A Diary Of A Life At CIA

[chiantiglace]

Well my extern has been over for a while now and unfortunately I have just been too busy to post over the last few months.

Its probably not such a bad thing either because over time you tend to forget unnecessary activities and or events plus negative features and focus on what was/is important and the best of your experience.

the 16 hour drive to west palm beach was probably one of the most exciting parts of my externship. The sun just began to shed tones of purple and orange around the southern tip of Georgia, the same time where the palm trees and marshlands became more and more prevalent. Even though we have marshlands in North Carolina, there is a vast difference in appearance. I couldn't help but notice how spread out the trees were, it almost looks like a wet safari (especially when driving in a jeep). The marsh terrain in carolina tends to have clusters of trees, many of them evergreen with more filling around their trunks plus a large amount of bush fills the marshland. Here in Florida it seemed like you could see for days in and out of the trees and through the grass. It definately was an interesting experience as the temperature slowly raised, the shadows lifted, the colors lightened and became more defined, and objects became far more vivid. Plus being awake for 26 hours and listening tool and pink floyd for hours on end probably didnt help my state of mind from being a little distorted.

I arrived a couple of days early before my orientation so I took advantage of the free time to explore west palm beach. I didn't bother with Palm Beach because I was sure I would spend plenty over there during my 5 month stint.

My experience for the first couple of days was filled with mixed feelings. I would drive down one road or highway and gain somewhat of a surreal feeling noticing how different life is here than where I have been before. And this wasn't so much the people, just the land structure, building style, appearance of the bright sun on everything, it just seemed great to me. But then I would go down over roads and the realization that life is generally the same no matter where you are and people are people no matter where they live sort of brought me back to earth. I would assume that my second day in Florida was one of my worst from a perspective point of view. It didnt get me off to a good start because through my wandering I think I saw more homeless people that day than any other day in my life, not just in Florida. The drive down Military south towards Boca made me not want to venture south at all (from my apartment). Over time I discover PGA, Jupiter and other areas and was a little more settled.

I never had a job orientation that lasted longer than 30 minutes before I was thrown into work before The Breakers. I honestly felt like I was back at school sitting through lecture and going over the details are rules/guidelines I will need to follow for the next five months. There with me was my roomate, an extern from a Cordon Bleu in Orlando, a couple of Cornell Graduates and a few locals.

We spent most of the time across the street from the Resort at the Wachovia bank where apparently The Breakers keeps its human resource department, their orientation lecture room, a sort of classroom filled with computers and tables and a few other offices.

The orientation consisted of a about 5 hours a day for two days of discussion about all the departments and what they do. We were visited by a lot of the "heads" of departments who gave us their own "101" on the subject.

On the second day of orientation we went on a "scavenger hunt" to get a good idea of all the things you can see or expect from The Breakers. Unfortunately for me I had a couple people on my "team" who had been staying at The Breakers for a few days free and knew the answers to roughly 70% of the questions. And since most people just wanted to complete it and get on with their day I was out of luck for touring the facilities. It wasn't a big deal for me though, I am an adventurous person, I was sure I would get around and see everything for myself, if not more.

[gfron1]

Wow - time flies! Thanks for the update. Looking forward to seeing what's next.

[eskay]

Great thread I really enjoyed hearing about the classes and the seminars you organised.

[chiantiglace]

My first shift started out in banquets, the evening shift. I partially requested it because it was the shift my body and mind is most accustomed to. The shift started at 2p.m. and ran until roughly 10p.m. or whenever plate up was through which could run as late as midnight. In banquets we seemed to do the brunt of the prep work for morning and our shift. Any cakes, fillings, cookies, pies, etc. that needed to be prepared we did it in the evening.

My colleagues at this hour consisted of the Assistant Pastry Chef who was English male and had spent much time in the Caribbean area like Barbados. The rest of the crew was female ranging from 19 to 34 years of age, roughly. There were about 9 or 10 running the gamut of corporate rank from cook I (me) to chef brigade, and there seemed to be a lot of controversy over who was in charge of what and why. My experience with these women showed me the difference between men and women. I believe the main difference is (on a social aspect) men concern themselves with who is screwing up the most or bringing the team down, women seem to concern themself with who is leading the team properly or improperly and who should. It might not seem like a big difference to some, but living your whole life and understanding people in the work field one way, and then being thrown into considerably different way can make it difficult to adjust.

