Adventures of a Culinary Padawan

Mom always said I would wind up flipping burgers - in my family motivation and belittlement are synonyms. Nevertheless, I have to give credit where credit is due; I have been flipping quite a few burgers lately.

In the last year or so that I finished - then slipped into near-perpetual rewrite of - a book I've been working on (Itself one third of a larger body of work.), I've been thinking a lot about cooking.

The last few months have been especially topsy-turvy: I was accepted into the Oregon Culinary Institute, and later the University of Nevada. Between these two schools, I endlessly debated whether or not to go to Lake Tahoe Community College to take up their culinary program. In the end, I split the difference and took a gig as a Culinary Padawan in Lake Tahoe.

The rational behind ditching the OCI classes, despite the seriously screaming case of homesickness I've developed over the last couple years, is Molliwogg's gig is skyrocketing in leaps and bounds and it would be stupid, not to mention incredibly selfish, to leave now. As a consolation prize, we're moving to Lake Tahoe which, for those of you keeping score, most certainly does not suck.

Ditching UNR is another story; I have a serious agro-mentality when it comes to higher education and the pomposity that comes with it. I'll spare you the details for now, but for those of you reading this entry on Edible Foods, check back later on Comentario Loco for a blog entry or two on that subject. I have a lot more respect for people, including myself, who succeed despite a college education than I do for those who succeed because of one. Molliwogg, John, and David (wife and two closest friends respectively) are prime examples of this. Although Molliwogg is currently pursuing her Bachelor's so I'm going to have to kick her out of the club soon enough.

The added advantage of this decision is I'm being paid for learning something that, up until a few weeks ago, I was planning to pay someone to teach me.

Enough of the thought process, it's time to get back to the gig. It's a strange situation - a mix between buffet-style industrial cooking and high-end catering. The high-end catering aspect of the gig is supposed to get pretty interesting next week, but I'll save that for another entry. Suffice to say my employer is on notice that they have their choice of either of my testicles provided they get me in on that gig.

I've been a (hyper)active cook at home for years now - experimenting, dinking around, that sort of thing - but nearly everything I knew about cooking flew straight out the window on my first day. Cooking in a professional environment has certainly changed my views on...well, everything. My knife skills - more than adequate in the confines of my own kitchen - resemble a two-year-old's new do after finding mommy's scissors. At home I cooked things until I thought they were done; at work I've learned the health department has something to say about what's done and what's not done - each morning I calibrate thermometers and every afternoon and evening I spear random dead animals to see if their internal temperature is up to snuff.

Don't get me wrong though, I wasn't totally clueless, I've read Kitchen Confidential and Heat a few times - the culinary equivalents of What to Expect When You're Expecting - and cribbed at least a vague understanding of what I was getting myself into. From Molliwogg's past stints as a bartender, and my own experience taking classes for the Oregon Food Handler's Card a few years back I've garnered a rudimentary understanding of food safety and sanitation. It's not a degree from the CIA, but those experiences, along with a few others, provided a small foundation from which to build from.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, I flipped a lot of burgers my first couple of days - somewhere north of two hundred - along with dozens of marinated chicken breasts and whatever else the powers that be though safe enough to throw at the nervous newbie. I also whipped up a giant pot of cheesy broccoli soup that, if I do say so myself, came out pretty good.

I'm at the end of my third week of culinary Jedi school and have sunk into a routine of prep work in the morning, salad and sandwich duties (I'm sort of a low rent garde manger in that respect.), along with helping cook lunch and dinner.

Out of those duties, the bulk of my time is spent on prep - paying my dues while learning. Three or four hours a day spent cutting julienne bell peppers and onions gives one plenty of opportunity to practice knife skills. As such I've become pretty good with the julienne technique. Dicing, now that's a different story all together. I'm still wrapping my head around that one - trying to get the cuts just right so the guts of whatever I'm dicing don't explode all over the cutting board, honing accuracy, working on speed, etc. Wearing a cut glove while practicing isn't all that great - I understand the necessity, but man does it get in the way of things - but things are progressing, and hey, I haven't cut myself yet, so I'll have to consider that a good thing.

While saving my skin from unnatural separation, my time there has not been without a few blunders. Dumping half a pot of freshly cooked pasta all over the floor wasn't one of my prouder moments, and causing my co-workers to flee bite-sized projectiles of tofu and broccoli florets while I gave a rather poor imitation of tossing a saute together will haunt me for the rest of my days. But it's all good.

At any rate, I'll keep updating this portion of Edible Foods when the mood hits me - sort of a day-in-the-life series on what it's like to be a Culinary Padawan. Check maze1971.com for non-food related blog entries if you're interested.

Tags: culinary padawan

Labels: Food, Personal

posted by m/a/z/e  [10:24 AM]   0 comments