Skipping Culinary School. A Guide.

podcast #2 is up.

So you like to cook.  You harbor dreams of owning your own restaurant some day.  Something small, rustic, neighborhoody.  Your friends tell you how great your food is.  Their compliments are nice, but in the back of your mind is the nagging voice that keeps on telling you that tough times lie ahead.  You've got a lot to learn...and almost zero money for school.  Well friend, help is here.  This is your skipping culinary school guide.

The first thing you need to do is mentally prepare yourself for whats to come.  Things are going to be hard.  You're going to push your mental and physical limits, usually far past your breaking point.  You will have almost no cash; so whether this endeavor means saving your pennies, or getting some financial help from family, just know that whatever you spend will be far less than what going to school will cost you. 
Mainly though, you need to submit to many things at once;  those that will teach you, your desire to have some me time, and the urge to talk back when you don't like the way things are going for you.

For me, culinary school was all about learning the vocabulary of the kitchen.  It was about having a knife in your hand every day.  It had nothing to do with becoming a chef, or making up recipes, or discovering your own personal style.  Mimicking this is fairly simple:

1. Buy either the Cordon Bleu or CIA textbook.  Read THE WHOLE THING.  As you go through the book, practice the cuts, recipes, and techniques.  Buy bags of potatoes and carrots and onions and dice and julienne and brunoise.  When you've completed your reading and are starting to feel comfortable with the knife, you'e ready for the next step.
2. Gather your tools.  You need an 8" chefs knife.  Stick with Wusthof.  You'll also need a bread knife, a paring knife, a peeler, and a microplane.  Pick up Becoming a Chef by Andrew Doreneburg and Karen Page.  It's a little dated, but the overall idea of the book is good.
3. Pick a restaurant you like, and go to the back door.  Ask the chef if he/she will let you hang out for a night.  Let them know that you will do anything:  peel garlic, wash lettuce, sweep the floors.  If they let you hang out, and you like it, make it your sole purpose in life to become a stagiere in that restaurant.  Offer to work for free.
4. Once your stage has started, don't give in to your urge to just work the 8 hours then go home.  You need to put in extra work.  Stay during service.  Watch the cooks on the line.  Offer to help anywhere you can.  Around this time you need to pick up On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee.  This book is not for reading cover to cover, but more as a reference.  If you're making vinaigrettes, read his chapter on emulsions.  If you're making stock, read his chapter on gelatin.  There is a section in that book that corresponds to every facet of the kitchen.  Your understanding of the science in cooking is important.  It's not magic.
5. If you've put in a couple of months, sit down with the chef and ask them for a review.  What do you do well?  Where are you weak?  When does the chef think you'll be ready to give the line a shot?  Don't let yourself get stuck in one place.  Chances are that if you're doing a good job, they'll want to hire you on anyways.
6. Read The Making of a Chef and the Soul of a Chef.  Kitchen Confidential is great and all, but it is not required reading.
7. Take everything that you've learned at work and start cooking at home.  Go to markets.  Cook for your friends and family.  Read local restaurant reviews.  Don't be tempted to watch Food Network--by this point it's time to cut that tether.
8. Self evaluate yourself every day.  Go back and re-visit all the books you read in the beginning.  If you're not astonished by your progress, you need to get back to basics.  Learn every day, and never settle.  Don't get caught up in the lifestyle of a cook...learning is your only purpose now.
9. Around the 6 month mark, branch out on your days off and stage in other kitchens.  If you or your family had money saved for school, take that money and save it for a trip to New York, or San Francisco, or France, or Spain.  This will not be a vacation--it's strictly business.  Arrange a stage, or a series of stages.  Again, don't get caught up.  This is not a vacation.

Coming up as a cook is hard, but if you can dedicate yourself and focus, the way up will be rewarding.  You'll look back on these early days with a smile.  Just realize that the learning never stops.  Things never really get easy.  There are always more books to read, new techniques to absorb, new flavors to taste.  With this guide though, you have a 12 month jump on the kids in school.



notes:

• go here and subscribe to our podcast.  face it, it beats listening to Rhianna.
• first Joey Santiago from the Pixies replied to my tweet, and now he's following me.  the word i'm looking for is motherfuckingawesome.
• expoing with a sore neck sucks.
• the cookies luis brought.  perfect.
• sometimes checking the eggs for the pasta dough recipe is like looking into a crystal ball.
• the lover's delight from plunder.  worth $1000?
• that guy at work that you don't like?  it would really give him a shine to see you fail.
• i didn't forget the coconut breadcrumbs, I swear.
• dear people in SF:  please stop standing in the street when you're waiting for MUNI. 
• when a guy gets up to go to the bathroom, his date will always check her cell.  it's like a rule or something.
• if you're wearing sunglasses at night, you're probably a dbag.  unless you're mc peepants.
• heads up:  i put salt on the fries so you don't have to.
• my iphone cover is made of rubber.  and it costs thirty dollars.

quotes and conversations

"He's all cookin' like Gilbert Grape and shit!"
-Mongoose. 

