Last week, I had the opportunity to go to a cooking course with my French class! The morning of the class, I forgot to check my email so I did not realize until 12:30 that I needed to meet met my teacher, Laure, outside of the university at 12:10pm! As soon as I heard from my friends asking where I was, I ran from my apartment to the metro and met them at the school only ten minutes after they arrived; I was pretty proud of myself for making it on time! The cooking school, L'Atelier des Chefs, is located in the center of Paris. It is hidden behind two buildings and does not stand out amongst them, but once we walked inside, it was an adorable building. There was a a huge kitchen with stainless steel appliances and counters surrounded by windows that separated it from the shop that sells pots, pans, and other cooking tools. While we waited for the chef to greet us, our French teacher told us the entire class was going to be in French! I had a feeling I would be the person in the group to burn something or have my meal turn out completely wrong, but it was successful for everyone! Once the course started, we split up into groups of 4 and worked together to translate the instructions;
- First we cut potatoes into small pieces and sautéed them in butter, onions, thyme, salt, and laurel.
- While they were cooking, we sliced tomatoes, pulled apart duck meat, mixed lettuce with a mayonnaise based sauce, and toasted bread buns.
- After each of these tasks were complete, we added the duck meat and red wine to the pan with potatoes to add even more flavor.
The final result was a duck burger that was absolutely delicious! L'Atelier des Chefs had a long wooden table outside the kitchen where the 14 of sat and enjoyed our meal. They even gave us an amazing passion fruit dessert with a speculos crust. Speculos is similar to Nutella but tastes like a cinnamon graham cracker or the crust on cheesecake… pure heaven. Our time at L'Atelier des Chefs was quite short, about an hour and a half; I wish I could have cooked another meal! It was a great way to immerse ourselves more into the culture, especially now that we only have two French classes left!
Me, my Clemson friends, and our French teacher Laure (center).
The final result!
Photo Cred: Kiki Heron: My friend Kiki was kind enough to take pictures of us cooking!