Cooking with Class

For a guy who has a hard time guessing the difference between a blender and a sieve, I'd been looking forward to today's cooking class for weeks.  I mean, where else would be a better place to learn to cook than in Paris, France?  As it happened, our chef, Patrick, had for twenty years plied his trade at his own restaurant in Shreveport, where he maintained the only Michelin 4-star restaurant in Lousiana outside New Orleans.  So we were in good hands.

 

We started at the cheese shop.  And, unlike the cheese shop of Monty Python fame, this shop had cheeses.  Imagine three walls like the one above and a big table in the middle of the floor, and you have the idea.  President Charles De Gaulle made a famous reference to cheeses in his retirement speech:  "How can one rule a country that has 256 different cheeses?"  According to Chef Patrick, France now has about 500; you can have a different cheese every day for a year and a half without repeating.  Where do I sign up for that?

Next up were the butcher and fishmonger, where we got lessons on how to first choose the shop, then the items in the shop.  Did you know that gills don't lie?  If you want to see how fresh a fish is, check the gills.  So the next time you want fish, go to your local grocery store and say "Show me the gills."  And you can tell'em I said so.

We stopped by the produce stand and the baker on the way back to the cooking school, and we settled in to prepare a four-course meal.  Except for the centerpiece, monkfish marinated in the chef's own concoction, we all contributed to everything.  So pull up a chair and, as the French really do say, "Bon Appetit!"

We start with veal and mushrooms on a bed of celery and oranges.  If I had cared at all about my girth, I would have stopped there, too.  It made a nice little meal of its own.  But I didn't come to Paris to worry about my weight. 






The main dish (not the entree, but the plat principal) was roast monkfish topped with candied orange julienne on a bed of fennel with haricots verts (think green beans).  To the best of my knowledge, I'd never had monkfish before.  But I will again, if I have to roast it myself.

Before finishing off with the dessert, we had an assortment of cheeses.  Today we had six, ranging from a mild hard cheese that looked remarkably like a cantaloupe (the orange-ish one at the 1:00 position in the picture) to the most delicious roquefort bleu cheese I ever wrapped my lips around.




 
Finally, we finished off with lava cake.  Anita had provided the expert service of dusting the tins, so the muffin-sized cakes with dark and white chocolate molten centers just perfectly slipped out after coming from the oven.  We also had strawberries, blackberries, and a little custard-filled cream puff from the dessert class that had just finished up in the kitchen next to us.  Hmm, will we have time to schedule that?





The chef assured us that this kind of meal would be cooked at home only on special occasions.  Since it took us from 9:30 to begin the shopping until about 1:30 to begin the eating, I can imagine why that might be the case.  All in all, it was a great way to spend the day.