first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The other day I was hacking apart palomb, pheasant, and duck carcasses into tiny pieces for our delicious gibier jus. My boss sent me downstairs to work so I wouldn’t annoy him with the continuous whack of my cleaver. As I began to make my way through the endless bird body pile, I got the worst headache in the world from hunger and lack of caffine.

The pastry kitchen was across from my station so I timidly asked the pastry chef if there was anything I could nibble on. He shoed me out of the kitchen with an air of total annoyance. I went back to my body pile deflated and drearily continued on. But minutes later he surprised me with an array of treats: tarte aux pomme, hazlenut and chocolate fondant, and ice cream. As he placed the little treats next to me he said in a jokingly serious tone, “Parce que c’est toi, uh?” and then he said it in English just to make sure I understood, “Becauhze eets you, uh?”

I have a serious sweet tooth and an addiction for dark chocolate. The whole kitchen knows this thanks to my chocolate chip caper but my boss has been keen to pick up on my little addiction. Sometimes after services where he’s yelled at me a whole bunch for making tiny mistakes, I’ll find dark chocolate in my cupboard for the following service. Inevitably after I say “thank you”, I get the response: “Parce que c’est toi, uh?”

He’s not comfortable yelling at a woman – especially one who’s 6 years older than him– but he doesn’t want to treat me differently either. We all get yelled at in the kitchen, it’s just part of the deal. It’s taken me six months to learn just to let it roll off, but a little chocolate goes a long way…

My body is broken and I am definitely ready for the holidays. I can barely lift my arms at the end of the long day, my neck is always stiff from looking down and cutting, and my hands are torn apart. My legs are beyond sore from constantly stair climbing with heavy items and I’ve noticed tiny little blue veins that are starting to appear in mass around my thighs. I’m sure a result of standing for fourteen hours a day six days a week. My body is a battleground.

Last Saturday towards the end of service I burst out in tears from the pain in my arms and back and just plain old exhaustion – which, by the way, I have seen every man do here too. I couldn’t stop thinking to myself, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this to myself? This is killing me!” It’s impossible to get more than six hours of sleep a night in this industry which makes it difficult for injuries to heal properly or to battle fatigue.

Probably in fear that they might truly break me, this week my boss has brought me all the extra heavy pots and pans I need so I don’t have to go up and down the stairs carrying things that are waaaay out of my league. “Eeets not my job, but, parce que c’est toi…”

I never asked anyone to do this and I wouldn’t dare, but I really am very very appreciative. Sometimes a little bit of feeling special goes and extra, extra long way.

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, 3-star restaurants, Chef, Cuisine, Food, Guy Savoy, paris

The post Parce que C’est Toi! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The disinfectant hexedrine and bandaids are for my finger that is infected in the cuticle. It swelled up twice it’s normal size until my boss popped it with the tip of a knife and a teaspoon of yellowish white puss came oozing out. It felt so much better afterward because the pressure from the swelling was unbearable. At one point I was sure I was going to have to go to the hospital, but he reassured me, “C’est normal!”

“C’est normal? My finger looks like ET’s and you’re trying to tell me it’s normal? You really think that puttting the tip of a knife into my cuticle is going to honestly make my finger feel better? I probably have Avian Bird Flu from gutting hundreds of game birds with my bare hands – and I’m going to die! Look at my finger! This is not normal!!!!”

“Ah ba oui, c’est normal! I ‘ave had zeees before. I will cut for you and you will see.“

I looked the other way and took a deep breath while he lanced it. Together we went through the “une, deux, trois” countdown quite a few times before I actually let him follow through with the surgery. After popping he sqeezed it hard and we both looked on in utter fascination as a lava flow of thick whitish stuff came out from the side of my cuticle. Kinda cool in a really grotesque kinda way. Forgive me, I hack apart small animals day in a day out – bodily fluids have become “c’est normal”.

The togo coffee mug, as I found out, is so completely other wordly that it cannot even be considered “c’est normal”. When I arrived today everyone including the exective chefs, the barista, the servers, and the rest of the staff were curious to know what I was drinking out of and why. They don’t do coffee togo in Paris and if you ask for “emporter” you get burning hot coffee in a thin plastic cup that blisters your fingers. And believe me you, my fingers have enough problems as it is.

“You’ve never seen a coffee togo mug?” I asked to the barista. I then explained how it worked and he fell about laughing. He couldn’t get over what a great idea it was. I couldn’t get over the fact that no one had seen one before! It was like I had just invented lipstick or something. Just about every car these days has a place for the coffee togo mug – attends! – no one drives in Paris. How could I forget?

Every Friday we have cleaning day and we all arrive early to clean the kitchens. There are no after hour cleaning crews. We are the after hour cleaning crews which often turns the thirteen hour work day into something horrific. But we are rewarded with croissants and pastries after our underpaid slave labor is completed.

The responsibility to buy the pastries goes to a different chef each week. Once and awhile some one does something special like coming in at 6AM to make crepes and waffles for our staff of 35 – that would be my boss and the Chef de Parti of Garnishes. I got talked into helping out but couldn’t get out of bed until 6:45A.M. Bleary-eyed, grumpy, and dreading a 15 hour day I asked: “Why are you doing this? It’s Friday and we are booked solid.” I got the a tandem response: “C’EST NORMAL!”

When you really love your job and love pleasing the people around you, you go the extra mile to do things that are special. You take the time no matter how tired you are to make some one else’s day better and brighter– that was the rational I was given at least. And honestly, I’ve never seen our very very young kitchen staff more excited to eat breakfast or put in the long hours. There was definitely an unusual joie de vivre in the kitchen that lasted the whole day.

I, however, still would like to challenge that turning my work day into 15 hours makes anybody happy because then they have to put up with miserable old me. My husband can attest to that!

Just a side note: I’ve started closing the service at the Viande station. And, if you don’t mind me bragging for a petit second, I also happen to be the first woman to ever work at the viande station at the 3-star restaurant I cook at…

Ah, buh oui, c’est normal, uh?

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant

The post C’est Normal first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

No silly – not in the United States – in Paris!!! I got to go check out the kitchens of the Palais de l’Elysée because I happen to cook with one of their former chefs.

This weekend Chef François took the viande and garnish chefs from the restaurant I cook at to see what the President of France, Jacques Chirac, gets to eat and where it’s cooked. I can’t even begin to tell you how cool it was just to enter the Palais which is heavily guarded on all sides. You can’t even walk on the side walk around the Palais unless you have a permit.

After a thorough security check we were allowed to enter on the side entrance to the kitchens. I have never seen a kitchen so large in my life! There were seperate kitchens for every sort of food preparation imaginable – from dessert, to pastry, to sugar sculpting, to catering, main kitchen, to garde manger. I’m sure the pastry chefs were in hog heaven with Italian marble countertops that sprawled for miles and air conditioning (so rare in French kitchens).

The main kitchen was enormous and spotlessly clean with huge copper pots and molds hanging everwhere. All the copper dates back to 1815 and has been used at the Palais for that long. If only the copper pots could talk, I wonder what stories and recipes they would tell…

The most fascinating part to me was not the kitchen but the guarded room that houses all the china and silver for the Palais. What can I say? I’m female after all. The man who showed us the cutlery had worked at the Palais for 30 years taking care of all the table settings. He carefully brought out the silver chests for us and described each piece in detail.

They use silver for dinner and gold for dessert – gold for dessert! Just like I do at home! No really, they use gold to eat dessert with. But the chests – oh my heavens – they filled an entire room. Over 300 full sets in gold and silver. A full set includes all the usual forks, knives, and spoons but also specialty pieces like caviar spoons, oyster forks, foies gras knives, etc, etc, etc.

The fine china was museum quality. Some of the china I was showed dated back to Napoleon III and I’m sure there were pieces that went back even further. All the dessert plates were hand painted and signed by the artist. They ranged from in price from $300 – $3000 per plate.

If you sat down to an eight course meal at the Palais you could potentially be eating off of $24,000 worth of china not to mention another $10, 000 in sliver and gold tablesettings. What can I say? I’m worth it!

I couldn’t leave without getting a shot with the executive chef. He was an excellent host and allowed me to snap tons of photos.

We came, we saw, we left through the side entrance. I guess that’s the breaks for us cooks – no eating off silver or gold today. Back to our unbearably hot, cramped, meager 3-star restaurant tomorrow. Ho hum. Just another day in Paris…

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We serve this at the restaurant in the biggest pumpkin known to mankind. I’m sure the customers are totally surprised when they see it coming to the table. We add white truffle slices and oil to the soup (just a little bit – it’s strong!) and mix in an egg yolk right before serving to create the ultimate in luxury soup.

The recipe below is just the basic, but feel free to experiment with the truffle oil if you can afford it. I was allowed to try a white truffle slice the other day and it was delicious. This truffle grows mostly in Italy typically several inches below ground near the roots of oak and hazelnut trees. It is the second most expensive food in the world running around $3000 per pound for the very best – I was of course told this before being allowed to swallow my ever so thin sliver of truffle.

What does it taste like? Hmmmm, kind of like soil with yeast and mushrooms with a bit of honey and something kind of gaseous. Sounds delish, eh? The peak season is now so eat up – oh, and don’t kill anyone over them, okay? They’re not that good….

