Week one as an intermediate chef at Le Cordon Bleu London

It really feels like a few weeks ago that I walked into the bewildering yet bewitching blue and white world of French cuisine! Over the past three months I have utterly fallen in love with French cuisine. The history and evolution of ancient recipes and techniques still used in Michelin star restaurants today is staggering and humbling. The passion with which the chef’s impart their culinary and cultural  heritage is nothing short of inspiring and it really feels very special to be working through French classics that have pleased palettes for so many hundreds of years. With cooking, like any of the arts, it really rings true that you need to know where it’s been to know where it’s going. Basic cuisine and patisserie was an explosive introduction to the true beginnings of what we now call haute cuisine, and in a few short months I have made numerous dishes that I am truly very proud of! In the blink of an eye, exams came and went and after a months break, where I all but forgot how to butter toast, I am back under the LCB spell! 3 hours in the kitchen feels like 3 minutes and you can reach 6 pm without having eaten anything but a few flakes of fish and some ‘not yet done’ veg. The adrenaline and excitement of the challenges each day brings, as the chef’s lead us further and further in the depths of the culinary world, is like nothing I have ever experienced before and makes every 5am start worth it. The day usually starts in the dark trying to get washed and dressed and packed as quickly as possible and out the door by 6:20! A short drive to the station and a hop onto the train concludes the commute. I’m at school by 7:30 and enter through the front gates by finger print recognition descending into the basement to get dressed in whites and checks and collect my binders for class. Usually we start the day with a 3 hour lecture where we scribble notes furiously as the chef dances his way through a number of simultaneous dishes. A few minutes to gather notes and thoughts before we head to the kitchens and it’s officially game time! A swig of water from the fountain and we head in and start setting up our stations with the equipment and ingredients we will need. 5 minutes in, chef calls us to the chef’s table for a briefing and the anticipation is palpable as we smooth our aprons and exchange nervous looks. He offers some words of advice, the occasional warning, and some words of encouragement on a good day. We are dismissed with an ‘ok let’s go, push push’ like we are beginning an important football match or going into a much anticipated battle. 2 1/2 hours in and it’s knives down. Did you manage to cook your meat long enough or did you get it on too late by wasting time during the veg prep? Has your sauce had time to reduce enough or did you rush it at the end? Are your julienne all the same size and width or does it look like a toddler had some fun with a pair of scissors? Is your pasta smooth and al dente or does it look like a pile of old dental floss... These are the questions we ask ourselves at the end of each day. Did we do everything we could have done to serve a dish that delights and surprises the chef in every way, fulfilling his every criteria. The answer is always no. And that is what gets us out of bed at 5am the next day. Bring on Intermediate.