My wife and I arrive in France in August 2024 as students. We spend 6 months at a cooking and pastry school in the south of France, then travel around the country before spending 6 months in Bordeaux attending wine school. After Bordeaux, we move to Paris to attend the FERRANDI Paris Intensive Professional Program in French Cuisine. School started last week.
FERRANDI Paris Week One
School started on Wednesday. It was a short week devoted to program orientation, including uniform fittings, a facilities tour, a kitchen walk-through, and an introduction to the cuisine toolkit, a ballistic plastic briefcase-like that holds all your tools.
On Friday, our team of 11 spent the day in the kitchen learning and practicing fundamental vegetable cuts, including julienne, ciseler, emincer, tourner, macedoine, and brunoise. Most of us did not cut our hands. It was a whirlwind three days, but a lot of fun.
I have to say the support from the staff, chefs, and everyone throughout the entire process was “top shelf.” In fact, it was astonishing how kind and supportive the FERRANDI Paris staff were throughout the entire onboarding process.
FERRANDI Paris Week Two
This was a full week. We had to be in the kitchen ready to go by 7:40 AM, earlier if you are the chef of the week or an assistant. I am glad my wife and I are just an eight-minute walk from school. We stayed at an Airbnb on Rue Saint-Séverin, so it is easy to get back and forth to school, which, after a long day when your feet are tired, is a good thing.
The FERRANDI sessions are 6 hours long and are divided into two parts: techniques, followed by applying those techniques to create classic French dishes.
Three chefs oversee the International program. We were assigned to a team when we arrived, and you keep the same chef through the entire program, punctuated by guest chefs. My initial take is that all the chefs in the program are top-notch and validate our decision to select Ferrandi Paris. The chef we have been assigned has been in the kitchen since he was 15 and has been an instructor at Ferrandi PARIS for 25 years. His depth of knowledge, skills, and practical experience is nothing short of spectacular. He is our own “Gandalf the Grey.”
On Monday, we delved into vegetable preparation techniques, including turning. Vegetable turning is a technique where you rotate (turn) and cut vegetables into the exact same barrel shape and size to ensure a uniform look and even cooking. We practiced turning carrots, celeriac, zucchini, and artichokes. In the end, the vegetables must be the same size and fit inside the bowl of a large tablespoon. The only good thing about my vegetable turns was that they were all the same size (more or less), and only after cutting some down to size. Shhh). However, with the chef’s demo. I did not make progress turning large artichokes into a “vessel.”
There are lots of kinds of artichokes worldwide. For our purposes at this time, there are primarily two types of artichokes. There are large artichokes, which you remove the stem, turn, and use as a “vessel.” And there are small artichokes, which are turned with the stems on and used as a dish. Our chef demonstrated an excellent method for turning large artichokes into a vessel. I have tried this many times before with limited success. He took me to the next level.
We then learned to “Cook in blanc,” a slurry of water, flour, lemon, and salt, to prevent vegetables such as artichokes, which are prone to oxidation, from darkening. We cooked two artichokes. One artichoke we reserved for tomorrow; the other we cut and gave to the chef, who showed us how to make sauteed artichokes with arugula (a favorite herb of our chef). I think the dish is called “Carciofi trifolati,” which are perfect as a side dish with lamb, for instance.
Next, we learned how to finely chop mushrooms, clean pearl onions, break down a tomato, hard-boil an egg, white, and brown glaze vegetables, White Cooking for Mushrooms, and make bechamel sauce. We used these ingredients to make duxelles de champignons, Œufs farcis Chimay, bouquetière de légumes, champignons à blanc, Essence of Champagne, fried artichokes, sundried tomatoes, and tomato powder.
After the session, my feet were killing me, so I ran off and bought a pair of BIRKENSTOCK Tokio Super Grip work clogs. My feet instantly felt better, and by the end of the week, after a 6-hour day, I had no trouble.
On Tuesday, we focused on steaming leeks in the oven, preparing and cooking julienne carrots, cabbage, and celeriac, making a basic vinaigrette, and preparing rémoulade, a classic French sauce based on mayonnaise. We then used our new skills to make a French Crudités Platter, Oeufs Mimosa, and Poireaux-Vinaigrette-Mimosa (Leeks Mimosa).
On Wednesday, we focused on stocks. The foundation of French cuisine. We made brown veal stock (French: “Fond Brun de Veau”), Beef Marmite, fish stock (French: “Fumet de Poisson”), vegetable stock (French: “Bouillon de Legumes”), and white chicken stock (French: “Fond Blanc de Volaille”).
The key idea I learned about stocks is that they are the “foundation” of French cuisine, used in many dishes and to make sauces. You would be hard-pressed to find a French main course served without a sauce. The fundamental ingredients of all stocks are protein, aromatics, and water.
Stocks can be divided into three classes: brown, white, and clear. In brown stocks, the protein is roasted; in white stocks, it is poached. It is a nonintuitive experience, especially when you look at Beef Marmite, a classic French stock made by poaching three types of meat. Typically: Plat de Côte (Short Ribs), Paleron (flat iron steak), and Quevedo Beef (Oxtail).
The end product is brown but is considered white stock because the meat was poached rather than roasted. This is important to know because in the end, when you sieve the stock, you may press down on the ingredients to extract any extra stock held in the mixtures with the back of a ladle, but NEVER press down on a white stock when skimming because you will cloud the stock.
After lunch, we had a class on fresh herbs.
On Thursday, we focused on the technique for making a suc from chicken stock, clarifying stock, in this case, our Marmite from the day before, from which we made consommé, Pot-au-feu, and Choux farci.
Friday, we focused on the “Five French Mother Sauces” (No, these are not sauces the chef’s French mother used to make). French mother sauces are the foundational sauces in French cuisine, defined by Auguste Escoffier in 1903. Escoffier traveled around France, talked to lots of chefs, and wrote down (aka codified) French cuisine in a massive tome called “Le Guide Culinaire.” In it, he defined the “Five French Mother Sauces” upon which all other sauces in French cuisine derive (and there are a lot of sauces).
For example, one of the “Five French Mother Sauces” is Béchamel sauce, a white sauce. It is a foundational sauce made by creating a roux (50% flour, 50% butter) and then adding milk, nutmeg, salt, and white pepper. Béchamel sauce can be used to make lasagna. But add cheese to it, and it becomes “Mornay Sauce” and “offspring of Béchamel. This is referred to as a “daughter sauce.” There are “Five French Mother Sauces.” They are Béchamel, Velouté, Espagnole, Hollandaise, and Tomato. More about these sauces and derivatives later.
