What is the Thierry Marx Award?

The Thierry Marx Career Development Award, offers two Victorian cookery apprentices the chance to spend a month in France working with Thierry Marx – the 2006 Relais Gourmands French Chef of the Year.

The competition is open to apprentices at any stage of their training, although they need to demonstrate a level of competency to be considered for the award. Their employer must be a current member of Restaurant & Catering Victoria.

The winners will travel to France in early August for a month to work at Thierry Marx’s Chateau Cordeillan-Bages in Bordeaux where they are exposed to the wonders of Molecular Gastronomy.

Apprentices receive airfares, accommodation and assistance with incidental expenses while their employers will receive an allowance to offset additional staffing costs while the apprentices are in France.

By Matthew Carnell

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

its almost over...

The last 2 weeks in the Cordeillan Bages kitchen have been fantastic! Ive changed posts and im now in the patisserie which for me is a different experience for me as i have only spent a few months in pastry at press club, and is something i definently doing some more work in a pastry kitchen in the not too distant future.

This pastry section is made up of 4 chefs, Jerome, Aurelien and Pierre are all of equal rank, and all are very skilled and unique in their own way. Aurelien makes beautiful macaroons, Pierre is a champion at hand made chocolate which I put togethor the chocolate trolley before every service, Jerome is so skilled that he makes some very intricate tuiles look like he can do them in his sleep. The 4th member is an apprentice named Clement, here like other apprentices on a stahje that will conclude in the next week where he will head back to his hometown near Paris.

I have been working on pre desserts with Clement recently and I have learnt quite a bit both about techniques and styles, but also my own tolerance for some things that i find are very intricate. Watching the works of Ian and Darren, the pattisiere's at Press Club I always knew that Pastry requires more than just cooking and understanding temperatures and conditions of the effect of a product (ex reactions of sugar, trying to temper chocolate in a hot kitchen), as Ive seen it takes a lot of skill, being articulate and of course, attention to detail.

Im changing post again and I look forward to my last week doing entrees and completing this experience with even more knowledge than i did when i arrived in this country. Im not looking forward to leaving France, but then again I am really looking forward to coming home so I can share my experience.

Ive just realised, that this experience is not about how many recipes we can get, budgeting a aussie dollar to a Euro, nor is it how many things we can learn practically from completing mise en place, its about understanding surroundings, environment, cultures, and the sacrifice to achieving a dream...
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