I know this blog is a couple of days late, and I apologize for the delay, but we've been very busy since we arrived. It's a short trip, but we're really doing a lot, so nearly every minute of the day is taken up with activities. I had one quiet moment about 10 hours ago, and now I'm finally relaxing in my hotel room with a glass of wine and a millefuille, prepared to do some hard-core blogging.
Our hotel in Lyon was called the "College", because the building used to be a high school. (The nomenclature works a little differently here.) The interior was really quaint, and decked out in a primary school theme, with desks, chalkboards, and books everywhere. It was a nice place, but the rooms themselves were STARK white, and I mean, the floors, walls, furniture, sheets... you get the picture. It was a bit... institutional, but charming, in a weird kind of way.
Anyway, we took our breakfast in the hotel while we were in Lyon, which was quite good. We sat on benches by old desks and were served an excellent petit dejuner of brioche, croissants, cured meats, cheese, yogurt and jams. The coffee was brought to us in thermoses, which I found adorable.
We took the metro and city buses to get to the Bocuse Institute, a pretty interesting experience, considering how many in our group had never used public transportation before. Sometimes it's a little difficult for people to understand that Europeans have a much smaller personal space "bubble" than Americans do, so some of the girls wouldn't shove into the bus, and were really uncomfortable riding shoulder to shoulder. So we got off at a much earlier stop and walked a few miles to get to the school. I was fine with this, but those who hated the bus ride soon changed their minds and decided that the crowding on the bus would be okay for just a couple of days.
The school is staggeringly beautiful, part of it is an old castle retrofitted to become a culinary school. The grounds are expansive and well maintained, and the interior of the buildings is posh, yet stately. I have pictures of the exterior, but I will have to show those to you at a later time.
The school is funded by the state and many sponsors, which makes it more affordable for the students. Their sponsors are the "who's who" of French gastronomy; Dom Perignon, Georges Duebouf, Perrier, Hennessey, Valhrona... the hall pictured above has displays of all their fancy wares. I wanted to take all of them home!
We took a brief tour and then met our chef instructor, who happened to be a very funny and irreverent guy whose name I can't remember, I'll be sure to find out tomorrow. He was also an amazing chef- I learned so much from him in only three days I can't possibly do him justice.
We cooked an entree (appetizer/2nd course in France) and a plat principeaux (main course) and the school prepared dessert for us.
I was thrilled to see sweetbreads on the menu, as they may just be my favorite bovine organ. They're the veal's thymus gland, located in the vicinity of the lower neck area. When properly prepared, they have an unctuous creamy texture, and the outside can be crisped up to create a crunchy, caramelly crust.
I was very happy to be able to practice cleaning them, as they're not something one sees every day in the states outside of Michelin-Starred menus. They're fairly expensive, and hard to find. To properly prepare them, you must carefully remove the translucent outer membrane and the extraneous fat from the organ, and then poach them briefly. Some people also prefer to soak them overnight in milk, (it's not necessary, but it does improve the texture) but we didn't do that. They were still awesome.
Our first course was a deep-fried soft boiled egg on a dungeness crab and wild mushroom ragout. A ragout (or ragu) in Italian is essentially a thick, chunky sauce, but the concept is so much more than that. Ours was made with veal stock, thyme, onions, sauteed mushrooms, and pulled crab meat. We topped it with some delicately dressed greens, and yes, I have all of these recipes for future use.
When you cut open the egg, the yolk oozed out to play with the woodsy mushrooms. The crust and the greens added a crisp texture to the dish. It was really good.
The sweetbreads were pan-fried, and then served as a part of our veal dish. We glazed the carrots and young onions in extra virgin olive oil, butter, and a hint of stock with garlic and thyme. The veal was trussed, then seared and finished in the oven. The sauce is a veal jus (juice), made by carefully extracting all the great flavorful liquid from the meat, then reducing and emulsifying it with added butter. The spinach was sauteed in buerre noisette (brown butter) and topped with a thickened creme fraiche. Yes, this dish was also amazing.
For dessert, the school's pastry chef made us a rich chocolate cake topped with a light milk chocolate mousse, then served with caramel sauce. Yum. There was also abundant wine, and coffee.
Later that night, some of us decided to assemble a buffet in our room from delicious looking things we found around the city. This required a mad dash to the stores, as by the time we got back to the city proper, we had about 10 minutes left. Somehow, we made it to the antique bookstore in town, where I found a 1935 first edition of Larousse Gastronomique in the basement. It's a truly remarkable find, quite the collector's item, and I got it at a great price. It's going to be a star of my cookbook collection, they didn't translate this tome to English until the late 1960's so it's pretty remarkable, and in astonishingly good condition. Everyone was jealous of my book, and wanted to take pictures of it. I was just thrilled to get it.
Above is a giant meringue we got, topped with pralines, various flavors of macarons, a crisp tuille, and some strangely delicious, gelatinous cake whose name I have forgotten.
Tiny, thimble-sized hard cheeses, tasted a lot like Pecorino from Italy, but with a distinctly Lyonnaise aura.
And a gooey, spreadable, super stinky cheese. It was really good, and was worth the pervasive "old foot" aroma it permeated our small room with.
We also had wine, salumi, several stuffed crepes with chestnut cream, strawberries, and ham and cheese, and baguettes, a haul which was made even more impressive when you consider that all of these things were gathered by a bunch of food-obsessed American girls in a ten-minute window from different stores. But when in Lyon... eat, a lot.
I'll try to write again tomorrow about day three, but I cannot promise anything. Many of these may have be post-France entries, strictly because of our packed schedules.
So for tonight, I shall bid you au revoir, as I finish this glass of wine and try to get the puff pastry crumbs out of my bed before I pass out.
Ciao!
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