First few days in Le Cordon Bleu and Deviled Eggs

Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs!

Mon nom est rutvika. Ça va? Je fais bien. Merci beaucoup. 🙂

Well, my French is limited to these few words and phrases, but thankfully for me, and many students like me, we have a translator who translates everything to English at the Le Cordon Bleu. Everything. Even if the chef swears while demonstrating the technique, that gets translated. I am yet to pick up any swear words in french, but very soon.

It has been four days since my school started and it’s quite intensive. We have 6 to 9 hours of class daily, but it’s so much fun! The day is divided into two parts. First the chef demonstrates the technique of making a new pastry for about 3 hours and then the next morning we have to make it on our own, and so on. And, let me tell you, the school does not have any printed recipes. They just give us a blank sheet of paper with the ingredients listed out and we have to write down the recipe during demonstration, in our own words. We have to observe what the chef is doing, hear the translator and write it down in as many words as possible. And write it so well, that it can be repeated next morning. Almost like blogging for myself. 🙂

In our Basic Pastry class of 30 students, we have girls and boys coming in from at least 15 countries. Yeah! And the Director of Cordon Bleu said that there are students from about 59 countries at any time in the school in Paris. It is very interesting, and when I meet a new girl from a different country, I come home and read about that country. For instance in the last 3 days, I read about Austria and Latvia! They have very similar flags, just the Latvian flag color is a deep maroon and Austrian is bright red. That’s some trivia for this week.Once we make a pastry, we can take it back home. Since it’s just 3 things that we have made yet, I get it back home and we are able to finish it by: 1. Eating some of it ourselves or 2. Distributing among friends. Danielle my friend and host in Paris has a lot of friends and I am so glad for it, we get to distribute a lot of it. My fellow students in the school who are mostly staying alone have to throw it in the trash, or what else are you going to do with tonnes of dessert?! I know that’s sad, but we also have a plan of finding some homeless people and giving them the desserts! 🙂

Meanwhile, back home a couple of days back, we had made Deviled Eggs for a Diwali party. They are so much like a tart, just the egg whites in place of the tart shells and whipped egg yolk in place of whipping cream! Ha! That’s the Le Cordon Bleu effect.

The deviled eggs can be done in innumerable ways and its very very easy. And for a party, they can be made well in advance and refrigerated. A perfect, healthy party food. Kids love it too, because you can control the spice and it’s comforting to bite into soft smooth whipped egg yolk and then feel the tender but firm seasoned egg white.

Deviled Eggs Recipe :

For 20 portions,

What you will need :

• 12 large eggs, preferably 3-4 days old
• Mustard, Chilli powder, salt, basil, coriander, olives etc for seasoning, as per taste

Steps :

Making deviled eggs is easy, and once you know how to hard boil eggs, most of your work is done.

1. The egg yolks can be centered by resting the eggs in the carton on their sides overnight (or for about 8 hours). So that when you cut it in half, you get two perfect slices of eggs, with the yolk in the centre.They get sturdier to handle, and look pretty.
2. Take your eggs from the fridge half an hour before you want to cook them. Let them rest on their sides. This will reduce the amount of cracks during cooking by reducing the shock of any rapid temperature changes.
3. In a large vessel, place the eggs. Let there be comfortable space for the eggs to move around while boiling, or they might bump into each other often and crack.
4. Boil one or two more eggs than required, as some of them will crack open while boiling, peel off very badly or yolks may be at the edge and hence may not be usable for making deviled eggs. You can have them for sandwich.
5. Fill your vessel with cold water, enough to cover the eggs by about an inch. Add 1 teaspoon of salt to raise the boiling point and help your eggs cook faster.
6. Cover the pot with a lid and set it on high heat. It will take about 6-7 minutes to get the water boiling.
7. As soon as it gets to a rolling boil, with large bubbles, take the vessel off heat.
8. Add a tablespoon of vinegar over your eggs, to make it easier for peeling and let the eggs sit for 30 minutes in the hot water to finish cooking. Put a timer for 30 mins, because if it stays and cooks longer, the egg whites will become tough.
9. The eggs must first be cooled before they can be peeled. Lift the eggs and place them in a bowl of ice-cold water. This way they cool rapidly and it avoids forming a green ring on the egg yolks while cooling. Leave the eggs to cool for 10 minutes and start peeling them.
10. Gently tap the egg on the kitchen counter till it looks fractured from all sides and then peel it off. You may need to start the process off by picking a small bit of shell off with your fingernail. Then the egg shells should slip off perfectly.
11. Then, cut the eggs into half and squeeze out the egg yolks by gently nudging the egg whites. The yolk will usually pop out easily. You can also take a small spoon to ease the yolk out if the egg sides appear particularly thin or fragile.
12. Then break the egg yolks with a fork.They will seem dry and almost powdery. For nice, smooth fillings, mash the yolks well so that there aren’t any large lumps.
13. Then add any or as many seasoning as you like. For 10 eggs, I added 2 tablespoon mayonnaise, 1 tablespoon mustard paste, some salt and some chilli powder. But don’t limit yourself to this,  you can even mix finely chopped onion, olives, pepper, Italian salad dressing and so on..
14. Mix it all very well and pipe it into the halved egg whites with a piping bag or even a ziplock bag with the tip cut off. Or you can simply spoon it into the eggs.
15. Drizzle with some coriander and chilli flakes for the colorful yellow-white-green-red effect. And you are done.
16. Now go, get ready and dazzle you guests!