Eggs, Eggs, Eggs: Cholesterol and The French Paradox Round Deux

After completing beef week, the next natural step was to move on to eggs.  Why not go from one cholesterol laden product to another?  This is France after all...

Our first practical called for beignet battered shrimp with tartar sauce and a cheese souffle. In the end I think we each used about 37 eggs that day.  But here, at Le Cordon Bleu, 37 eggs per person is not enough.  So during our demonstration the chef showed us how to make several different types of eggs: hard boiled, soft boiled, coddled, and deep fried. What is it about these people and loving the richest, most unhealthiest of foods?  I just don't understand!

Anyway, on to practical.  We made a beignet batter that, surprise, had a tons of eggs in it! and then coated our shrimp in it and deep fried them.  Then we made a tartar sauce with homemade mayonnaise (key ingredient: egg) and mushed hard boiled egg into it for "texture."  Ew.  In case that wasn't enough, we finished the session with a cheese souffle.  Surprisingly enough mine rose very high and actually came out quite well!  Making a souffle sometimes can feel like playing craps, so it's pretty exciting when it turns out well.

We finished shrimp and souffle just in time to go home, go to sleep, and wake up again for blanquette de veau at 8:30 Saturday morning.  I'm not going to go into much detail describing b de v because it's pretty disgusting.  It's a veal stew with a creamy egg (surprise!) and cream based stock.  Tasting that early Saturday morning was not fun.  Served with rice pilaf makes for a lot of beigeness- something that the French seem to love in their food presentation.  

Although this wasn't the best Saturday morning I've had in Paris, it turned into a pretty great day because my friend Ariel came from London to visit!  As soon as he arrived we set out to explore the Marais. I never knew how many glasses stores there were in my neighborhood until Ariel arrived! I'm pretty sure we went into all 4,385 of them.  After lunch we wandered into a particularly adorable small glasses boutique at the edge of Place des Vosges.  The store was owned by a very little Moroccan man with some serious ADD.  I think we spent about an hour there just because he wanted to talk to us about so many different things.  Moroccan music, the 50's, his sons, the economy, finance, instruments, physics, the list goes on... It was here that Ariel found his dream specs and I purchased a pair of vintage parisian shades.  Tres chic.  What a successful day!

That evening we went out to dinner to celebrate Dani taking his LSATS.  After dinner Ariel, Alex and I went to a club called Rex by the grand boulevards.  Rex was a pretty cool spot filled with lots of french people and good music.  We drank and danced and danced and drank. After a few hours, it was getting late and I had had a few too many drinks.  I turned to Ariel and said, "Should I be myself or should I try to be cool?"  He responded, "Be yourself, of course" to which I replied, "Ok, I'm going home!"  I immediately put on my coat and left the club in search of a cab.  I guess you can take the girl to Paris but you can't make her cool (or however the saying goes).  

After having a restful night sleep I was ready to show Ariel more of Paris and my friends.  We went to brunch at Briezh cafe with Ali and had some really excellent crepes and mimosas.  Ariel chatted up our waitress, of course, and she gifted him a World Wildlife Foundation panda pen.  What a schmoozer.  We conitnued our day-o-fun by heading over to the boys house for some more mimosas, pictionary, and a lot of snacks. If I haven't said this a thousand times already, being friends with culinary students is so fun!  They're always making yummy things to eat!  

Overall it was an eggcellent (sorry I had to!) weekend.  I'll keep riding this french paradox wave as long as I can.