"I'm Kelly Dunwell! Bon Appetit!"

When planning for this trip, I knew there was one thing I had to do: take a cooking class in France.

From France

The recommendation from Chateau Les Roches was to try L'atelier des Chefs in Dijon. The problem? The classes were only offered in french!!! We were left to our broken french and hand gestures.

On the menu was a Duck Terrine (duck!!!), a Green Tomato Chutney, and ... drumroll... raspberry macarons!

The green tomato chutney was a great recipe to practice our chopping, dicing, and mincing. Chutneys are so delicious and simple to make: you just need to be patient when reducing all the ingredients to a tasty mush. We froze the chutney and brought it back to Toronto where we ate it with some maple glazed ham. mmmm.

From France

From France

The terrine was much like a pâté, but more chunky. We had finely diced some sweet orange and yellow bell peppers to mix in with a fish mixture. It was all whizzed up in the blender with some cream and then alternately layered with the smoked duck breast. If only we knew there would only be two layers of duck breast, I would have (quietly) asked Dustin to load on the duck.

From France

From France

The finale of the day was the raspberry macarons! I want to say that it was so easy to make, and I think I could make them at home, but the hardest parts were taken care of by the chef...

The outer part of the macaron was essentially a meringue with almond powder.

We all took turns sifting the almond powder and folding the powder into the perfectly prepared meringue (We observed as the master chef carefully heated the simple syrup to 119 degrees Celsius, adding it to perfectly whipped egg whites producing the "eagle's beak" to show that the meringue was at the desired consistency.)

From France

From France

We got a quick piping lesson and Dustin decided it was a contest to pipe the biggest macarons. It just made for a difficult situation trying to fit them into our take-home containers in the end.

From France

From France

The "garniture" (filling?) was a raspberry jelly slowly reduced in a pan, and additionally solidified with agar agar (a natural gelatin).

From France

I think the hardest part about macarons is baking it to the perfect doneness. Too much, and they look a little burnt; too little and they collapse and don't come off the pan. The chef took care of that part.

Our job was to find matching sides to pair together, then add the filling, and voila: the almost perfect macaron!

From France

From France

From France

From France

They really are as delicious as they say. Crispy light outer crust, delicious jammy filling... Mmmmm.

And thus ends the quest for the french macaron, and the travel section on France. [Exeunt]

Post a Comment

  © Blogger template Shush by Ourblogtemplates.com 2009

Back to TOP