Read The Making of a Chef Online
Authors: Michael Ruhlman
The Making of a Chef (23 page)
But Ainsworth's main philosophy was to give assignments, hang back, and not instruct too much. “They're about to go out on extern,” he told me. “They've got to be able to answer their own questions.”
T
he second-term practical is among the final tests a CIA student takes before departing for extern. It is a cooking test taken during the first week of Garde Manger. A group of six students arrives in the Practical kitchen off the mail room at seven A.M. (if they are P.M. students). The six menus the students may prepare, printed in the handout everyone receives before the test and also posted on a bulletin board, consist of a soup, an entrée (a meat and sauce), two vegetables, and one starch. Before they cook, students answer questions, such as what mother sauce is used in preparing most cream soups, or, what is the protein in ground beef and egg whites? (Velouté, albumen.)
he second-term practical is among the final tests a CIA student takes before departing for extern. It is a cooking test taken during the first week of Garde Manger. A group of six students arrives in the Practical kitchen off the mail room at seven A.M. (if they are P.M. students). The six menus the students may prepare, printed in the handout everyone receives before the test and also posted on a bulletin board, consist of a soup, an entrée (a meat and sauce), two vegetables, and one starch. Before they cook, students answer questions, such as what mother sauce is used in preparing most cream soups, or, what is the protein in ground beef and egg whites? (Velouté, albumen.)
The menu is basic. Entrées include roast chicken with pan gravy, sautéed chicken with sauce fines herbes, and poached salmon with hollandaiseâSkills Two food. Soups were straight out of Skills One. This was after all a test of basic methods (sauté, shallow- and deep-poach, braise, roast, broil) employed in a timely fashion. The soup was to be presented after two hours and fifteen minutes, entrées fifteen minutes later. Everything you needed was either on a tray or in the reach-in, and you had exactly the right time to prepare a full meal for two from scratch provided you made no mistakes.
But the practical made most people nervous. If you were late with your food, you failed. If your food could not be eatenâsay you misjudged doneness of the roast chicken and the thigh meat was bloodyâyou failed and
would have to pay to retake the test. You cooked in an unfamiliar kitchen for a chef you didn't know. This was a test and test anxiety went along with it.
would have to pay to retake the test. You cooked in an unfamiliar kitchen for a chef you didn't know. This was a test and test anxiety went along with it.
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I
arrived for the practical at seven A.M with Len Mormondo, who had moved through his standard daily mise en place like a sullen workhorse across from me in Skills, and beside Eun-Jung, who was also scheduled to take the practical today, as was big, sweet-as-a-Teddy-bear Lou. When Eun-Jung arrived and saw me, she said, “I am so happy. It is just like Skills.” And it was. We were asked to do nothing that we hadn't already done in Skills long ago. The only difficulty was that no one knew what menu they would be preparing and therefore had to know all the menus, and the uncertainty weighed heavily. Eun-Jung, like many students, had written all the menu recipes on three-by-five cards and carried them in her breast pocket. I had not done this; I carried a few of my Skills cards to ensure I had the right amounts for items such as the court bouillon in which the salmon was to be poached, but I would rely on the techniques and hoped, somewhat nervously, that the rest would follow.
arrived for the practical at seven A.M with Len Mormondo, who had moved through his standard daily mise en place like a sullen workhorse across from me in Skills, and beside Eun-Jung, who was also scheduled to take the practical today, as was big, sweet-as-a-Teddy-bear Lou. When Eun-Jung arrived and saw me, she said, “I am so happy. It is just like Skills.” And it was. We were asked to do nothing that we hadn't already done in Skills long ago. The only difficulty was that no one knew what menu they would be preparing and therefore had to know all the menus, and the uncertainty weighed heavily. Eun-Jung, like many students, had written all the menu recipes on three-by-five cards and carried them in her breast pocket. I had not done this; I carried a few of my Skills cards to ensure I had the right amounts for items such as the court bouillon in which the salmon was to be poached, but I would rely on the techniques and hoped, somewhat nervously, that the rest would follow.
Chef Felder's advice seemed best of all: “It's only dinner,” she had told us on Day One. “You're only doing what you love to do.”
The chef-instructor, Adam Balough, was a weathered man with a large nose, strawberry-blond hair, and a Hungarian accent as thick as his glasses. As a youth he had served his four-year apprenticeship at Karpatia Restaurant in Budapest. He had been at the Culinary for twenty-three years. “People call me a lot of things,” he told us, chuckling gruffly, “but not a bad cook.”
