My first class beginning my culinary career was Foundations I, an injection of the obvious, was a class meant to teach us the foundations of French cuisine.
We studied Escoffier, stocks, mirepoix, dimensions of knife cuts, mother sauces, and different cooking techniques. The class was taught by a serious chef in both skills and demeanor who would flash his dry witty sense of humor.
He taught with the fervor of a symphony conductor. He lined us up ten minutes before class started everyday and inspected our uniforms for cleanliness and appearance, ensuring that we were clean shaven, nails trimmed, shoes shining. And if we weren't points were taken from our daily grade.
Some found it tedious, but I felt its importance. They were shaping us to become young professionals with the habits we were forming then to impact the kind of chefs we should become. All great chefs were detailed oriented....sometimes bording on insanity, or at least OCD.
How unforgettable it was when we were given our knife kits, I am sure that is a memory that will always stay with me. Having the knife kit in some ways validated me. I felt like a chef now and it help remove a layer of amateur insecurities I felt about myself.
I looked around at my classmates. For this moment all of us having various skills, experience, and backgrounds but were all given the same tools to succeed.
But how we mastered them would be what would eventually seperate us from each other.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Life is all about timing....
I was excited.....
I felt like I had already had a lifetime full of education, but my first day at culinary school was the first time in my life I could ever remember being excited for school.
It was different.
My whole mentality had changed. If I had went to culinary school straight out of high school I wouldn't have the maturation I currently possessed now. School now to me was a place of infinite possibilities, possibilities that I knew wouldn't be given but could be achived only by the sweat on my brow and the end of my blade.
School to me was now about networking, volunteering, receiving the most value for the money I would eventually have to hand over to Sallie Mae. My goals spanned from achieving straight "A's" throughout my program, to studying abroad for my externship, to not missing a single day of class throughout the program. I was confident these were goals weren't easy, but all were within my reach.
I was going to blog, I was going to Twitter, I was going to map out my journey and share it with all of those who wanted to hear.
I was humble, yes, or maybe I had been humbled through time. Gone was the young man that would snicker at someone else's suggestion on how to do anything better, a young man that had felt that he had done everything and seen everything, a young man who was at one point uncoachable, unteachable, and in some aspects unreachable.
I knew my chef instructors I would defer to, as if I was now let into a secret society where they were my superiors. They were men and women who had been in the industry, and I wanted to absorb as much knowledge and skill as possible.
Life is all about timing, and I knew all of my experiences had brought me to this point and put me in the best position for me to succeed, I could feel it. But I had to put mentally and physically position myself and do things I had never done before to achieve things I never have. So the first day I did something I had never done in ALL of my years of schooling.
I sat in the front of the class....
I felt like I had already had a lifetime full of education, but my first day at culinary school was the first time in my life I could ever remember being excited for school.
It was different.
My whole mentality had changed. If I had went to culinary school straight out of high school I wouldn't have the maturation I currently possessed now. School now to me was a place of infinite possibilities, possibilities that I knew wouldn't be given but could be achived only by the sweat on my brow and the end of my blade.
School to me was now about networking, volunteering, receiving the most value for the money I would eventually have to hand over to Sallie Mae. My goals spanned from achieving straight "A's" throughout my program, to studying abroad for my externship, to not missing a single day of class throughout the program. I was confident these were goals weren't easy, but all were within my reach.
I was going to blog, I was going to Twitter, I was going to map out my journey and share it with all of those who wanted to hear.
I was humble, yes, or maybe I had been humbled through time. Gone was the young man that would snicker at someone else's suggestion on how to do anything better, a young man that had felt that he had done everything and seen everything, a young man who was at one point uncoachable, unteachable, and in some aspects unreachable.
I knew my chef instructors I would defer to, as if I was now let into a secret society where they were my superiors. They were men and women who had been in the industry, and I wanted to absorb as much knowledge and skill as possible.
Life is all about timing, and I knew all of my experiences had brought me to this point and put me in the best position for me to succeed, I could feel it. But I had to put mentally and physically position myself and do things I had never done before to achieve things I never have. So the first day I did something I had never done in ALL of my years of schooling.
I sat in the front of the class....
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Mise En Place
It seems like I have walked through so many different paths to have reached this point, to begin this walk, even though it seems that this pathway I have begun was running parallel to the other ones I had been walking all along. Maybe its destiny for those who believe in that, maybe its a form of self realization for those who would psychoanalyze it, but for now I can say it is reigniting my passion for life at a time when I had felt certain aspects of it waning.
Out of high school I wanted to attend culinary school. I had always enjoyed cooking, and at the time I had thought maybe it could become a career, but like most eighteen year olds, I didn't know what I wanted. And I was to many at the time a lost cause anyways. I was barely C average students in remedial classes, and was in trouble quite frequently and known for hanging out with the proverbial "wrong crowd". I had even had one of my teachers during my sophmore year tell me I was going to "die young" during an afterschool conversation with her. My troubles not being unique, nor were the ways I dealt with them. I was a lost soul searching for something to complete me.
