Culinary diary
Week three

Tuition: $1100
Uniforms $200
Knives and equipment $250
Books $210

Taking time off from the outside world to be a student again? Priceless.

Ok, I’ll spare you the master card spoof. Actually it should read like

Tuition: $1100
Uniforms $200
Knives and equipment $250
Books $210

Realizing that your comfy jet setting lifestyle is coming to a grinding halt and the only time your passport will see the light of day is on a trip to Canada? Or that you’ll no longer be ordering out of the Anthropology catalogue but the Chef’s Wear catalogue? Heartbreaking.

I am starting culinary school as a 28-year-old married adult. Yeah, it’s a little late. I’m a little long in the tooth compared to my fresh out of high school, or college freshman classmates. Thankfully I’m not the oldest, and I’m not the least experienced, but returning to the kitchen after professionally critiquing it for three years is an about face.

Unable to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty until passing the county’s food handlers exam, my first week as budding young chef was spent in lecture, listening to Chef G drill in the importance of uniform standards and professionalism, drilling in the fact than none of us are going to be on the Food Network, and drilling in the fact that chefs and cooks are a weird subculture of folks who work when regular 9-5ers have time off. “Forget holidays, man.” He almost chuckled as he paced across the lecture room, soundlessly in black wooden clogs and chalk-stripe black chef’s pants. “You can’t be in it for the money.” He challenged us.

This is, of course, his way of weeding out the passionless. But it doesn’t work on my class. Week three, all but two show up, crisp in chefs whites, lip rings removed, beards trimmed, died black hair or afros tucked under white skull caps, donning ill flattering hounds tooth checked pants and black leather clogs or workman’s boots. Even the boy who sags his cargo pants past mid thigh, showing off a colorful assortment of plaid boxer shorts, has been inspired to keep his chefs pants at mid ass.

As first quarter students rotating daily assignments are designed to aid us learning our way around the school’s kitchen. From washing pot to being our (first quarter) kitchen’s sous chef, by the end of the quarter we’ll have the basic skills to get a job in prep, or bussing

Snow and ice have closed school once so far and delayed the start a few days.
After a week bussing tables in the fine dining student restaurant. I am now in the kitchen.

This morning I sliced radishes, trimmed broccoli, and prepared concassee. I hate concassee. Perhaps the hardest part about going to culinary school is retraining yourself to slice, prep, and cook the way your chef wants you to, or as he would say “properly.” Tomato concasaee is one of those retraining exercises. Boiling the tomato, adding the tomato to an ice bath, peeling the tomato, de-seeding the tomato, taking out the core of the tomato, julienne the tomato, dicing the tomato, julienne the core, dicing the core. COME ON! So my way leaves the skin on, so what. But concassee, man, that takes way longer than necessary, and for what? SOUP! I’d give it to you for a garnish, a sauce, but a soup, where the already pithy winter tomato is going to further breakdown amongst black beans into an unrecognizable mush. No. No more concassee.

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