He didn't much look at any of us. We gathered in the kitchen around a small rectangular table scattered with the chef's papers, a silverware container, and a silver bowl containing six small wads of yellow paper. He extended the bowl to Lou. Lou took one and unfolded it. “Shallow poach,” Lou said, and then took a breath. He had spoken with emotion, but I could not say whether it was worry, happiness, or simply relief that at last he knew what he was responsible for: cream of broccoli soup, rice pilaf, broccoli and carrots, and poached fillet of sole. We then toured the kitchen with the chef, who more or less pointed and mumbled. “Keep the ovens at three-fifty.” “Wash your own pots as you use them.” “Don't be late for your entrée.”
“Chef, are there tasting spoons?” asked Lou.
“Yah,” said Chef Balough, and set them with a clank on the table.
The stations were numbered one through six. There were two stoves and a small alcove with barely enough room for the table and a few chairs. Chef Balough asked us to fill out a form with pertinent data, including the name of our Skills instructorâ“So I know where to send you back,” he grunted. He then tried to put us at ease. “Cook like you cook for your mother. If your mother would eat it, so would I.” He paused, reconsidering this wisdom. “Maybe your mother would eat it anyway, so you don't feel bad.” He chuckled and continued. “We sit down and I tell you what I think and maybe we disagree. But when people see the grade, they don't usually disagree.”
And then it began. Five of us departed, leaving Lou to the shallow poach and fate, with the small advantages of more time to study and the knowledge that we no longer needed to be concerned with the menu Lou was beginning.
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I
returned at ten to a bustling kitchen and a single yellow wad in the bowl that read “Braise, Steak/Lamb Shank, Cauliflower, Snow Peas, Mashed Potatoes, Onion.” Lou had started late and was just presenting his soup as I sat down to take my verbal test. After a perfect score there I was up and cooking. I'd drawn one of the easier menus. The deep poach, for instance, requiring hollandaise, court bouillon, and a consommé, was a headache.
returned at ten to a bustling kitchen and a single yellow wad in the bowl that read “Braise, Steak/Lamb Shank, Cauliflower, Snow Peas, Mashed Potatoes, Onion.” Lou had started late and was just presenting his soup as I sat down to take my verbal test. After a perfect score there I was up and cooking. I'd drawn one of the easier menus. The deep poach, for instance, requiring hollandaise, court bouillon, and a consommé, was a headache.
The key to the braise was to get the meat seared and the mirepoix caramelized first since the braise would take about an hour and a half to cook. So while my meat seared at one end of the kitchen, I was back at the other end chopping mirepoix and fine-slicing onions for the soup, which would also take a long time, since a good caramelization was the critical element in onion soup. The veg and starch were no-brainers. I'd cook and shock the veg once the soup was simmeringâI wanted a nice long slow simmer to really develop the flavorâand the lamb shank was braising. The mashed potatoes could be done just before the soup was ready and held above the stove. The chef had made it easier still for me. Don't pipe the mashed potatoes, he said. Keep the veg plain. And garnish for the soup can be a simple slice of bread toasted with melted Parmesan and Gruyère.
Meanwhile Lou was making a critical error. The shallow poach method was simple: sweat shallots in a sauté pan, add fish stock and a little white wine, bring it to a simmer, lay the sole into the liquid, called a cuisson, on the bed of shallots, cover it with parchment, and pop it in the oven for
several minutes. The cuisson, reduced and thickened, would become the sauce.
several minutes. The cuisson, reduced and thickened, would become the sauce.
And there Lou made his error. He held his fish on a rack while he reduced his cuisson to sauce consistency. The problem was that, though reduced, it remained thin as water. Lou panicked and turned up the heat. It was nearly time to plate his entrée. In moments, Lou's sauce was gone. He had failed to add velouté or beurre manié (butter with flour worked into it) that would have thickened his cuisson.
The chef evaluated everything, tabulated Lou's score, and gave him an 83. “He boiled away his sauce,” Balough told me when I asked. “He had no sauce and he served his fish dry. I could have failed him. But everything else was perfect.” Balough shrugged. “Other chefs might have said, âYou fail.' They don't care.” It was difficult to fail with Chef Balough. He noted that some students get so flustered they give up entirely, or serve their entrée a half hour late, both of which result in failure. One student would fail the practical this block; his consommé raft broke and he simply fell apart after that.
In the meantime I had everything under control and worked efficiently at the stove beside Len and Eun-Jung, who frantically simmered her gravy for the roast chicken. Suddenly a burst of flame engulfed her, then disappeared, and her expression never changed. Often she was in my way, or Len's, or she'd take the burner that I'd been using and still needed, apparently oblivious to the awkwardnesses. Waves of nostalgia would sweep over me.
My soup was ready at twelve-fifteen as planned, had been ready for some time. I had forgotten my crouton in the broiler and it had turned to cinder, but I had saved enough cheese to quickly make another. I presented the soup and went about reheating the veg with butter and some salt, holding the perfectly cooked fork-tender shank above the stove while I strained the sauce and kept it hot on the stove. I plated the veg and mashed potatoes first. As I reached for the shank with my tongs, I noticed that a thin film of grease had separated out of the sauce and hung on top. I placed the shank on the plate, grabbed the sauce, and spread a spoonful of sauce over the shank. Chef Balough, having finished with all the rest, hovered over my shoulder at that moment.