Based on my academic career and my attitude my guidance counselor had recommended to me and my mother that I attend a trade school or the military.
My mother wasn't having it.
She thought that the guidance counselor's suggestions were an insult. She had worked too hard to raise me and my siblings on her own, and even though I wasn't the oldest I was the first to graduate high school, and she envisioned me going to college as an act of repayment for all of her hard work. She believed I had the ability to be great at academics, I just never applied myself. Through her coercion and the opportunity to play basketball at a junior college with hopes of improving my grades and going to a divisioin one school I enrolled at a local junior college.
Right before the season started I got injured during practice...injured enough to have to be redshirted for the entire season. Without basketball as a motivating factor I almost flunked out, literally almost flunked out of school. I was relapsing into old bad habits. I remember being failed by my english 102 professor even though she told me I was probably one of the best writers she ever had, but I refused to come to school and do the work, and she didn't understand the company I kept or why insisted on wasting my talents.
Then I met professor Laufe, in an Anthropology class. She wasn't the first teacher that believed in me, but she was the first that literally refused to let me fail and made it her mission to make sure I didn't. She beleived in me so much that she would check my grades for my other classes, and I began to feel if I failed other classes I would be letting her down. She made me her project, and got me involved in student activities, and I turned around my grades to the point that I made the Deans list, and on her word I was able to get into an honor's college. I eventually graduated with a Psych degree and worked in the mental health field, but my passion for the culinary arts never waned.
Cooking had always been a part of me. I learned to cook out of necessity, because I had a mother who worked tireless hours to put food on the table. But it was something I had a passion for, it was a way to show people I cared about them without being able to put it in words, I would put it in food. Cooking allowed me time to escape, to have instant validation for something I put effort into, it was the culmination of creativity, balance, hardwork, and affection. It was love, and an extension of me. It was art by all of its definitions.
So with much encouragement, I decided to enroll in cooking school. And it has been a worthwhile journey, full of highs and lows, and I can say that it has opened my eyes to a whole new world, a world that I want to share with you.
Out of high school I wanted to attend culinary school. I had always enjoyed cooking, and at the time I had thought maybe it could become a career, but like most eighteen year olds, I didn't know what I wanted. And I was to many at the time a lost cause anyways. I was barely C average students in remedial classes, and was in trouble quite frequently and known for hanging out with the proverbial "wrong crowd". I had even had one of my teachers during my sophmore year tell me I was going to "die young" during an afterschool conversation with her. My troubles not being unique, nor were the ways I dealt with them. I was a lost soul searching for something to complete me.
Based on my academic career and my attitude my guidance counselor had recommended to me and my mother that I attend a trade school or the military.
My mother wasn't having it.
She thought that the guidance counselor's suggestions were an insult. She had worked too hard to raise me and my siblings on her own, and even though I wasn't the oldest I was the first to graduate high school, and she envisioned me going to college as an act of repayment for all of her hard work. She believed I had the ability to be great at academics, I just never applied myself. Through her coercion and the opportunity to play basketball at a junior college with hopes of improving my grades and going to a divisioin one school I enrolled at a local junior college.
Right before the season started I got injured during practice...injured enough to have to be redshirted for the entire season. Without basketball as a motivating factor I almost flunked out, literally almost flunked out of school. I was relapsing into old bad habits. I remember being failed by my english 102 professor even though she told me I was probably one of the best writers she ever had, but I refused to come to school and do the work, and she didn't understand the company I kept or why insisted on wasting my talents.
Then I met professor Laufe, in an Anthropology class. She wasn't the first teacher that believed in me, but she was the first that literally refused to let me fail and made it her mission to make sure I didn't. She beleived in me so much that she would check my grades for my other classes, and I began to feel if I failed other classes I would be letting her down. She made me her project, and got me involved in student activities, and I turned around my grades to the point that I made the Deans list, and on her word I was able to get into an honor's college. I eventually graduated with a Psych degree and worked in the mental health field, but my passion for the culinary arts never waned.
Cooking had always been a part of me. I learned to cook out of necessity, because I had a mother who worked tireless hours to put food on the table. But it was something I had a passion for, it was a way to show people I cared about them without being able to put it in words, I would put it in food. Cooking allowed me time to escape, to have instant validation for something I put effort into, it was the culmination of creativity, balance, hardwork, and affection. It was love, and an extension of me. It was art by all of its definitions.
So with much encouragement, I decided to enroll in cooking school. And it has been a worthwhile journey, full of highs and lows, and I can say that it has opened my eyes to a whole new world, a world that I want to share with you.
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