365 days later ...

It's been a year since I started writing this blog... And what a stimulating year it has been!

A year ago, I knew virtually nothing about baking or French pastry (except I like eating French pastries), and I had no idea what it was like to live with 15 housemates... Up until then, I had basically stayed within my comfort zone (i.e. academic environment). After becoming disillusioned with that work environment, I decided to do something totally different (or crazy, as some might say), just to experience other possibilities in life.

I do not consider myself artistic (well, "artistic" in the traditional sense of the word), since I can neither paint nor draw (art was perhaps my worst subject at school), and I wondered how well I would cope with a pastry program that required artistic skills. In my mind, French pastries and cakes = food art... I was intimidated by the thought, but I was determined to learn.

When I first arrived in Canada, I felt overwhelmed. I remember feeling so out of my depth and out of my comfort zone that I was somewhat withdrawn during my first month at Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa and in Wilbrod House. Writing this blog was a way to anchor my (new) chaotic life to what I was familiar with, and a way to remain positive/optimistic.

I soon grew to love my new way of life (I became used to the noisiness and activities of 15 housemates), and began to look forward to attending classes at LCB Ottawa and volunteering in Production Kitchen. Though I struggled in many of my practical classes (and sometimes ended up close to tears from frustration and/or disappointment with my own "handiwork"), I don't regret my decision to study Pastry at LCB Ottawa. I am very glad I hung in there until I finished Superior Pastry, because I enjoyed fruit-carving, bread-making, chocolate work and sugar work, and these are only taught during Intermediate and Superior Pastry.

I am winding up my blog here, because my Canadian sojourn (including a short trip to Europe on my way home to Australia, using my round-the-world air ticket) is over now. I have to say I really miss the life and the things I had grown used to in the past year, especially the snow and the squirrels in Canada. Now it is a matter of re-adjusting to life in Australia. I can see things from a new perspective now, and that's one of the most valuable things I got from my Canadian experience.

I hope this blog has inspired you to try something new, to take a risk, to visit Canada (or another country), or even to learn to make French pastries and desserts.

If I find the time and energy to do more blogging in the future, I will start a new blog. In the meantime, I shall continue to practise the skills I'd learned in Ottawa... I'd already started to read more books about professional baking (particularly, the science of baking), and it is just so fascinating. I remember browsing such books in the bookshops just before I went to Canada, but found it difficult to understand the concepts. But now that I have had some actual training in baking (and know many of the key concepts), I can understand the explanations quite easily.

PS. Here are some of the things I've made in the two weeks I've been home:

My homemade creme caramel. I love this recipe, and I was craving it, so I made some.


My homemade pain soleil (sun-bread). I managed to buy some fresh yeast the day before yesterday, so I decided to make bread, and one of my favourite bread recipes is this one. :)

I will practise more LCB Ottawa recipes when I can get hold of more ingredients. (Some ingredients are simply harder to find in the supermarket, and will need to be sourced from elsewhere.)

Ottawa's Ornamental Gardens

Today, on a whim, I visited the Ornamental Gardens at the Central Experimental Farm (near Dows Lake) in Ottawa. I went there by bus (Bus No. 3 from Downtown or Rideau Centre).

Colorful flowers and beautiful gardens always make me so happy, though I have always preferred cooking to gardening. Time flies when I am working in a kitchen; time stands still when I have to do gardening... :D Fortunately, I am not required to do any gardening these days.

Nowadays I just visit gardens and admire their beauty, and leave the gardening to people like my sister (the keen gardeners).

Anyway, it was a lovely day to be out and about. I managed to take quite a few photos of the Ornamental Gardens. Here is a sample:

Winding Down

These few days I have been catching up with friends and organizing my travel arrangements. I have not had much time to tend to this blog. This is basically a wind-down.

I will be doing some sight-seeing in Quebec City and Montreal (for 2 weeks) before heading to Europe for a short holiday. After that, I'm heading home. By the time I reach home, I would have been away for a whole year.

And what a year it has been! I shall never forget it.

