Today I started my six month accelerated program at the French Culinary Institute. It is exciting to be back in school after working for almost four years and especially exciting because this schooling is like nothing I've done before.
The 22 students in my class are from many backgrounds and nationalities. I'm really looking forward to learning from them and perhaps teaching them a few things about Southern desserts :).
Today we learned knife skills and practiced them by dicing apples for an apple compote. I don't think I'll be flying through fruits and vegetables like Hung on Top Chef any time soon, but I definitely thought learning the proper grip was useful.
The majority of the class was spent learning about the technical aspects of pastry dough and making pate sucree (sweet pastry dough). The dough is chilling overnight and tomorrow we'll use it to make an apple tart.
Everyone I talked to who has completed this program talks about how quickly it speeds by. After today, I understand that better. No second of class is wasted and every task is designed for maximum efficiency. It was a blast. Now, I'm off to purchase an electric scale--our recipes are measured in grams for precision.
2 comments:
hey! just commented on your fb status but then found your blog! Hope you have an awesome experience ...I would LOVE to do that one day! I'm still teaching myself everything as I'm constantly testing/developing recipes for Ashley Mac's and somedays I sure wish I had a teacher and didn't have to learn by trial and error! ha! Look forward to keeping up with all you learn! so fun!
keep us updated! can't wait to learn new cutting techniques when i see you next. :)
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