Friday, February 18, 2011

Pastry School: Lesson 1 (Induction)

First day of class was good. So much to absorb and so much to learn. We have 2 components, 6 hours - practical and 2 hours - theory.

Practical
Our pastry teacher told us what we are expected to do and learn throughout the course. We will also be examined at the end of our semester.

So, we learnt knife skills on the first day. We were told that it was important for us to learn the basics including knife skills. My first thought was "this feels like a cookery class instead of a pastry class."
It started by our pastry teacher showing us a few times how it is done before we were to do some of our own.

We got to learn some French terms for different types of vegetable cuts....
"Brunoise"
"Paysanne"
"Macedoine"
"Jardiniere"
"Julienne"

Theory
We had a different teacher for the theory class and it was taught in a classroom instead of in the kitchen.
First class was all about introduction and we were given a subject outline and all. Before our teacher became a teacher, he was actually working in a kitchen in different countries as a Chef too. "How cool is that, he travels around, and works in different kitchens."

It was pretty much just introducing ourselves to the class as well as to share with them how we got here. There are some great experienced people in the group, some were already working in the industry, some owns a restaurant business, some did cookery course before and wanted to learn the pastry, some wanted to do it for self-knowledge and some moved from a different career path.

Then we had to do a survey at the end of the class. We were told that this is to ensure that we can read, write and understand what was going on in class.

Anyway, that pretty much sums up the first day of class. It was tiring but FUN!

I hope the first day wasn't too boring for you.  :)

4 comments:

Boyd J said...

It's nice to hear that, Mae. I hope you enjoy your adventures in culinary arts. It's really wonderful once you get to know it more.

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Passionate Mae said...

Boyd J: hello :) definitely am! there's so much to learn ;)

long island restaurants said...

Hey Mae, when you know what you eat, you'll definitely enjoy them more. With the sufficient knowledge in culinary arts, you'd have a more accurate sense of taste (thus, the right to criticize) which ordinary foodies lack.

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