First Week

2 days of class down, 2 to go.

Monday 5:30 PM:
My first class was a "lab" class, in which we sit in a commercial kitchen on the 4th floor of the school. It's a bit awkward walking past art students with their facial piercings, tattoos, "fashion statements" and crazy hair (length, color, proportion) wearing a pressed white uniform, until you get up to the 4th floor where you see everyone, wearing the same pressed white uniform.

I can't really describe the feeling of excitement as I walked into that first class. I was 20 min early and the class was half full already and the smell of roasting bones was left from the class before. My friend John probably has the best written description for the feeling, and I quote, "knf;lksadnvo[va" (yes, it's just smashing your fingers on the keyboard). The class is small; there are 21 of us scattered across 6 stainless steel tables.

The first half of the first class was 2 and 1/2 hours of admin stuff (paperwork, tours, safety videos); it was brutal. You can see everyone in the class anxious to touch anyone of the toys in their kit or the tools around the kitchen. The next hour we talk about stocks (the different kinds, the difference between those kinds, what they're used for, how to make them and most importantly, why they are made). Finally, Chef Pierre says, "OK, lets brown some bones. We are roasting veal and beef bones for a brown stock. Once we put them in the oven to brown, Chef Pierre does a short demo on some basic knife skills that we'll use in the class. Everyone goes back to their tables and does 2 things: 1. Practice the knife skills and 2. Prepare the mirepoix (onions, carrot and celery) for adding to the stock. He has us prepare a small dice on an onion and a carrot. Now, we don't practice just to learn to do it fast, we are practicing slowly to ensure that everything we dice can be used as a garnish. Appearance is very important and we get graded on how our cuts look.

The last half hour of the class is clean-up. We pull the bones from the oven and store them for the next class; we scrub clean the roasting pans; we wash rinse and sanitize the cutting boards, baking sheets, knives and pans used in todays class; we wipe off the tables and sweep the floor. It takes 20 of us, 30 min to make the room immaculate.

Tuesday Noon:
Management by Menu is one of the classes that really inspired me to go to school. In this class, we learn how to build a menu. On day 1, they make it very clear that a menu is not just a list of what you serve and how much they cost, but that it is a description of who you are and who you serve. My reason for taking these courses is to open my own place and this is the first step in helping me understand how to open it.

This class is held in a standard classroom, whiteboards, projector and those attached desk and chair things (no uniform in this class). The chef instructor in this class is funny and we have some characters in the class as well; so, it ought to be fun as well as informative.

Tuesday 5:30 PM:
Today we get to make stock! Because we are the late class, we don't get to finish the brown stock that we started on Monday because we don't have 8 hours to let it simmer, but we do get to make a chicken stock. First task of the day, Chef Pierre draws names for kitchen teams. My team is made up of 3 people:
me: 27 yrs old, business degree in 2003 with a white collar job who wants to change lifestyle
Stormy: 19 yrs old, transferred from Community College to pursue a career as a pastry chef, ultimately wants to build, design wedding cakes
Guy 2 (I'm forgetting his name right now): has been married and worked for the postal service for 30 years and is coming to school at night so that he can open a place with his wife

Along with team placement, we also are given roles on the team. I drew the Team Leader role. Stormy drew the Food & Equipment role and Guy 2 drew the Stewarding (responsible for safe and sanitary work practice) role.

Next, we get started on the stock. Stormy get 8 lbs of chicken bones, covers them with water and gets them to a simmer on the stove. While simmering, the rest of us work on the mirepoix for today's stock, again, practicing our knife skills from yesterday. Chef Pierre adds a new skill and shows us how to julienne celery. After simmering for 2 hrs and skimming the pot, we add in the mirepoix. We also prepare a sachet d'epice (french for spice bag), which is our seasonings wrapped in cheese cloth and sunk in our stock.

After another hour, we pull the stocks off the stove and begin to strain them. We hand ladle our stock into a china cup (looks like a large metal pastry tip that hash a mesh screen on the inside) which is lined with cheesecloth and coffee filters to strain out impurities of our stock. As you can imagine, this is a little slow going. During this process, you can start to see that people are getting more comfortable with the flow of the kitchen. While 2 team-members are straining stocks, you can see others hustling about cleaning up behind each other. There is an assembly line at the sinks, one washing, one rinsing and one sanitizing. Others are busy wiping down tables or sweeping up the floor.

After the stocks have been strained, Chef Pierre hands out plastic tablespoons and has us taste our stocks and compare them with stocks he intentionally had teams ruin to show what not to do.

I am confident that I know how to make stock. This class is awesome!

--Rees