By the way, this soup doesn’t have any cream in it. Typically in France when you see a soup that says crème it means that the vegetable has just been pureed. You can add some cream at the end if desired, but it’s not necessary. Click on “Continue reading Pumpkin Soup” for recipe

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, eggs, paris, pumpkin, soup, truffle, white truffle

Pumpkin Soup: Crème de Citrouille

serves 6-8

30g / 2 T salted butter
1 medium onion chopped
1 shallot chopped
1 potato peeled and chopped
950g / 6 cups cubed pumpkin (about 2 lbs.)
2 litres / 8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground white pepper

Additions to experiment with:
1teaspoon white truffle oil
herbs to garnish with
1 egg yolk blended in with hand mixer at the end before serving

Instructions
1. Melt butter in a large saucepan and cook the onions and shallots until softened but not browned. About 3 min.
2. Add potato, pumpkin, and stock to pan. Season. Reduce heat to low and simmer for around 40 minutes. Test pumpkin and potato for doneness with a fork. They should split apart easily.
3. Transfer vegetables to a food processor and blend until smooth. Add some cooking liquid as needed to help purée. Return the purée to the pot and add more seasoning. Mix in some white truffle oil if you’re feeling adventurous and an egg yolk right before serving

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I first saw the baby in the walk in fridge with it’s paws dangling out of a plastic bag. I thought it was just a wild hare, but then an apprentice asked me how I was going to emotionally handle cutting up the baby pig with it’s cute little snout and strange half smile – I had to go back to the fridge and take a second look at the contents of the plastic bag. Sure enough, it was a tiny little wild boar with short coarse hair and strips down it’s back.

My heart stopped when I first looked at the whole body. In fact, I think my boss was in shock too. We both just stared at it for awhile in the fridge – cold air filling our lungs, eyes a little weepy. “Aaah, eet’z good!” my boss finally exclaimed in his thick French accent as he grabbed the plastic body bag to carry up to our meat station. “It’s good? You think killing animals this young is fair?” I questioned unbelieving that anything so young should be hunted.”

I followed him up the stairs (our kitchen is on two levels which makes for lots of stairclimbing throughout the day) not quite sure how to feel about our upcoming project. I rationalized that it was already dead so I might as well just do eeeet! When we got to our station he admitted that he had never actually prepared baby wild boar before. He then began playing with the pig putting it in various positions to make me laugh. I didn’t find any of it funny but managed to finally give a half chuckle when he started adding voices.

What happened next was humourous only because it was just soooooo Français. All the executive chefs came to huddle around the boar and discuss the best way to go about preparing it. It was like a secretive football huddle. I couldn’t make out all the conversation but it was decided that it would be skinned, roasted whole, and cut at the tableside like wild rabbit removing the legs and then the fillets. “C’est bon ça, c’est bon ça, huh?” the Executive Chef kept muttering. “Uggh, how can one actually kill something as cute and innocent that looks strangely like my family dog?” I thought to myself disgusted.

It’s always the first cut that’s the hardest. I wonder if plastic surgeons go through this same feeling? That first pierce through the skin always sends shivers down my spine. Unlike the rabbit’s skin that you can yank off, boar’s skin is difficult to sever from the muscle and takes a lot of knife work.

My boss and I traded turns carefully removing the skin. Once most of the skin was off I stopped feeling so nostalgic about the whole situation. Cutting it’s face off was revolting and so was popping out it’s eyes. The ears we removed entirely after a brief discussion as to whether or not they should be eaten as well. I firmly said “Non!”, he authoratatively said “Oui!”, but they were too difficult to skin so off they came.

We roasted it whole with some wild pigeon carcasses to make a jus with afterwards. Every time I opened the oven to baste it I kept thinking, “Gawd, this thing looks so prehistoric, like something that Fred Flinstone would enjoy with Wilma”. The toothpicks in it’s eye sockets, which I assume were stuck in there to hold the brain in, really added to the cave man look.

The pig was finally presented to a private party, cut tableside and then sent back to the kitchen to arrange on plates with wild mushrooms of huge porcinis, mushrooms of death, and girolle.

Unfortunately I was too busy filleting pigeon and hacking apart chickens to order that I didn’t get to see the finished plates. I can’t say that I ever want to cook or prepare another baby boar ever again, but I can say that it is strangely empowering to know how to and also that I could do it again if I absolutely had to in order to survive. Very strange indeed…

The post Don’t Be A Boar! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

My hands are permanently blood stained (out out damn spot!) and no matter how much bleach or hydrogen pyroxide I use it won’t go away. They are swollen from gutting hunted animals by hand and getting pricked by tiny bullet shattered bones – so much so, that I can’t even get my engagement ring over my knuckle let alone make a tight fist. The scars on my hands, wrists and arms from cooking and accidents (like the time I tripped on a box left on the floor and landed hands first onto our massive hot plate stove burning the entire side of my hand and wrist) are obscene.

I’m a mess.

And then there’s this other hellish part of cooking in a French kitchen that is hard to describe. Imagine being around the same people in a very small space in a very hot environment (around 80˚F during prep and 90˚F during service) for 13 hours a day every day. No cubicles or dividers. There is no hiding anything. Your life is visible for everyone to see and vice versa. If you’re tired they see it, if you’re upset or happy they see it, if you get yelled at by one of the chefs and break down in tears they see it. It’s like living in a green house and the heat just gets hotter and hotter until you just want to explode.

Last week I did something totally unprofessional that I still feel a little guilty about and got verbally ripped apart in front of the whole staff by the Executive chef. I took some chocolate chips from the pastry kitchen to my meat station to munch on during service. Why? I don’t know. I needed chocolate. I got my period for the second time during the month (which has never happened to me before) and I couldn’t handle the emotional roller coaster let alone the pain and needed something to make me happy.

I also have a new boss at the meat station and my old boss doesn’t see eye to eye with him and they both stress me out completely because they do everything differently. Hard to please two men at the same time! Not to mention my total exhaustion or the fact that I’ve worked there for free for 4 months and have never once asked for anything. Merde, I figured if a cup of chocolate chips was going to get me through the evening in one piece, then who cares? But the Executive chef saw me carry up the cup of chocolate chips and stopped me.

We’ve had this disgusting smelly bird grouse on the menu for the last few weeks and we were using dark chocolate chips in the sauce to deepen the flavor so I always had a few chips stored in my fridge. But it just so happened that we were sold out of grouse that day and no more would be arriving for the rest of the week. I thought I would just get some more chips and no one would notice.

But the executive chef did notice and in French yelled at me for everyone to hear. He was so pleased with himself for catching me in my little chocolate chip caper. Like he had solved the biggest crime of the century. “Grouse is not on the menu tonight!” he screamed in French. I tried to ignore him and go to my station because I knew I couldn’t make him understand in broken French how desperate I was for chocolate and I didn’t want to yell back at him that “I’m a woman, and I have cramps, and I feel like passing out in this f’ing heat, and I’m tired of two crazy French meat chefs bossing me around and then getting mad at me for doing things the way the other one likes it, and I work here for free, and I NEED CHOCOLATE!” He yelled at me full force to bring the chocolate chips back down to the pastry kitchen. Sooooo embarrassing.

To make matters worse my old boss yelled at me too and gave me that look that only a disappointed parent can give , “How could you do this? It’s so unprofessional. Why didn’t you put the chips in your pockets so no one would see? Amy, how could you do this?” Yeah right – put them in my pockets so they can melt into my pants? What’s the point of that? It was hard enough to have the exectuive chef yell at me, but then to have my old boss double the pain was mortifying. I felt like a two year old kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar, not a grown independent woman.

I couldn’t help thinking, “You should be paying me right now and the only reason you’re not is because I can’t get my work permit sorted out. If I want chocolate chips, then pay me in chocolate chips. I do the work of Comis for the Chef de Viande – one of the most pretigious and demanding parts of the kitchen – and if I need some sugar to make it through the evening then let me have it! Everyone knows I’m working here for free and knows how much work I do and all the extra hours I put in.”

My new boss could sense that I was either about to walk out for good or sob uncontrollably so he sent me down to the pastry kitchen to return the chocolate chips and retrieve a few dead birds from the walk in fridge. He was sweet enough to tell me to stay in the fridge for awhile. “Don’t come back up until you’ve cooled off, okay?” I came back up birds in hand this time – no chocolate chips – and returned eyes downcast to my station. He told me he needed all the birds gutted, filleted, and hacked into the tiniest pieces possible. Luckily, it was the beginning of service and not many orders had come through yet.

I did as I was told trying to refrain from unleashing a flood of tears. When I got to hacking the birds apart I just let those poor little creatures have it. I pictured the chef on my cutting board and I let my cleaver cleave away until my board was covered in blood and the walls around me splattered with a thin spray or red. Ah, much better. I turned to my new boss and asked what he wanted me to do with the birds. He said, “Nothing. I just thought it might make you feel a little better.” It did.

I then proceeded to focus on de-boning a huge pile of fifty ducks legs and picking the tiny balls of shot out of their flesh. That kept me going for quite awhile until the orders started to fly in one after another. The good thing is, my new boss is English and we can talk and joke and no one has a clue what we’re saying. So the whole night my boss kept me sane with French jokes and English humor.

I told him at the end of service that I thought I wasn’t cut out for this job and asked if there was another person he would rather work with. I went on to tell him that I would be willing to train another person and then leave. But he said to me, “I will work with you and only you. When you go I would rather work alone. You will be here as long as I’m here and I will teach you how to cook.” I told him that I was only going to be there for the next month and then that’s it. But he replied, “You will stay for six more months.”