I came to Canada looking for inspiration and to learn a new skill. I wasn't disappointed. I am grateful so many people (the chefs, my classmates, my housemates, my friends) cheerfully taught me what they know, and encouraged me to persevere when I needed moral support. This is a new beginning for me.

As a Chinese philosopher once said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." I know this was just my first step in a new direction...

I feel a sense of renewal now, with the determination to forge ahead on my new career path.

The Best Thing about Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa...

I attended the LCB Ottawa graduation ceremony yesterday. It was such a surreal feeling to finally graduate with a Pastry Diploma. Everyone is asking me how I feel now. Am I sad or happy to be leaving? The truth is, it hasn't quite sunk in yet.

Pastry is one of the most challenging things I have ever tried to learn, and I would even say a little more challenging than earning my PhD degree -- because even though it is not easy to complete a PhD degree, I felt it came to me more easily than learning to bake. You see, by the time I got into the PhD program at university, I could read and write quite well. But when I enrolled in the Pastry program here, I could hardly bake. In Basic Pastry, I struggled with piping, with making a genoise sponge cake, with Italian meringue, with chantilly cream, with everything... Literally. Then the struggle continued in Intermediate and Superior Pastry. Nothing related to baking came easily to me. I guess I just need a lot of practice to become comfortable with it.

However, I have absolutely no regrets. It was good to learn a new skill and experience the discipline required to become a pastry chef. I believed it was possible to learn to bake well even if you didn't have the natural flair for it that some people are fortunate enough to possess. It is like learning a new language or playing the piano. Not everyone can excel at it (because it depends on so many factors), but everyone can achieve some level of competency, if they practised, persevered and found some coping strategies whenever they encountered problems or difficulties.

If you asked me what was the best thing about Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa, I would say without any hesitation: The Chefs.

For me, it was wonderful to be taught by the best of the best. The chefs taught us many things -- techniques and skills (both macro- and micro-skills), aesthetics, problem-solving and coping strategies... And they had high standards and expectations, which spurred us on to achieve more than we thought we could.

Furthermore, I appreciated their patience with me, even though I sometimes did stupid or crazy things in class or in production kitchen. For instance, the first time I made pâte à choux in Basic Pastry, I put all the ingredients (except the eggs) in a pot, thinking I had to cook everything together. Chef T had to tell me to discard everything and start again, which I did... I burnt caramel at least once, stuffed up the pastry cream and Italian meringue a few times, forgot to put whipped cream in the white chocolate bavarian cream, made "lifeless" marzipan leaves (just to name a few things) ... I am glad the chefs weren't exasperated. Well, maybe they were, but they did well not to show it. :D

I was always grateful for their feedback and critique of my creations, even if I didn't always agree with their opinions (note: ninety-nine percent of the time, I agreed with their assessment). I am glad they continued to give me constructive criticisms. As a former academic, I can tell you the worst thing for a student is to receive no meaningful feedback. It doesn't matter if the feedback is sometimes a bit hard to swallow, as long as it is ultimately a worthwhile learning experience. Being classified as a "Lost Cause" would be the saddest thing that could happen to a student.

******************

To all the chef instructors,

I owe you a debt of gratitude for all that you have taught me, for inspiring me, for being patient with me. Thank you!

SP Special Lesson: Lard Sculpture (photo gallery)

Chef A taught us how to make lard sculpture the other day. It was the last demo class we had for Superior Pastry, and it was a fitting way to end the course.

In lard sculpting, we use styrofoam to form the basic shapes, and using skewers and toothpicks, we connect/join all the shapes together, then we cover the styrofoam with a thin layer of lard, which is not at all easy to work with, but it is an interesting experience to work with it for the first time. After that, we used various tools (e.g. cake modeling tools) to create texture on the thin layer of lard.

I am very glad LCB Ottawa included fruit carving and lard sculpture in our Superior Pastry course, because I think exposure to these skills and art forms really helps to stimulate our imagination and creativity.


