Cooking lesson- Cuisine Francaise :-)

It was all about cutting, cutting, and cutting. We learned the basical cutting technique in cuisine francaise, called "chateau". (though I'm not sure if this is really used or a kind of out-of-date technique in France...) After, we learned how to make simple and tasty dishes out of cut and chopped potatoes. Yummy .

Teacher's sample.

Potage Parmentier   Potato soup:-)

this is our group's.

please dont laugh



I practiced till 2am:^0 practice makes perfect?



Japanese cuisine lesson

Hello there, so every Friday, we have a practical lesson, where we learn how to prepare dishes by first, watching our teacher's demonstration, and then dividing up to groups and doing it again by ourselves.

This is TEACHER's work, and below is...

What we did. It tasted OK, but that's it. No applause to chefs(us)!

Still missing a lot of things to make maney out of this simple bawl of rice and a cup of soup.

Our group. Im the one taking the pic.

knives

I had a class about knives.

This was actually my first technical class so, what we did was to wash and wipe knives.That's prety much it. I'm not gonna laugh about it cuz basic is the most important thing.
That was a very nice 3 hour class...
(of course, other than this we learned how to maintain knives, how to sharpen, which knife is used for which dish, and so forth.)

Also, what's interesting was, according to the school regulations, if you happen to have your knife with the tip of the knife pointed to someone, you are done. You gonna be excluded permanently from college, because you're considered to have murderous intent. what a big deal. I think there are way more people in Japan who are not holding a knife like this but have murderous intent. Especially in trains...

Anyways, I wanna see how these knives are called in English.
Let me ask Google...

First, European knives.
Basically European knives have a double ground V shaped edge, while Japanese knives-single.

*(Jap.) Gyu-Toh (牛刀　=  beef sword) --> (Eng.) Chef's knife / French knife

(from wiki:In cooking, a chef's knife, also known as a French knife or a cook's knife, is a cutting tool used in food preparation. The chef's knife was originally designed primarily to slice and disjoint large cuts of beef. Today it is the primary general-utility knife for most Western cooks.)

*(Jap.) Petty knife (ペティナイフ）　--> (Eng.) Paring knife

Interesting that only in Japan it's called "petty".

And also...
*カービングナイフ　--> Carving knife
*骨すき包丁--> Boning knife

And now Japanese knives.
*三徳包丁　（santoku bohtyoh)/文化包丁　（bunka boh tyoh) -->Santoku Knife

It's very common, and I guess any japanese family has at least one this type of knife in the kitchen.

*出刃包丁　（deba boh tyoh) --> Deba knife

For me it looks so professional. I can see the god of cuisine in this shape.

*薄刃包丁　（Ushuba boh tyoh) -->Usuba knife

It's basically used for vegetable.

*刺身包丁　（sashimi hoh tyoh)--> Sashimi knife
When you grip this, you suddenly feel like a killer. This is dangerous.
(and now began Micheal Jackson's "Dangerous" in my head, probably will last untill tomorrow morning..)

About School

*****

Back to the time when I was still deciding whether or not quitting the job and entering school was the right thing to do, being not 100% sure that I wasn't just temporarily driven by Steve Job's death and his words, one of the biggest concerns was about money.

Living in Tokyo, we have several choices for culinary schools, and tuition differs a lot for schools and courses. But without exceptions, they are ALL expensive...

Here is an example of well-known schools in Tokyo, plus some others for comparison.

My mind was almost settled for a less expensive school but at the last minutes, I changed my mind for the most expensive one. It's my stupid phylosophy that " the more expensive, the better". I often doubt this myself though...

My course is night time, so I paid like 1,500,000yen, and yes it did hurt a bit...

I was a salary worker only for 2 years, so oviously I'm the bottom of the pyramid type of person, richness wise, but I managed to save money enough to go to school and still lead a peaceful life, thanks to my mom

who gave me a talent to live on a budget. (I'd hoard bananas, those damaged ones sold exremely cheap, and eat only these bananas for a whole day. I don't recomend this though for your selfesteem!)

(For people not used to Yen, here is US$ version:))

I wish I could go to Cordon Bleu (Paris most preferably) someday, but I guess it is and will be just too over my budget.big sigh.

btw, I have the first technical class today, which I'm so looking forward to. Today it's about knives. Sounds so fun.

My first step

Hello.


Woo it's been a really long time since I quitted blogging...(I blogged like for 2 years in Polish but couldn't continue for a couple of reasons) It's been only a few days, though, since I quitted MY JOB(maybe I'll write later on why I did so), and started leading a brand-new life, that is, I'm back to school again.

Only this time, it's a culinary school!! Now that I have more time than when I was a working poor, it occured to me that re-trying a blog might be good and fun stuff to do.


You might be asking why culinary school- well it's a long story, but to explain as short as possible, I LOVE COOKING. I finally realised that cooking (and eating) IS my lifetime passion, and wanted to prepare to have my own restaurants (or cafes or bistros-whatever it'll turn out to be) before I get old.Old here means around 30. Sorry ladies..


Why in English you might ask, it's simple: A)to brush up my rusty English(rusty might be a wrong word cuz it's never been good) and B)to maximize the accessibility to any kinds of advise, comments, supports from outside Japan, as I'm hoping to do work experiece abroad and eventually, have my restaurants not only in Japan but also in other countries (now my candidates are Poland, Canada and France-sounds weird eh...)

So, anyone who happened to visit my blog and got something to tell me, please kindly leave a comment.... And of course, if any foreigner thinking of going to a culinary school in Japan, there might be something I could help out with. (In my school there are some foreigners like Americans and Russians, not to mention Chinese and Koreans)



****


 On Suturday, April 8th, I had an entrance ceremony . It was a really nice feeling to be a student again, to be told about the importance of greetings, punctuality, and so on...


This is my school: http://www.hattori.ac.jp/

I think this is the best and most famous culinary school in Japan(and most expensive one). Principal Yukio Hattori sensei is such a lovely person, well know for his philosophy of "shokuiku", and also for his role as a commentator in a famousTV program "Iron Chef"(it's originated from Japan, btw) Thank you for reading. Sayonara:) byebye.