Today I had my demo assist!  It was for the intermediate pastry class, like I said before. With Chef Nicolas. This morning I didn’t think I was going to go, because I was sick last night. But I told myself to suck it up, drank some water and headed off to the class.

He showed them how to make millefeuille praliné. It only took him 2 hours to do it, and it was so pretty in the end. He let me try some and I liked it. But I would never order something like that for myself just because it’s too hazelnutty for me. Basically what I did was move the camera around so that the class could see what he was doing, and zoom in on important parts like when he was piping onto the puff pastry layer of the millefeuille. I also washed his tools and things when he needed me to. There was one point where I was just standing there frozen for a few seconds thinking to myself “oh god oh god oh god I’m going puke. Oh god I’m going to puke.” but I just took a few breaths and then the feeling passed. But afterwards I couldn’t help but wonder what I would have done if I actually had! Would I have had time to run all the way to the basement to the bathroom in the locker room? Hahahha, oh well, I’m glad I held myself together.

I noticed that Chef Nicolas’ intermediate demos are much livlier. He doesn’t speak as much in mono-tone and jokes around more. Maybe it’s just because he has established more of a relationship with the intermediates. I really like Chef Nicolas’ style of teaching. And I like the way he does certain things differently than Chef Herve so we can see that there are different ways to do some things that are just as good. He shows “tricks of the trade” and things like that. I like it.

At the end of the demo he asked me if I had class afterwards. I said no, so he said “you came all the way here just for me, uh?” and I said “yep.” and that made the people in the class laugh for some reason. Afterwards someone from my house who is in the class said “Chef kept trying to chat you up and you just shot him down, that’s why we were all laughing!”.  I didn’t think I said it in a dis-interested tone, but apparently I did, haha. When demo was over the people I knew said I did a good job, and then I just cleaned some of the small tools and the marble and the countertop and I was free to go!

So that was my one and only demo assist. It wasn’t bad and I thought I did a pretty good job. Now I just have regular classes and my production assist in the end of february. I’ll tell you more about that when the date comes closer.

Tomorrow we will learning the Black Forest Cake! With Chef Christian I am fairly sure. I’m excited cause I really really like black forest cake. I have my demo and then my practical right after. Yay!

P.S. oh!! Did I mention that I made my very first and fairly perfect cornets yesterday when I had some spare time in practical? Chef Nicolas showed me and another guy in my group so we practiced a bit. I only made two though, but the other guy was having some difficulties with his. I’m sure he will get it down in no time though. If you don’t know, cornets (pronounced “cor-nay”) are just basically little piping bags made of parchement paper triangles that you use mainly for chocolate piping and things like that.