The Inner Workings

And the Rules Again

My husband came to visit this weekend, after being delayed two days by the ice storm in Dallas, which had me grinding my teeth and cursing the weather gods, and he has asked me a hundred questions about LCB. Questions about the place, the people, basically everything from an insider’s perspective, so I thought I would lay it out there for y’all as well.

As I have mentioned, a big rule at LCB is that all students must be in uniform AT ALL TIMES on premises and no one is allowed to wear it coming or going from LCB. As a result, you really have no idea what people are truly like because you never see anyone in their natural habitat or clothing. And since the women are always wearing hair nets you don’t even really know the length, style or color of their hair. The effect is that everyone is a generic student—guessing there is some LCB psychology to that but —I will leave that to the psychology majors among us.

Also, the locker rooms are super weird. No benches at all and nowhere to sit. You literally have to stand in front of your “gym” locker to strip down and change, hopping on one foot to get your boots off with a huge pile of all your stuff on the floor around you. Not sure what they have against sitting but there is almost nowhere to sit in the whole facility. There are 200 people there at any given time and there are literally three sofas on the main floor and nothing to sit on anywhere else. So once you get your clothes off and your uniform on, you then have to take out the giant 30 pound knife kit, your recipe book, your notes and this mesh bag of miscellaneous stuff like a scale, two plastic bowls and some other random stuff that is awkward to carry, and shove your coat and boots and clothes back into the locker, and go stand somewhere. It’s really annoying. Also, the locker rooms are on the third floor and the kitchens and demonstrations are on various floors, but no matter what, students are not allowed to get on the elevators. In fact you have to have a key card to make them operate which only the chefs have. Students must take the stairs, which makes lugging that knife kit and mesh bag up and down flights of stairs a real pain.

The kitchens, of which there are approximately six, where we do our practicals, are not all equal. No one wants to end up in Marco Polo because two people have to share a stove top with four burners. Which, if the dish you are making that day requires a lot of pans on the stove, there ends up being some jockeying for position. Only one kitchen has windows and that is L’Atelier. My favorite! It has views onto the river and makes you feel more like you are cooking in your own home kitchen. I love it! It’s where the quiche miracle occurred.

In my blog I have referred generically to “Chef” but chef is actually 15 different people—I was kindly trying to protect the guilty. They rotate in their supervision of our practicals and everyone cringes when chefs who we know are difficult or who are stingy graders show up to let us in. Oh—that is another thing—you are not allowed into any kitchen or demonstration room until you are invited in by the chef in charge. So when I said there is nowhere to sit—it is particularly painful when you are waiting to be let into a kitchen with all your heavy gear and your notes—standing up outside.

The kitchens are long stainless steel affairs with two rows of stovetop/oven combos and marble counters behind. Everyone has a station and mine is number 4. Always. And in your small group there are 16, or in our case 15, as one girl has not shown up for awhile. It was after the chicken disembowelment. Guess she had had enough. There is usually a trolley with all the foods and other things that we are going to use that day and while we are setting up our workstations, four unfortunate souls, who are called the team leaders, (this rotates every week) are in charge of dividing up all the vegetables, spices, meats etc that we are going to use and they prepare a pan for each person with the various items. This is time consuming and very rushed, and, if you are a team leader that week, totally takes away your focus from getting your mind right and running through the steps of what you are going to cook that day.

Once we get going on whatever it is we are cooking, there are always other things needed that are “community type items”. This is where it gets tricky. For example, we might need little round cutters to punch out rounds of vegetables, or a pasta machine to make pasta -and inevitably there are never enough for everyone, so people are desperately searching for these items when they are ready to be used. Some people hoard them at their stations so you find yourself running around and asking, “who has a rolling pin?” or whatever. Super stressful due to the 2 hour and 15 minute cooking deadline for every practical. Also, because process is such a big deal at LCB, there is a great need for bowls; many, many bowls of varying sizes to distribute ingredients, contain peelings and hold liquids, like melted butter or egg yolks etc. These inevitably run out and you have to run to the dishwashing room between two kitchens to see if there are extra. At this stage of the game everyone has learned to hide a few extra bowls underneath their station to cut down on the time used in searching for them as needed.

This past week, which thankfully was pretty unremarkable in terms of disasters, I committed only one infraction and I didn’t even know it was a no-no. We have community butter at the front of the class and you have to go retrieve it and weigh it on your scale to get the proper amount. Well, I cut off a piece of the butter with the tinfoil attached so the butter wouldn’t get all over my scale and so it could rest at my workstation without it getting greasy. Well, Chef called out to the whole class, “who cut off this butter?”, and when I admitted it was me, he called me to the front of the class and proceeded to dress me down in front of everyone on the proper way to take the butter, which apparently is to completely unwrap the butter and cut off a piece without cutting the tinfoil. Whatever. Lots of rules like I say.

Anyway, this week we made several things. The most fun of which was the pasta. I know lots of you have made homemade pasta and I have to admit I have never really bothered, but it was a blast! It is my new favorite thing and so easy! Below is a veal piccata and homemade tagliatelle-yum!

We also made blanquette de veau this week and while I didn’t love it—a lot of white sauce, it too, was super popular, and not that hard, except for those damned 8 sided potatoes.

Sometimes, the things we make are just not what we are really eating in the US, but the skills are super useful and I am thinking about how to apply them to more modern American applications.

To celebrate the end of the week and my reunion with my husband, we dined in a super chic restaurant at the Palais Garnier-one of my favorite buildings in Paris- and had a delicious meal, but towards the end I heard the unmistakable sound of a singer— with guess what? Another all-in-one band— history does repeat itself! This must be a French thing. This guy had a guitar but could also produce a bass in some device he had strapped to it and he roved among the diners singing such favorites as “Volare”, totally channeling a Love Boat episode from my youth, and again the ubiquitous “Happy Birthday” in French. Equally as bad as the last time in case you were wondering. It was pretty funny and again everyone filmed him as if he were a celebrity. To enjoy the show, my husband asked for a Manhattan for an after dinner drink—one of the most common cocktails in the world right? Well, I am not sure if it was his Texas twang or the fact that he could not be heard over the guitarist, but the waiter, bartender and then ultimately, the manager, all had to get involved while he tried to explain what a Manhattan was. Finally they brought him little vials of all the ingredients and let him mix it himself. After he demonstrated how to do it they all nodded sagely in unison and announced “Ah, yes, the Man-hat-tan.” The joys of language barriers.

All in all, I am counting this week as a win! I am integrating into life at LCB and I just realized—I am at the halfway mark! Looking forward to lots more adventures in the remaining weeks but definitely feeling on more solid ground!