Wednesday 8 July 2009

The cabbage rose

We had a student dinner yesterday night at Atelier Maitre Albert with the intensive cuisine students as well. It was nice to finally dress up after being in uniform all the time. Apparently if you're doing Superior Patisserie, the student dinner is held at a michelin star restaurant! Hmm oh well I'll get there.

Sadly, food was average but the company was in a word, amazing.




I've never met such a variety of people at the same time. Different countries, age, jobs, marital status etc all sitting on one round table. All here in Paris for the love of food. I felt comfortable here. No weird looks or that question "I thought you're doing engineering??"when I start talking about my research project about understanding texture perception in the human mouth.

Ahh it was indeed a night to remember. Dessert was below par by the way or maybe I'm just sick of cream lol.

It was nice to have a break but lessons continued the next day. This time it was Dacquoise, a meringue sorta cake with praline cream in between. This was what chef made:



And drum roll please! This is mine:



A product of 20 minutes of whisking eggs and cream continuously. It is painful! Basic level aren't allowed to use electric mixers. It's like 1st year of mechanical engineering all over again. I look like any right handed guy now lol.

So when everyone was done, we lined up our cakes to compare. Chef took a look around and stopped at mine. He asked who's was this. I felt confident and put up my hand. He smiled and said my rose looked more like a pink cabbage.

*Heart breaks into two* Thanks chef! That was 15 minutes of marzipan shaping. Honestly, this guy doesn't speak much English and he knows the word "cabbage". And not to mention that the chef's rose looks like Japanese pickle.

I guess mine could have look better. It was a first attempt!



I'll definitely practice more on weekends. I loved doing it actually. Can't wait to try it on birthday cakes :)

I'm gonna really look at roses now and dissect them to see how it comes together.

Oh yea definitely gonna get some weird looks from family when I'm back. Heh.

Until next time folks!

1 comment:

  1. Hey sweetie! (:

    The rose looks ok for a first timer what.. Haha mine would definitely turn out worse.

    And I can't imagine whisking the eggs BY HAND for 20 minutes. I always use electric mixers. :P Looking forward to more posts from you!

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