The image of the French Chef, haughty, demanding, and a genius, is legendary. As a student at Le Cordon Bleu (LCB) I am subject to these kinds of chefs every day with one important deviation. These guys are not haughty (well ... except for one) and their demands are to make sure that we push ourselves as close to perfection as we can come.
Perfection seems to be pretty unattainable.
When I entered Basic Cuisine last November the mantra of all the chefs for everyone was "More salt, more salt". It became a joke. No matter how many pounds of the stuff we felt like we were pouring into our sauces, the inevitable result fell short when subjected to the chef's tasting evaluation. Had these guys ever heard all those high blood pressure warnings? Apparently not. They were probably busy plopping butter into their sauces when the National Health Organizations were revealing the risks of salt. Which brings me to the second link in French cuisine's much ballyhooed diet paradox. We students had to get over our parsimonious response to butter. You would laugh at what constitutes a "bit of butter". Think a baseball sized mound. No wonder those sauces taste so good!
So we went all through Basic cuisine breaking down our American National Health Organization's brainwashing. Needs salt? Okay.......a bit of butter? Bring it on!! And why not? LCB's chefs are all skinny (suspicious I know) and so are the majority of the french waifs you see on your way to and from the kitchen. Being from California and probably missing my weekly quotient of Mexican food (Paris' one major drawback in my mind), I added "more pepper" to the list. Not always such a good idea. The pepper in the LCB kitchens is that strange powdery gray stuff that bears little resemblance to the freshly ground variety. The taste is sharp and strong. My life long liberty with pepper has been seriously curbed. One chef, in his charming broken english, commented after a spoonful of my rice pilaf "You like pepper, No? The taste, he not good, too much!"
Okay, so I'm learning.
The admonishments have changed in Intermediate Cuisine for some strange reason. " The taste, he is too much salty". What? Too MUCH salt! Just after we have all been converted to "when it rains, it pours" little Morton's salt girls? Maybe this about face is part of the program. Kind of like in running. In training you push beyond your speed limit so that in a race your new normal pace is faster.
Maybe. Our taste buds are definitely in training and the messages we are receiving are in the strange Franglais of the kitchen. I am beginning to think in this strange mixture of French and English when I'm cooking.
"She enough cooked"....(out of the oven it comes)....."She reduce more, no?"....( simmer a bit longer)....."You couper not the skin" (slow down with the knife Mary)....
My other job as an English teacher may be in jeopardy.
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