"I'm gonna sell this motherfucker, and put a fried chicken salad on the menu."
-Chef, who might someday turn Nopa into a Cheesecake Factory

"I would not want to bone down with seat 2.  He would probably want to put it in my butt."
-Merrell.

Goose:  Yim Yam's in the house!
Me:  It's like The Shining Goose.  Yim Yam never left.

"For a moment, I thought Corey was playing Pussycat Dolls."
-Sophia

Goose:  This bitch thinks she knows everything, and she doesn't.
Merrell:  Are you talking about me?

"Hey dude, if I go into Home Depot without a list i'm in trouble.  I'll come out of there with a nailgun and a cashier."
-Corey.

"Smokin' blunts with French people is just as cool as it sounds."
-Ponder.

"I'm gonna run a bath and do like the yellow pages.  Let my fingers do the walking.
-Corey.

"I don't respond to shithead anymore."
-Corey.

Me:  Edward!  How was the weekend?
Eddie:  It was alright.  A little weird.
Me:  How so?
Eddie:  My girlfriend's mom gave me a massage.





from top:  bourbon at noon, gibraltar, tecate, nopalito salsa's, flowers from Violet, a case of Asahi, prep list, iced tea, ponder, editing the podcast, corvina, fettuccini, chips, no hands Amy, eating, plate lunch family meal, no!, may I please have an espresso this big?, your station should be this clean, foil chicken, anti cca sticker

Hazing.

My early cooking career was peppered by two constants:  poor training, and being hazed.  They rarely overlapped one another, but thankfully the distrust that stemmed from being hazed led to me questioning the poor technique I was being taught. 

My first real hazing was at Sushi Ran.  I had been working for a catering company in the morning before school, and I was learning some good stuff--knife skills, making vinaigrettes, sauteeing and grilling.  That I was learning these skills without the stress of a dinner service was a good thing--hours of cooking that would become muscle memory...instinct.  As my skill set grew, so did my ego.  I started to challenge my instructors at school--finding ways to use their own lectures against them.  One teacher, out of either admiration or disgust for this rebellious streak set me up with a job at SR.  I was about to change to morning classes, so my job at the catering company was more or less over at this point. 

Upon showing up for my first day at work, I was given a twenty five pound bag of carrots.  The sous chef had been extolling the virutes of smoking weed while drinking espresso when I arrived--he called it the poor mans speedball.  I was simply an annoyance, so he led me to my corner, carrots in tow.  

"Small dice this bag."
"The whole bag?"
"Yeah."
"Whats it going in?"
"Dont worry about it.  Just do it."

Twenty five pounds of brunoised carrot is going to end up being around 15-18 quarts.  If it's going in mirepoix (something rarely used in a Japanese restaurant) youre talking about almost eighteen gallons of veg.  Baffled, I started peeling and cutting.  Around the second hour of this my vision started to blur a bit, my neck tightening.  Around the third hour my knife callous started to become raw, an excruciating little jolt everytime I pushed my knife down.  I cant remember how long it ended up taking me, but by the time I was done the resturant was well into service.  The stomach area of my coat was stained orange, as were my fingers and side towel.  I felt gaunt, like I had entered the culinary equivalant of a sweat lodge.  The only difference was that instead of an epiphany, I saw only a hollow future of being this restaurants vegatable bitch.  The sous stepped off the line and ran his hands through the large mixing bowl mounded with carrots.

"Good."
"Thanks."

Then he dumped the entire bowl in the garbage.  The whole line, Chef included laughed. 

"You can go home now."

Up until this point I had never considered that I was making a mistake by choosing to cook for a living.  Now I was retracing my steps until this point, trying to figure out where I had this mental lapse that landed me here.  I went home, furious.  I mean really, throwing away a bag of carrots?  Just to humiliate me?  Even to this day, it seems excessive.  When I came back the next day I was given real tasks--plating for a cocktail party, making ponzu, and grilling burgers for family meal.  That I even came back was enough for these guys;  I was still the culinary school asshole, but at least I was persistant. 

I like to think that my brand of hazing was more creative.  The VDV crew, being the cocky alpha male jerks that we were hazed everyone.  New cooks, food runners, servers, hosts--it didnt matter.  Everyone got fucked with.  Some of our favorites: 

• the aioli creme brulee, complete with garnish
• wasabi filled profiteroles
• duck fat ice cream, perfectly quenelled into a chilled glass
• the classics:  wooden sautee pan, left handed sautee pan, spaghetti batter, chopping flour, jet wash...