Chef A's lard sculpture, which he made in order to show us basic skills in lard sculpting


Here's what my classmates and I created in under 3 hours in our practical classes (with some help from Chef A, of course)... from cartoon characters (Mike from Monsters Inc.) to animals (Penguin, Crocodile, Polar Bear) to objects (Chef's Hat, Handbag and Stilleto):
























This is my lard sculpture: A fan and an embroidery hoop. Why these two particular objects? Personal reasons, which I will not elaborate here. (No, I don't do needlework. If you gave me a choice between peeling 200 carrots and doing needlework, I'd choose the 200 carrots any day.)

Notice there is a Star Trek logo on my sculpture. It's not just because I like Star Trek; it is also because I wanted to juxtapose an actual past (people -- particularly women -- in the past used/made silk fans and did embroidery) with an imagined future (Star Trek's imaginary universe, hundreds of years from now). Or, you might even say, arts & crafts versus science fiction...(Yes, I like to think about philosophical questions, even when I am taking a pastry course.)

Anyway, it was a fun workshop. Most of us felt really relaxed by the end of the class, and that was good, because we were starting to stress out about our practical exam coming up next week.

A Restless Day

Today was just a weird day for me. I have been feeling rather restless all day. I don't quite know why... Perhaps it is because my mind is working overtime thinking about the sugar showpiece exam we have to prepare for. The exam is worth quite a lot of marks for the course, so I guess I want to make sure things turn out well. The question is how to make the showpiece look nice, given that we have had so little experience with pulling sugar.

At the demo class, Chef N showed us some poured sugar and pulled sugar techniques, and a few of them were different from what Chef H showed us. I thought it was especially good we got the chance to see a different technique for making pulled sugar ribbon, as well as pulled sugar roses. I suspect Chef N's technique for making ribbons might just be a touch easier for beginners like us. Anyway, I will give it a try at the next practical class and see what happens.

Some techniques might suit some people and not others. It's a matter of trying them out and finding what is comfortable for yourself.

National Gallery of Canada (on Victoria Day)

Today is Victoria Day, a public holiday in Canada, so we didn't have any classes. The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) opened its door free to the public for one day, just to celebrate International Museums Day, therefore some of my housemates and I took the opportunity to visit the NGC.

As soon as we entered the Gallery, the first exhibition my housemates and I headed for was the Scott McFarland: A Cultivated View exhibition. The beautiful photographs Scott McFarland produced were thought-provoking indeed. I liked how he got us thinking about how humans interact with nature (particularly in gardens and in landscapes). There was such a lot of detail in his photographs.

I really enjoyed visiting the Gallery. I spent the entire day there, and there was so much to see that I could only manage to see about half the artworks (I will return another day to see the rest).

I have to say the highlights for me would have to be the French impressionist paintings (particularly by Pissarro, Monet, Cézanne and Degas) and those by the 17th Century Dutch & Flemish painters (Rembrandt and Rubens, in particular). There's something special about the French impressionist paintings that really appeal to me. I'm not trained in Art, so I cannot put my finger on it, but I could stand in front of those paintings and gaze at them for ages... I just love them.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any photos of the artworks inside the Gallery, but we could take photos of the NGC building and architecture. Across from the NGC is Major's Hill Park, which had lots of gorgeous tulips and blossom trees. My housemates and I went to check out the festivities at the Park after lunch, before I went back to the Gallery alone to view more artworks (I always plan for an entire day in a museum or art gallery, simply because I know there is so much to see).

Here is a selection of photos I took today (click on photo for a larger image). As you can see, it was just a magnificent day.


The National Gallery of Canada (NGC)


The Spider (an artwork titled Maman) outside the NGC. Why a spider outside the Art Gallery? Apparently, one explanation I saw in the Gallery was that children have always been fascinated by insects (such as spiders)... Anyway, it was really eye-catching, even to adults.

In the next two photos, I wanted to capture the sense of space in the Gallery. I think the Canadians are so lucky to have such impressive architecture for their museums (e.g. Museum of Civilization and Canadian War Museum) and national gallery.






Here, you see some lovely tulips in Major's Hill Park, and in the background is the NGC.