I believe I spent the majority of my experience at The Breakers adjusting my personality. I spent the majority of the 5 months very tense and frustrated for numerous reasons, but a year later in my collective and calmed state I look back at it and am glad I went through it. It always takes a small amount of time and reflection to appreciate ones own struggle I feel. I concquered physical work and stress a long time ago, so for me to take the time and put myself through pyschological strain was exactly what I needed to make myself stronger. I do feel somewhat sorry for putting some of the girls through my own alteration, but there was little they could do for me except be harder on me.

[chiantiglace]

On the Banquet shift we generally did parties greater than 150. As a person from restuarant experience, I am used to 15-30 people being a party. Considering The Breakers is a place where whole companies come to vacation or have "getaway meetings" we could generally do considerably large size parties. It was not uncommon to do parties up to 1000 or more. There were many weddings that would be up and over two and three hundred.

We generally used on banquet hall to plate for another. I don't ever remember plating in the "Ponce" though. We spent most of our time plating in the gold room becuase in was somewhat in the middle of everything, one of the smaller rooms, and not as popular I suppose than the others. It is a gorgeous museum like room, but just doesn't have a pleasant atmosphere for dining and dancing.

I have done parties over 200 before, but never with covers, so usually you would just fill every last surface area with a plate and roam around the room plating up as quickly as possible. This plating procedure of stacking plates on end was intense for me at first. Actually now that I think about it, I never really became use to the mountain of plates, it still seems insane.

But here we are in the gold room, and I think this party was around 500 people.

here you can see the ceiling of the goldroom a little.

This was a plate up we had to do in the bakeshop because everysingle room was filled. We did probably six plate ups this day and loaded them all on queen mary's.

The weddings were no joke here. If you feel like dropping several hundred grand or million on your own wedding, you could very easily at The Breakers. The pictures of this wedding, which as one of the more expensive ones, was taken in the "Venetian".

This was during the beginning of set up. You can see the cake with its own table right at the entrance.

I actually had to assist in a lot of the moving and removing of the cakes because I was typically the only able male pastry person around. Ha, yea sometimes I felt like an ox.

Heres Angelique finishing the cake after we spent a good 20 minutes properly positioning it.

They dimmed the lights here to test one of the procedures of the wedding, I took the advantage to get a couple pictures of the remarkable colors portrayed on the silk coverings.

And the Cake in all its glory.

I never had times like this on the culinary side of the line. I spent a lot of stressless time helping assembling the wedding. Usually I was only there to help move the cake, so waiting for angelique to put the finishing touches on I had a chance to help some of the musicians and designers do there job and ask them questions.

[chiantiglace]

About half way through my extern I was put on the morning assembly team because one of our girls went back to Barbados. I dredded getting up at 5/6 in the morning but thoroughly enjoyed the company in which I was working with.

My team consisted of an elderly colombian man who had been working there for just under a decade. He treated me like a nephew. He told me stories of his own pastry shop back when he was young and before his children had children. He seemed to take a lot of interest in my personal vision and skills/creativity. For a man who deserved so much respect, as an amazingly hard worker, good father and husband and all around gentle person he handed out respect as if it were candy in his back pocket. I also worked with a young and sweet red head who seemed a bit melancholy at times. She could go from a mixture of anger and depression to excitement and flirtatiousness with a short series of moments and events. She definitely kept me excited with her random comments that were never affensive. She gave the impression that she didnt give a damm about anything or anyone she worked with, but the second someone actually started to believe her she would pull a 180 on you to make you feel wanted again. The last link in the puzzle was our leader who was a middle aged egyptian woman who had been working at The Breakers for around two decades, but nobody really knew exactly how long, and she would say she didn't either. She was undoubtetly and interesting human being. Sometimes she would turn and look at me, proceded to say something and then turn back to what she was doing. I always anticipated something, but once in a while it didn't come and would throw me through a loop like anticipating milk but swallowing water. It's just wierd.

This team apparently aggravated the hell out of each other, and none of them would hesitate to give me 411 on each other when they were alone with each other. But no matter what they said, I knew they loved each other all they needed was a vacation from one another. This was definitely the most entertaining time I had because at no point did anyone expect me to be a moderator, so I was able to sit back and laugh my ass off at the confusion and disgruntled atmosphere.

I must say, I didnt really care for the work that was done during this time of my externship. There are many people here on egullet that know me as person following in the footsteps of those who attempt the unknown or non-traditional. These tasks I was performing on my externship were far from un-heard of.

