Learning what culinary school has to teach
Posted on | July 2, 2009
I am always struggling to improve the speed and accuracy of my knife cuts. I work hard to make sure I have a perfect mise en place. And I’ve been struggling to get faster. At everything.
But, after watching how the fast cutters managed to cut so quickly yesterday, I decided to pay attention to all the things the fast students do in the hopes of learning.
And, in one morning, this is what I observed.
Medium dice is a matter of opinion
Everyone teased the people with the fastest knife cuts yesterday of having gargantuan pieces for hours before I realized that was how they managed to cut so quickly.
Recipes? What recipes?
At the start of this term, the chef asked us to stick to the recipes so we could compare dishes. But it is pretty time consuming to find / weight / measure / prepare required items. Many students have figured out that winging it is so much faster.
Help yourself
Yesterday, I came to school early to clarify butter to use for my midterm practical exam. In the space of one hour, I saw three separate students help themselves.
Ditto equipment. And burners.
Complaining Girl was the champion of helping herself to equipment other people were using. But she is not the only one. Yesterday, for example, someone took the ladle out of my pot of clarified butter while someone else moved my saute pan off a burner they wanted to use.
Cleanliness is next to … erm
We are supposed to wash our own equipment. Yesterday, for the first time, I realized, not everyone does. By a long shot.
And now a word from our sponsor
I was telling my husband about my revelations when he said “What’s worse is this behavior is rewarded.”
“Rewarded? What do you mean?”
“It’s the student who does not do this stuff that gets the special learning opportunity, isn’t it? The student who spends their time trying to make proper knife cuts and getting their own ingredients.”
I’m learning.
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3 Responses to “Learning what culinary school has to teach”
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July 2nd, 2009 @ 7:24 am
Interesting lesson here about ambition and about how people today approach learning! I’m with you on this one that this is one case where doing something better, not faster, will be rewarded in the long run. If one doesn’t learn technique and the proper way to really cook properly(and this goes with doing anything in life well) then they have won the battle now but will lose the war later.
July 2nd, 2009 @ 10:12 am
[...] Chef Gordon wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAt the start of this term, the chef asked us to stick to the recipes so we could compare dishes. But it is pretty time consuming to find / weight / measure / prepare required items. Many students have figured out that winging it is so … [...]
July 3rd, 2009 @ 10:36 am
Way back, my old Chef told me once that the difference between a cook and a chef is, that cooks learn how to cook properly, chefs learn how to short cut the process without being found out. Not to do it, mind you, but to find those who do.
My kitchen has, approximately, 250 years of hard labor between line and prep. Without my watchful eye on clarified butter, warmed up stock, knives, strainers, mise, or butchered chickens, there would be very little actual work and very much stealing from the Joneses going on.
That’s not to say you should have to deal with that in school. After all, you pay the bucks to get an education without that side of the industry. But in the long run you’ll win over all your fellow students, both because you know how to make things (and, yes, consistency is darn important if you crank out 60 plates of the same dish every day, winging it is dangerous). you make things beautiful (julienne vs. jul-crap can be the difference between one star and none, or being promoted and not), and you’ve seen all the shady tricks so once you become a Sous you’ll be able to smack some fingers in other people’s jars.