More tulips ...


Tulips and blossom trees. Don't you just love the contrast in colours?


Isn't this lovely?


A close-up of the white blossoms, and a bumblebee (I think)


Fun for kids in Major's Hill Park

In the late afternoon, I was a little tired from walking around the Gallery, so I went downstairs to the Inuit Galleries and sat down to view the High-definition Inuit Storytelling, a series of videos about the Inuit culture and way of life. I found the videos about how the Inuits build their stone houses and igloos truly fascinating. Such resourcefulness for surviving in a harsh environment...




In short, an intellectually-stimulating day for me. I'm glad I had the chance to relax a little today. It is going to be a hectic week coming up for me. Demo classes on Tuesday and Friday. Practice with pulling sugar (and a practice run for the sugar showpiece) on Thursday and a written exam on Friday.

Why I Decided to Write This Blog

I guess more and more people are curious to know why I decided to write this blog. Well, there is a whole host of reasons, some of which I shall get to later. Firstly, let me just write a bit about who the blog is for.

The blog is largely for myself. Mostly, I write to amuse myself, and sometimes to help me relax. I also use the blog as a way to record my progress, and to give myself a chance to reflect on what I have learnt (it gives me an incentive to review my notes and think about what I have learnt).

As someone with an academic background, I can tell you that it is always interesting to track someone's development by the records they keep, and by the way they write about their experiences. The training I had in my previous career taught me how to keep track of the little details that would be important for understanding the big picture later. For instance, you will notice I always make a note of who the chefs were for the demos and practicals. From the little details (--> consistent data), you can perform analyses and draw some conclusions about people's personalities, preferences, baking/cooking styles, teaching methods, patterns of behaviour, and so on. I don't include every little detail in my blog, because I don't think it is necessary to do so. But I do include enough to help me remember what went on in class (the photos really help jog my memory).

The blog is also for my friends and relatives, and especially my beloved sister. I write this blog so that they are able to follow my progress at LCB Ottawa. I seldom send emails to any of my relatives or friends these days. They know they can always read my blog and know what I am up to (my sister can even tell the mood I am in by the way I write). I sometimes write about things that I know would interest my sister, another family member or a friend. So, if you wonder why I am discussing something out of the blue (or include some seemingly random photos), that's the reason.

Finally, I write this blog for those who would like to know more about LCB Ottawa. When I was trying to decide whether to study at LCB Ottawa, I couldn't find a great deal of online information about the school, the staff or the facilities. I couldn't even get a coherent picture of what it is like for an international student to live in Ottawa and study at this school. I decided then that I would write about my experiences if I did end up at this school.

So, here I am, and this is my blog. I had a list of all the things I was curious to learn more about, then I set about researching them and noting them down. I even take photos of what might be considered "mundane stuff", just so that readers can get a better sense of what I went through and experienced.

I want the information I provide here to be freely available to help people decide for themselves if this is a school they want to study in, especially if they are thinking about taking pastry.

I do my best to be fair to all those I write about (especially the chefs, for whom I have the utmost respect). I look for the positive things I have encountered here because doing that makes me feel good. Life is always better when you can count your blessings. It does not mean I haven't encountered problems while studying at LCB Ottawa, it just means I prefer to focus on the good things I have discovered here. After all, what you get out of an experience depends on what you put into it and how you approach it, right? What I am talking about is "mindset".

I am hard on myself because that is the way I push myself to do better and try harder. So, if you come across any negative comments I've made about my own creations in the practical classes, don't worry too much about them. They are my strategies for motivating myself.

Usually, I do not provide the full names of the people I mention, unless there is a good reason to do so. I have my reasons for doing that. And I chose to remain anonymous (by writing under a pseudonym) only to protect the privacy of my family and friends.

This blog is pretty much a show-and-tell. You are free to draw your own conclusions about things. I do not invite comments because I have no time to moderate them or read them. I need to concentrate on my own studies.