I spent my time dipping strawberries, setting up cookie platters and amenity plates plus News and Gourmet orders. The other chunks of time were spent moving and rotating things in storage, because once again I was the only ox around . I did enjoy Sunday Brunch though. Unfortunately I cannot find the pictures I had taken of brunch (which were incredible) but I can tell you that The Breakers brunch was like no other I've seen yet. And every Sunday on this shift I spent working brunch.

Working brunch with me were a couple eggs and omellette makers, a meat slicer, sushi guy, and colombian woman who prepared lamb chops. And man can I tell you, I had a lot of conversations with women from young to old at the pastry section. From the amount of attention I received there, the closest example I can think of would be equivalent to a female bartender. Unfortunately I didnt get any tips, even though I did perform some cooking for a few people now and then. Sometimes I felt like an auctionaire, constantly selling off desserts that I think certain people would enjoy.

[Shalmanese]

Where were you working when you did the smoked dessert?

[chiantiglace]

I was at The Breakers at the time, what exactly do you mean?

[chiantiglace]

My final participation at The Breakers was the early morning shift which began at 2 in the morning was probably the most dreaded and most appreciated at the same time.

Apparently when I first started there were some interesting rumours going around about me from the evening crew that were meant to "forewarn" my new colleagues which happened to be an all male crew ranging from 25 - 45 years of age. Four gentleman with different backgrounds, one being a baker since college, two others being savory at first and more primarily but do were doing this in the mean time because of their enjoyment with it, and the head baker Bruno who was French but had been living in America for nearly twenty years.

I developed great relationships with every single one of these guys, I quite honestly think this was the best bunch of people I have worked with yet, but then again I might have thought that due to "sleepless high".

What seemed to be the main seperationg between this crew and the previous crews, mainly the evening crew, was the work dedication. All of these guys had another job outside of The Breakers and or major obligations. These guys enjoyed what they do, had well developed philosohpy and strong ideas towards life, yet were all very good listeners in their own.

Anyways, the worked consisted of assembling all of the baked goods (breakfast pastries and breads) for the resort. This isn't my primary cup of tea, but I seem to be instinctively good at this sort of work so I have fallen into it many times.

The job started out with the 3 to 5 of us in the middle of the night with very quiet beginnings. None of us talked unecsesarily for atleast an hour and a half into our shift. Which was fine for me because I was either just waking up, or about to fall asleep. After we all gained awareness of our surroundings became comfortable again the work really became easy and enjoyable. For being the youngest guy there, and extern and an outsider to Florida, they ideas and techniques with me while accepting some of my personal thoughts. I dont think I had a single moment of tension personally, or witnessing fellow tension among others the whole time. If one guy found a better way of doing something, the rest easily embraced the new system. Sometimes three of four of us would gather around a minor problem to figure out the best solution.

My first couple of days were a bit difficult though. Only Bruno would speak to me freely, I thought it was just their personalities and I had to open them up a bit. So for the first week I worked as hard as I could and spoke in the most non-affensive way possible, or not at all. Finally I broke into conversation about New York Restaurants with one (who was from the NYC) and racial discrimination with another. After that small window was open, the remaining 3 weeks there were a blast. It was an excellent ending to an interesting externship. I was offered a job immediately, and was even asked not to go back to school right away, but other things kept me from being able to make that any other way.

One of the most memorable parts of this shift was working with Bruno on the Thanksgiving Day bread display. We made a few small alligators and a large plaque with grapes and vines and braids. While down there I took a picture of the FIVE-FOOT long Alligator they made before I moved to that shift, unfortunately thats another picture of many I cannot trace. They made all sorts of display pieces for brunch and other events such as seagulls, crabs, flowers and traditional bread pieces.

Here is the only picture I could trace though:

Some of the pieces which would eventually go on the plaque.

Other than one night on the Amuse Bouche station in L'Escalier and a few plate ups at the Kravis Center, thats about it for my Externship.

[chiantiglace]

Sorry I haven't been on recently, I started a new job in San Francisco and have been unable to use a computer to the extent that I could post. I have a lot to write about, more than last year and soon, very soon I will be able to put it on.

But I have graduated, in august and it has been a very energy draining road since the transition.

See you soon eGullet.

Dean Anthony.

[Shelby]

I sure enjoyed reading all of this. Hope your new job is going well!

