It’s been quite some time since I have made any posts, so, here’s a new one, should allow for some catching up. I started at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Natomas last month, and just finished my third week.
It’s great. It’s amazing. I love what I’m doing. For the first time, I actually want to go to school, to study, to work hard, to show up to class everyday on time and prepared. It’s something that makes me feel like I’ve finally made the right decision, that the path I’m now headed on is the right one.
Which is not to say it hasn’t been hard, or even frustrating at times. Because it has been. When you cook at home, you don’t think about a lot of things that you are required to think about once you’re in a classroom being told how to actually do it. Simple little things, like what a dice is, what a mince is, realizing that for your whole life, you’ve never actually cut anything in a julienne, and that you’ve never had a fucking clue what those words actually meant.
It’s eye opening, and in some ways scary. I’ve thought of myself as a good cook for years, but it’s hard to feel that way once you try to turn a potato into 1/4 inch cubes. And that’s what a lot of school has been thus far, knife skills. What each cut is called, how each cut is done, and what the finished product should look like. It’s about precision, speed and wasting as little product as possible. As somebody who’s never cared tremendously about the technical aspects of cooking, it’s been hard. In fact, I’ve just finally started to get to a point where I’m pleased with my knife work, not happy with it, but pleased. The last three weeks have left me coming home on a high from my love of cooking and food, but in a distinctly different place when it comes to my feelings on my performance. I went in for tutoring on Thursday, and in 2 1/2 hours made a lot of progress, enough so that I’m feeling confident about my ability to score well on my next knife skills test.
If cooking well were merely about passion, I know several people who would be three start Michelin chefs, running successful restaurants, with their own TV shows and branded merchandise, and popping up to judge challenges on Top Chef. But it’s not. Passion, I’ve discovered, is what makes it possible to get through what it takes to make one a great cook. If you’re not passionate about cooking, you won’t care enough to get through the classes, to work on improving your skills, even the most basic ones. If you don’t have the passion, it’s not worth it. And if you can’t find it within yourself to make it worth it, you’ll never succeed. Not in the higher levels of the culinary field. Don’t mistake this as a belief that professional schooling is necessary, one look at Thomas Keller is proof that it isn’t, but again, it was his passion that drove him, and while he didn’t learn in a classroom, he made much of his life about learning. Reading The Soul of a Chef, author Michael Ruhlman recounts Thomas Keller’s fascination with making Hollandaise sauce, his aspiration to make each batch better than the last, the passion is evident. The time Keller spent cooking the staff meal at the Dunes Club, in upstate New York, and Paris, was about learning, if not in the classroom, then on the job, and from the best teachers available.
And I love it. As frustrating as the last three weeks has been at times, it turned the corner Thursday. The tutoring put my knife skills on the right track, and class ended up satisfying my soul. If it sounds over dramatic, it might be, but the fact of the matter is, I walked out of that classroom feeling better than I have felt in a long time. After the first hour of Serv Safe, we set about the tasks for the night, making mayonnaise and Hollandaise sauce by hand. Both are emulsions, two ingredients that do not mix together, that you are able to, with a little manipulation, mix together. In both cases egg yolks and fat are mixed together to create something entirely new.
The first up was mayonnaise, and I can definitely say that it was the more physically demanding of the two. Starting with the three yolks, I had to whip in 20 oz of oil, starting first by adding very, very slowly, a drop or two at a time that needs to be fully incorporated before adding more. Using a 2 oz ladle to slowly add the oil, it took me at least five minutes to empty the first ladle into the yolks. Now, we often use five minutes as a quick measure of time, very quick, but it’s deceptive, five minutes is a lot longer than we seem to think it is. And 2 oz is nothing. It’s 1/6th of a can of soda. Think about how quickly you normally drink a can of soda, it probably takes you five minutes right?
It took me a long time to make the mayo. And since it’s supposed to be thick, you can’t really add much vinegar or lemon juice to thin it out and make it easier to whip, otherwise, you’re not gonna end up with mayonnaise. And you’re constantly whipping. Your hand cramps up, it seems like it’s going to take forever to make some mayonnaise, which is ridiculous when you can go down to the grocery store and buy a jar for a couple bucks, it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the effort. Except it is. Real mayo is unlike any mayo you’ve ever tasted before, it’s richer, creamier, less oily, and it tastes better, brighter. It’s worth the effort.
I made it through mayonnaise pretty easily, but it’s the easier of the two. You don’t need to keep it warm, in fact cold is what you want, it’s harder to break the emulsion than it is in Hollandaise. But it takes time, a lot of it as you’re adding twice as much fat to the mayo than you’re adding to the Hollandaise.
Hollandaise is harder. It’s similar to mayo, but you use butter instead of oil, and you have to worry about the sauce being exposed to the right amount of heat. It’s a bit of a high wire act, but again, it’s worth it. The nice thing about the Hollandaise is that it’s supposed to be thinner, so if the emulsion gets a bit thick and hard to whip, you just add a little acid, and thin it out. Sounds easy enough, but remember you can’t add too much acid, or let the sauce get too cold, or you’re in serious danger of it breaking.
Except my sauce didn’t break.
And it was at this point that a smile spread across my face, probably the first time I’d smiled in regards to my performance. Seeing the way it all came together, it was a revelatory experience. And then tasting it…it was amazing. It was the first night I felt like I had done well in class, and I had done it on something I’ve never made before. Never even attempted to make. But I made them. And I did it well, and they tasted good.
It crystallized in that moment, when I tasted the sauce for the last time, when the flavors were balanced, and I was please with the sauce. This, cooking, is what I am meant to do. It gave me hope that I’ll be able to make it through, and not just scrape by, but do well. It was a moment that changed me, and it’s something I’ll never forget.
