The Making of a Chef (39 page)

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Authors: Michael Ruhlman

BOOK: The Making of a Chef
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“So in sautéing you could say, my God, there are probably ten different temperature levels of sautéing. Surely, the principle is to encase the meat or fish by caramelizing the protein, keep the flavor in, but there are different levels that depend on what it is I'm doing. Some need a very harsh level; others need a very soft level that almost generates some moisture. It depends on what it is that you do. Whether it's chicken or bacon, all those things require different levels.
“On top of it, the one word, again, is passion. Seeking more knowledge each and every day, doing more things each and every day.”
Ryan had also talked about passion—he'd take a student with passion over a student with experience any day.
“Can passion be taught?” I asked Metz.
“Yes,” he said. “By example. Not by talking about it. By example. Absolutely. If the students are involved with a teacher who, when he or she talks about a fresh herb and what that means, and begins to become excited by this silly little fresh herb, that's passion. If they see that that person, being more mature and more experienced, still gets enjoyment by being able to focus on that, understanding and appreciating the difference that makes in his or her cooking, I think, yeah, by example it can be learned.
“And then there's another ingredient that's called balance. I see a lot of
people, especially younger people, they involve themselves—they have an opportunity to open a restaurant—they involve themselves heart and soul, and that's good, but to the point where they may get burned out. My viewpoint is, there are other parts to life that are very important, and it's by maintaining that balance that I can always find this to be exciting and always get pleasure out of being involved in cooking. If this is the only thing I do and I do it eighteen hours a day, it becomes a drudgery and something I may not look forward to. A friend of mine felt that way: he hated to go back into the bakeshop, into the kitchen, and that's terrible if it comes to that, because then he doesn't do a good job. You're not happy, you're miserable, you don't look forward to it.
“So I would say those are the three components: basic understanding, passion, and balance.”
Metz concerned himself about such abstract matters of education but he also kept his eye on the food here, ordering food from various kitchens, he noted, to see what the students and instructors were up to. He then said, “Potato salad is something out of my heritage, and a lot of people don't know how to do it well. I don't come down hard; I say try this way, try that way.”
“You tried some recently from a kitchen?” I asked.
“Mm-hm,” he said, nodding almost imperceptibly.
I knew by his expression that he had not been pleased. “How was it?” I asked.
“It wasn't too good,” he said. Clearly Metz was not angry about this, but instead he conveyed genuine sadness; it had made him unhappy.
“Why wasn't it good?”
“You know,” he said, “for the same reason some people think it's fashionable to undercook vegetables. I think it's the silliest thing there is. If they want to eat them raw, give 'em raw to me.” He paused, mused. “Not cooked enough. Now, one could say, ‘Well, so what?' Well, it has so many implications. A, it doesn't feel comfortable. B, the potatoes don't absorb the flavor. Texture and flavor, those are two important components of what food is all about. Again, it's the principle. You have to know how long to cook what item. Potatoes you don't cook medium rare, especially if you want to make a salad. Those are very simple things. But oftentimes, people get caught by ‘I gotta do different, I gotta do it in a more modern way.' There's nothing wrong with doing something the old-fashioned way if it produces great results, nothing wrong with that. Why mess around with something that's perfect?”
As I listened to Mr. Metz speak I sensed—as I had sensed in every kitchen I'd attended at this school—that how one cooked potatoes was only a link away from a moral value judgment. Mr. Metz had told me one puts one's values on the plate; in fact, he suggested that this was the final and distinguishing element one brought to the basics of cookery. “The thing you add is your own sense of standards and quality,” he said.
I asked him to clarify what he meant when he said one puts values on a plate.
“You know an artist is represented by his or her paintings or drawings or sculpture, the quality of it,” he said. “I think we project our values by the food we have on the plate, not necessarily in the same artistic sense, but in the sense of flavors we offer. I always feel that when I put food on the plate for my family—
anybody
—I'm saying, ‘I feel good about this. This is what I believe is good food. If it's not good food, I wouldn't put it there. This is what I like, this is my standard, this is what I believe is good food and I hope you enjoy it.' I think you make a value statement every time.”
This, I realized after we'd said good-bye, truly was the final element of becoming a good cook. There was no secret and it didn't come from outside oneself. Your own values and your own standards—that, in the end, was all. This final element, as the Culinary tried to teach it, was a standard so near perfection that it would be almost impossible to reach for everyone who left this unusual world. And yet the good students here, the students with passion, the Adams and Ericas, they would always understand perfection, absolute and unattainable, if only to gauge how close or far away from it they'd landed. The standard was clear. Perfectly cooked. Perfectly clean. Perfect consistency. Date on a dime at the bottom of a gallon. Under Metz, the Culinary Institute of America had made itself into a theater of perfection.