[jsmeeker]

Sorry I haven't been on recently, I started a new job in San Francisco and have been unable to use a computer to the extent that I could post.  I have a lot to write about, more than last year and soon, very soon I will be able to put it on.

But I have graduated, in august and it has been a very energy draining road since the transition.

See you soon eGullet.

Dean Anthony.

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Congratulations. I'm looking forward to your next detailed post. Good luck in San Francisco (and tell us where! I'll be back there again in January)

[chiantiglace]

Well I have been in San Francisco a while now just barely getting back on the internet. I finally have my computer with all of my pictures back so that I can post properly.

Currently I am working at a restaurant called Aqua in the Financial District. I will soon, hopefully, be transferring to Michael Mina's to work with Bill Corbett (former soux pastry chef - WD50). Interestingly enough Jordan Kahn has been there recently because he is working for the corporate division I believe. So there is the assistants to Sam Mason and Alex Stupak in the same room, kind of interesting.

The second year, or fourth term, of CIA begins with L Block, which is very similar to B Block. It is six weeks of academic classes including Restaurant Law, Nutriton, Menu Development, Food Costing, and a Business class.

They were all pretty simple and quick, except Menus, I am not sure that my specific class was the generic situation but it was absolutely meaningless. I probably learned 3 things in that class that I probably could have learned on a quick wikipedia research session.

My first class back into the kitchen was based on showpieces and specialty cakes. This class we learned how to use all the different kinds of mediums to create a special look. We began by learning how to work with chocolate in show piece form, and how to build a piece. We also learned how to pull sugar, blow sugar, create poured sugar pieces, how to pull flowers and petals as well as other small things.

We had our class around valentines day, so that was the theme. The sugar piece we had to compose was based on two blown sugar hearts, a couple of roses, green leafs to accompany them, a couple of ribbons and a caramel sugar base.

I made an extra flower of my own, that being the blue one right out in front.

I am sorry, but this is apparently the only picture I have on my camera. Even though I distinctly remember taking many more pictures.

The rest of the class we working on all specialty cake features. We learned to work with modeling chocolate, which is such a pain I dont see myself willingly using it anytime soon. We also focused on rolled fondant, gumpaste, pastillage, buttercream, and marzipan.

I think the majority of the end was learning how to create effects with gumpaste, which I believe is a greate medium, but then again I am not a specialty cake kind of person.

A really neat thing about that class was the last day or so Duff Goldman was there to be a graduation speaker, and of course our class being the wedding cake class he came and hung out with us for a while. I actually didnt know who he was, but all the girls in my class did and were afraid to talk to him because of the photographers constantly taking pictures. So of course to break the ice (which was heavy with Duff because I could tell he was a little nervous himself and being kind of shy) I cracked a couple of jokes and all the sudden it was like being back in the kitchen. I dont even remember who we were making fun of, but its a good thing there werent any video cameras, ha. So after about 15 minutes of me and him sharing kitchen humor our chef decided to make him walk around and discuss each specialty cake with the maker. Execpt for mine because I spent my "special time" goofing off. Ha, though I'd rather that than him forcing a few comments or compliments out about my cake.

[chiantiglace]

My next class was a contemporary cake class. This is something I've been wanting to practice for a long time, ever since I watched my first pastry competition on tv when I was maybe 16/17 and saw my first entremet (real cake) and was blown away.

Even though I had learned how to produce all the products of this class before entering it, the class itself was extremely beneficial in that I was able to perfect these procedures. And I have a tip for any up and comers out there, it doesn't hurt to research a technique before conquering it. I have tried so many things in my life blindly or on a whim, and I have learned how to do it wrong so many ways as well. But if you take the time to study how something works, why it works and possible research how to make it better, you can achieve anything even on the first try because you will no longer be blind, even if that vision goes without experience.

Basically in this example I am speaking of the simple things like creating a perfect flat top by building the cake upside down as well as trimming the cake so the mousse flows around it for perfect sides, as well as using the piping bage supmerged into the mousse to decrease likelyhood of airbubbles especially at the surfaces, as well a using guids to make sure each layer is perfectly trimmed, in position and evenly spaced. There are plenty of other small things as well.

Before I came into this class I had never constructed a cake this way, but I have read so many different pieces of information to no exactly what to do. When I was finished with my "practice" practical cake my chef had a little stun when he looked at it (not knowing it was mine), he viewed over all the cakes stopping at mine and one of my classmates turning them every which way, cutting them open at different points and saying something like - well thats interesting, these two are just about perfect. Feels good to get it on the first try.

