I'll be a part of running some cooking classes at Ren Spa this Saturday from 6 pm-9 pm. The theme will be Italian and I'd love to see some more people sign up. If you're interested, give Patti a call at 312-415-5500 or shoot her an e-mail at pattinavilio@earthlink.net. Or shoot me an e-mail at Bobdruschitz@gmail.com. They're located in Chicago off of Elston Ave., right across the street from Wine Discount Center.
I'm most likely going to have some fun demoing a few easy to make at home pastas & sauces, while doing my best to keep it as healthy as possible. And knowing me, anything is possible. Eating, drinking & having fun, right?
Showing posts with label cooking culinary schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking culinary schools. Show all posts
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
A Culinary School Rant
How do I put this? I've been to culinary school, graduated, and paid off all my student loans. I have an Associates of Applied Sciences pertaining to the culinary arts. But had I been told that I could get the same education by working in the field, buying a set of decent knives, and a bunch of industry cookbooks for a fraction of the price... I would have gotten a degree in accounting at a community college and just worked in the field. And I'd most likely have been to France by now to boot. Probably be driving a mercedes too.
So, I guess I want to say is...
...fuck culinary schools.
There. I've said it. While I'm at it, the ACF sucks too. Too many kids go through culinary arts programs, while being told that they're bonafide chefs upon graduation. Bullshit. I remember an old school-er telling me to work for 3 years as a cook or chef de partie, another 5 as a sous chef and only after 10 years... or when I felt ready, take a job as an executive chef. I'm 32. Do the math. But too many kids with rich parents and/or trust funds open places or take these jobs after working at one or two good places, and then crash & burn after only a short period of time. Kinda crashes your credibility when people you want to work for have been burned by this type of tongue-in-cheek "chef".
And currently it seems that overall menus have been dumbed down to become idiot proof, thus making the better trained line cook something most restauranteurs can't afford! Any shoemaker can make pesto in a blender or reduce cream for an easy sauce. Not to mention all of the quality store bought prepared products you can buy though most vendors. I feel that I'm from a dying breed. Think I'm being melodramatic? How many good fine dining French or Italian restaurants still exist, atleast in the Chicagoland market? Name 'em. Are they still turning out real chefs that are opening new places? Think about it a bit. With fine dining growing increasingly smaller here, where do all the culinary students go?
Effing nowhere. And they don't train them well enough to succeed in the business side of the industry. Out of the last 15 cooks I've seen come out of culinary school, saying one might make it is being too generous. However, out of the last 15 immigrants I've seen, most will probably work 10 times harder than the other 14 students without ever going to culinary school.
Do the math.
So, I guess I want to say is...
...fuck culinary schools.
There. I've said it. While I'm at it, the ACF sucks too. Too many kids go through culinary arts programs, while being told that they're bonafide chefs upon graduation. Bullshit. I remember an old school-er telling me to work for 3 years as a cook or chef de partie, another 5 as a sous chef and only after 10 years... or when I felt ready, take a job as an executive chef. I'm 32. Do the math. But too many kids with rich parents and/or trust funds open places or take these jobs after working at one or two good places, and then crash & burn after only a short period of time. Kinda crashes your credibility when people you want to work for have been burned by this type of tongue-in-cheek "chef".
And currently it seems that overall menus have been dumbed down to become idiot proof, thus making the better trained line cook something most restauranteurs can't afford! Any shoemaker can make pesto in a blender or reduce cream for an easy sauce. Not to mention all of the quality store bought prepared products you can buy though most vendors. I feel that I'm from a dying breed. Think I'm being melodramatic? How many good fine dining French or Italian restaurants still exist, atleast in the Chicagoland market? Name 'em. Are they still turning out real chefs that are opening new places? Think about it a bit. With fine dining growing increasingly smaller here, where do all the culinary students go?
Effing nowhere. And they don't train them well enough to succeed in the business side of the industry. Out of the last 15 cooks I've seen come out of culinary school, saying one might make it is being too generous. However, out of the last 15 immigrants I've seen, most will probably work 10 times harder than the other 14 students without ever going to culinary school.
Do the math.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Arizona Stories, A Request
An old Chef of mine (I'll call him Monroe) from Phoenix wanted to hear a story about our old Executive Chef J. Now Monroe really wasn't too keen on J's rules and general Boy Scoutedness. There's a few key things for you to know about Chef J to make this post make sense. So let me give you some background.
