thirtydaysinjapan: Fourth day of the chocolate week and it's a chinese number curse!

As the Westerners fear the number "13", the Chinese associate the number "4" with death. Hotels and housing developers who are Chinese or those who believe in the number 4 usually remove the floor number or replace with 3A after the 3rd floor. Then it happened to me, this fourth day began with me totally forgetting about having a morning class. After a few days of classes which began at 2pm, I assumed that the class on this particular Saturday was also in the afternoon. At first I didn't know at all until I arrived at the school and my classmate texted me saying the school was looking for me. I thought to myself, could they be offering me a job! Nah, little did I know that they were asking where I was this morning and failed to attend the chocolate box practical class. Now I don't have a chocolate box to decorate and assemble. So screwed....so darn screwed. To make matters worse, I can't remake it before the class and the chef was a Japanese chef who is one of the big shots in the school.

I asked the school representative if I could be given extra time to remake the box and was so worried that my marks will be low due to this one class that I missed. Feeling so guilty, I requested the school rep to bring me to the Japanese chef and I apologised and explained why I was not present. To my surprise, he did not scold me but said he was worried that I was unwell or had any complications which caused me to not be able to attend the class. He also suggested that if I had extra time after doing the decorations for the class for the next practical later I could do the chocolate box that I missed this morning. Phewww.

But first the demonstration of how to decorate the box by the Japanese chef, Chef Yuji Toyonaga the huge huge celebrity chef here in Japan. He has appeared in many local TV shows here. Here is the link of his experience. But in Japanese though. Continuing on with the demonstration class, Chef Yuji is so amazing and professional working with chocolates. His working style is swift, methodical and added with the Japanese precision. I have total respect for this chef. His demonstration has led me to thinking that a chef can be both technical and performer at the same time.

In this demo he taught us how to make a different kind of flower using chocolate also but using a small knife to draw lines on a film to create the petals in varying lengths. He also taught us how to make chocolate ribbons and do the tablage (tempering chocolate on marble table to distribute the cocoa butter around easily). I just sat there amazed and mind blown by his every move. Here are some pictures of him in action.

After the amazing demonstration it was my time to recreate the chocolate box. Luckily I had enough time to complete both the box and the decorations. Lucky me. While we were doing our decorations, Chef Yuji took some time to integrate all three of his chocolate work he had done earlier in the demo class and combined it in a stunning 3 dimensional chocolate showpiece. See it for yourself how amazing it is below.