Journal of a Culinary Student

[CityCook]

I'm not that late.

I'll be posting here a record of experiences and reactions surrounding my culinary education for a time. Who can say how long I will continue to post? I certainly can't. I believe that I will continue to post until I forget to do so for a long enough time that it becomes embarrassing and cumbersome to stay up to date. Having said that, I'll try my best to stay current. I'm using eGullet because it's more organized than I am, and because I'll have the opportunity to get feedback (please) from my fellows.

First, a little background: Aside from a couple of catering gigs and a brief stint as an underpaid personal chef, I had no formal training as a cook until just before my 24th birthday this year, when I started working weekends at a local restaurant of favorable repute (http://www.slocum-house.com/). Like I said, I'm not that late getting this journal started. I'm also taking an intro to cooking principles class at a local junior college. The restaurant job was a hook-up. I am lucky to have the opportunity to learn in a kitchen of this caliber. The guy that hooked me up worked with Jeremiah Towers, and he said he could get me a hook-up at Stars in San Francisco, when I move there in May to start cooking school. This guy is very cool.

I own the Ruhlman books. I own the Bourdain books. I own the Larousse, I own the Professional Chef, I own Pepin's Complete Techniques. I've read everything through except the Larousse. Can you blame me?

You know how a typical western-style knife has to have an edge ground on two sides to get an edge? I think that my complete culinary education consists of two distinct sides, the academic and the practical. I've always been more comfortable with the academic side, and I'm just now starting to grind down that practical side. Where the two sides meet is the edge, the actual working part of the knife (the student), which for efficiency depends on both sides being ground, balanced and honed. Like the metaphor? Right now, by the way, my edge is about as sharp as a dried mushroom. I've got a long ways to go.

So here is my post, which will bring us up to date:

My first day at the restaurant was one of my more terrifying experiences. It was a Friday; I had finished a day at my office job, drove across town and figured out the back way in to the restaurant kitchen. I was wearing a t-shirt, my check pants, clogs, and I was carrying my knife roll. I stepped into the kitchen and immediately realized that I didn't know where to stand. I didn't know this because I couldn't see a spot on the floor that was not periodically occupied by at least one person doing some useful work in that spot. There was no useful work I knew how to do in any spot on the floor. I felt that the best thing for all involved would be for me to back out of the kitchen again and let these busy people do their work without the obstruction of my body. My feet knew this, but I made my brain tell my damned feet to stay put.

I met the chef. I met some cooks. I met some expediters. I was put to work trimming strip steaks. I was shown how to do it right by a cook, and then again by the chef. The chef's manner was paternal and instructive; there was a reason behind every technique. Most everybody was quite kind; they recognized the panic in my eyes, I think, and knew how terrified I was. Eventually, as I slogged through maybe a dozen steaks, I was taken off the job because they actually needed to be finished before the night was over. I think I started cutting fruit then. I was better at fruit.

There was nothing in my life to prepare me for the pace and precision that a professional kitchen demands. I did have the strong feeling, about an hour and a half in to the night, that I was in over my head, that I could not do this. I had been wrong to put myself in such a hostile environment. I figured out the steps I would take to back out of the situation: I would take off my apron and coat, put my knives away, calmly approach the chef and explain that I had made a terrible mistake, that I was sorry, and that I had to be going now. Then I would walk out, get in my car, and return to the life I was comfortable with. Yet again, I made my brain tell my feet to stay where they were, and tell my hands to leave the buttons on my jacket alone and concentrate on cutting fruit.

So, I stayed. I've now worked 14 shifts, and I'm counting my third shift, which lasted 20 minutes. My third shift lasted 20 minutes because I nearly cut my right index fingertip off with a mandoline while slicing cucumber 20 minutes into my shift. A cucumber is a cucurbit, which is a type of fruit-vegetable, so it's not really a fruit, which I'm better at cutting than most anything else. I should have known better. I now slice cucumber with a knife. My third shift, incidentally, was the first one I worked with the sous-chef, whose friend has worked with Jeremiah Towers and said he could get me a job at Stars. It was not the best introduction I could have asked for.

So, to bring this long post to a close and to bring us up to date, I have been getting faster very slowly. I have learned where most everything that concerns me in the kitchen is kept, and where everything sometimes is if it isn't where it should be. I either work the pantry station, plating salads and some appetizers, or the dessert station, plating desserts, or sometimes I "float." I have made acquaintanceships with several cooks and expediters, and have found them to be, for the most part, genial and sympathetic to my lack of coordination (as Bourdain would say, I have no moves) and lack of speed. I have endured much ridicule, both first-hand and second-hand, regarding my lack of experience and speed. These are problems that are resolving themselves, so I sometimes wonder what these people will have to ridicule me about when I'm smarter and faster. The chef has a lot of knowledge and varying amounts of patience for putting up with mistakes. I sometimes try to put myself in his shoes, especially when I'm reprimanded for doing something wrong (which happens an average of 2.5 times a shift, I think), since he has to have a lot more on his mind than I have to.

