Cours de Cuisine

For Emilie's birthday, her sister got her (and I) a gift certificate for a cooking class in Vevey where you work with a professional chef in a group setting to prepare a three course meal and then get to eat it afterward. Given Emilie's desire for me to start sharing the cooking load, the gift was welcomed and yesterday we finally participated in the class.

There are a couple of classes each week, so you simply find some dates that work and then sign up for one with a menu of your liking. I don't specifically remember the exact menu wording, it broadly consisted of the following:

• Entree: Tomato, mozzarella and basil in layers of mille-feuille puff pastry with an accompanying salad
• Main Course: Roasted rack of lamb
• Dessert: Thai mango salad with ice cream

The class was held in a kitchen that looked kind of like a set from a Food Network cooking show. In total, there were 12 students -- a mix of young and old, men and women (though mostly women), and exhibiting a full spectrum of cooking experience.

The night basically consisted of watching the chef and following his lead. Fortunately for me, we all weren't preparing the plates individually. Instead, we were simply assisting with various parts of the broader preparation -- basically, we were novice sous chefs.

I assumed that I could just lay low for most of the night and then swoop in at the end once the meal was prepared. Emilie was having none of that, however, and seemed to use mental telepathy in order to get the instructor to increase the level of my involvement.

All went relatively smoothly with the preparation / cooking and the meal turned out to be great. The presentation might not have been perfect, but I thought everything tasted very good and would have definitely gone back for seconds if given the opportunity.

In the end I can't say that I really learned much, though. The "class" was more of a cooking experience combined with the benefit of eating a very nice meal afterward -- which was perfectly fine with me.

St. Prex Classics

 

Tonight Emilie and I went with her mother and a friend to St. Prex -- a small lakeside town between Lausanne and Geneva -- for its annual "Classics" festival. The festival consists of various vocal, music and dance performances over a two week period, and we had tickets to see Philippe Jaroussky & Friends, a vocal and musical performance.

Philippe Jaroussky is a reknowned French sopranist countertenor, which effectively means that he sings in a falsetto style equivalent to female voice type such as mezzo soprano (I learned all this after the fact thanks to Wikipedia...). My interpretation during the show was simply that he sounded like he had been kicked in the groin prior to the performance -- albeit in a way that preserved the beauty of his voice.

  

I also learned that the popularity of sopranist countertenors has an interesting history. When women weren't allowed to sing in the church, the role of female voice types often went to castrati -- men whose prepubescent voices were preserved through castration. After this practice was no longer en vogue, there was a resurgence in interest in such vocal types thus leading to the increased popularity of those who could hit the high notes naturally (Wikipedia again...).

The performance was very good, with various combinations of vocals, piano and cello. Each performer was clearly a virtuoso with his instrument and did a very good job of playing off the others. I think the hardest job of the night went to the poor girl who had to turn the music sheets for the piano player. She by far seemed to be the most nervous and concentrating the hardest.

For the encore, all three performers sat at the same piano and played a very impressive piece. During the performance it seemed like something that they just had improvised, but I'm sure they must have put some time in beforehand practicing it.

Tanay et Grammont

 Yesterday Emilie and I hiked up to Lake Tamay and Mount Grammont, which are just south of the eastern edge of Lake Geneva near the border with France. Here's the view as we began our ascent.

The first part of the hike towards Tanay took us mostly through forest, though there were a few open areas with nice views.

We got turned around a couple of times and had to backtrack a bit, but we eventually made it to Lake Tamay. The lake is relatively tiny but very picturesque and there were a couple of families camping there.

At this point I was already tired and casually asked Emilie where we were going to stop to eat the lunch that we had brought. And that's when I learned, unfortunately, that we wouldn't be stopping for lunch until we reached the peak of Grammont.

On the other side of the lake is the village of Tamay, which is very small and has a lot of tiny alpine cottages like the one pictured below.

The next stage of the hike was exhausting, as we had to cover a lot of vertical ground with the midday sun beating down on us. Plus, part of the trail consisted of loose gravel, so it was a bit difficult to get proper footing at times. Here's a view looking back down at Lake Tamay after only a small portion of the incline.

Fortunately, the view was very nice so we could at least enjoy that despite the exhaustion and hunger that continued to build.

The final incline consisted of a narrow path up a ridge with a relativly steep drop on either side -- a perfect setting given that my hunger was driving me towards delirium.

But I ultimately was glad that we waited to eat given the panoramic view that we had at the top of Mount Grammont. It was a perfect spot for a picnic.

After finishing lunch and extending our break a bit to recover, we began the trek back with Emilie leading the way.

