Day 33 of 60 | Bonjour, Paris! 🇫🇷✨
This week, the focus is on learning the Ducasse way of cooking Mediterranean cuisine - aka: “Let’s take sunshine, olive oil, and decades of culinary tradition and convince these students they can do it justice.” No pressure, right?
Today we dove into two dishes: one starring sardines, the other featuring squid. Both were delicious, but honestly, the cooking process stole the show. Especially when we busted out a Japanese hot box to barbecue romaine lettuce and sardines. Yes—barbecued lettuce. In France. With Japanese equipment. If that isn’t global culinary harmony, I don’t know what is. Definitely not something you see much of in the U.S., unless someone is accidentally setting their salad on fire at a backyard BBQ.
Lori even caught a great photo of me plating one of my dishes. I may still be a beginner, but I’ve officially reached the stage where my passion for this craft is giving “lifer energy.” You know, that hyper-focused, slightly too-excited look chefs get right before yelling “oui, chef!” at a houseplant.
And because apparently I’m in my “main character of a training montage” era, I started my day with a new personal best of 28 consecutive push-ups right after waking up at 5:45 a.m. Only two away from my Thanksgiving goal.
If you hear cheering from across the Atlantic in the next few days… it’s probably me finally hitting 30 and my strength trainer Titus Jean yelling “My Man!” He was the only witness to my failure to even complete one back in summer.
Here’s to getting better at things we initially suck at, or are outside our comfort zone. Onward. Upward. And always hungry.
