Day 13: Pears Are Not In Season

After Gateau Basque on Monday we had a demonstration class for Tarte Meringuee Aux Poires Caramelisees, or Caramelized Pear and Crisp Almond Crust Tart.  The demonstration was such a comedy of errors that it is truly a miracle I was able to pull off the practical class at all let alone successfully.  There were many problems on Monday including the assistant not measuring the ingredients for the dough correctly, something falling when being taken out of the oven, and the chef being so distracted by everything else that he forgot to include half of the butter in the recipe for his tart filling.  I guess the moral is we all have bad days.

So, on to Tuesday and my try at the pear tart.  As I said, pears are not really in season here, so we were making our tarts with canned pears.  I am not personally very fond of canned pears so I did not even taste this cake.  However I think it would have been really good with canned cherries or maybe even canned peaches as a filling.  The dough recipe was for a sweet pastry dough and turned out much nicer than the day before.  The dough was put in a tart ring, filled with a cooked pear/almond/raisin filling and topped, creatively, with meringue.  It was then baked at 160 degrees Celsius until the meringue started to brown.

The pear tart was really pretty and I liked making the swirls of meringue, but I really did not like the taste of the cooked pears and raisins mixed together and would not make this again unless I had to.  While my Gateau Basque was ugly to look at it really was a delicious cake!

My Pear Tart

After our 8:30am tart class we had a 3:30pm demonstration followed by our class dinner.  Each semester halfway thru classes the students are invited to a class dinner at a fancy restaurant somewhere in Paris.  The higher the level the nicer the restaurant.  Basic Pastry and Basic Cuisine were invited to dinner at a Guy Savoy restaurant called L'Atelier Maitre Albert.  There were about 70 students and faculty who gathered for a lovely dinner in a private room at the restaurant in the 5th arrondissement of Paris at 7:30pm.  We began our evening with champagne and several passed hors d'oeuvres.  Our starter was a pumpkin soup with carrots and celery.  I cannot impress upon you how amazing this soup was.  I would study cuisine just to be able to someday recreate this soup.  The fish course was a spit roasted sea bass over green lentils in a red wine sauce followed by a meat course of spit roasted veal shank with spinach and mushroom gratin.  The veal literally fell off the bone it was so tender and left our mouths watering for dessert.

The dessert course was more than disappointing.  After the delicious dinner and several bottles of red and white wine our dessert was pear crumble with caramel ice cream salted butter.  Again, pears are not in season here and I am not a fan of cooked pears anyway so it was a huge letdown.  However, all in all, dinner was a lot of fun and the restaurant's atmosphere was really lovely.  There was a huge fireplace in our private room and the waiters were constantly stoking the fire.  In fact 5 other girls and I had so much fun that we're going out to dinner together somewhere new again this Sunday.  Although our night out wasn't a complete success, I did make a few closer friends and have a great meal!

Until next time Au Revoir and Bon Appetit!