I'm Certainly In School Again

I find myself concerned with grades.

Geez.

It's been awhile since I've had to worry about grades. Since I graduated college 10 years ago, my experience with teaching drums has put a large emphasis on learning for the sake of learning and performing (oh, and competition, too) with no real concern for grades. With drumline and private drum lessons, grades are not a factor and lessons are given with almost pure education in mind. I entered culinary school with this same mind set until points started being given along with quizzes and practical application exams. Argh.

The other thing that reminds me I'm in school is an unfortunate reminder: instead of feeling like I'm attending a culinary "college", I feel like I'm in high school again. I've mentioned this before, but now I know I'm not the only one to be concerned with the students who are both distracting and detracting from the lessons. It's ridiculous, really, and we did mention it to Chef Bruno, who understands our concerns.

Chef Bruno is an extremely nice guy and is very open to his students' questions and comments. He's patient and seems to always have a good attitude about everything. Hopefully he'll be able to address the rudeness in the classroom as we finish up our last week.

My last week will be difficult. I'll be missing school Friday and the following Monday, which means I'll be losing points (which I hate), thus lowering my grade (still with the hate). It also means that I have two reports to turn in early, practical exams to make-up (if necessary; I'm still not sure if the schedule has changed), and a ServSafe test to take the day after the rest of my class takes theirs. This means a lot of studying on my pre-planned vacation. Thankfully, the studying is for a subject that I like.

Perfect!

A perfect score on my mayonnaise! Yes!

A perfect cherry on the top of our sundae, the run-through of our knife practical. Chef Sandra added 8 cuts to the original 4, having us try to do 12 cuts in 30 minutes. And yes, I finished! Most of my classmates did. I wanted to finish earlier, but unfortunately took longer to do a simple task: block a potato. I needed to get three cuts out of a russet potato but because it was longer than fatter, I needed to be choosey about which parts of the potato to use for which cuts.

The good thing, though, is that I blazed through the two tournées of red potato. The tourée is my worst cut, but following the tips given to me by Chef Bruno and the desire to finish all 12 cuts before time was up, I blazed through them and, thankfully, I think they turned out pretty nice. They were, in fact, my best tournées to date.

To change the subject, all week I've been wondering why certain students are attending this school. I'm not going to talk negatively about anyone, as everyone is pretty nice to each other and we all try to help each other out. But some students just don't seem to want to be there. They don't take notes, they talk during lectures, they dismiss rules regarding the uniform... it's a shame really.

Remove the fact that these folks are paying anywhere between $18K to $22K to attend and essentially what you have is a group of people who are learning how to cook professionally by choice. Everyone is choosing to be there yet some students are squandering their time by not making the most of the education they're choosing to get. Granted, the lessons thus far are basic; we're learning the fundamentals of food, food science, methodology, and knife skills. Some students have culinary work experience, some have attended culinary school before, and others just love food. But no matter the background or the amount of existing knowledge of a given student, there's always something to learn from these basic lessons.

I've been teaching drums for about 15 years now and I teach a lot of basics to a lot of students, basics I know like the back of my hand. Yet I still continue to learn basic things, whether it's how to improve my technique, another way of learning something, another way of looking at something, or another way to approach something. I've found similarities between drumline and what I know of the professional kitchen. I know there are also similarities between the craft of drumming - music in general, for that matter - and the craft of cooking. It stands to reason that there's always something fundamental to learn or to improve upon, no matter how much one knows or how technically proficient one is.

I have to wonder how long some of my classmates will last.

Late and Heart Attack on a Plate

I was late for the first time today. Not happy about that. However, Chef Sandra, who is Chef Bruno's teaching associate and is teaching the class while Chef Bruno is in Las Vegas for some training, gave me all my points. Thanks, Chef Sandra. Still, I did not like being late and I will need to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Today, Chef demonstrated how to clarify butter and also showed us that, if you heat it too much, you might as well make gi*, an even more clarified butter except more brown in color. From there, compound butter was made. Let's just say Chef Sandra likes strong, strong flavors.

Next: more mother sauces; yesterday, she showed us veloute and Bechamel, and secondary sauces you can make from them: Sauce Supreme and Mornay, respectively. Today, it was Hollandaise. Yum. She made what I would consider an "enhanced" Hollandaise by also adding an herb-infused white wine reduction. From there, she made a Bearnaise (add tarragon, according to Chef). Yes, we got to try them, over an English muffin and some Canadian bacon; with the Bearnaise, she made poached eggs. They were pretty strong but tasty.

Next, mayonaise! I've never had anyone serve me personally-made mayo before. I'm sure I've had in-house mayo at restaurants, but this was the first time someone made a batch of mayo and I tasted it fresh. Chef likes her salt! It was a strong mayo. We then tried a batch of pesto she made earlier (damn spicy with the garlic!) before she had us taste them combined: pesto mayo!

Tomorrow, knife skill practice and a test of equipment names.

Before school started, but after I'd already enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu, Sacramento, I got a (late) call from the Art Institute. One of the arguments the admission manager (as she called herself) told me was that they get a lot of transfer students from Le Cordon Bleu because the program wasn't what they were looking for, stating that LCB has a lot of book learning.

I can only imagine what they're learning over at the Art Institute if they skip the "book learning", because, so far, our books are helping us to learn some fundamental things like kitchen structure, the history of the modern kitchen, food safety and sanitation, basic procedures, etc. The Art Institute supposedly concentrates more on the artistic side of food, which is fine, but I'm pretty happy with my books. I feel like I'm getting an actual education instead of being taught how to play with my food.

Maybe that last statement isn't fair to say. After all, I didn't visit the Art Institute, and I am certainly not taking any classes there so I don't know what their actual curriculum is like other than whats described on their website. But, if the admissions manager told me there's less emphasis on book learning at the Art Institute, then I do have to wonder if the basics are being taught through pure lecture or maybe taught along the way.

I can safely say, however, that I like my books.

*update: 12-22-2010 - "gi" is actually spelled "ghee". I didn't find that out until later...

Week 2 into Week 3

As I go into Week 3 of culinary school, I noticed a couple of interesting things:

1. According to our ServSafe book, people will deliberately attempt to contaminate food, including (number one on the bulletpoint list), terrorists. The page dedicated to purposeful contamination was at once funny and paranoia-inducing.
2. Many culinary students are squeamish about "strange" foods, such as brains and cow hearts. I don't understand this squeamishness coming from any student studying food and the preparation thereof, but I apparently it happens.

I find that I'm pretty good at most of my cuts (Chef Bruno seems to think to), but I still need to get the hang of the tournee, the 7-sided (sometimes 5-sided) football-shaped cut. I will find out this week that I probably failed a conversion quiz because I didn't know about one of two equations I was supposed to use. Thankfully, I know about the formula now which is beneficial in the long term.

Oh, and we got our culinary kit, complete with KNIVES! Woo hoo!

We now have the Internet at the new home. Hopefully, as things get set up here at the house, I'll be able to blog about my experience at culinary school more often.