Well, I don’t know if that’s possible with my work permit situation but it was sure a little piece of heaven in Hell’s Kitchen!

The next morning there was a bar of dark chocolate in my knife box from my old boss.

Apology accepted.

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, Chef, Cooking School, Cuisine, french, Paris restaurants

The post 14th Week: The Chocolate Chip Caper first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I work six days a week, thirteen hours a day butchering wild game and preparing it for the 3-star restaurant I cook at in Paris. I love my position at the prestigious meat station and feel very special to be the first woman, let alone stagier, to work solely with the Chef de Viande especially during the hunting season. We are receiving many animals that I’ve never worked with before: grouse, palombe, pheasant, hare, boar. But my dreams, my dreams are haunting me. Perhaps it is a combination of fatigue and guilt, I don’t know.

I came home on my lunch break yesterday to take a nap and I dreamt that I was butchering a Palombe (wild pigeon). I cut out it’s breast easily with my sharp fillet knife. The tip of my blade slid cleanly against it’s backbone unlodging one side of the breast. Then I carved down the ribs to peel the flesh away from the bone leaving a perfectly shaped fillet. Everything was so smooth – like cutting through butter.

I took the breast in my hand to admire the ease of my skill and then looked down at the bird. It was still breathing. It was still alive and there I was performing surgery. It attempted to walk with half it’s body missing. I remember watching it hovel slowly away from my knife in unbelievable agony while I held it’s breast in my hand. I don’t know why I didn’t chop it’s head off and end it’s life. I just stood there watching it hoping it’s breast would grow back unable to do anything.

Three nights ago I dreamt I was with my grandmother (who is now deceased) and she was making Thanksgiving dinner. She was roasting at least twenty coquelets (small chickens) in butter and the delicious smell was making my mouth water so I asked her if there was something I could munch on before dinner. She pointed over to a small red fox that was stiff and held upright between two posts, kind of like the way they do with hocks of pata negra. I remember thinking, “A fox! How unusual! I didn’t know you could eat fox.”

The fur was still on the animal but one of it’s sides had been carved into so I could see the rosy color flesh. My uncle called me over and began slicing paper thin sheets of meat from the fox. As I got closer to the fox I realized that it was still alive. It’s eyes were darting back and forth in pain, but it was being held by the two posts and couldn’t move while my uncle was carving. I woke up from the dream with it’s eyes still vivid in my imagination. Just writing this post I can still see it’s confused fearful eyes searching for an escape.

I don’t feel bad when I’m working with the animals at work and I feel better knowing that all the animals have been hunted and not raised on farms and stuffed with chemicals and hormones and allowed to live freely up until they’re shot to death, but I suppose something is seeping deep into my psyche.

Yesterday I carved and cleaved seventy wild birds. Filleted the breasts, stuffed their legs, gutted them, and broke down their bodies to make rich jus. My fingernails are blood stained and I can’t get them clean. My hands are swollen and punctured from their sharp little bones that stick into my skin when I gut them and break them down. It took me an hour of hacking to get through all the carcasses and I can still hear the sound of my cleaver ringing in my head.

The smell of their blood won’t go away. It’s on my clothes and my body as if it’s attached itself to me now. Perhaps a final punishment?

Bon Appetit…

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, birds, butcher, Paris restaurants, pheasant, pigeon

The post 13th Week: The Haunting first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

We get two hearty meals a day to sustain us through the twelve – sometimes 13 hour – work day and I am always surprised at the French love of organ dishes. Now that I am cooking with the Chef de Viande we make all the meat for the staff – or in this case, he makes all the meat and I silently protest in the background and find other tasks that I must complete first.

I have actually visited Rungis, the largest market in the world and have seen the tools used to extract the brain from the animal skull in one piece. The brain is put in a metal clamp that holds it steady then a fork like plunger comes down and cracks the skull neatly in two and grabs the brain in one piece. It is horrifying to watch because the animal eyes are often still in the skinless skull and when it splits in two the eyes go their separate ways.

So, just how do you turn this gelatinous wiggly grey matter into something delicious? First, it is necessary to pick out any veins or blood vessels on the brain and remove the film. If the film is not taken off then it will not brown properly when sautéed. To draw out impurities and blood soak the brains in cold water (overnight if possible) changing the water every few hours. When the brains are sufficiently soaked, the water will be clear.

Quickly blanch the brains in boiling water and drain well. Then season with salt and pepper, roll through flour and fry up in salted butter until golden brown. Top with sautéed garlic, parsley with a squeeze of lemon. We serve them along side creamy potatoes which is supposed to compliment them in some way. Voila! Bon appetit! For the recipe click on “Continue reading Sautéed cerveaux…” at the bottom of the page

Technorati Tags: brains, cerveaux, offal, Paris, brains, recipes

Fried Brains

Ingredients
1 calf’s brain per person
1 cup all purpose flour
2 cloves garlic minced
1/2 bunch italian parsley chopped
1 lemon
1/2 stick salted butter
salt and pepper

Instructions
1. Pick the blood vessels and film off of the brains and soak in cold water overnight. Change the water every few hours. When they are properly soaked the water will remain clear.
2. Blanch in boiling water for two minutes and remove onto a rack to thoroughly drain
3. Season with and pepper
4. Roll through a pan of flour to coat evenly
5. Melt butter in a skillet on medium high heat. When it is frothy and begins to turn a nut brown color add brains. Sauté until golden brown, constantly basting with butter to evenly brown. Remove and keep warm.
6. In another skillet melt 3-4 Tablespoons of salted butter and quickly saute parsley and garlic. Remove from heat, squeeze lemon into garlic / parsley mixture, stir, and pour over brains.
7. Eat up!

The post Sautéed Cerveaux (Fried Brains) first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Everyday’s a long day – sometimes over 12 hours, but we do manage to have some fun because our team is FUN! We just hired a new girl to the garnish station so now I’m not a lone female. She’s young and super talented and we have a lot of fun working together. We’ve bonded in our need to brave the constant teasing – yesterday we were caught chatting in the hallway and when we returned to our respective stations our bosses asked if we had fun shopping together and if we would like any coffee to go with our afternoon brioches. “Thees eez not holidays!” Nonetheless, I know our femininity is a welcome relief.

In fact I think our team has become the envy of the rest of the kitchen because there are two women now in the meat and garnish section. What a novel idea! Can you imagine not working around the opposite sex every day – 12 hours a day? I know that not all chef’s are particularly happy about our being included on the line, but too bad. The Chef de Parti’s of the meat and garnish stations seem to think that a co-ed work environment is a good thing. Perhaps France is changing slowly but surely!?!

Chef Johh Baptiste, Chef Francois, and Chef Damien (soon to be Executive Chef at the new Moscow restaurant). Take a good look at these faces, because these guys are young and have been cooking since the age of 17 – they are sure to be the upcoming talents gracing the pages of foodie mags in future years. They already have ten years of professional cooking experience thanks to the trade school university programs in France. Sometimes I feel so behind…

Some new dishes were added this week. One beef dish, one chicken breast cooked in a pigs bladder that is popped tableside for extra entertainment, a new crab entrée, and a raw mushroom salad. The pigs bladder one is the weirdest and I don’t know how I feel about it. The bladder is popped at the tableside to reveal a stuffed chicken breast. Kinda cool, I guess, but kinda weird too…

I like the new beef one that has fillet with a melted pieces of bone marrow on top served alongside a beef and carrot medley that is sauced with different mustards and jus. It’s a little retro – okay it’s very 1980’s, but it’s tasty anyway.

Only other major happenings include Auralee, the new girl, slicing off the tip of her finger with a mandoline into our staff lunch. The carrot salad was extra crunchy. Oh well, we all ate it anyway. She came to me with finger spurting blood asking for a bandaid. We had to send her to the pharmacy to have it professionally wrapped (thank God for the pharmacy’s here!).

How she made it through the rest of the day I will never know. Her job includes garnishing all the meat dishes and she’s constantly putting plates under the hot broiler which I’m sure her thumb didn’t appreciate. I’m surprised the finger condom didn’t melt into the wound. She’s a tough cookie!

I’ve progressed into slicing chicken and pigeon at the meat station for presentation and not stressing out so much when I have to cut ris de veau into exact 35g pieces without wasting any of it. I’ve noticed that my speed in hacking apart chickens to order is increasing and so is my oragami pappiotte dish. Life is good.

That’s all for now, from the land of 3-star cuisine… there’s no place like home…

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, 3-star restaurants

The post 10th Week: No Place Like Home first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

This last week our dinners have been revolting (from a preparation and eating standpoint) with French delicacies of Tete de Veau (head of veal) and Tongue, but last night was yummy. We made Croque Monsieurs for the whole staff and they were gobbled up faster than…well faster than the head cheese…

What is a Croque Monsieur? It is simply a ham and guyere cheese sandwich with a little béchamel sauce spread inbetween and on top for added creaminess. I know that many people are frightened by the idea of making béchamel because it is one of the quintessential French white mother sauces, but it’s easy and takes minutes. And you can make it the day before and refrigerate it.

Once you make a roux (flour and butter mixture that thickens the sauce) add milk a little salt, pepper and nutmeg et Voila! C’est facile, non? For recipe click on “Continue reading Food for the Masses” at the bottom of the post.