In another month or so (when the term is over), I shall be winding down this blog. Between now and then, there will be a few more interesting blog posts (e.g. our sugar showpieces, and final exam). After that, I will decide whether to continue blogging (if so, it will be a blog with a different title, because my Canadian sojourn would be over).

"To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before"

I'm sure most people would know where this quote came from...

Yup, I went to see the new Star Trek movie at the Rideau Centre today. As a Star Trek fan for over 20 years (and having watched all the movies so far and followed every series, except for the animated series), how could I resist this new movie?

Warning: Possible spoilers below. Scroll down at your own risk.



The rooftop garden at Rideau Centre, just outside the Cinemas. I can't get enough of the tulips. They are just so pretty.





Having seen the trailer and waiting for weeks to see the movie, I have to say I was not disappointed. I thought the movie was really entertaining. The acting was fantastic! I also enjoyed the special effects, which was quite spectacular and fairly well-done. For me, it was good to learn a bit more about how the main characters met during their younger years, though I found one of the friendships/relationships (involving Uhura) less than convincing. It was probably happening in an alternate universe, but I still found it quite weird.

I liked the fact that the late Professor Randy Pausch (whose book The Last Lecture inspired me) had a line in it. In the opening minutes of the movie, you see a crew member walking across the bridge of the USS Kelvin, saying "Captain, we have visuals." I believe that was him. It was a nice touch indeed.

If you asked me what I found most memorable about the movie, I would say all the references to TOS (The Original Series) and the early movies, particularly Leonard 'Bones' McCoy's line "I'm a doctor, not a ..." (which totally cracked me up), and the Kobayashi Maru scenario. Finally, we get more details and some (plausible) explanations for the Kobayashi Maru; Spock explicitly explains that the purpose of it was to face fear/death in a no-win scenario. It was good to see how Kirk actually dealt with it!

As for criticisms of the movie, I think (1) there could have been many more scenes set at Starfleet Academy (but there weren't), and (2) Scotty didn't have a very significant role in this movie, which is a real pity. I hope we see more of Scotty in the next movie. (I'm assuming there is going to be another one.)

SP Lesson 5: Chocolate Showpiece

This was the lesson I'd been waiting for in pastry -- the chocolate showpiece.

Chef H showed us how to make a chocolate showpiece last Friday. Today some of us got to make our own showpieces, which must incorporate the required elements determined by the chefs. (Some of my other classmates will make their showpieces tomorrow afternoon.)

Chef had specified the elements we must have in our showpieces: Flower(s) and leaves are compulsory, plus a number of other shapes and patterns, as well as demonstrating our carving, molding, cutting, and piping techniques.


Chef H's chocolate showpiece, demonstrating all the techniques he said we could use for our showpieces. It got us thinking quite a bit.


Each of us had to produce a sketch for the showpiece before class. I did mine over the weekend and I also wrote out a list of chocolate pieces I had to make before I could assemble the showpiece.

By the way, it was good to have Chef T in the workshop today, because I am never nervous or tense when he is supervising the class. And he even showed me a few good ways to assemble some of the pieces in my showpiece.

In the photos below, you will see the chocolate showpiece I came up with, after over 5 hours of hard work. My classmates came up with some wonderful themes and chocolate showpieces, but I might leave that for another time.




The theme of my showpiece is Divine Gifts. I tried to use chocolate to make pieces (parts/components) to symbolise what I consider to be divine gifts -- and these are the things we take for granted, but we really should be thankful for, in my opinion.

I am happy with the result, though I know my techniques appeared a little amateurish... Let me tell you, working with chocolate is not easy. Chocolate melts at body temperature, which means the chocolate pieces will melt in your hands if you hold them for longer than a few seconds (even with gloves on). And I have what Chef calls "warm/hot hands", which means chocolate melts even more quickly in my hands. I love working with chocolate, but I have to be really quick. Thankfully, I have learnt some strategies to deal with my problem of "warm/hot hands". Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to make this showpiece at all.

Also, I am glad I had learnt a number of the chocolate techniques during my stage (internship) at Stubbe Chocolates last term. Hence, I was on "auto-pilot" some of the time, and was able to make some of the items relatively quickly (well, quicker than I normally am, anyway). I could do the molded chocolate quite quickly.