T
he American Bounty Restaurant, my final kitchen, was the last stop for students and thus, ostensibly, the Culinary's best restaurant. When I met with Ryan and Chef Fritz Sonnenschmidt to discuss a book about how the Culinary trains cooks, we ate at American Bounty, as they and their guests often did. Among tourists, it was a popular restaurant, serving thirty-six thousand people annually.
I had worn my whites to introduce myself to Chef Dan Turgeon, a relatively young chef at thirty-three, as was my custom, forever hoping to be mistaken for a student, though I was, by introducing myself, calling attention to the fact that I was an outsider.
“Excuse me, Chef?” I said when I saw him moving past me. He stopped in mid-stride, grudgingly. Chef Turgeon had blond eyebrows and icy blue eyes. He maintained a rigid posture and had the sloping shoulders of someone who lifts weights. I said my name, hoping he'd been made aware of me. He winced and shook his head.
“Has Dr. Mayo—”
He squinted again, unpleasantly, but nodded—meaning that Fred Mayo, associate vice president of degree programs, had told him I would be hanging out in his kitchen. He said, “Do you know about—”
“Pre-Day One,” I said. “Today, three-thirty.”
“Right,” Turgeon said, and walked away.
I remained standing in the same spot for several moments, perhaps
expecting the chef to return with a package of information and a smile, but he didn't. Not a handshake, not a good-ta-meet-ya—nothing. I left to meet my St. Andrew's pals, who were finishing up seven days in the Escoffier kitchen. They waited in the hall shortly before three-thirty, a few of them mumbling about Chef Turgeon. Manning said, “The chef is supposed to be tough. I already had him in American Regional, but I heard he's gotten worse.” Everyone nodded wearily.
At three-thirty, we filed into the restaurant and took seats at small tables now without tablecloths. Paul Angelis, working behind the glassed-in patisserie/rotisserie station on view for customers, saw us and came into the dining room. He was unhappy because he was no longer part of this group. A missed International Cuisine class had to be repeated in order to graduate and he had been scheduled into P.M. Bounty.
Gene, the group leader, said, “Go join your class.”
“Shut up,” Paul said. “You guys are my class.”
He loitered some more and slunk off when Chef Turgeon appeared. Someone said, loud enough for Paul to hear, “He's not with us.”
Turgeon, unsmiling, said, “Thank God.” Then he opened an enormous three-ring binder on a table. He read from a class list, taking attendance and giving assignments as he went. “Russell Cobb, Mark Zanowski? Soup station. Scott Stearns, Scott McGowan? Fish station. Michael Ruhlman, John Marshall? Grill station.”
Chef Turgeon continued down the ranks but I stopped hearing as the blood drained from my ears. The chef had plugged my name into the vacancy left by Paul. Unless there was some mistake, I'd made the hot line at the Culinary's best restaurant.
“ … The most important thing I can tell you is to read these handouts,” the chef was saying when my hearing returned. “They're the most in-depth handouts in the school. I've told you how to tie your shoes. This is the bible. Follow the recipes. There's no room for interpretation.”
Pre-Day One speech covered the basics, but you always got a good sense of the chef here. On his expectations and grading: “If you come to class every day and on time, you're in code, you set your station and cook your food and clean up, keep the kitchen clean, clean things when I ask you to—if you do
all
those things, you will get a C.”
His philosophy toward teaching the class: “This is your job, and I'm the executive chef. And I want you to act that way. I'm not asking you to kiss
my butt. When I was in the field, I'd often have people who wanted to work for me come in and work for a couple days, so I could see how they did. That's how I want you to treat this.”
He broke student performance into three categories. Knowledge—knowing the handout with all the Bounty recipes and knowing your station. Skills—how well you cooked your food and ran your station. And professionalism. “I shouldn't even have to say this, but make sure your knives are sharp. I find a dull knife, I keep it. No foul language. We're based on a hundred percent performance. People do fail American Bounty and it's usually because they miss a day. The way I look at it is, you guys are already graduated. This is your first job. We serve about a hundred twenty people a day. My job is to get you ready for the industry.”
His goals: education, hospitality, and to serve the best food in the school.