I must mention that, from here on we didnt have anyone in our group that was bombing as we had a couple the previous year. Our group shrank from I think 18 to start, to 15 at the end of the first year to a now stunning 11. We had a very small group. There were a couple that had there points of struggle, but up until the last class everyone seemed to handle there own pretty well. Many of the 11 had impressed me quite a bit since our extern break.

We made all kinds of cakes like this hazelnut chocolate mousse cake:

same thing just done in a different way:

That was the best thing about this class was, whatever topic everyone would construct the cake's differently with different garnishes and finishes to give the same flavor/texture profiles but a different look all together.

This was a praline cake of some sort:

And again in an entremet fashion:

construction of the hazelnut wrapped in tempered chocolate:

Pictures of the Chocolates class showpieces and candies during Grand Buffet:

I thought I would show them because easter is a pretty neat time for chocolates class and we just missed it really.

This is our set up of all our psatries. The super bright round red ones were me and my teamates. I had an idea to use mango and raspberry because they go well and I needed raspberries (which just came into season) to create the super bright red look to my new spray on glaze. My teamate told me she wanted to use tropical fruits and thought raspberry was a great idea, so we went with it. For some reason she lended to my ideas, which was nice because as the only male I dont expect to get any idea in edgewise. But the perception was wrong the whole school experience. I guess I am just defensive.

So the layering was a coconut soft dacqouise with a mango mousse, candied mangos, raspberry gel and raspberry (spray on) agar glaze. The garnish was whit chocolate curled petals fill with a beautifully small diced mango and fresh raspberries.

I screwed up the spray glaze on the first batch, thats why a few may look "thinned" on the side because the agar started to break down. I accidently blast froze the first layer of spray because I was having some technical difficulties with the power spray. And of course, its not good to freeze agar, but I was in a rush and not thinking straight. So the agar weeped off a bit. Regardless, the second batch was done properly and the glaze is a success. I gave the ration to my chef, and its possible he is still using it, but maybe not.

Our final project was to construct our own cake. Now being deeply influenced by chefs like Sam Mason, Pichet Ong, and Johnny Iuzzini, I just had to get a little wierd on the flavors.

I made a spiced grape and cashew cake. I may have went over board because I think my chef wanted me to use racipe ratios that were part of the class, but I did everything different. Yea yea I am a punk, but my enthusiasm is uncontrollable even by myself.

I really ran into time constraints too, I finished my garnish while they were halfway through critique on the last day, most people were done before we left for lunch (I did not leave). I tried to concentrate as much flavor as I could out of the black grapes chef got for me. And it took a while through several stages or sugar rubbing, freezing, chilling, steeping, reducing, blah blah blah. But if you ever made grape mousse from the juice alone, it is just too mild. I could have gone a little farther with it, but there just werent enough hours in the day. So my main idea was to create a texture effect different from that of any of the cakes my chef had put forward to us. I wanted several suttle layers of the same thing, so I created a praline like nut cookie that was 100% caramelized nuts and egg whites (kind of like a tuile). I made a paste out of the muts and then incorporated the egg whites in. The I refrigerated it like a cookie, rolled it ou very thin and cut circles, eight of them to be exact. So the end result was 8 thin layers of praline cookie (that was later baked) arranged evenly in the mousse.

The cake was then glazed on top with a grape glaze and decorated as you can see. I wish I had dextrose instead of powdered sugar, and I wish I had an apple pectin glaze, or a carrageenan glaze that would and formed a skin on top to keep the dextrose apparent instead of dissolving. But it was for a 5 minute effect so it worked.

Oh and by the way, the tanish/brown smudges underneath the purple glaze is simply bad reflection. I didnt notice it until I loaded the picture or else I would have taken a more properly lit picture.

here are some pictures of the cakes my other classmates made. I do not have all of them:

And that was it of contemporary cakes.

[gfron1]

Those are simply gorgeous Anthony! I'm really glad you're continuing this topic with your new learnings. And I love the pic of the class standing around the table. The woman on the right in the center has a face that says, "If I have to look at this shit any long I'm going to scream." Or then again, maybe she just got a negative review on her work. Thanks!

[chiantiglace]

Back to work.

So I suppose the next class to write about would be chocolates and confections. This is quite possibly everyone's favorite class simply because there are so many small things to learn in such a short amount of time. In this class we had the oppurtunity to compose far more items and ideas than ever before as a group.