The extra rest didn't help much, though, as the hike down was also exhausting. Plus, we had to basically cover the same route that we had taken up, so there was a clear understanding of exactly how far we still needed to go to get back to the car.

I more or less gave up on taking pictures by this point in an effort to salvage the limited energy that I had remaining. I made an exception, though, during a brief stop at Lake Tamay -- here's the view from the other side of the lake and a picture of a tiny alpine church nearby.

Vacation

Right now we're in the heart of the vacation season in Switzerland. Thus things are a bit mellower at work as the masses are off on their summer trips to France, Italy, Spain, etc. for some R&R.

For the most part people generally take two weeks off, though this year I've got a colleague taking his summer vacation to a whole new level -- 3.5 weeks.

Pretty impressive, right? I feel like in the U.S. if you left for that long on vacation you'd come back to find that your office badge no longer works and there's someone else sitting at your desk. If you're out of the office for nearly a month and things go smoothly, someone's bound to question your true value to the company and the necessity for keeping you around, right?

Regardless, I'm definitely jealous. A 3+ week vacation sounds great to me. Particularly since I don't have any real vacation planned for the summer. That said, I shouldn't complain given all the weekend travel that we've been doing.

Drottningholm

We began our final day in Stockholm by heading back to Gamla Stan to see the cathedral, which was partially closed during our first visit on Saturday.

The cathedral traces its roots to the 13th century and has served as the site of major events in Swedish history over the years (namely coronations, royal weddings and royal funerals). I liked the relatively bright interior and the "St. George and the Dragon" statue, which commemorates a 15th century battle versus the Danish over Swedish secession.

Our final stop was Drottningholm Palace, which is a bit outside of Stockholm to the west. The palace serves as the private residence of the Swedish Royal family and is partially open to the public. Here's the view of the palace from the lakefront.

The palace dates to the 16th century, though it had to be restored about a century ago following years of being in disrepair. We weren't permitted to take photos on the inside, which was very ornate as would probably be expected from any royal residence. And as with every palace that we've visited during our travels, Emilie objectively commented that she prefers Versailles.

After we toured the palace we walked around its gardens a bit, which offered a nice view of the palace from the other side. I waited about 10 minutes for the guy in the photo below to move, but he apparently liked his spot.

Rather than taking the subway back, we decided to catch a boat in order to make the most of our final hours in Stockholm. As a result we had a very nice view of the palace from the lake as we departed.

The boat ride back was nice, though it got a bit cold as the clouds came in and blocked the sun. This didn't seem to bother the many locals out enjoying the summer day lakeside, as their definition of cold seemed to be much different from ours.

I particularly liked the houses along the water with private docks.

And here are a couple of shots that I took as we returned to Stockholm to collect our stuff from the hotel and head to the airport.

Boat to Finnhamn

On Sunday we took a boat ride through the Stockholm Archipelago to Finnhamn, a small island about 2.5 hours northeast of Stockholm. We chose Finnhamn for no other reason than that it was one of the furthest stops out in the archipelago and we wanted to see as much as possible.

The boat to Finnhamn was full of passengers who had similarly decided to take advantage of the beautiful day with a trip on the Baltic Sea. Nonetheless, we were able to find a nice spot outside to take in the sights of the archipelago.

Here are a couple of pictures of Stockholm as we headed out to sea.

The archipelago is beautiful and consists of around 30,000 islands and islets, of which I'm sure that we only saw a very small proportion. Given that there was some form of land pretty much everywhere, the ride felt like we were on a lake rather than at sea.

 

While most of the islands appeared to be unihabited (at least from the boat), we saw a number of houses that apparently serve as summer dwellings for those in the city. They definitely seemed to be the perfect spots for getting away from civilization and relaxing in peace.

The locals also seemed to be taking advantage of the beautiful weather, as there were a lot of boats out on the water.

This boat, however, doesn't seem to have had much use in recent years.

We arrived in Finnhamn in the early afternoon and had a few hours to explore the island. For the most part it is absent of human development, aside from a hostel and a couple of other buildings near the dock where the boat dropped us off.

My favorite spot on the island was a small elevated rocky area that offered a nice view of the surroundings.

The interior of the island consisted of dense trees and some grassy meadows. There were some nice spots to picnic, but we unfortunately hadn't brought anything with us.

Our time on the island went by quick and pretty soon we had to head back to the dock to catch the return boat.

The ride back was a bit more relaxing as I put the camera down for the most part and just enjoyed the ride. Nonetheless, here are a few more photos that I took.

By the time we got back to Stockholm it was early evening. The archipelago tour definitely made for a long day, but the perfect way to see the natural beauty of the surrounding area.