Yeah, that's right. I was sick most of the week. Don't be in the freezer organizing stuff for too long. Lesson learned right there on monday, first day of the week. I mean, I was packed up and all that (t-shirt+chef-coat+fleece-jacket+winterjacket) but didn't had a hat. The weekend before I already had a little scratchy throat and this kinda pushed me over the top, I think. MAYBE this could've caused it...

So I was seriously taken down tuesday and wednesday, like spending most of my time in bed and drinking humongous amounts of hot tea. I can't remember when I had something like that before, like the full range of symptoms. From my whole body just hurting over dry, hurting throat to not be able to sleep. Thursday I felt in general much better, most of the aches were gone, only my throat hurt and I had a stiff neck. Like pain when I moved it from the shoulder up to the ear. And a bad headache, like the one that just has fun to stab your head when you stand up to fast or walk up stairs to quickly. Friday I felt much better but I kinda got myself some more rest to simply recover. So I thought I'd help cook that dinner that night but even then I sensed half way through dinner-prep how my body was like "nope, you're not ready yet".

The great thing is besides that, that we're (my wife, my daughter and I) live in this super small hotel-room-style room so there's no way to hide. If one of us is sick the others will have it most probably too eventually. And there's no way to go! Normally you kinda can sit in the hallway but not when it's cold out there and a nasty air-draft going through. Man, never again do I want to live in those circumstances when there should be other solutions.

So that was my week! I was excited about custards and ice-creams but instead I got this...

But monday was pretty cool, before I turned into a sick ice-cube. Chef Victor Matthews thought us again. He was, as always when he teaches us, in a good mood so he went all over the place and come back like ... 15 minutes before the class ends to what he actually wanted to talk about, which is in his case a GOOD thing.

First he went on talking about a holistic lifestyle, the spiritual, support, physical and social side of it and how to try to balance and change it in different stages of life. Illustrated with a lot of stories of his life.

Then before he went into the teaching he asked if we have any questions about food. I asked (yes, I talked in class!!) if you an make the sauce from running and separating once you plated it. He said it's basically not possible, that food as soon it's on the plate should be served within 5 minutes. If it's for a picture and should hold long enough you have to work with aspic, but I'm not going into this here.

Then he taught us ganache, or the 10 levels of ganache. I make it simple: You have chocolate, you melt it and the more cream (or other ingredients) you put in the more the consistency is changing. So a 10 would be just the block-chocolate, a 8 you can mold into truffles or pralines, 5 is a coating, a 3 would be a chocolate-sauce that's not melting at room-temperature, and the 1 is hot chocolate.

Then we went through how creme anglais, ice-cream, custard, panna cotta, creme bruleé and flan have almost the same ingredients, only the preparing is different. And caramel has also those 10 stages but I don't think we went through them.

That afternoon we went to "whole-foods-market" to take a look at the cheese-counter and to check out the chocolate-section.

This is the real deal when you talk about parmesan(picture bellow). The big wheels was plastic (...) but the same size and the same marking on the outside. Man, I do have to go there one day, look for the cheapest piece or probably get a small piece of the cheese-counter and just try it. I obviously created magic already with parmesan but very often it was the cheap-version which doesn't mean not good but to eat the real deal? Got to do that...

This is gruyere. I have to look over my notes again but I think this is the swiss answer to parmesan (which comes from italy). Also really, really good.

And this is one side of the cheese-section or it's actually more like a island. Great selection, sorted by regions and types of cheeses. The great thing you can ask to try any cheese you want!

And last but not least we've been to the chocolate-section. Small, but the good stuff. As with the cheese-island chef explained all to us. What to look for, what not, the different types of chocolat, what to use for what and all that.

After this we had 30 minutes with him in the kitchen before we had to start preparing dinner (as we have to do every day) so he showed us some of the things he taught that morning and then, he let us play...

But I got sick so anyways...

See you next week. Write a comment.

Chef Paul