The thing about hazing is it has to lead you somewhere--it cant be done just to be mean.  If youre going to be 90% poison, then your 10% of sugar has to be really, really sweet.  Hazing should be to break the ice--a twisted way of saying welcome to the family.  It has to be coupled with strong training, and it has to be done very, very carefully--the chances of it turning into bullying are far too great.  One has to think back to their own experiences with it, and remember the feelings it left them with.   


a quick guide for new cooks:

• read everything ruhlman has written about cooking.  not just the laundry cookbook--start with the making of a chef and work your way through.  man cannot survive on bourdain alone.
• cook on your days off.  start with breakfast, even if it's at 1 in the afternoon.  hit up a market, a produce stand, whatever.  spend all your money on food. (and a little on whiskey, beer, and wine.)  make something simple, but re-work the recipe to challenge your own technique.  if your dirty bowls, pots and pans stack up faster than you can wash them, you're probably doing it right.  invite your friends over for added stress.
• sharpen. your. fucking. knives.
• please, im begging you--do not try to learn recipes by watching the food network.  let's keep the molto mario watching to once a month.
• go back and re-read soul of a chef.  yes, i know you just finished it.  you missed stuff--trust me.  also read the fourth star, the perfectionist, heat, letters to a young chef, cooking for kings, larousse gastronomique, and on food and cooking.  on second thought, read on food and cooking twice also.
• use the internet.  it's your most important resource.

NOTES:
-"I like to think I put the taint in sustain(t)able"  -corey
-if you can't accept blame for your own actions, you should not cook
-salt cod.  it should be salty.
-rotating my matress got rid of the knot in my shoulder. 
-out the door imperial rolls + lunch with dan at the berkeley marina = awesome
-cooking successfully is just a never ending cycle of contradictions.  more on this later.

5 reasons you should be a cook. And five more reasons why you shouldn't.

Cooking isn't for everyone. Long hours, bad pay, burning, cutting, yelling, absurd amounts of stress. I've seen it make grown men cry. Seriously.

So why do it?

5. You'll be a fuckin' cook man! You'll put on great dinner parties, be able to taste flavors you never noticed before, and have an absurd amount of cooking technique at your disposal. A knife and a sautee pan in hand will be second nature.

4. Your days off are different than everyone else. Cooks (the good ones) work on the weekends, and have odd days off...mine are Tuesdays and Wednesdays. This means eating out rarely requires a reso, and movie theatres are typically empty. Stores are less crowded, and you can generally get more done on your "weekend."

3. You hate mornings. Seeing as how you usually won't be getting off work until midnight anyways, your internal clock switches up a bit. You can sleep in...and when your buddy hits you up for a midnight beer, it doesn't seem so out of the question.

2. You get to eat a lot. For free. Seriously, you will be very well fed. People will cook things...amazing things, and ask you to taste them. You will save money on groceries, as most of your meals will be eaten at your work.

1. It's rewarding. You're making people happy. Seeing the fruit of your labors every single day is a nice feeling. There aren't many professions that allow you to pour your passion into something and see it's effect almost instantly.

So having said that, you really need to understand--this shit is not for everyone. Here are the reasons NOT to do it.

5. You'll be a fuckin' cook man! Beyond the stresses and pains of work, when you go to dinner parties, the host will either be terrified of you, or enlist you to help out. Or, you just won't be able to ignore just how bad their technique is...and it might ruin a great many meals for you.

4. Your days off are different than everyone else's. You won't see your friends that work Monday through Friday. You won't get to go to their parties, or your family members get togethers. You'll work holidays. Oh, and you'll be so exhausted on your day off that all you'll want to do is sleep.

3. Waking up before 10 am will become difficult. You surf? Sorry dude, you're gonna miss the morning swell. You go to church? Hope they have an 11am service. Did I mention that after a 14 hour day, going to the gym the next day seems a little less important. People will hit you up for midnight beers...or 2 am beers. This will not always be cool.

2. You get to eat a lot. Maybe too much. You will gain weight. You will have to eat terrible, horrible things that people cook. Your fridge will be empty, and the groceries that you do pick up on your day off will spoil by the time your next day off comes.

1. It's not always rewarding. There is nothing more heartbreaking than pouring your heart into something, and having your guest shit all over it. They say you can't please everyone. There will be nights where it seems like you can't please anyone.


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Missing: Cooks.

Nearing the end of culinary school, a student starts to feel the stress of finding a job. Top of class in culinary school usually means a certain aptitude towards some arbitrary classic techniques (and generally kissing up) as opposed to the actual head down-im focused and listening attitude needed to hack it on a hot line. Some students start to realize that at the end of their culinary school "fantasy camp" vacation that they are deeply in debt, and despite having made that really neat Thai consomme for their Asian Cuisine test, do not have the firm grasp on their technique. Others don't realize this at all...but more on them later.

