Butter, flour, and milk

With those 3 things, a true French chef can prepare some of the most delicious and artful dishes on the planet. Add chocolate or cheese, and French cuisine becomes the standard of luxury in the culinary world. And while I have made my fair share of awesome dishes, sweet and savory alike, I am not, in fact, a true French chef. However, we did get to hang out with a couple about a week ago, and they even let us use their kitchen.

Last Friday, our cultural orientation activity was to head over to Tour de Cuisine, in the 20e Arrondissement of Paris, a true blue French culinary school, for a small lesson in basic French cooking and baking. We all thought that we would simply be watching and reading the recipes, maybe making something small and really easy, so weren't too shocked as instructor said, «Alright, everyone, take off your coats, wash your hands, and grab an apron in the back,» but what really shocked us was the addition of the phrase, «Then find a partner and a workstation.» It was true, towards the back of the shop there were 6 stations set up with ingredients, pots, pans, and recipes at the ready. We weren't watching at all!

Petry and I teamed up and shopped around a bit before picking one of the only stations involving chocolate. Our mission, which we gladly accepted, was to make crème patisserie du chocolat, or a chocolate custard filling, and croissants pralins, a concoction of chocolate, praline, and delcious-ness filling small, fluffy croissants.

Croissants pralins are like little packets of chocolatey delicious-ness...
Actually, that's exactly what they are.

I was a little confused about what the crème patisserie was going to be used for, since it's usually used to fill pastries, but I had made it before, and I knew it could be finicky. It's a stovetop custard, meaning it isn't baked in a water bath, and you can easily end up with chocolatey scrambled eggs, or, worse than that, burnt custard. We decided to start with that, so we would have time to remake it if we needed to.

As we started weighing and measuring ingredients, I looked over at the other group's recipe cards. Croissants pralins and... choux. Aha. Now the crème patisserie made sense. Choux is one of the lightest of the French pastries. It's an almost battery dough that is put into a pastry bag and piped onto a pan. It can either be piped into a ring of many layers, making something very cake-like, or piped in small bundles, which creates airy little puff balls. The pastries are then filled with either jam or custard to add sweetness, flavor, and texture. This is how cream puffs are generally made.

Our finished choux, filled with chocolate custard,
sitting on a plate ready to be enjoyed.

So that was how this was all happening. Were weren't all making the same dishes, we were making separate parts of a few dishes. Cool! I didn't think it was going to be anything that fancy. We cranked away on our crème patisserie, which got completed without a problem, and moved on the croissants. We were going to use pre-made, pre-rolled dough, which was nice, so all we had to make was the filling. We again set off diligently weighing and measuring. This one went off mostly without a hitch, except we had a little bit of trouble figuring how to use some of the appliances. After a little help from the instructor, though, we were on our way to Tasty Town.

Across the way, at some of the other workstations, another concoction was under construction. Two of the stations were collaborating on tartelettes aux pommes, or small apple tarts. Think of small, dense Christmas cookies (minus the sugar) that are baked normally or in mini-muffin pans (to make a little bowl), then topped with crème patisserie (this one without chocolate), and finally pieces of apple that have been caramelized with some butter and sugar on the stovetop. The other group was working on a variation of the same, only with homemade caramel instead of crème patisserie.

Tartelettes aux pommes. The bowl shapes hold the apples and custard better,
but cook a little less evenly. Also, the crust to filling ratio is lower...

After everything was said and done, we all sat down with a coffee in hand, and smashed into the pastries. It was all delicious. The choux were just the right size to pop into your mouth and not shoot custard everywhere when you bit into it. Both of the crèmes patisseries were rich, velvety, and smooth. Everything a custard filling should be. The richness of the dark chocolate in the crème patisserie du chocolat was just the right amount of nutty brightness, and the regular crème was an awesome texture and flavor for the warm apple spheres on top.

Just thinking about all of it makes me hungry again. I guess I'll have to survive off of Nutella sandwiches until I can get my hands on a cheap scale and good recipe for all of this again. Alright, I'm going to post one last photo before I start licking the screen...

Laura biting into a tartelette aux pommes caramel.

Ok. More photos tomorrow. Hopefully with some nice bright colors. Also, I think I'm going to try and do a portrait series here soon. I've found some inspiration in some French sayings, and if I can get the help of some of my American comrades, I think they could make some very interesting pieces. We'll see...