Divine Gifts: The gifts and the way I represent them in my showpiece. Water (teardrop shape, dripping from a chocolate pipe), fire/light (lit candle), time/sunshine (sundial), the natural world (lotus flower, leaves and dragonfly), music (piped treble clef), language (writing in different languages), and planet earth (chocolate sphere).

Visually, I tried to connect or link all the components in my showpiece in some way. If you start with the chocolate sphere, your eyes will come down to the white teardrop (representing water). The lotus flower and leaf sit on water. The ripple in the water foreshadows the shape of the sundial (concentric circles). The gnomon on the sundial is the same colour as the candle flame, and the candle itself is roughly the same shape as the long vertical tube next to it. Your eyes go up to the treble clef, before coming back to the sphere again. The general shape of the showpiece is a teardrop shape (just like the white chocolate teardrop). I hope it achieved the desired effect.

Making the piped treble clef and molding the chocolate sphere were pretty straightforward. But the following items required some planning and thought.


My lotus flower and leaf, and dragonfly. I really liked being able to use chocolate to create texture in the leaf -- I smeared some chocolate onto the square piece of molded chocolate with my mini offset spatula, and gradually built up the texture as the chocolate hardens. Then I carved lines into the leaf to make it look life-like.

You will also notice a few concentric circles in the corner; I wanted to suggest there's fish in the water causing the ripple. That's just to represent life beneath the surface of the water. I must admit I was inspired by M.C. Escher's Three Worlds, which is one of my favorite artworks of all time.


This is a close-up of the sundial I made. The sundial is used for telling time, but I used it here in the showpiece to suggest sunshine as well (otherwise, I would have just made a clock).

Before I molded the chocolate for the sundial, I painted the acetate with some gold dust and a thin layer of green-coloured cocoa butter. This is to give the effect of verdigris (weathered bronze). Then I carved the chocolate to make the sundial look realistic.


This "candle" is made with 8 tube-like pieces of chocolate. I used drinking straws to make long tubes of chocolate, then I arranged the long tubes of chocolate in a daisy formation. Then I drizzled some chocolate down the side of the "candle" to make it look like melting wax. It was fun to make this item in the showpiece.

I chose to include a lit candle in my showpiece to represent fire/light, but also to remind everyone that our time on this planet is finite (much like a lit candle).


In this photo, you see "water" written in different languages, including in scientific language. I had to pipe the words in reverse (i.e. mirror writing) onto acetate, so that when I unmolded the chocolate, it would show the writing the right way. It would have been easier to make the piece of white chocolate teardrop and then pipe the words onto it. I wanted the challenge of having the words inlaid in the white chocolate teardrop (like the technique I used when I made my chocolate box in Intermediate Pastry). As you can tell, I will require more piping practice if I want to make it look nicer, but this is a good start.

In case you are wondering, the languages you see in the photo are: H2O = scientific, water = English, eau = French, wasser = German, air = Indonesian/Malay, voda = Russian, agua = Spanish, acqua = Italian, imaq = Inuktitut, shui = Chinese (or, mizu = Japanese).

These are languages
(1) that I speak/spoke/understand, or
(2) that I have tried to learn at some stage (but did not get very far), or
(3) that people I know (e.g. classmates, housemates, friends) speak

Oh yes, I also learned basic Australian Sign Language (AUSLAN) for fun a couple of years ago, but I couldn't think of a way to represent it in my chocolate showpiece. LOL

Anyway, the workshop today was exhausting. Not least because we spent nearly an hour cleaning up the mess we made in the pastry kitchen. Just imagine chocolate everywhere -- chocolate on our aprons and jackets, on our tools, bowls, pots and trays, on the kitchen bench, on the stove, on the floor, in the sinks, on the refrigerator door handles, inside the refrigerators... It is no wonder Chef H had allocated 45 minutes for clean-up. :D

Fortunately, I have a lot of patience for chocolate work. Even if it means I have to clean up afterward.