craig001

Do you have Shop 'n Save out there? THey carry frozen pearl onions in the St. Louis area.

Skate is good. I do a saute with a parmesan panko crust. If you can get it dressed then it is worth the money. The last time I picked some up at a lcoal fishmonger it was not. While not difficult to dress you lose about half the weight was waste.

I love turducken, if only my wife was a carnivore. They are not hard to do, but as others have noted, time consuming, Peter the Eater, how's your seafood version coming along? SOunds interesting. Are you going to use transglumate or Activa to bind?

A lot depends on what you want to do. Going to a community college is a good way to go, less expensive, more casual environment, local; going to the CIA, Johnson & Wales, LeCordon Bleu is more expensive but the CIA and J&W offer bachelor degrees (4 yr) vs. AOS's. If yoiu go the community college route with the school to make sure the 1) all the credits are accepted elsewhere should you decide to go for a bachelors degree and 2) are they ACF accredited. Keep in mind that starting out the hours are lond and the pay is lower than you will expect with or without a degree or certificate. School should teach you the basics in food, theory and operations then you will need to go out and pay your dues. Hope this synopsis helps.

Well, the third thing is that since the jackets are double breasted you can just flip the lapels over and look semi-clean if you had to meet someone or go out to the floor.

I saw this thread, read it and just thought I would throw in my $0.02. I am a non-traditional student (read - just turned 50 with a BSJ) currently enrolled in a Culinary Arts program in the Midwest. I have over 20 years of food service experience - started washing dishes in 1973 at 16 and last cooked professionally in 1994. I have been to the "mountain" so to speak by attending some Boot Camps at the CIA, Hyde Park and have some Continuing Ed. credits from them as well. So I think that I have some background to speak from. Just because you went to Culinary School doesn't mean you are a good cook, chef or manager - the school just gives you the base to build on. If you do the work your education will give you the basics- technique, an understanding of flavor profiles, how to do the paperwork, nutritional aspects of food and hopefully a clue if this is what you want to do. If you came out of the program thinking that you are the next bif TV Star Chef then you might have forgotten to park your ego at the door. Because after school's out it is time to start paying your dues and building a reputation. What that reputation will be is totally up to you - work hard and apply yourself and jobs will always be there at the end of the day. Slack off and act like you know it all and are better than the staff and you will get that reputation. So I am sorry you dropped $40k on tuition, but did you look at local community/junior colleges with Culinary Arts programs? I pay about $80/credit hour and when I am done I won't be "done" as I am considering a Masters in Nutrition, but the problem there is the $500/credit hour tuition. So it is what yoiu make of it. For anyone considering this field I would say get a job at a local establishment for a minimum of six months before starting any Culinary School to make sure this is something you enjoy. Hopefully this makes some sense, but the feeling I got was that people felt ripped off after paying all this money in tuition only to find out that the degree or certificate only got them in the door for an interview or stage.

I have one of these as well. Used it a few times and now it lives in it's box in the basement. Sadly the combination of a downdraft exhaust fan and an overly sensitive smoke/fire detector in the alarm system made it less than usable. The alarm goes off if I roast duck, boil pasta or take a shower with the bathroom door open, makes me think about having the system being monitored ended. I just fire up one of my grills to smoke - no fire trucks pulling up to the door. But when I did use it for meats: Salmon, chicken, trout to name three - I liked the result.

Thanks for the welcome. Even though this class is about a year off for me (depends on availability of the pre-req's I need) I have been developing the menu and concept. I have been building an idea for a restaurant from the start and using each class to help develop the concept. Anyway, this meal planning/restaurant ops class is the last class I will need. So I am currently shooting for Fall 2008 ( two classes I signed up for this summer were canceled and I am waiting to see about the fall classes I enrolled in). So I need to get my chemicals and equipment and start playing. I am thinking about using this technique for both dessert offerings and two of the three items on the app/salad offering.

I just found this thread through a Google search. Simply fantastic. I am a non-traditional Culinary Arts student in St. Louis, MO and am starting to plan my 'Meal" for a Meal Planning/OPs class I will be taking. I was going to do a Flourless Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Poached Pear Puree and Raspberries, then I started to think about doing the chocolate portion as a Taglitelli (sp) or a spun round of say linguine, then I saw a piece on el Bulli and thought about chocolate pearls on a vanilla pear foam... I am just bouncing all over with this. But would the foam support the chocolate pearl? The joys of Google searching....

I have a Deni. It works fairly well but finding the Deni Vacuum Rolls are hard to find. I may upgrade to the Tila Foodsaver, the one I'm looking at is ~$159 with a three stage pump. Can't say if that is an improvement over the two stage pump on my Deni, but the rolls of sealer material are more easily found. A good trick is to apply your rub or seasoning to meats and then seal them up. Really helps get the flavor into the meat and you can freeze it and when ready defrost and cook. I have also made Gumbo and Jambalaya, sealed it into bags, froze it and then just put the bag into a pot of boiling water th reheat.