The origin of the name Croque Monsieur, is uncertain but the first part derives from the verb croquer (to crunch or to munch). Its first recorded appearance on a Parisian café menu was in 1910. It originated in France as a fast-food snack served in cafés. If you top it with a fried egg the dish is known as a croque madame.

Bon Appetit!!!

Technorati Tags: bechamel, béchamel, croque monsieur, recipes, sandwich, white sauce

Croque Monsieur

Ingredients
Loaf of Pain de Mie or thick white bread sliced
Sliced ham
Gruyere shredded cheese

Bechamel Sauce:
2 Tablespoons / 30 g unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons / 30 g all-purpose flour
1 cup / 250ml milk
Freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 Bay Leaf

Instructions
1. Make Béchamel sauce by melting butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour once the butter is foamy and cook until just golden stirring occasionally. The starch in the flour needs to cook but not overcook so be careful not to burn it.
2. Pour in half the milk and stir vigorously until smooth, then add remaining milk. Add bay leaf and season with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg. Reduce heat to low and cook gently for another 5 minutes.
3. Spread a layer of béchamel sauce on thick white bread and top with a sprinkle of gruyere. Add 1- 2 ham slices and cover with a sprinkle of gruyere and another layer of bread.
4. On top of sandwich spread another layer of béchamel and more cheese. Bake in a hot oven (400˚F / 200˚ C) for 3 minutes until cheese is melted.
5. For a variation try a Croque Madame with a fried egg on top of the sandwich.

The post Feeding the Masses: Croque Monsieurs! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The highlights this week included the Chef de Cuisine asking to hire me permanently after my apprenticeship is over – yippeee!!! He said he would make me Commis (a rank above apprentice yet under Demi-Chef and Chef de Partie). If I continue at the meat station this would make me The Chef de Partie’s personal slave. I’m already playing that role, but I would actually get paid for it. It’s quite an honor.

The unfortunate part is I don’t have a work visa, I have a dependent visa which doesn’t allow me to work or pursue work. If I can’t figure out the visa issue then I can’t work at the restaurant. Anyone have ideas on how to go about this?

Other highlights included gaining speed slashing chickens and pigeons into beautiful fillets, learning how to make Fond Brun and Fond Blanc or beef and chicken stock – and loving the comforting smell of it as it simmers into liquid gold. Gaining confidence with ris de veau or sweet breads (the thymus gland) and not grossing out every time I have to handle the small blubbery gland globs. Lastly, perfecting my oragami skills with special dishes that require time consuming folded aluminium packets that are presented and served tableside.

Now for the lowlights…yesterday I slipped and fell on my butt and slid halfway down a flight of stairs while carrying an enormous stock pot filled with heavy bones and hot liquids to the basement kitchen. I managed to hang onto the bones at the cost of bruising my tailbone and tushy. This of course brought forth a release of tears from the exscrutiating pain coupled with my fatigue. You know how babies cry when they’re really really tired? That was me yesterday. And of course my boss had asked if it was too heavy for me to carry before my descent and I pridefully said “no”.

Looking back the scene must have been humorous to anyone watching. As my butt bumped along down the stairs with the stock pot resting on my lap my boss came running over behind me and picked up the pot. “I told you it was too heavy. Are you okay?” I tried to smile but limped my way over to an empty hallway to whimper in private. When I returned to my station he told me that I could go to the bathroom if I wanted to take a little rest. But I reminded him that the ladies bathroom is up five flights of stairs and my bruised butt wasn’t going to make that climb.

I continued with my work hacking apart pigeons with a shaky hand and a cloud of emotional instability which must of scared the daylights out of him. He kept asking, “Are you sure you’re okay?” and I kept responding, “Yes, I’m sure.” while whacking off pigeon wings haphazardly with my cleaver. Finally he said, “Would you like I make you a coffee?” Although coffee normally wires me out – especially the way the French make it – it actually settled my nerves a little and gave me some energy to get through my exhaustion.

The other huge issue I’m having is communication. I can’t understand half the words my boss says to me because his accent is lazy like my Californian accent and it just sounds like mush to me. It difficult when we’ve got orders up and he’s yelling at me to do and get stuff and I’m just running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what on earth he wants.

Now that we’ve been working together awhile I can pretty much anticipate what he needs. But the other day he said, “get me fond brun” but I heard “get me fond blanc”. I repeated the order back to him and he heard me say “You want fond brun?” and not the actual “You want fond blanc?”. It’s a Laurel and Hardy scene at the meat station right now.

He tells me often, “You make good service tonight” in broken English at the end of our shifts, which translates into “You’re doing good work”. But I know that I’m sloppy and slow at this point. It’s really hard to work under pressure when you don’t have a secure grasp on the language. I am honored that the Chef de Cuisine thinks enough of me to let me work at his 3-star restaurant at the most difficult station without a firm grasp of French and I often wonder why….

I still wrangle with the heat and depending on my womanly cycle I find it more or less tolerable. I’m one of those people that has the misfortune of turning crimson when it’s over 120˚F, which it often is. Everyone else just pours sweat while I seem to turn into a hot tomato and then break into mild un-cooling perspiration.

I’m a runner too and I sweat buckets while I run, but not in the kitchen. I just retain all the heat in my face. Lovely. I know this is totally girly, but I don’t like looking like a tomato! I’m self-concious about it especially when they make fun of me. To add insult to my injury, when I leave the kitchen my face is covered in a layer of shiny grease because we don’t have proper vents to suck up the heat and grease. Everyone else just sweats the grease off but not me. Yuck-a-roo. I’m a greasy tomato.

The walk in refrigerator is still my saving grace and I like to find excuses to get things from there. My boss often says when it’s slow, “If you want you go to the refrigerator” because he knows that I like hang out in there. I stand against cool shelves, face lifted toward the air conditioning, and use my toque to fan the frosty air my direction. Glad to know that stupid pleated hat is good for something besides trapping heat on my head. The walk in fridge is right next to the pastry kitchen so sometimes they give me little desserts while I’m cooling off. They know I like to hang out in there too.

Jeez, they must think I’m just a crazy American woman. Sometimes I think that too…

C’est tout from the land of French Food, more next week

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, 3-star restaurants, Chef, Cuisine, Paris, Paris restaurants

The post 9th Week: Vacation’s Over first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I always watch in awe as our thirty-six young chefs wolf it down. But me, well, my own tongue does this weird thing whenever I try to take a bite. It kind of balls up in the back of my throat terrified that I might mistake the cows tongue for my own tongue and swallow itself. Then my throat just simply closes, shuts down, fermez la porte and I have to spit it out before the rest of the contents in my stomach come forward in a desperate attempt to force my tongue back in the direction it was intended to be all along – lying horizontally flat.

However, correctly prepared it should cut easily and have a texture similar to beef brisket – kind of stringy. The two most difficult parts are peeling the skin off the tongue (I did not include picture, I thought I’d save you the horror) and cutting it. There’s something about slicing that makes my own tongue just quiver.

See? It doesn’t look too bad once prepared right. It could be mistaken for beef to the slightly inebriated eye. And the vinagrette that goes with it is delicious and hides most of the flavor (so I’m told). Well to all you tongue lovers out there….this is how we do…

To go recipe click on link “Continue reading: What? Cat got your tongue?”

Technorati Tags: cooking tongue, Paris restaurants, recipes, tongue

Tongue

Ingredients
1 Cow’s tongue
2 Carrots, peeled and left whole
3 Leeks whole
6 Black peppercorns
4 Tablespoons gros salt (rock salt)
Water to cover tongue by 4 inches
For Vinagrette:
1 Tablespoon capers, crushed and chopped
5 Cornichon pickle,s finely chopped
1 Hard boiled egg, finely chopped
1 Egg Yolk
1 Tablespoon dijon mustard
1/4 Cup sherry vinegar
3/4 Cup olive oil
1/2 bunch Italian parsley chopped

Instructions
1. Place all ingredients for tongue into a big pot and turn onto boil. Once boiled turn down heat a little and continue to boil for 4 hours. If needed add more water to insure that there is always water covering the tongue.
2. After 4 hours check for doneness by inserting a pick. If it slides through easily (like when testing a potato) then it is done.
3. Remove and let cool a little. Reserve carrots if you want to serve with tongue. Peel off the white skin and try not to gag.
4. Cut into 1/2″ slices and place on a baking tray. It can be reheated later if necessary.
5. For vinagrette: whisk egg yolk in a mixing bowl and add a pinch of salt and pepper. Whisk in mustard. Drizzle in olive oil (like making mayonnaise) while continuing to whisk briskly. Then add vinegar. Stir in capers, cornichon pickles, hard boiled egg, and parsley.
6. Serve vinagrette over tongue if you’re trying to disguise it or along side.

The post Cat Got Your Tongue??? first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I can’t believe how smoothly it all went yesterday considering that we were closed for August and now have almost a completely new staff. This is terrible – but I enjoyed watching the look of fear on all the new apprentices faces as they nervously prepped food with shaky knives. I guess everyone has to go through the initiation process.

Dinner service was slow with most Parisians still on vacation, but in September with the onset of Le Chase (hunting season) we are going to be slammed and I can’t wait to see how the new crew reacts when the Chefs start yelling. Oh la la la la. That should be fun to watch – only if I’m not the one getting yelled at of course. Hey, it’s all part of the game.

