"It goes clack-clack chef"

The south of France, just saying those words makes you sigh into a state of instant relaxation.  When I got off the train in Grasse scents of orange blossom and fresh sweet basil waft about in the cool Mediterranean breeze and just for a moment everything felt, or should I say smelt, angelic.  It is understandable why this area has bespoke perfumeries and markets that would make even the pickiest eater go a little weak in the knees. After a weekend of eating fabulous pastries and fresh strawberries that give new definition to the color red, I was…well frankly, I was exhausted, but the kitchen shows no mercy for sleepiness.  Starbucks in hand I went into class Monday morning to start to learn blown sugar.

Our task for the morning was to make a blown sugar pear and a blown sugar apple.  The process starts by pulling the sugar to get the gloss you want and then you literally put a ball of the hot sugar on one end of a copper pipe and blow it up. Oh did I mention that it must be the perfect consistency, warm (not hot), constantly moving, without seams or air-pockets, and the shaping must happen as you are blowing the moving sugar?...oh yeah and when it gets too cold…BOOM! Shards of sharp sugar fly everywhere.  In our kitchen there would be dead silence for about 1 minute and then I would hear “BOOM! Ahhh! Uhhh (the sounds of utter disappointment)” and then the hammering off of the remaining sugar on the copper pipe going into the trash.  In fact I myself jumped the first 5 times my sugar apples exploded on me. Mine was the first one to explode to which my chef responded with “it goes clack-clack chef when it gets too cold”.  Once I got my first attempts shaken off of me and calmed my coffee jitters, everything went fine. With out a doubt this has been the most challenging task for me so far in superior.  After my first successful apple, and by successful I mean it didn’t explode, my friend Nicole and I just looked at each other and started laughing. We decided that it was a VERY rustic looking apple that possibly had been mauled by a bear. My chef said “oh well done chef you finished one…iz like one of zose crappy organic apples that you sell for 7 pounds in zee stores”.  We all had a good laugh about that comment. Even so, I still look at pictures and think, ‘wow I just can’t believe that is sugar’. Food has a way of enticing us and touching senses in a way nothing else can.

Can you tell which one is "organic"?

 For the afternoon it was onto my sugar piece…”clack-clack” became the phrase of my afternoon. You will notice that there is a reason why there is only half of an orange slice coming out the side of my yellow teardrop and that two of my shelves look like a dark army green color. First I ran out of sugar, because I made my teardrop too big and so was my base. Then my orange slice crumbled on one side and my sugar burned. My chef kept saying, “if you are not happy with any of your pieces, then just for today start again and do it right”.  I knew he was talking to me, but I just didn’t want to redo the entire thing, so I just didn’t make eye contact. He came over to me and said “chef I know you can make these pieces well,  I saw your pieces last week…go boil some more sugar and make them again”.  I begrudgingly went to go clean another pot to boil my sugar again. Although I was annoyed that I had to remake some of my pieces, I did end up getting to play a little bit more with some color…silver lining.

Tuesday morning was working with pastiallge, which is a mixture of gelatin, lemon juice, and icing sugar. Once you mix it together into dough then you can roll it out and make all sorts of different shapes with it. The dough dries very fast, so you have to work extremely quickly. The result looks like porcelain and has that same texture.  Not feel extremely inspired by looking at Google Images of pastiallge work for two hours the night before, I decided to do an abstract piece with my pastiallge that has a theme of a whimsical sky (moon, sun, stars, clouds all woven together). I think it will really come to life once it is painted.  That afternoon I had to finalize my sugar piece for my final. As you all can see the piece has evolved over the past two weeks, but I feel like I have a great base design for display of my sable petit fours and chocolate truffles for my final exam. On top of that I know I can do it in one hour, which is imperative.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dinned well.” –Virginia Woolf