Lunch on the Seine- Day 6 at LCB

No Demo or practical class this day. LCB kindly prepared for us a combination of haute cuisine and sightseeing with this Welcome Lunch on the Seine. The food was average, but overall the experience was very pleasant. Great opportunity for us to mingle with other students who are studying Intensive Basic Cuisine. #

As you see from the picture, a substantial portion of students are Asians, but there are also many from the States, Canada, Mexico, the Middle East and other parts of Europe. Quite a nice mix of people from very different faculties and with very different aspirations.

One of my favorite chefs, Chef Pascal Quere joined us for lunch. I dare not say heś my favorite after all we are just half way through the course. But am sure heś making it to the Top 3 in the end.

He is responsible for many of the Demo classes, and sometimes supervise us in our practicals. He is by nature, not a very patient man, and he looks really pissed all the time! But he knows how to control his temper and tries very hard to keep his cool and even stay humorous even when in face of our very silly questions or mistakes and inefficiency.

He is gentle and helpful. When we mess up, he never shouts. Instead he quickly comes to our rescue and later explain to us what has gone wrong. Seeing how stressful and nervous we got during our practical, at the end, he took some time to give us a short but memorable speech. He said to us that pastry is a tough profession. We have good days and the bad. But we always have to take pleasure in what we are doing. We have to think of the person we are making pastries for and we have to really enjoy the process, otherwise the pastry will not come out right and we will of course suffer. We do not do things for the Chef, we do things for ourselves. It is ourselves to whom we are accountable.

This really made me reflect upon my attitude towards the pastry classes. I often thought I was more of a savory person, spent more time experimenting on savory dishes but failed to adopt the same inquisitive attitude in pastry-making. Having already gone through half of the course, I really appreciate pastry now. I have so much fun kneading and whisking, and decorating. Even when I completely messed up one of my cakes (Dacquoise, in later post), I managed to stay cool, stay cheerful and tried my very best to remedy the situation. Chef Pascalś words stay in my heart.