Chef J (and our head steward) used to search the employee housing weekly (where I lived) to ensure the interns and/or current residents were living to code. Heck, we weren't allowed to have food in our rooms, all meals were supposed to be eaten at the resort or somewhere on the town. Which sucked. One day he stole the vanilla wafer cookies I had hidden in my sock drawer. Swear to God. Never got written up for it, but the empty package was in the trash... With no cookies!
With that I decided a prank was in order.
Our fearless cookie thieving leader also had stickers of his face made to put on the tops of the spice rub jars the resort sold and/or gave away as amenities. With a small distraction from an unnamed intern I was able to lift a roll of the stickers. Good thing the statute of limitations is over in this epic crime of mine. Later, I went back to the employee housing and proceeded to hang out with a coworker in their room. After some drinking, the coworker decided to run some laundry. I was still in the room, and made it to the restroom. I quickly turned off the water valve and flushed the toilet to drain the tank. I then dried off the bowl with a wad of Kleenex and stuck a bunch of stickers (of Chef J's head) to the bottom. I then turned the water valves back on and walked out of the washroom.
The epic part of the plan was this was one of the last nights the neighbor was in town. They ran a shorter internship.
And after they were gone, the chef had to inspect their room with the head steward.
Word is the head steward caught the prank only after he'd used the facilities. And he was the one that had to scrape the stickers off of the basin.
And that's what you get for stealing my cookies, jerks.
Chef J (and our head steward) used to search the employee housing weekly (where I lived) to ensure the interns and/or current residents were living to code. Heck, we weren't allowed to have food in our rooms, all meals were supposed to be eaten at the resort or somewhere on the town. Which sucked. One day he stole the vanilla wafer cookies I had hidden in my sock drawer. Swear to God. Never got written up for it, but the empty package was in the trash... With no cookies!
With that I decided a prank was in order.
Our fearless cookie thieving leader also had stickers of his face made to put on the tops of the spice rub jars the resort sold and/or gave away as amenities. With a small distraction from an unnamed intern I was able to lift a roll of the stickers. Good thing the statute of limitations is over in this epic crime of mine. Later, I went back to the employee housing and proceeded to hang out with a coworker in their room. After some drinking, the coworker decided to run some laundry. I was still in the room, and made it to the restroom. I quickly turned off the water valve and flushed the toilet to drain the tank. I then dried off the bowl with a wad of Kleenex and stuck a bunch of stickers (of Chef J's head) to the bottom. I then turned the water valves back on and walked out of the washroom.
The epic part of the plan was this was one of the last nights the neighbor was in town. They ran a shorter internship.
And after they were gone, the chef had to inspect their room with the head steward.
Word is the head steward caught the prank only after he'd used the facilities. And he was the one that had to scrape the stickers off of the basin.
And that's what you get for stealing my cookies, jerks.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Arizona Stories, The Ballad of Lonely Bob
I used to work for a five starred, five Mobile Diamond resort on the west side of Phoenix. It seems to be the source of most of the stories I retell over and over (much to my wife, family & friend's dismay). I'd like to share a few of these choice gems that I've been polishing, as most of you won't get the chance to hear them in person. And if you have heard them in person, well, quit whining. I'll write about you next.
The property was huge, including three professionally designed golf courses, an incredible spa, a killer pool, over 365 rooms, three high end restaurants led by an ex-White House chef, and had a considerably large area to house workers and interns. I was one of the latter during my internship from Kendall College. I worked through every kitchen and station I could over two seasons, eventually working in their four star, four diamond ode to Southwestern cuisine. We did everything from scratch. We made our own bread, desserts, butchered only prime meats, and carried the biggest chip on our shoulders for doing this on a day-to-day high volume basis.
I saw an extremely large number of cooks flow though the line over a short period of time though those two seasons. One of those I shall call "Lonely Bob". We named him this because there were too many Bob's. I should know, I was one of them. My nickname was (still is) Shaky or Shakes. I drink a lot of caffiene. Lonely Bob got dumped by his girlfriend for a fellow cook. Thus the lonely moniker. Well, to put it kindly, Lonely Bob sucked. Royally. The culinary school he'd applied to said that he needed atleast a year's professional experience before they'd let him into their program, and they set him up with us.
Good 'ol Lonely quickly found himself on night shift duty. It was the consumate bitch shift, 7 pm to 7 am. The job entailed a few key tasks; to strain and cool the stocks, perform general prep, grind butcher scraps, set up breakfast for the main dining room, and to cook employee meal for the the night cleaners, bakery, & security staff. Two days in, the night cleaners logged a formal complaint. He'd marinated chicken in raw white vinegar and then cooked it with peppers, calling it chicken fajitas. I swear every time a hispanic person walked by him they muttered a death threat under their breath.