Aside from the techniques for preparing certain items and the location of equipment to do so, I have learned the following things so far:

1. Never assume that you know what you're doing until you have had every component of every technique demonstrated to you by someone with authority. You will probably be wrong if you assume, and it takes less time to ask a question than to fix a mistake.

2. Always smell the crab before it goes on the appetizer plate.

3. Always show up early and do not leave until your usefulness for the night is at an end, or until the chef sends you home.

4. The answer to "Are you hungry?" is always "Yes."

5. Music makes you feel better.

6. Ego is the enemy of learning.

7. Water goes in the pan after the pan is in the oven. Hot water. If you don't know why you can't get hot water out of the sink, ask (see #1).

I will add to this list.

JJ

[CityCook]

Quick P.S.:

I'm at the restaurant until late March 2004. As posted elsewhere on eGullet, I'm taking three weeks to visit France and Spain, to eat and drink there, and then I'll be moving to SF and starting at the CCA late May 2004.

Edited December 1, 2003 by bratt23 (log)

[CityCook]

it's Jeremiah Tower. ugh. I'm a moron.

[Squeat Mungry]

The restaurant job was a hook-up.  I am lucky to have the opportunity to learn in a kitchen of this caliber.  The guy that hooked me up worked with Jeremiah Towers, and he said he could get me a hook-up at Stars in San Francisco, when I move there in May to start cooking school.  This guy is very cool.

Hey bratt23,

Not sure just how recently you talked to this guy, but I thought you might want a heads-up that Tower sold his interest in Stars years ago, and that the new owners finally closed down the place altogether early this year after a dispute with the landlord.

Good luck in your career; hope you enjoy CCA and San Francisco. Where are you now? (I may have missed this in your post.)

Cheers,

Squeat

PS Unless maybe he means a different Stars and a different Jeremiah Tower, but that seems a very unlikely coincidence!

[CityCook]

Hey Squeat, thanks for the heads-up; I wasn't aware of that. Sounds like the guy may not have been aware of it, either...

I was born & bred in Sacramento, CA.

Edited December 9, 2003 by bratt23 (log)

[CityCook]

Weekend 6

(Weekends 1-5 were summarized in the first post)

This weekend, I started really wanting to kick some ass.

Friday night, I was on the dessert station, which features a tiny, food-spattered clock radio. I learned half a dozen new dessert platings and busted out more plates than usual while rocking to local FM. I handled the cooking and plating of 22 fruit crisps at once. Was I kicking ass then? I sure thought so. "the beautiful people! the beautiful people!" Creem Brulee! "the beautiful people! the beautiful people!" Molten Chocolate Cake! The reason, then, that I went home in such a shitty mood, was that I had a bit of an altercation with a cook about one of the dessert station's as-yet-unknown duties. I shouldn't have done this, but I turned my back on him and walked out because of his debasing attitude, and I didn't do the work.

Saturday morning, I heard about it from the chef, the sous-chef, and two other cooks. The lesson: even the tiniest bit of ego, at my stage in the game, is harmful. Even the self-preservation kind of ego is off-limits. The nature of this work seems to clash with the ego of a peon; the kitchen spits it, and the peon, out onto a shiny white plate for everyone to see. So I started Saturday with my little coins of self-confidence scattered to hell; it took half the day to pull myself together enough to start doing the simplest things correctly and in a reasonable time.

I think that by Sunday I had pulled my head together sufficiently to start working on speed again.

But I keep having doubts about this whole process, and I don't know if it's just the pain of ridicule, or the influence of this book I'm reading (note to all future culinary students: don't read Sinclair's The Jungle while learning to cook if you're at all sensitive). I wish I could mindlessly throw myself onto this path. But I keep imagining myself ending up curled in some scummy San Francisco alley like Sinclair's Lithuanians, holding a stained knife bag in two crusty talons for hands. All because I had some bizarre notion of toughening myself up. Is a vanilla white boy from the Sacramento suburbs really suited to this life of discipline and sacrifice?

It's so easy to romanticize hard work; maybe it's the poet in me, after all, that's making me learn to cook.

JJ

Edited December 9, 2003 by bratt23 (log)

[Sparkitus]

Dear me! Do we have a burgeoning Bourdain on our hands??

You are a really good writer, keep it up. But don't give up the prep shifts :)

[Larry]

2. Always smell the crab before it goes on the appetizer plate.

..and taste one from the batch too.

