The plan was to write one of these everyday. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), starting culinary school at Sacramento's Le Cordon Bleu coincides with moving into a new home. Our phone and Internet gets turned off tomorrow, so this blog comes to you during the hours between Day 4 and 5 of my first week.
First up is Food Safety and Sanitation and Culinary Foundations I, both taught to us by Chef Bruno Caccia. We've been given 7 books (!) that will serve as our texts during our entire time at the school. The culinary/knife kit comes next week (supposedly Monday).
It's a little weird; Chef reads the SafeServ book to us. Yes, he also provides his own anecdotes and elaborations, but having been out of high school for 15 years, it's weird to be in a class where the teacher reads the text aloud. As we learn more about foodborne illnesses and prevention measures, I fear the class will do the opposite of what I'd hoped it would do; I'm obsessive-compulsive - a "germaphobe" - and I was hoping that learning about food safety and sanitation in the professional kitchen would help me to realize how far is too far when trying to be clean in the kitchen. So far, my paranoia feels heightened, like Spider-Sense except not as cool.
Day 2 put us in uniform, complete with checks (pants), chef's jacket, white neckerchief , hat, black socks, and slip-resistant shoes. No earrings, though, which meant taking mine out (and losing one). We have uniform inspection everyday, during which we line up in alphabetical order as the chef inspects our fingernails, our shaven (or unshaven) faces, and our uniforms.
Day 2 also saw us jumping right into learning classic knife cuts. In doing so, I became subjected to the confusing world of French culinary terminology. A diced potato, for instance, is called "macedoine", no matter the size. However, a "macedoine" for vegetables, however, is a larger dice, while a smaller dice is a "brunoise" and an even smaller dice is a "brunoisette".
Oh, but wait. There's more. Cutting a vegetable - say, a carrot - into a 1/2" x 1/2" x 2" stick is called a "batonnet". But if you do the same cut with a potato, it's called a "pont neuf". Sigh.
Today, Day 4, I cried in class. It was the onions. Imagine 32 students cutting shallots, garlic, and onions in fairly close proximity to each other. There was a lot of crying and sniffling. I'm surprised I didn't see any ex-newbies watching us through the hall window. It's funny to look out and see students who were probably newbies six weeks ago watching the new newbies as if we were zoo exhibits. I would've expected that today, with all the tears and snot pouring from our faces as the fumes from the onions took their toll, the ex-newbies would have looked in on us, the expressions on their faces saying, "I remember that. Ha. I bet we never looked that funny."
My class is a hodge-podge of people. Some are older, some younger. Some look like they're the pirates described in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Some look like they came from a ghetto. Others from nicer areas. Some have professional kitchen experience. Some, like me, just love food and want to learn. As I look at the faces of my classmates, I wonder how many will quit before it's over and how many will graduate. You just can't tell because the food industry is full of so many different kinds of people and you really can't stereotype what a foodie is supposed to look like or how they're supposed to behave.
Day 5 is up next, then the weekend. Hopefully the major part of the move to our new home goes well and I'll actually have some time to get some homework done.
No comments:
Post a Comment