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Authors: Michael Ruhlman

BOOK: The Making of a Chef
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The Formative Kitchens
“M
y name's Rudy Smith, and I'll be your chef for the next three weeks. It'll be an interesting three weeks.”
Day One, Smith said privately, is like running into a brick wall. By the first week he has the kitchen running smoothly; by Day Fourteen it runs itself; then the next day, boom—take two steps sideways and start again with eighteen new students.
“Here we're serving customers,” he said. “If we're late, we're penalizing them … . Speed needs to be much greater here. In the last class, you were learning skills, now you're producing. This is a really big transition.
“I need you guys to respond,” he said. “You need to challenge me. ‘Hey Chef, Escoffier says to do it this way, but you say to do it a different way. Why?'
“I must taste everything before it goes out that door,” he said. “Everything goes through me. Think of me as a funnel.
“Today is a day of following directions. It's not a day I want you guys making decisions. If I say I want you to have a two-ounce ladle and you have a four-ounce ladle, that won't be acceptable.”
He stood in front of his desk and scarcely moved from there. His clean crisp chef's hat made him seem seven feet tall.
“I'm not here to teach you to season your soup,” he said. “I expect you to do it. When it's perfect, bring it to me. Green beans, when they're cooked, bring one to me so I can taste it. If I'm talking to someone, stick it in my
face. I'll know what you're doing. I'll say they're done, you'll run back and shock 'em. I want you to do that with every batch, every day, through Day Fourteen. That's how you learn.”
“I thrive on the classics. I live in the present,” he told his new class on Day One. “I'm very into the idea of giving attention to food. It's like a child. The more attention you give it, the better it will be. Smell it, touch it, listen to it. You gotta give it everything you got. If you're uptight and nervous, your food will come out that way.”
Ben and Adam liked Chef Smith because, in Ben's words, “he gets excited about food.” And to everyone's relief, he turned out not to be the exmarine that everyone expected. Travis's fears were unfounded. Even Erica would grow to appreciate Chef Smith because she said she learned from him. The reconfigured group seemed to be a good one. Greg, Bianca, Paul, and Travis also remained, and so did Lola from Staten Island, and Travis and Lola remained as one.
“I'll marry ya, but I'll never work with ya,” Travis would say.
“Oh,
Trav,
” Lola would say.
Gone, however, were Lou and Eun-Jung and Len and Stupid-Ass Dave, Susanne and the rest, to a different Intro kitchen. There were an equal number of faces (and personalities and skill levels) to get used to, but the main thing to learn now was the chef and the demands of a new kitchen, a new classroom. Each chef had his or her own personality and this dominated the kitchen and could affect your grade if you didn't abide. Some chefs liked a heavy use of salt. Some didn't want you using black pepper or garlic. Some wanted you to flour meats that were to be sautéed (Smith); others wanted it patted dry but no flour (Pardus). Some did not want you to make decisions; others encouraged experiment and autonomy.
In Chef Smith's class, prep lists were elaborate and were to display a clear sequence of movements and times. If you were on braise, your prep card had better read “2:45 Roll, tie, season, sear meat” and “3:30 Pot roast in the oven.” One might also remind oneself “3:00 Check mise en place” since the supplemental order is placed at 3:15 and if you didn't have everything you needed at service, it was your own fault; you either had it or you didn't—no excuses, didn't matter why. If you were on starch, your card should include “4:50 Start pilaf.” And everyone's card read “6:05 Service.” Sometimes prep lists would go on for several cards. These cards were not checked, but if Chef Smith saw you in the weeds, he'd ask to see your cards.
He could usually point to the spot on the card, the error or omission, that put you in the weeds.
Chef Smith also wanted a card with your station setup; if you were on sauté, he wanted you to plan before class where your veal would be, where your bain-marie insert would be, and what utensils would be in it, where every item of your mise en place would be, from salt and pepper to clarified butter to the sliced mushrooms for your sauce champignon to the rack you'd hold your veal on while you made the sauce.
Also you were to write on three-by-five cards all the recipes you would need for the day. On Day One the soups were puree of broccoli and chicken broth. The broil station would do lamb chops (Smith wanted them Frenched to the eye), which would be served with a cabernet-rosemary butter, orzo, ratatouille, and sautéed spinach. Sauté station prepped for veal scallopini champignon served with a lemon-almond rice pilaf, green beans, and ratatouille. Everyone would be responsible for the entire menu and should be able to answer questions regarding any station. Everyone would know the method, recipe, and history of each item without referring to notes.
The breast pocket of a student in Chef Smith's kitchen bulged with three-by-five index cards, along with a pen and an instant-read thermometer. And on Day One, Chef Smith could spend ten minutes at the roast station explaining how to use that thermometer.
“It's only as accurate as you are,” he would say, then ask if the thermometer were calibrated; you should calibrate your thermometer regularly. He explained what part of the metal bar read the temperature. When the roast station was ready to check the strip loin, he said, “You try to get to the coolest part of the meat there is. That will be the center of the thickest part of the roast.” He eased the thermometer into the meat. “How do you know you've got the center?” He waited, then said, “If you push it farther in, the temperature should
rise
.”
Chef Smith generally would float through the kitchen, demonstrating how he wanted the broccoli florettes (wedged apart for a natural break rather than cut and small enough to fit on a spoon), tasting the vinaigrettes, tasting sauces, checking doneness, calling out, “It's four-twenty. Are my potatoes on the stove?”
“Yes, Chef!”
“Is my roast in the oven?”
“Yes, Chef!”
The meals on Day One were clear and not altogether complicated. Everyone was usually frightened into overpreparing. Chef Smith would walk the hot line and explain to each student how to set that station. He was a stickler for perfect setup. “I'm a true minimalist,” he said. He wanted nothing extraneous, not even an errant grain of kosher salt.
“Sauté, let's talk about station setup,” Chef Smith said. “I want you to have a full hotel pan with ice, I want a half sheet pan here; I want your flour here, salt and pepper, spoons.” He turned to the range and, pointing, said, “Bain-marie here, clarified butter here, sauce here, white wine, stock, all of them with two-ounce ladles.” The veal would be pounded and rolled in three-piece portions. Why? “Because in service you don't even have to look,” he said. “You're doing two hundred fifty covers a night, the orders are coming, you just grab 'em, boom boom boom, they're in!”
In a restaurant situation, that is. Here, eighteen people would be preparing about eighty plates. The sauté station would do sixteen of them. Many people deride the kitchen experience at the Culinary as not being like a real restaurant. True, a third of the people would be needed were this an actual restaurant kitchen; on the other hand, a restaurant doesn't change every item on its menu daily, start with nothing daily, not even cracked pepper. In Chef Smith's class, you cracked your own pepper, minced it with your chef's knife to the consistency you desired. You did everything the long way here.
Chef Smith would cruise the long bank of ranges, beginning with broil and ending at roast, which had the use of a convection oven with glass doors. Learning how to set a station was a primary objective of this class. Chef Smith also wanted students to understand the types of meat on the menu and how they were cooked; they must be able to identify their total mise en place, have their mental mise en place in order, and be able to do all this in any kitchen in which they might find themselves. The transition from cooking one plate of food to sixteen plates required a shift of gears and deeper focus on execution. If they didn't learn all these basics here, Smith said, they would not be able to focus on the new tasks coming their way in future kitchens.
By five-thirty all were ready for Chef Smith to demo plates, and again he'd walk the line, preparing one plate at each station. He would begin at broil and demonstrate the quadrants of the grill for perfect cross-hatching during service. He explained that one should check doneness by touch, then by cutting into the meat to check your touch judgment. “This is the
one kitchen where you can actually cut into each one to check doneness,” he said. “Take advantage of that.” To make sure no one misunderstood him, he reiterated that this would
not
be considered an acceptable way of determining doneness in a restaurant kitchen. He would then demo how he wanted the item plated and move on to the next station as service approached.
During our Skills Two a change in service had occurred. Instead of receiving meal tickets and waiting in line outside K-9 for dinner, Skills One and other classes would be seated in Alumni Hall and waiters would take their orders. This meant that instead of having “customers” passing through your open kitchen, Intro students cooked with the doors closed and filled a hot box that would be wheeled to the dining room. While this made for a more orderly and refined dining experience, Chef Smith didn't like it for his kitchen; it took the urgency away. You didn't see the faces of people you served. He tried nevertheless to keep everyone working at production speed, telling the sous chef when to fire what orders, and the sous chef, standing between the hot box and the steam table that had been set up to hold the veg and starch, would shout, “Fire two sautés! Fire two roasts. Fire two broils!” or “Pick up two veg entrées! Pick up two braise!”
And each station would respond—“Firing two sautés!” “Picking up two braise!”—in turn. Other than those calls, Chef Smith, who all the while would be checking each plate, sending inferior platings back, wanted the kitchen silent.
 