[CityCook]

Quick post:

I'm eating at my restaurant tonight, so I called back in the kitchen to let them know that I was coming. I also asked, since I stupidly seared my right hand last night on a pot handle, if they had any advice to help the healing process so I could work tomorrow night. I got two pieces of advice: "suck it up" and "suck a lemon." I think that they're starting to like me.

JJ

[CityCook]

Weekend 7

Victory!

Did I screw up, badly? No. Did I work faster than I ever have before? Yes. Did I not only finish all of my station's work but help out in other stations as much as I could? Yes.

And I was sick, too.

And I'm going in Tuesday night to help out, too.

The result, of course, is that my body's nearly squeezed dry of its mojo; I'm bloody tired and my feet hurt. But I'm so happy all of this work is finally starting to click that I welcome the fatigue.

This weekend, I learned:

8. You will get conflicting information on the procedure for doing something, or even what needs to be done with, say, a slab of meat. It's up to you to figure out what the story is from the most reliable source, which is usually, but not always (!), the chef.

9. Unless you're going for avant-garde, plate rims are off-limits. Soup should not be considered avant-garde.

10. Surprise people by doing a bit of their work for them. Bonus points if you can time it so as many people notice as possible.

By Sunday, I was singing to myself all night. I surprised myself by getting every closing job done in record time. I started to have the feeling, near closing, that I really could get everything done quickly, whereas previously I had a block in place against working too fast, due to lack of coordination and the simple fact that I would have forgotten something. This was a good block to have for a time. I've just grown out of it now.

Next, I'm going to try to start working on absorbing as much creativity and understanding as much of the workings of the kitchen as possible. It's too early to try to put myself in the chef's shoes to learn what I must learn in order to have my own kitchen someday; the number of balls he keeps in the air would overwhelm me. But I'll start inching toward that.

But as for this weekend: it was a coup, a routing out of some weak demons in my muscles and my brain. My abilities grow.

JJ

[SethG]

Thanks for these entries, bratt23! In addition to what you've already read, you ought to check out Malawry's Diary of a Cooking School Student. I'm sure you'd enjoy it, if you haven't seen it already!

[CityCook]

I printed out and read all of Malawry's Diary a while ago; it served as an inspiration to this thread and some great reading! I plan here to try to cover my entire introductory cooking experience. I'm starting with this first restaurant job I've been describing, followed by my eating and drinking experiences during three weeks in France and Spain, then I'll post through my cooking school experience as Malawry did. My goal is to keep a cohesive record for myself and to get as much feedback as possible from eGulleters. Thanks for reading, SethG!

JJ

[CityCook]

Weekends 8-9

Massive illness. Fevered hallucinations blessedly interrupted by periods of intense concentration and work while at the restaurant. Still have all fingers, most skin remains. Met a guy who used to work at the French Laundry. He said he'd give me a business card for a friend of his who'd give me a job in SF, but then he forgot.

Still sick; may be dying. Probably overreacting. More later.

JJ

[Raynickben]

Bratt23: I just discovered your posts and I love reading them. Brings back fond and not so fond memories of my times in the kitchen. I wonder how many people caught your Marilyn Manson reference...how apropos!

Looking forward to reading more

[JennyUptown]

What's the protocol re: working in the kitchen while sick?

[Pan]

Feel better soon, JJ, and get some rest!!!!!!

[CityCook]

Thanks Ray and Pan. As I write this, I keep sweating and I feel like my head's caught in a whirlpool, so I think that means my fever is finally breaking.

Jenny, I think it depends on the restaurant. If you're asking abuot my restaurant, I can tell you that I've seen some pretty sick people working in the kitchen, though they appear to be very careful about where they cough, hand washing, wearing gloves, etc. There are a good number of sick cooks working in the world's kitchens at any given moment, but, if they're conscientious, I think that the risk to the customer is minimal. Ask around; it's a harsh truth that this is one of the ways in which kitchen work is demanding: unless you're actually dying, you'd better haul your ass into the kitchen every day.

[Pan]

Man, Bratt, I've had the flu for over 3 weeks. If I had dragged my ass to a job like that, I would have been dragged to the hospital on a stretcher and rehydrated with an intravenous drip for a week. And actually, I physically couldn't have dragged myself anywhere including the emergency room on the worst day.

You have got to watch out. When I was in high school, I went back to school too soon after severe respiratory illnesses three times in a row (i.e., after 3 weeks out instead of a month). Doing that depressed my immune system so much that I got sick for 3 years and, after finding someone with great difficulty who was able to cure me, it took me 3 more years to regain my full strength. You're young now, but so was I when I was in high school. Watch yourself, and remember that if you lose your health, you truly have nothing.