I’ve definitely relaxed into the job. I change in the locker room (that is all male) and I don’t care anymore that there’s no female section. All French men think they’re fat – they aspire to that Calvin Klein look – they really do.

I love doing prep work now because the repetition of it is meditative and gives me time to zone out. Before, I was always trying to prep faster and faster for fear of not being good enough, but now I just cruz through it. And, I’m having fun with people around me without worrying so much about the male/female barrier. I say this now of course, but we’ve all just come back from vacation…

Yesterday I hacked up my pigeons – dirtly little suckers – and peeled their legs off. Then I chopped up their livers to make a stuffing, deboned the legs, and filled them with it. Afterward I cut off the breasts, pan seared them and put them aside for service. Aside from icky job of prepping them, I’ve come to the conclusion that they look and taste incredibly sexy once prepared. The color the texture the taste…jeez, maybe I have gone French!?!?

C’est tout pour la premier jour, j’écrirai plus demain.

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, Chef, Cuisine, Food, French, restaurants

The post Some Like It Chaud! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I sometimes feel that I’m living back in India because it takes a whole day to accomplish simple tasks. Grocery shopping takes me at least two hours because I hop from one little shop to the next for meat, fish, cheese, and wine chatting with all the local vendors. Then it’s over to the farmer’s market in my neighborhood for produce.

I know this notion is very romantique to those not living in Paris – but sometimes I miss good ole’ American convenience. I often day dream about driving to Whole Foods in my huge American car. Parking in the spacious parking lot. Shopping in a store that has multiple options and exciting international products – many of them organic. Putting all my groceries in my huge American trunk and driving away into the sunset. Oh, and of course, pulling up into my double driveway and parking inside my house. Eeetzh uh good dreem, non?

Today was spent trying to get my knives sharpened before 8 A.M. tomorrow morning. A feat nearly impossible in any country. However, I found a place on the outskirts of Paris and metroed myself over there this afternoon. It was a tiny little shop with only one man working. Behind his counter were the biggest spinning sharpening stones that I have ever seen. They were taller (and wider) than me! I kicked myself a few times for not bringing my camera along. He took my knives and told me to return at 5 P.M.

I hopped back on the metro and killed time in St. Germain lécher la fenêtre (window licking) and people watching in Jardin du Luxembourgh until the blue skies burst into grey torrential downpour. Then I ran for cover as best I could in my stiletto heels and huddled under an awning barely wide enough for all us sun worshippers. No matter we bonded in the rain and clapped when it was over. I metroed back over to my knife guy and there my beauties were awaiting me in sharpened splendor.

So tomorrow’s the big day. Back at work at the 3-star restaurant I call home. I don’t know what I will be doing but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will still be at the meat station, it’s interesting, and I like to work with meat. I like to hack up chickens and debone lamb and peel the legs off of pigeons. I’m wierd like that.

However, there are many other stations that are equally fascinating, they just happen to be in areas of the kitchen that are twenty degrees hotter and next to the chefs that yell a lot. Eeeeek!

There will be a whole new crew of apprentices tomorrow and we are somehow supposed to be ready for dinner service after a month of being closed with a totally new staff. Twenty new young chefs will be arriving tomorrow. Twenty. Oh la la la la la la. Should be interesting. I’ll let you know how it goes…

A Demain!

Technorati Tags: French, Paris, travel

The post Nose To The Grindstone first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I love NYC – the people, the food, the theater, the energy – I don’t love the weather, but it’s no worse than Paris. We stayed in the Lower East Side and spent time with old theater friends currently taking respites from their Broadway careers.

Playing soon in a theater near you!?!?!

Lo-side used to be seedy but now it’s the place for food, music, and eclectic boutique stores. They even have some trendy cool hotels now such as the Rivington Hotel. The area has always been a haven for music with venues like the legendary CBGB’s (closing soon –quick get a t-shirt) but the food is incroyable and affordable.

Here’s my suggested itinerary…Start at Suba’s, a tapas restaurant whose Chef de Cuisine is a prodigy and the recent recipient of the James Beard Best Restaurant award. Sip fresh peach white sangaria while waiting for a table (hopefully next to the moat – yes, there is a little river that surrounds the restaurant) and get into the spirit of the evening while listening to latin inspired techno grooves spinning overhead. The tapas are divine, but our group opted for main courses because we needed fuel for the night ahead…

After Subas, walk down Ludlow street just before Rivington Street to the rockabilly hangout, Motor City. As one city search reviewer described it: “The bouncer is the Lower East Side and the bikini girl dancing in the window is directly out of 1950’s. Cheap beer, decent drinks and a Star Wars pinball machine”. Couldn’t have said it better myself…

And don’t forget the Pabst Blue ribbon with the shots of tequila

After Motor City check out the local venues for music. We went in and out of different places in search of the the best grooves and more snacks. We poked in Katz Delicatessin the famous 24-7 eatery but decided we weren’t hungry yet and headed over to Arlene’s Grocery for live music (it’s not a grocery store) but they wouldn’t let me in because I didn’t have my ID with me. Bummer! – don’t they know who I am!?!?

Somehow we ended up at a dive bar on the corner of Clinton & Houston Street bordering Alphabet city that had a secret backroom where a salsa band was playing and it just happened to be right across from the famous Clinton’s restaurant known for their cuban sandwhiches. The service is notorious slow, but worth the wait.

We finished the night at the marvelous afro-french colonial restaurant Le Pere Pinard on Ludlow Street, for some well made nightcaps, groovy beats, tarot card readings, and French conversation with the fabulous owner FiFi.

One last photo…we had to get a picture with the local fireman. I’m not too sure what they were doing up so late at night or where exactly the fire was – but we attempted to put it out! God Bless the New York Firemen and all those that lost their lives.

Quel Bonheure!

Technorati Tags: Arlene’s Grocery, La Pere Pinard, Lower East Side, Motor City, New York, NYC, restaurants, Rivington hotel, Suba, travel

The post My NYC: Lower East Side first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The last week before August break has come and gone and it has been filled with innumerable highs and lows at the 3-star restaurant I cook at in Paris. The highs being the photo shoot and the opportunity to work with Chef Damien (Chef de Parti) and keeping my position with him at the meat station for longer than two days – Wooo!.

Most stagiers have been cycled through the line positions quickly, especially the meat station. At our restaurant this station is the most prestigious and left to only the Chef de Parti (chef responsible for all stations). Chef Damien works solely with one other person which makes the position even more desirable. He’s also super cool and every young guy there worships the ground he walks on because he’s talented and he doesn’t yell (what a relief!)

So you can imagine my little jump from the Amuse Bouche Station to the meat station caused some controversy amongst the other stagiers who were hoping to secure the apprentice position. Luckily I’m a positive person with a sense of humor so I think after the initial shock hit the young staff and the rumors died down, they just accepted it and decided it was kind of fun to work with me on the line anyway.

Damien (Chef de Parti) and me & Francois (Chef of all Garnishes)

Just how did I get the position? Good question. Maybe because I work fast? Maybe because they think I’m a famous actress from America (long story)? Maybe because I waited for the Chef to Cuisine to ask me what position I was interested in instead of asking for it outright? Or maybe it’s because 25 of the 36 young chefs will not be returning after our August break and they needed a reliable person. Most of the young stagiers and apprenticeships are working towards their university chef degrees and they will be returning to school.

The Chef de Cuisine during service one slow evening asked me if I was interested in doing something new. I answered that I was interested in working on the line. I also mentioned that I was happy doing whatever he wanted me to do – even if it meant peeling carrots in the basement all day long!

The Chef asked, “Well, would you like to try the fish or garnish station? What would like to do?” With a second prodding I said, “I love fish but I’m really interested in the meat if there’s an opportunity…”

He yelled across the kitchen for all the thirty-six chefs to hear, “Damien, how would you like to work with Amy?”. Chef Damien, without looking up from the myriad of different dishes he was preparing, yelled back that it would would be okay with him. “Great Amy, you’ll start tomorrow.” I’m sure I turned a light shade of crimson as the whole staff stared at me in surprise. Needless to say it was hard to keep from smiling throughout the rest of the shift (yippeee!)

So will I hang on to the position when I return after August? That’s still unknown and there are many other positions that I’m excited to explore, but I’m happy that I got the opportunity at least for awhile.

My newest buddies on the line: Pepino, Jean, Julian

Now for the lows…on the very last day I brought in presents for the entire cooking staff. I made a special CD with candid shots of everyone cooking and pictures of the food. I figured that most of the young chefs at some point would want to remember their experience and that the older chefs probably didn’t have any pics of themselves in action. I wrote special notes to each of the thirty-six chefs inside the CD jacket. I really took the time to do something nice.

There is one chef who I don’t see eye to eye with. I gave him a CD and wrote a nice note anyway. He responded that he had a present for me too and went and got one of the adult videos (read my later posts on this one) from the basement. He handed it to me and told me that it was for me and my husband. On the cover was a woman holding an enormous penis in her hand about to perform oral sex and another woman spread eagle. It wasn’t funny, but I tried to make a joke out of it anyway.

I put the DVD on the counter next to the huge basket of mushrooms I was trimming and tried not to look at it – kind of hard to do. I also tried to push down mixed emotions of tears and anger. Luckily there were three main chefs around me trimming mushrooms too, and they were also shocked by the exchange and a little uncertain how to handle the situation. We all tried to ignore the video glaring at us and go on with normal conversation, but the dynamics were uncomfortable for everyone.

