Wave the stick…

Today the class was a bit better and they worked a bit more efficiently. It had partly to do with me because at one stage I was like “f*** this” and told them that I don’t have a problem with people talking, as long as it doesn’t affect the work. If it does, tough shit, no more talking.

We did pain bresan (with the “gaude”, roasted maize flour), pain complet (made with the T150 and butter. I would eat this one with just some salted butter or schweineschmalz) and pain bio (made with bio flour and baguette concentrate which is roasted barley flour). Due to the class still being pretty slow, we have only done the shaping of small breads into boules and the larger ones into baguettes or batards.

For lunch we had a

Nicoise Salad

nicoise salad, but with tinned tuna, anchovies, thin slivers of tomato, slices of boiled potato, capers, olives, hard boiled eggs and  an awesome dressing. Main was some fish with beautifully cooked veg, potatoes, carrots and mange tout and some soft and extremely flavourful onions to garnish.

I ate some of the things that Marlene bought for me at Maison Pozzoli. The Framboisier was delishus!!

Framboisier

A base of sponge cake, with an almond mousse with pieces of raspberry and dried coconut, topped by another layer of sponge and then a thin layer of pink marzipan which was ever so slightly brulee’d.

The “charlotte” was similar except it contained a vanilla mousse and no marzipan on top and also came with a small macaroon on top J

There was another small item that I don’t know the name of but it was in a quenelle like shape and had a base of some sort of cake with chestnuts in it, topped by the chestnut cream and then some icing... very simplistic but all you need really.

As I’m typing this I’m having one of the beers that Marlene bought at the blueberry festival outside of St. Etienne.

Initially it tasted quite strong (its 8%) but after a while I can taste the slight acidity from the blueberries. In fact, since it was neither sweet nor dry, the acidity reminded me of a beer-ish wine if that’s easy to understand. Really pleasant once I was half way through...I think it needs to warm up in your mouth before you can get the full flavour of the blueberries. Def not a quaffing beer.