[CityCook]

Cases like Pan's remind me to temper my previous advice with common sense. Thank you, Pan!

[CityCook]

Weekend 10

Getting a little better at my two stations means taking on more responsibility and fitting more work into a day, and that makes my feet hurt, but I wouldn't trade it now for anything.

Among the first things I learned to do, out of necessity, were the proper platings for salads, apps and desserts. People who knew what they were doing did all the prep and even the mise for me beforehand. Then, as I learned where things were in the kitchen (so very important, can't stress enough the importance of this knowledge to my survival), I started to be able to set up both stations and do some simple prep and production, like the wrapping of spring rolls and the slicing of cucumbers. If you recall the first post (above), it was the cucumber slicing on my third day that nearly cost me my fingertip. I'm now becoming more comfortable with production, and I have been able to produce nearly every item required by both stations. Except, I don't grow the veggies for the salads, and I don't milk the cows for the whipped cream. Someone else does that. Someday, I'll find out who.

I'm letting my sick sense of humor leak out a bit in the kitchen, too. Varied results. Have to pay more attention to whom I'm speaking, because I've actually found the kitchen environment to be a lot more civilized than I expected after reading Kitchen Confidential. Heh.

Plans for Europe are firming up, like the panna cotta I made did not. Letting sheet gelatin bloom is of great import, oh yes it is. So, unlike the too-milky panna cotta (should be like yogurt consistency, or thicker), plans for Europe are fairly solid. I've got plane & train tickets, a backpack, hostel reservations, maps, a toiletries bag, and panna cotta. The panna cotta is a harsh and constant reminder to let the sheet gelatin bloom.

I can make caramel now, though!

JJ

P.S. Finally feeling better. Think it was the Plague.

Edited January 5, 2004 by bratt23 (log)

[Pan]

Cases like Pan's remind me to temper my previous advice with common sense. Thank you, Pan!

You're welcome, and I'm glad you're feeling better.

When you know where and approximately when you'll be in different places in Europe, I recommend that you post to the appropriate boards for some suggestions. You'll have a great time!

[CityCook]

Pan,

I actually have done that and have recieved a lot of great feedback. I'll be in Paris, Bordeaux, San Sebastian and Barcelona. With my backpack and my swishy panna cotta mess.

JJ

[CityCook]

Weekend 11

For privacy purposes, I'll call one of my co-workers Bill for this story.

I come in to work on Saturday (Friday was uneventful, meaning good) and the sous-chef tells me that the chef called Bill off from working tonight, saying that it would be slow. We did around 180 covers that night (meaning not slow). The sous chef tells me that the chef said I could work circles around Bill, which is sad, considering that he went to culinary school (I start in May) and has been in the business for 6 years. The power that that praise had to lift me up was amazing; it made me want to work harder for more, like a well-trained basset.

Not one hour had passed from that comment before I, while trying to load a flimsy freezer shelf with six heavy plates, caused all of the plates on that reach-in freezer shelf to tumble onto the floor, ringing out glass-shatter notes through the kitchen. I hadn't destroyed all the plates, only the most expensive ones in the restaurant. Now this amazed me: the chef comes over, upset at the loss but in that "aw, dude, what the fuck?" sort of way, rather than in that "give me your nuts right now while I get the meat grinder" sort of way. I have seen him speak to Bill with the latter tone dozens of times for far less spectacular screw-ups, and it made me think that the chef had previously decided to tolerate me, and stuck with that decision even in the face of that mistake. That mistake, and about four other major mistakes, including not taking stock of the number of desserts available (resulting in the cancellation of two near the end of the night), getting way behind on tickets, and not finishing side work that caused him and two other cooks to have to help me out so we could leave (slightly) before midnight. But, at the end, the chef still told me I did a good job that night in a genuine tone.

I had some problems that night because I hadn't planned well, and I had the rest of them because I simply wasn't fast enough to put out all the night's desserts and keep up with the necessary side work. I'm still trying to figure out why I've got both balls intact.

Not only are they still there, but Sunday night, Bill got sent home early and I took over his station. He seemed happy about the time off; I'm not sure the chef is trying to send a message, but if he is, Bill isn't getting it.

So I'm gearing up to work like a meth field, while also planning better than I have before, next weekend; we'll see how successful I am next week.

WOOF

JJ

P.S. I'll put in my notice for my office job of five years this Friday, and I'm still debating whether afterwards I'll tell my co-workers that I've had this weekend cooking job since October. Don't know what good it'll do, really, and it may piss the bosses off.

[Nick]

Great stories, Bratt. Keep'em coming!

[Pan]

Go, Bratt!

I'm glad the chef is being kind to you.