The Chef de Cuisine came in and saw the adult video and asked what it was there for. I told him it was a present for me and my husband. He took the CD back and apologized. He also later translated the note I had written inside the CD for the Chef who gave me the present and I wonder if he felt a little remorseful afterward. Oh well, kill ’em with kindness.

Regardless, I finished the last night at the meat station in high spirits. We had a lot of fun playing around and making jokes in the kitchen. There was no yelling and no stress that night. The restaurant was slow (Paris vacates for August) so the atmosphere was relaxed and nostalgic as over half of the staff was cooking for the last time at the restaurant.

We are like a family and it was hard for everyone to say goodbye to each other. Funny how everyone was looking forward to taking off the month of August, but at the closing hour I garauntee that every single employee would have gladly agreed to work to another month – including me.

Ummm…another martini please?…

Technorati Tags: Chef, Cuisine, Paris, Paris restaurants, stage

The post 8th Week Ending: Summer Break first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Why? I was asked by the administration to do some publicity photos for their website and dress up as a client. I wasn’t even aware that they knew I was a woman! However, the request appealed to my inner diva (and former career as an actor) so I decided to go for it.

taken with my camera after photoshoot – this is not the publicity ones

It was kind of embarrassing showing up to the restaurant all dressed up. Especially because most of the chefs took a slight indiscreet peek as I entered the kitchen and then did a total double-take once they realized it was just plain ol’ me.

I could totally sense a change in their demeanor while making normal morning small talk, which I inwardly found funny and heartwarming at the same time. Let me remind you that we work 12 hours a day together from 8A.M. to 11P.M under hot, greasy, stressful conditions and there is little time for the 36 all-male cooking staff to spend time with the opposite sex. Whenever a woman does walk back into the kitchen the whole place lights up.

I waited around for the photographers to show up, which was fine by me because I got out of prepping for service. The Chef de Viande (my boss) kept joking with me that after my photos were finished, I needed to change into my uniform and butcher the rest of the pigeons and scrub the kitchen down from top to bottom at the end of service.

The photos lasted about ten minutes. They were quick and featured myself and another female server as clients pretending to eat lunch. After they were finished I walked back into the kitchen to head up the stairs to the locker room so I could change into my uniform and get ready for service, but the Chef de Cuisine stopped me and asked me what I wanted for lunch. “Nothing” I said stupidly. “I’ve got to get ready for lunch service, I’ll be down in five minutes.”

Much to my surprise he insisted that the restaurant treat me to lunch along with my colleague. I thought he was joking at first, but just in case told him that I would gladly take the oysters from the photo shoot (a specialty at the restaurant). He ordered me to go sit back down in the restaurant.

Myself and Minh took a seat at the table we had occupied for the shoot and the next thing we knew champagne arrived followed by two amuse bouches, oysters, salmon with fennel, artichoke soup & truffle brioche, sweetbreads with black truffles, a complicated apricot dessert, a chocolate dessert, macaroons, marshmallows, and wine to pair with each course. Easily a 250 euro lunch all for some photos that might or might not come out well. Yes, I know, I’m living in a 3-star Parisian dream world. Some one pinch
me please…

The service was outstanding and even though I know each and every one of them (we practically live together!) they treated us like we were formal guests explaining the ingredients in each plate and filling our glasses with more wine as needed. Minh and I kept joking that no one would ever believe this at home… well?…

After lunch we walked back into the kitchen to thank everyone. Funny, I heard a nearby table comment how lucky we were to get a tour of the kitchen. I wonder what they thought when we didn’t come back out!

The cooking staff seemed to have some mixed reactions, particularly the only two girls on the staff—who I could tell were not too happy that I got to do the photos. I definitely understood their jealousy. But hey, I’m fifteen years older than both of them and look foreign which I’m sure was part of the intent. The rest of the staff wanted detailed feedback on the dishes and the service.

My boss half joking, half serious, threw me a sponge and told me to get to work. I threw it back at him and told him I’d show up for the dinner shift early. I never would have had the courage under normal circumstances to have said that to him considering his rank at the restaurant, but I guess my high heels and five glasses of wine did it for me. Smiling broadly, he reminded me that my pigeons would be waiting…

And yes, they were waiting for me along with a bucket of vinegar water to clean the meat station from top to bottom. My chef thought some exercise might do me good after my heavy lunch.

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurant, Chef, Paris, Paris restaurants, stage, tag

The post 8th Week: Sitting Pretty first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

My biggest problem is the heat. I know that sounds totally wussy, but we don’t have ventilation like I’m used to, and according to my latest laser thermometer reading it’s 50˚C / 122˚F next to the burners and 40˚C / 102˚F about two feet away. There is no fresh air and no where to escape to at my little station. My personal skin temperature yesterday was 37.5˚C / 99.5˚F. It doesn’t help that Paris has been the same temperature outside all week.

There was nowhere to escape the heat the other day except the walk-in fridge- ahhhhhhhhh – j’adore the grande frigo!!! I think my boss felt sorry for me because he kept allowing me refrigerator breaks and finding reasons for me to leave the kitchen (count the chickens in the fridge, get more fond de volaille from the fridge, are there pigeons in the fridge?, etc…) Perhaps he had never seen a woman’s face as red as mine before!

Yesterday the heat was so bad that during the middle of service all the power went out on our block. This is a normal occurrence during summertime in Paris due to the power required to run air conditioning. But imagine cooking for a packed restaurant in the dark with nothing but the gas of 16 burners to light your way during rush hour with meat and fish sautéeing on every burner and all four ovens in use. Oh the horror!

this is how dark the kitchen was!
The dining area of the restaurant most have been incredibly romantic for the long ten minutes it took to get the power back on. At the meat section however, it was anything but! We often butcher to order so everything is fresh. I watched my boss hack apart chickens with a cleaver bigger than my head in the pitch dark. I nervously poised my camera expecting to catch him hacking off a finger. He actually told me to take a picture so he could see…

Tonight I managed to stay the whole service in the kitchen without trying to find solace in the walk-in fridge. Maybe I’m adjusting? I also was allowed to cook some of the veal and lamb under close scrutiny. I think my boss said that I’m the first woman to do so. Quite an honor if I understood him right. Must be my lax Californian attitude rubbing off the Parisian cooking militia (lol)!

I hit the jackpot with my timing because most of the apprentices will end their contracts in three days which is probably why they are risking training me at the Viande (meat) station . I will be one of the only people returning in September after the customary month long August vacation. Our thirty-six strong cooking staff will almost entirely turn over.

I will be sad to say good bye to many of the young men (and the two women) who have become my family for the twelve hours we cook together everyday. We do have our moments, but we count on each other and work together like a team to accomplish something more beautiful and memorable than we could do on our own. That’s what makes it all worth it – heat or no heat, lights or no lights – ah, the belle profession!

Technorati Tags: 3-star restaurants, Chef, Paris, restaurants

The post 7th Week: Lights Out first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Handling the flowers requires a little attention. Be careful not to leave them out in heat too much because they will turn brown. If the flowers are twisted closed at the top then carefully untwist and slice gently with a tip of a knife to the base. Peel the petal around the base so there is one long petal left. Throw away the yellow stamen inside. set aside in refrigerator until ready to deep fry.

When working with hot oil – especially if you don’t have a deep fryer – a few cautions must be followed. Always use a pot that has high sides compared to the amount of oil used. You only need enough surface area to allow the food you are deep frying to float around comfortably and cover with oil by about three inches. Never turn the heat on to high. Start with medium heat and use a thermometer to test exact temperature or test with a small amount of batter before turning up the heat to medium high. Let oil cool thoroughly before throwing it away.

I normally use a neutral tasting peanut oil when deep frying because it has a high smoking point. It can take heat without catching on fire like other oil. In fact we use peanut in France in just about everything. You can use olive oil too (not extra virgin, but regular) or vegetable oil too, however the taste can be overpowering for the zucchini flower.

I love these salty crunchy little treats. slice them in thin strips to add a striking garnish to an entée or eat them hot out of the fryer with an ice cold beer.

Recipe to follow….

Technorati Tags: beignet, courgette, deep fried, fleur de courgette, zucchini, zucchini flower

Fleur de Courgette Beignet

Ingredients

10- 12 zucchini flowers, opened with stamens removed

200 grams / 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

20 grams / 1 Tablespoon compressed yeast

1 small lager beer (non alcoholic is fine)

Water as necessary

4-5 cups peanut oil for deep frying

Salt to sprinkle over beignet

Instructions

1. Make beignet batter by breaking compressed yeast into tiny pieces with finger tips over flour. Pour beer over and mix with a whisk until yeast and flour are smooth. Add water little by little as necessary. Consistency should be like thick pancake batter (think Bisquick pancake batter). Refrigerate until ready to use. Can be made a day before.

2. Remove petals of zucchini flower by gently slicing with tip of knife at base of flower to the top and peeling away petal around base in one go. Lie petals flat on a tray lined with paper towels. Refrigerate until ready to use (not more than a half hour)

3. Heat oil to 160˚C / 350˚ F in a large pot with high sides on medium heat. Check temperature with thermometer or drop a little bit of beignet batter in. If it sizzles and floats to the top quickly then it is ready.