 
A
fter the first week, the kitchen hummed rhythmically. Each day at one-forty-five the group would gather their physical mise en place, which would happen quickly if they had good mental mise en place before they arrived. By two o'clock, chairs would be spread around the huge stainless-steel tables and lecture would get under way.
Lola was on soup station today, corn chowder. Chef Smith said, “Tell us about chowder.”
“Whaddaya wanna
know
?” said the affable Lola.
“What is it? What makes it chowder?”
“It's a thick soup,” she began and fumbled thereafter for a precise description.
Smith squinted and said, “Sounds like a puree.”
“Main ingredient is part of the thickener?” she suggested.
“I wouldn't say that.” Chef Smith paused and said, “It can be red or white, it can be cream- or broth-based.” He stopped there. “Come on, you should have had this in skills. You probably
did
have this in skills.”
Ben said, “It should have the flavor of the main ingredient.”
“Well,
yeah
. That goes without saying. But yeah.” Smith chuckled and shook his head. “How about pork?”
“Classically, you have pork,” a voice called out.
“Classical chowders always have pork,” Smith continued, customarily salt pork. “It's going to be
packed
with ingredients. It's almost going to be a stew.” He turned to the board and wrote
Chowdière
. “Anyone know what this is?”
Ben said, “A small chowder?”
Smith chuckled again. He described the type of pot often used for chowders over open fires, said sometimes chowder was meant to be a one-course meal, then moved into the specifics of today's chowder, which would use bacon, roux, potatoes, a mixture of milk and cream.
Following discussion of the next soup, cock-a-leekie soup (a Scottish specialty using chicken, leeks, and classically thickened with barley), Chef Smith said, “Roast pork, pan gravy, who's got it?” then on to broil, a strip loin with sauce fine herbs. “Make the reduction with stems, add chopped herbs at the end,” Chef Smith instructed Melissa, a student from the other Skills class.
“Can I make it in one batch?” she asked
“Absolutely,” Smith said, adding, “don't monté au beurre.”
“Should I start that at five-thirty?”
“Start it now.”
Greg was on stew today and asked how much liquid for the stew.
“It depends on the size of the braising vessel,” Smith answered.
“Can I caramelize the mirepoix separately?” he asked.

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