“If you make a mistake, tell me,” he continued. “I'm not gonna take your head off. Just say, ‘Chef, I torched this,' or ‘I cooked this a little past what it should be.' But don't try to slip something by. These people are paying New York City prices. If you make a mistake, say so. The big thing is not sending it out.”
“My fellow is Rose Ann Serpico,” he continued. “If she asks you to do anything, assume it's coming from me, it's the same as coming from me. The kitchen opens at six-thirty. You don't have to be here till seven, but you can come as early as six-thirty. When you get in here the first thing I would get on my station is tasting spoons, a bain-marie, and salt and pepper. Get your stuff on sheet trays. If you need six pounds of cabbage, make sure it's on your tray. Supplemental is done at eight-thirty and there are a max of eight items on it. If you don't have something, you have to scrounge from other kitchens. During service, keep it as quiet as possible.”
And then he moved into each station. Russ and Mark were responsible for the turkey broth (served with a turkey-and-herb dumpling and garnished with julienned carrots and scallion), corn and lobster chowder (with red pepper and chives), and an apple, carrot, and Vidalia-onion soup, as well as a goat-cheese-and-caramelized-onion tart. Veg station made corn cakes with dry Jack cheese and pan-roasted mushrooms, and roasted poblanos stuffed with goat cheese from nearby Coach Farm, black beans, and fresh corn. Sauté, the most difficult station because of the popularity of its dishes and numerous
à la minute
plating responsibilities, did a crab-cake starter, pan-roasted chicken with an old-fashioned mustard gravy, sprinkled with
toasted garlic, and served with whipped potatoes, sautéed corn, peppers, and squash, and stewed kale, and spit-roasted leg of lamb with a rosemary-garlic-cabernet jus, cheddar scalloped potatoes, grilled summer squashes, and oven-dried potatoes.
Good, hearty American chuck.
Tomorrow, however, we would not do any of this. For the last two blocks, the schedule changed to allow students to graduate instead of cook; that is, for Escoffier and Bounty, the block began on graduation day. Tomorrow's graduation day was unusual in that it included a tri-annual graduation for the bachelor's program. The graduates and their families would dine in the American Bounty Restaurant. Tomorrow we would make 120 crab-cake aps (with coleslaw and a red pepper–dill sauce), 120 watercress-endive-apple-and-baby-beet salads with a walnut-raspberry vinaigrette, we would grill 120 already-marinating chicken breasts that would be served with a roasted tomato salsa and an onion pudding, and for dessert 120 black-bottomed banana cream pies with chocolate, vanilla, and bourbon sauces.
“We're gonna do a red pepper coulis with this,” Chef Turgeon said, beginning the following morning's seven A.M. lecture with the crab cake. He had a strong baritone that created an almost humorous contrast to his words—coulis, capers, onion pudding. “Sweat the shallots and garlic till they're tender but don't give 'em any color. Add the peppers and sauté, really just to heat through, add the chicken stock and bring it up to a simmer and then purée it in a bar blender. I want this nappé consistency.” He had a white board on an easel, and he designed the plate with colored markers.
He moved next to the salad. “You're gonna need to toast your walnuts. The last class burnt them.” He paused to shake his head. “They burnt their walnuts on their last day at the Culinary Institute of America. After burning a hundred pounds of walnuts, after burning a hundred pounds of pine nuts, I want to tell you a little trick. It sounds stupid but it works. If you're toasting walnuts, put a walnut in the corner of your cutting board. It really works, I'm telling you.
“O.K.,” he continued, “fish is doing the onion pudding. You're gonna do it five more times. I want it in the oven at ten-fifteen … . Grill, there's some sauce already made; it's complete except for the tequila. I want you to do that recipe four more times. Do not add the chipotles, got that? They don't want heat. We may even monté au beurre. The lime cream, which is in the poblano recipe, do that six times. Thin it with half-and-half.” The chicken
was to be seasoned with salt and ancho peppers roasted crunchy and ground to powder. “At ten-forty-five, I want you to mark 'em off,” he said to me and John. “Nice crosshatch. First at seven o'clock, then at eleven. Don't turn the grill all the way up. I want the chicken cooked rare and I want the skin to render. Put 'em on half-sheet pans, size 'em so they cook evenly—a sheet pan with big ones, medium and small—and we'll finish 'em in a four-hundred-degree oven. I'll let you know when to fire those. Stagger fire 'em, maybe four sheets at a time.