“Let me see,” he said, pulling my sauce pot to him. “You need to degrease it.”
He had spoken as if I were a blockhead. I got flustered and stirred the sauce quickly.
“Now you're stirring the fat back into the sauce,” he exclaimed.
I halted and looked at him. I did not know what to do.
“Leave it,” he said, giving up. “Go on.”
I looked down at the shank. Already bright orange grease was bleeding out of the sauce I'd already spooned. I finished plating and sat to taste and evaluate with the chef.
My soup was overdone, simmered too long with too many onions that had been overcaramelized, and a few that had been scorched gave the soup a faint bitterness (I had not cut them uniformly). But mainly it was too rich. I argued that I was after rich.
“You wouldn't want to eat the whole thing,” the chef said.
“Not in this hot kitchen in the middle of July you wouldn't,” I argued. “Imagine a blustery winter evening and you're famished.” The chef was not buying. He liked a lighter flavor. And by the way, I shouldn't have cut the crust off my toasted bread; the French way is to leave the crust on.
My vegetables were cooked well. As was the shank, but it was a little dry; I should have covered it when I held it instead of simply setting it on the rack. Besides being greasy, the sauce was too thick. I had used brown sauce for my braising liquid. I should have used half veal stock. The potatoes were nicely done. “That's
something
,” he said, then tabulated my score.
something
,” he said, then tabulated my score.
I got a 91.7, and while I'd fared better than the chef's comments would lead one to expect, I was nonetheless disheartened by my many errors. My food was completely edible, pretty good in fact. But it was far from excellent. I had forsaken many details.
Most of my Skills class had done better than I. Greg Lynch drew the braise and scored a perfect 100. Balough had told him one would not find a better braised shank anywhere in the world. Ben scored a 99 on the braise. “My sauce was soooo good,” he bragged. “The chef grunted when he tasted my braise.” He begrudged Greg his 100, said Greg was still a “shoemaker,” which had become the popular sleight of the block.
I returned on the last day to ask Balough how the group had done relative to others. “The group did unusually well,” he said. “Two high passes today, three high passes yesterday.” He shook his head. “They knew all the questions, their knife skills were good.”
Half of my Skills class returned to thank the person they felt responsible
for their high score, Chef Pardus. Pardus told me pretty soon he was going to need a bigger hat.
for their high score, Chef Pardus. Pardus told me pretty soon he was going to need a bigger hat.
Adam had scored a 99 on the sautéed chicken with sauce fine herbs, zucchini, carrots, pasta, and split pea soup. When I asked him to tell me about his practical, he sounded like he was reliving a legendary sports moment.
“If I'd given him the other piece of chicken, I'd have gotten a hundred,” Adam said, noting that one tip of one chicken breast was a tad overdone. “Everything else was perfect. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't supposed to go that good. I don't know why it did. I knew that he didn't want bacon in the split pea soup because he doesn't like color, heavy flavor; he wants things to be what they are. He wants split pea soup to be split pea soup. So I rendered the bacon and cooked the shallot and the garlic and the celery in the bacon fat, but I took the lardons out and held them on the side, and I took part of the bacon fat and made the croutons with the bacon fat. And I put the lardons in a sachet into the soup for the last minutes of cooking. I never would have thought of that. I don't know why I thought of that. It was the perfect amount of flavor. And I cooked the potatoes in chicken stock instead of cooking them with the peas and the hock, right? And I saved the chicken stock to thin out my soup. That worked out pretty well. I glazed the carrots with chicken sauce, butter, and zucchini I just blanched, shocked, reheated, and tossed in whole butter.”
I asked him what he thought of Balough.
“I think he knows what he's doing,” Adam said. “People are like âHe shouldn't be grading the practical, he grades so easy, he's got no sense of flavor.' Bullshit. He's lenient, but he's right. I tasted Melissa's soup, and she said, âHe said it has too much flavor.' And she looked at me like âI don't understand what he's talking about.' But it's true. You know what broccoli tastes like when you cook it till it turns gray, you know how it's got that weird sort of mushy gray underneath flavor? Well, that was the way the food finished. I knew exactly what he was talking about.”
Vic scorched his consommé, just as he had done in Skills. And Erica scored a 91. She too had drawn the sauté. “I'm pleased, yeah,” she told me, smiling, shrugging modestly and looking away. Then she looked at me with those incredibly blue eyes and said, “I got the pea soup. And you
know
how I feel about pea soup.”
know
how I feel about pea soup.”
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