4. Using two fingers take zucchini petals and dip flower into beignet batter. Use sides of bowl to wipe off extra batter of flower. Place gently in oil (careful of fingers). When beignet flowers float to top turn them over in oil. Flowers need to cook for about 1 1/2 minutes each side. They will be a light LIGHT golden color. Remove and let drain on paper towels. Sprinkle generously with salt while still hot. Continue until all flowers are deep fried!!!

5. Cut into long strips and serve along side cold zucchini soup or serve in big pieces along side an ice cold beer!

The post Zucchini Week: Fleur de Courgette Beignet first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Jean, Me, Damien, Cyril, Kevin
Maybe that will be me too, but I’m pinching myself right now, because it’s such an honor to be given the chance to learn in such a demanding environment. Currently the Chef has an apprentice who he has mentored for the last year, but in September that position will be open. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that perhaps I might fill that role.

The Chef de Cuisine who I absolutely adore, Laurent, has been very generous to me so far in allowing me to be part of service (and not just prep food) so I guess we’ll see. I kinda think they like having a woman around to balance out the energy.

Today was my first day and I mostly did a lot of watching and assisting. I watched Damien, (Chef de Viande) and Cyril his apprentice butcher the veal and lamb, prepare pigeon, section poulet, make different jus for all the meats and stocks, and cook everything to perfection. Luckily the restaurant was almost empty with so many Parisians leaving for vacation, so they had the time to really show me.
I can’t tell you how hot that part of the kitchen is. By the end of the shift I was a little sweaty cherry tomato. They obviously don’t have the same kitchen heat regulations in Paris that they do in San Francisco. Although there are vents above the burners, they are not the kind that suck out hot air. Instead they just recirculate it.

It also didn’t help that today is a record breaking hot day of 93˚F (37˚C). Oh well, there goes my fresh & cool Amuse Bouche station look. Whatevah – I’m not there to look good, I’m there to cook!
I have a two hour break and then it’s back to the viande station for the evening shift…hope it goes well…

Technorati Tags: Guy Savoy, Paris, restaurants, top ten restaurants

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Technorati Tags: courgette, soup, zucchini

Créme de Courgette Soup
Ingredients
5 medium zucchini
1 small shallot sautéd
3 T extra virgin good quality olive oil
3 T citron virgin olive oil
3 teaspoons salt
4 cups reserved cooking liquid
Topping garnish options: chopped basil, diced tomato and fennel, deep-fried zucchini flower
Instructions
1. Trim ends of zucchini and slice into 1/2″ thick rounds
2. Boil water in a large pot and add chopped zucchini. Cook until done, about 7 minutes. Zucchini should be thoroughly cooked, not al dente.
3. Once zucchini is cooked strain out and place in ice water to stop cooking. Cool cooking liquid and reserve 4 cups to thin out soup.
4. In a large mixing bowl puree zucchini with olive oil. Add salt and sautéed shallot (Add salt little by little. This soup should be salty but pleasantly so. You might need more or less depending on how you like it) Ladle in reserved zucchini cooking liquid until the soup has the consistency of oil – not too runny, but not too watery.
5. Chill for at least one hour before serving. Soup should be served cold.
6. Garnish with chopped basil or tomato & sautéed fennel or all three!

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The food is edible art and the owner/chef loves the element of surprise and many dishes are specifically designed for this. He also loves to evoke memories through color, taste, texture and smell. This sweet pea dish was created by the executive chef in honor of a springtime childhood memory he had of eating fresh sweet peas right out of the shell freshly picked.

On the bottom of the plate is a sweet pea jelly puree, cold and smooth in texture. On top are blanched sweet peas (so glad I don’t have to shell those) forming a nest for a delicately poached egg. The server at the table slashes the egg open with the point of a knife and the yellow warm yolk floods down over the sprouts and peas. It’s table art and delicious.

Following the sweet pea entree the Chef de Cuisine suprised my parents with a new delicate salmon dish he created. The salmon sits on a bed of chard stems and has a wedge of fennel on the top with a frothy cream sauce. Everything is soft and dreamy, the colors the flavors are distinctive yet subtle. To me it looks like a little boat in a make-believe ocean.
Following the delicate flavors of the salmon was the famous artichoke and black truffle soup. If you like truffles then this is mana from heaven, because the soup itself is blended with white and black truffles and served with truffle brioche and smeared (at the table by the server) with truffle butter. The textures are smooth and sensual and the scent is – well – erotic. I make this at work and I never get tired of tasting it (hee, hee)

Unlike American dinners where meat is prepared separately for each person, the meat is often prepared for the whole table and cut by the server in front of the customers – a lost art in America. I love the entertainment quality of carving meat tableside and the skills required to serve that way.

After a little prodding I found out exactly how the Chef de Viande creates his juicy masterpieces. He browns the meat in olive oil on all sides first. After searing, it is roasted it in the oven to desired doneness and let to rest for twenty minutes (collecting the juices to make the jus for the table) Right before serving it is seared again in clarified butter to give a slightly crispy crust and seal in the juices. The meat melts in your mouth.

After four healthy courses the desserts started to roll. My favorite was the ode to peach and bluberries. Countless other treats kept arriving at the table: macaroons, fromage, riz au lait, chocolate mousse, cherry clafouti, marshmellows that melt in your mouth, and more. I will save those pics for another article…
The service is different that other 3-star Parisian restaurants. It isn’t stuffy or uncomfortable. You don’t feel like there are secret service people watching you at all times trying to anticipate your next move, which can be really annoying. The Maitre D, will be more than happy to accommodate any occasion to make sure it is perfect for each guest. They will also keep track of what you like and dislike so the next time you come in you can be sure to have something that is specifically tailored for you.

If you are in Paris and have never had the experience of eating in a 3-star restaurant you must come for lunch or dinner. It is a once in a life time meal that you will never ever forget.

Technorati Tags: Guy Savoy, Paris, restaurants, top ten restaurants

The post 6th Week: Beautiful Food first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Champs Elysée after the match

France played Portugal on the 5th of July which was and is a very special day for me. First of all it’s my wedding anniversary, secondly my husband’s parents flew in to be with us, and thirdly I placed the winning bet. That’s right! Ha!!! I cleaned hoooooooouuuuuse!!!!

The Chef de Cuisine let me go early so I could be with my husband and family – an unusual show of tenderness. I did mention to him that I haven’t seen my family in seven months. I also mentioned that I never see my husband because he’s always travelling and I’m always working and we don’t even get to faites l’amour anymore. This he understood. No one at the restaurant has time for love – it’s a sad painful fact. Especially when you are surrounded by sensual smells and tastes all day long. Starving, really, if you know what I mean…

I placed my bet 1 – 0 France with the first goal by the Coq’s in 23 minutes. Everyone scoffed at my early goal estimate. But when I got home to watch the game with my husband, family, and friends I caught the first goal by Zidane at 33 minutes!

It wasn’t exactly a romantic anniversary, but it was great to be with family, eat shish kabobs, and drink beer and not be in slaving away in a hot hot hot kitchen.

I felt bad receiving my lump of cash the next day. There I was the little American girl who knows nothing about soccer, or cooking for that matter, collecting wads of euros. I could tell there were some bad feelings. Oh well! You win some, You loose some!

I’m betting France 2 – 0 for the final Sunday game with the first goal in 17 minutes. Any takers?

The post 5th Week: Allez Les Bleues! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The last few stagiers (apprentices) have been cycled through quickly and now are stuck doing prep work throughout service, which includes carrying stacks of heavy dishes up one flight of stairs, shelling mountains of sweet peas for hours on end, shucking oysters, and cleaning up after service – glad I’m only responsible for my own station right now.

The Amuse Bouche station is like a miniature meal. We use uniquely designed petit cups that are filled with a seasonal soup and then removed by the server at the table to reveal a little treat underneath. They are beautiful, elegant, feminine and delicious. Of course there’s other stuff I do too at my station: seared foies gras, ris de veau, poached eggs, the signature artichoke soup, but the part I like the most are the little tasty surprises that awaken the palate…

When I first began work at the restaurant our amuse bouche’s were served hot, but now with summer clearly on it’s way we are serving little cold soups. In the afternoon we serve a cold zucchini soup emulsified with citron olive oil and a sliver of battered zucchini flower. In the soup cup itself is a ratatouille of brunoised fennel, tomato, zucchini, and onion. Underneath the soup bowl is a hot duxelles crisp with a tiny zucchini slice on top with parmesan (sorry, no pic). Looks easy, but it takes so much time to prepare.

For lunch we serve tomato gaspacho with a vegetable tabouleh and five spice. Underneath is a little cherry tomato stuffed with herbed chevre and topped with chive oil. Yummy!

The biggest highlight of the week was getting invited to a photo shoot Friday afternoon. I got to help the Chef set up numerous plates for a French food magazine. I’m not quite sure why I was asked to go, but it was a lot of fun. I watched him create beautiful plates, drank champagne with the photographers, and washed a few dishes. More importantly I got the afternoon off – what a novelty from the 11 hour work day. Whew-hoo!

It’s been a good week all and all. I also asked the Chef if perhaps there might be room for me on the fish, meat, or garnish line when some of the apprentices leave…he seemed to like the idea, so I’ll guess I’ll see….

Technorati Tags: Guy Savoy, stage

The post 4th Week: Amuse Bouche Station first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

More importantly I’m actually beginning to look forward to each day. I guess you could say that for the moment the clouds have lifted. Today we had a banquet for fifty people. I plated all the amuse bouche’s and they were fun and easy: plates of fritto misto (fried calamari) piled high. I also got to plate all the main courses.