“The important thing to remember,” he concluded, “is you're working in a banquet kitchen today.” This meant everybody should know what a small dice was so that if two different people were doing small dice, their dice would be identical. “The last plate should look like the first plate. You should all have the same sense of urgency here. At eleven o'clock, I want to be doing this.” He tilted in place, twiddled his thumbs. “I want to be cleaning something, checking my mise en place. My goal and acceptance level is perfection. Anything less, you can do it somewhere else.”
And into the kitchen we went. It was one thing, it occurred to me then, to be a hard-ass. It was something altogether more impressive to be a hard-ass at seven in the morning. Turgeon never faltered.
 
 
T
he banquet on Day One allowed me to get comfortable with our station and with the kitchen. Furthermore, Turgeon made sure the outgoing class had prepped our stations. I'd made a prep list and stood in the walk-in realizing everything had been done. All the restaurant kitchens had to operate this way given that they were restaffed every seven days and the chef had no idea what sort of crew would arrive. I looked at John, who rummaged through our mise en place, and asked, “What should we do?” He shrugged. I suggested that we go home for a little nap and come back for service. John didn't think this would be a good idea.
John had continued to cook at the shooting club six days a week, usually till eleven or twelve at night, and was up and on the road by five-thirty the next morning. The one good thing about his schedule, John told me, was that he'd gone from a forty-four waist to a thirty-eight. He said it had been a long year. Once, walking to the parking lot with him after service, thinking about how he would head straight to another kitchen, I said, “Your poor wife.” With comic surprise, he said, “Am I married?!” and made a loud
Homer Simpson noise. He was older than I, experienced in the kitchen, and I was glad he would be my grill partner.
 
 
G
rill station put out good simple food, shrimp and steak, but what landed me in the weeds every day was the prep. Though there were only two dishes, I could never seem to work fast enough to catch up on all the components that went into the dishes. On top of this, there was often a party that we'd have to grill and make a sauce for in addition to à la carte.
Our appetizer was grilled shrimp satay with a spicy peanut sauce, Oriental greens, cucumber, and mint salad. There were only three components, but each component comprised an array of other components. The shrimp had to be marinated in an elaborate curry marinade that included fish sauce, curry, honey, coconut milk, garlic, and various curry spices. Then there was the peanut sauce, which combined red curry paste, turmeric, peanut butter, coconut milk, chicken stock, fish sauce, and lime juice. For the salad, a mix of greens, we had to peel, seed, and slice cucumber, julienne red pepper, sauté, season, and julienne shiitakes, and, at service, chiffonade cilantro and mint. Onto this salad went a vinaigrette that included rice wine vinegar, lime juice, Dijon mustard, honey, minced scallions, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, ground coriander, and lastly some peanuts that had been toasted and chopped.
The entrée was more elaborate. A six-ounce filet mignon was first coated with dry marinade of paprika, salt, cumin, sugar, mustard, pepper, dried oregano, cayenne, garlic, and ancho chili powder. (Anchos—dried poblanos—made a tasty powder when roasted and ground, and gave an excellent flavor to salsas when rehydrated and chopped.) We had to cut hundreds of large french fries and blanch them in 275-degree oil before service. These couldn't simply be fried like normal potatoes. We had to spice them with onions that, before we cut a single potato, were peeled, chopped, sent through the small die of a Hobart grinder, squeezed of their liquid, and baked till they became dry, then ground in a spice grinder and mixed with salt and, of all things, a little Old Bay. There were huge colanders full of spinach to stem and clean, and shallots to mince for the sautéed spinach. Turgeon served succotash with the steak—onion (small dice), corn (cut from the cob, boiled, and shocked), and many pounds of fava beans (shucked, boiled, shocked, then peeled). This mixture was reheated to order in cream that we'd reduced to nappé. Rough chopped chervil would be
added at the last minute. We wouldn't just serve this succotash on the plate—too easy. We'd put it on the plate in its own little cup made from a sweet onion. First we would boil the onions, shock them, peel them, cut them in half so that its top could be rested like a lid against the bowl soon to overflow with succotash. The onion, of course, had its own seasoning: two parts ancho chili powder, one part ground cumin, one part ground coriander. But the bane of my Bounty existence was the barbecue sauce on which the grilled filet was rested: minced onion, a head of minced garlic, dry mustard, ancho chili powder, cumin, coriander, cayenne, dried oregano, tomatoes roasted black, sherry vinegar, molasses, honey, bourbon, veal stock, brown sauce, and cilantro stems.

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