A month before my last day of school, I started to weigh my options. I had done my time with a catering company that had fostered me through the days of barely knowing how to make vinaigrette, and had spent some nights toiling away in the Sushi Ran kitchen. I could talk a good game, but in my heart of hearts I was shitting myself. Could I hold down a sautee or grill station on a three hundred cover night? Would I be the weak link that dragged the restaurant into debt with an endless list of guest comps due to quality or bad timing? Chris Ludwick, at the catering company, had made me a smart cook. He made me think. Taught me ingredients. Taught me seasonality. Taught me to care. Sushi Ran had made me tough. Taught me humility. Taught me the poker face a cook needs to survive. Now I was on my own. Now I needed to start teaching myself.

A plan to go to New York had slipped through my grasp. I had the dreamy plan to work in Nobu, or some other high profile kitchen, but had neither saved the money to do so, nor even tried to contact any restaurants. Rossi and I decided that some mutual support through this strange time might be a good idea, so he moved to the east bay, and we set out to find work. My start was not promising. Ironically, the first place I stopped, Va De Vi, was the first place that shooed me away. The place was full of sawdust and construction workers, and I wanted desperately to be a part of an opening. The sous chef told me they weren't hiring anymore, but that they would give me a call. I ran around town and dropped off resumes, interviewed, and tried to sound smart, but not so smart as to come off like a pain in the ass. In the end, I got called back from every place I stopped at...and not just for interviews. Even my eventual call from VDV went like this: "Richie, it's Kelly, the chef at Va De Vi. Can you work tomorrow night?"

Initially I chalked all this up to my brilliantly typed resume (Helvetica neu only please) and my charm and wit in my interviews. Perhaps they could see that, yes, in me, was an amazing chef. Now I can see there was something else at work completely.

This past week saw the Chronicle put out a cover story about where all the line cooks have gone. The article more or less chalks it all up to underpaid cooks living in a very high rent city...a problem that Ginger has told me she runs into in NYC. Shuna wrote a great follow up, and the whole thing really got people talking. Some of the best comments:

• "I think tipping should be banned."
• "You know? The cooks could fix this very easily. Basically they need to
  extort the wait staff into tipping out. All they need to do is slow the
  line down and get the orders wrong so that the wait staff don't get
  tipped as well, and when the wait staff finally decides to tip out to
  the cooks, and the rest of the help, the line would speed back up to
  normal. The only way you will get the wait staff in line is to hit them
  in the pocket book"
• "Bottom line.. I have decided to become a waiter intead of a cook. Hey cooks!.. if you can't stand the heat.. get out of the ..."

Sheesh.

Either way, I think this article misses a key point, and thats asking the question of why cooks do it in the first place. Its a conversation ive had many times with my cooks, and generally goes like this:

"You need to ask yourself why you do this...and obviously you dont do it for money. You need to ask yourself what the point is...after all the burns, and missed weekends and holidays, and the yelling, and back breaking work. YOU need to know why you do it."

Cooks are in short supply...there is no doubt about it. At my work we often lose cooks in the time it takes them to go have a smoke before their stage. Kids come and go, and more and more often, they cant cook, and they can't keep their mouths shut. When Joey, Rossi, Angelo and I worked the line together, there was something else at work than just four cooks on a line. There was a collective passion, a need to be the best. Money, hours, burns, cuts, yelling, screaming...these things simply did not matter. The only thing that mattered was the food...and our guests. I have not seen a cook in the past year that thinks like this...except for Chad, who is now a co-sous with Rossi, Angelo, and myself.

A cook quits because I tell him to wear a side towel, and stop wiping his hands on his apron. Another cook quits after he spent his whole shift telling our pastry chef that he was making his truffles the wrong way. Another cook quits because thinks he's ready to be an executive chef, despite a woeful problem with being able to fry an egg.

I dont know where this industry is headed, but its comforting knowing that all these people are making me look really good.


And now, notes.

• Brutal review of Kuletos, eh?

• How did I end up on Chow.com and not know about it? And here, and here. And here. Thanks technorati.
• Marisa. She will make you laugh.
• Oil spill. Assholes.
• Barry Bonds. Pwnd!
• Dylan leaves his xbox360 here, with Call of Duty 4. I consider never working or blogging ever again.
• Tasting menu's piece on breaking down your station after service.
• Your cheese plate is nice...but Ideas in Foods in nicer.
• Studio Kitchen asks for help...and the result is an eye opening conversation about hydrocolloids.
• Chadzilla visits Bluezoo.

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