The evening before Thanksgiving, Lonely was given the task of cooking turkeys for the next morning. He was told by the Executive Sous to cook 8 turkeys to 135 degrees, and to set them up in a closed door speed rack with 6 sternos on a sheet pan on the bottom to keep them warm for the next morning, when they'd be brought up to temp before lunch service.
For those of you who don't know how sternos work, they're the little cans of gelled, napalm heat that are placed under pans on buffet lines. When lit, they burn blue flame. They're effing hot. Well, good old Bobby has never used them before, and interpreting the directions literally, takes the gel out of the cans with a spatula and smears the goo onto the oversized cookie sheet. He puts it on the bottom, lights the pan, shuts the door, AND WALKS AWAY. Now usually only a small surface area burns with these things. He's multiplied this over tenfold.
Long story short. my friend, a night baker comes out of the pastry shop and sees flames licking the outside of the cart. Wide eyed, she runs to the dish area, grabs a mop & bucket, uses the butt end of the mop to open the cart's latch, and throws the dirty mop water over the fire frantically.
All of the turkey's were ruined. Blackened by Metallica comes to mind. I remember the smell vividly as I walked into the kitchen for my morning shift.
Lonely had burnt a hole through the sheet pan. No shit.
We had run to Safeway for more turkeys. Lonely didn't last much longer after that.
The property was huge, including three professionally designed golf courses, an incredible spa, a killer pool, over 365 rooms, three high end restaurants led by an ex-White House chef, and had a considerably large area to house workers and interns. I was one of the latter during my internship from Kendall College. I worked through every kitchen and station I could over two seasons, eventually working in their four star, four diamond ode to Southwestern cuisine. We did everything from scratch. We made our own bread, desserts, butchered only prime meats, and carried the biggest chip on our shoulders for doing this on a day-to-day high volume basis.
I saw an extremely large number of cooks flow though the line over a short period of time though those two seasons. One of those I shall call "Lonely Bob". We named him this because there were too many Bob's. I should know, I was one of them. My nickname was (still is) Shaky or Shakes. I drink a lot of caffiene. Lonely Bob got dumped by his girlfriend for a fellow cook. Thus the lonely moniker. Well, to put it kindly, Lonely Bob sucked. Royally. The culinary school he'd applied to said that he needed atleast a year's professional experience before they'd let him into their program, and they set him up with us.
Good 'ol Lonely quickly found himself on night shift duty. It was the consumate bitch shift, 7 pm to 7 am. The job entailed a few key tasks; to strain and cool the stocks, perform general prep, grind butcher scraps, set up breakfast for the main dining room, and to cook employee meal for the the night cleaners, bakery, & security staff. Two days in, the night cleaners logged a formal complaint. He'd marinated chicken in raw white vinegar and then cooked it with peppers, calling it chicken fajitas. I swear every time a hispanic person walked by him they muttered a death threat under their breath.
The evening before Thanksgiving, Lonely was given the task of cooking turkeys for the next morning. He was told by the Executive Sous to cook 8 turkeys to 135 degrees, and to set them up in a closed door speed rack with 6 sternos on a sheet pan on the bottom to keep them warm for the next morning, when they'd be brought up to temp before lunch service.
For those of you who don't know how sternos work, they're the little cans of gelled, napalm heat that are placed under pans on buffet lines. When lit, they burn blue flame. They're effing hot. Well, good old Bobby has never used them before, and interpreting the directions literally, takes the gel out of the cans with a spatula and smears the goo onto the oversized cookie sheet. He puts it on the bottom, lights the pan, shuts the door, AND WALKS AWAY. Now usually only a small surface area burns with these things. He's multiplied this over tenfold.
Long story short. my friend, a night baker comes out of the pastry shop and sees flames licking the outside of the cart. Wide eyed, she runs to the dish area, grabs a mop & bucket, uses the butt end of the mop to open the cart's latch, and throws the dirty mop water over the fire frantically.
All of the turkey's were ruined. Blackened by Metallica comes to mind. I remember the smell vividly as I walked into the kitchen for my morning shift.
Lonely had burnt a hole through the sheet pan. No shit.
We had run to Safeway for more turkeys. Lonely didn't last much longer after that.
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