Evening Shift 5:00 PM – 11:00 PM
What a friggin’ nightmare – OMG – what an effing nightmare. One of the stagiers decided he didn’t want to help my boss at the amuse bouche station. He feels slighted because I always get to do service while he does prep work downstairs. The real reason is that he’s got mega attitude and the chef’s will just keep giving him shitty jobs until he figures it out. If he figures it out.

He’s young and doesn’t quite get the fact that I’m faster, smaller and can maneuver within the small space easier, and I do my work and then redo his work because he’s sloppy. What a jerk. He’s sure it’s because I’m female since I don’t speak French and he does. Maybe it is, I really don’t care.

I began the shift behind trying to play catch up thanks to our young dissenter, and the orders just came in one after another after another after another. My boss and I were yelled at the whole night for not being prepared.

I was more exhausted than I knew and started to shake under the pressure. When I reached to grab my water bottle from the fridge a plate of sliced truffles smashed to the floor. This, of course, caused the kitchen to momentarily freeze while the chef de cuisine for the evening let me have it.

I reached down and picked it up and put in in the trash because my boss told me to, and that made the chef de cuisine even more upset because I was throwing away truffles so I got yelled at even more. I was so tired that I couldn’t help but unleash tears. No loud sobbing thankfully, just flowing tears from being pushed over the edge.

I put my head down and continued to plow through the shift. My boss let me go as soon as the last order was up and once I got outside the restaurant I think Noah’s Flood let loose. Not excited for work tomorrow….

Technorati Tags: Paris, Paris restaurants, stage

The post 1 3/4’s Week: Bomb’s Away first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Then there’s the reverse question – what should I do? Do I take the sexual humor as a joke and let it roll off? Do I put forth my best butch impression and try and be one of the boys? Do I play off the fact that I am a women so I don’t have to do all the icky work? Do I dare show talent and determination?

Of course, I am who I am, there’s no changing that, but how to fit into an ingrained system that is not quite sure about whether or not women are acceptable? I find this more challenging than even the French/English language barrier.

The restaurant kitchen is not set up for women at all. There is one toilet by the chef’s dressing room that doesn’t lock and isn’t clean and we can’t use the bathrooms in the restaurant. All chefs are expected to change in one locker room that has no privacy. No one is supposed to wear their uniform in or out. However, I live a block away, so I’ve decided to forgo that rule.

I’m not shy, but I don’t feel like giving 36 young men a sneak peak and then having to work with them in the kitchen. Even the way the day is set up, working from 8:30 AM – 11 P.M. with a two hour break in the middle, provides a barrier for any woman who might want a family.

I would say that most of the chefs really enjoy female presence in the kitchen and even though they aren’t quite sure how to behave around me yet, they want to make it work. I think I have proved my self-worth to the point that I now am heaped with prep work.

I do have restaurant experience, so I’m not completely a deer caught in the headlights, and I think that shows in the speed in which I can whip through tasks. However, I feel that I have to prove myself at all times, because there is always some one watching me either out of curiosity or disdain.

Looking back on my first week, it has definately been a difficult one. The physical exhaustion, the language barrier, the male dominated army like regime. Very very difficult. There have been rays of sunshine that have brightened my week and I count myself lucky because I’ve only had one afternoon where I came home in tears and seriously thought about not going back.

As one of the older and wiser chef’s said to me : You’ll get used it. Don’t worry mon petit, after two months it won’t bother you at all.

Hmmmm, I hope so…

The post 1st Week Review: No Place For A Lady first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I came into work for the Saturday night shift ready to get the amuse bouche station into gear and was talking with another stagier (apprentice). He was explaining the variations of the soup for me in English. There was no one in the kitchen yet – just us – and no real need to keep our voices down or hide our conversation in English.

Out of nowhere, the coffee maker guy started to yell at us. “Pas Anglais! Anglais – NON!” He went on to tell Justin that he was not allowed to talk to me in English and that we were both going to get in a lot of trouble. Justin fired back that he was only trying to help me with the different plates for the soup as it was my third day on the job.

I kept thinking, “Great, the coffee maker guy is telling me that I can’t talk in my mother tongue and he’s obviously not from France orginally, what a jerk!” But then the thought donned on me that I am an immigrant and an American at that. I started to wonder what it must of been like in Early America with immigrants coming from all over the world speaking different languages.

How hard it must have been (and must be today) to find work and friends. To survive. And here was this guy, totally out of line, yet in some ways totally right – I’ve got to learn French. Period.

When the chef in charge of the Amuse Bouche station came in, the coffee maker guy told on us just as promised. But our boss just shrugged it off and told me not to worry about it. Later I heard from another young chef that English is forbidden and if some of the older chefs hear me speaking English they will get angry.

I had to think about this for awhile. What was the big deal? Was this because they hate Americans or because if you have a kitchen of people shouting multiple languages you’re going to have some pretty messed up dinners. I hoped the later was true.

So I started the shift upset that I had been yelled at for speaking English. We don’t talk to each other like that in American restaurants. At least not in San Francisco where most kitchens have an equal staff of men and women of all different nationalities.

Our chef de cuisine for the evening was a man who I was warned about. I was told that he would not tolerate English and was very strict. Funny enough, the Chef de Cuisine had just come back from America and was eager to speak English. When I attempted to hold a conversation with him in French he replied “You can speak English with me, I want to speak English”. Ha!

The Chef was an excellent leader the whole evening, he knew just went to raise his voice to get the kitchen moving faster and when to laugh and give praise. He was even tempered but demanded excellence on every plate that passed by on the way to the customers. We were slammed that evening, but we made through it good spirit. If I was ever to sail through a typhoon, I would want to be on his boat.

As the night winded down, with only two orders yet to fire, my boss at the Amuse Bouche station told me I could go home. I started to take off my apron and wish all the chef’s a a “Bon soirée’ when the Chef de Cuisine stopped me and said in French that it is customary to give two kisses when you depart for the weekend. The kitchen of eighteen young men stopped and stared at me to see just exactly how I would respond or if I even understood.

I looked at the Chef de Cuisine quizzically, “You mean the two kisses on the cheek?”. “Yes” he responded and laughed not thinking that I’d actually go through with the dare. So I walked forward and gave him two kisses and the whole kitchen burst out in laughter. Although the greeting with kisses is traditional, it’s not something you do to the big boss.

He then pointed to the other main chef and said, “And him too!”. The kitchen staff paused again to see my reaction, “Him too?” I went over and gave him a double peck. And one last time he pointed to another chef and said, “And him too!” and I replied “Okay, him too, but that is it!!!” and the whole kitchen burst into laughter again.

I think we all left that evening on a high note. For a brief moment we had all managed to transcend the language, cultural, and male/female barrier and just have fun. It’s amazing how far a little humor and a lot of hard work will go.

Technorati Tags: Cooking School, Paris, stage

The post 3rd Day: Whisper English To Me first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The evening was ten times smoother than this afternoon and I was surprised because Friday nights in restaurants are usually crazy. I got to work the amuse bouche station alone (with the chef in charge, but no one else) and we really got into a groove.

There were a few moments where I didn’t understand his French, but no major problems. In fact, I even surprised myself with how much I understood. He was very complimentary at the end and so was the Chef de Cuisine: “Bon travail, Amy!” Yippeeee!!!

Needless to say, I came home wired and happy. It took a few hours to unwind and a few glasses of wine. Every muscle in my body was aching, but luckily there’s no lunch shift on Saturday. No wonder why French chef’s have such a high suicide rate. How can they keep this type of work up for 12 hours a day?

Two days down, 88 to go. But who’s counting?

P.S. Thanks Gill for your last comment – you’re such a sweetie! Jeorg – soup is on me when you come to Paris!

The post 2nd Day: Evening Shift first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I’m not new to working in restaurants by any means, but I am new at trying to work in a language I’ve just barely got the hang of. It’s like playing a game you don’t know the rules to. When some one asks me to do something in French it takes me a little while to process, because I have to read body language and anticipate what the issue is. This of course leads to mistakes and inefficiencies. So far no big ones or anything traumatic, but still it’s frustrating to the max.

Thankfully there is a young American guy who is also a stagier and we work the Amuse Bouche station together. His dad is French so he’s fluent. He’s very sweet about translating stuff for me, but he’s also really bossy during set (service) which makes me want to throw my towel down and stomp away. I can take orders, but I like to take them from the people who are in charge. He started work a week ago, and he just began working the amuse bouche station with me, so we’re at the same the beginning level. I know he’s well intended but I can only take so much.

People have different attitudes about set (when all the orders come in). I like to try and remain focused and concentrate, but allow flexibility so I don’t freak out if (and when) something goes wrong. I don’t like to rush around bumping into people acting like a scatterbrained dodo. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Time to take a little nap before I subject myself to more fun, fun, fun…

Some one remind me – why am I doing this?

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The post 2nd Day: Lunch Break first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

What I’m most happy about is that I got to cook in the kitchen tonight – granted it was just the amuse bouche’s (there’s many of them at Guy Savoy) and the restaurant’s signature soup: artichoke purée with shaved parmesan and truffles. Nonetheless, I got to be up there with the best of them, getting yelled at like the rest of them. (Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t understand everything)

I’m sorry, but I have to go bed because my eyelids are dropping. I have so much to tell….a demain….

Technorati Tags: Guy Savoy, Paris

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