I think for the most it is exciting to most because its something we are not accustom to and probably will never be. Even Chef Greweling said at the beginning of class that he doubted more than just a few of all his students would go off and become an accomplished confectioner. It seems silly at first to make that assumption but if you really think about it, its true. Confection skills do not come easily, or cheaply.

You can get an exact idea of how are class was just by picking up "chocolates and confections by Peter Greweling". That was basically a text book for us, the first real CIA text book. It evevn goes in order of pages to curriculum days.

Out of 14 days each team of two would generally have one to two projects a day to work on, and very seldom did two teams make the same thing. Me and my partner Danielle absolutely anihilated that class. We ended up doing seven extra projects including a giant chocolate egg (about three feet tall).

Even I always had the disdained feeling that Chef Greweling had some sort of inner hatred for me I still had a fantastic time in that class. Me and my partner worked with true precision, it was as if we were reading each others thoughts, one would grab a bowl, the other would grab the chocolate without even talking to one another first. One would temper, the other would set up for dipping, one would bring liquid ingedients up to heat, the other would organize dry, it was like fluid motion in many ways.

Originally I was concerned for my partner because she tends to be a perfectionist, and strives for the best possible grade, which is typically the opposite for me. I tend to want to absorb as much as I possibly can and sometimes that makes me a bit forgetfull and neglectfull.

Basically we discussed our game plan before the block started, I promised to focus more on finishing projects to excellence if she would focus more on letting little things go so we can move on to bigger and better things. And I have to tell you, with both of us elevating our goals we really put some chocolate work to rest.

We started off the class mostly with emulsions such as ganache and other fillings. We did liquid ganache and then butter ganache, then we studied different forms like piping method and slabbed method as well as truffly shells.

We learned how to hand roll chocolates, pre-coating and final coating; we learned dipping methods for slabbed fillings; we also learned how to create patterns on forming chocolates, plus special garnishes, when and how to use them.

Moving forward into the next week we learned all about jams, jellies, gelee', marmalade, and caramels both hard and soft and ways to use them for chocolates.

Somewhere in there we also gained knowledge on how to make confectioner's marzipan(not limited to almond), gianduja's (not limited to hazelnut), pralines, fondant's (including soft fondants using invertase, cordials, and hard fondants).

The last week we studied hard candy as well as aerated confections. Me and my partner even took on the task of making a couple varieties of taffy which our small class had not had the oppurtunity to cover.

I had many many more pictures but they never got loaded into my new computer since my old one has since failed to respond. Hopefully I will be able to retrieve them someday soon. Once I do I can go into more depth of this class, but I just felt like I was taking to long to write about it.

[Gabriel Lewis]

Wow, what a pleasure it has been to discover and read through this thread. I merely dabble in pastry/sweets myself but it has been very enlightening to learn about the complexity of pastry from your perspective.

Having just finished all the posts, a few questions come to mind. I am wondering if your emphasis/appreciation of all things hypermodern in terms of pastry extends to savory cooking as well. I think I remember you saying you started out doing savory food, and even though I am not obsessed with pastry/sweets it seems to me that I would appreciate moderness more in this context. Personally I feel that pastry sweets are more more playful/open in nature than savory cooking in certain contexts. I know that I can appreciate aspects of el Bulli style cooking, but I find myself somewhat alienated by the extreme compartmentalization and deconstructionism that pervades todays modern cooking. Furthermore, as I am interested in traditional foods from around the world, I find that many traditional cuisines have in their legacy many crazy dishes that would stand up well to a sous vide poached egg or whatnot.

Secondly, I am wondering to what extent you felt like you could make yourself understood/were understood during your time at the CIA. You seem to enjoy analyzing every detail of a particular problem or task, immersing yourself completely in the details of a project. This is something I also do, and while I don't have anywhere near the exposure you do, I find many people heavily involved with food in whatever way are alienated by this approach. I find it all the more satisfying when I feel like someone "gets" the way I approach food and cooking.

Best of luck to you now and in the future, and thanks so much for putting so much hard work into sharing your experiences with us.

[chiantiglace]

Wow, what a pleasure it has been to discover and read through this thread. I merely dabble in pastry/sweets myself but it has been very enlightening to learn about the complexity of pastry from your perspective.

Having just finished all the posts, a few questions come to mind. I am wondering if your emphasis/appreciation of all things hypermodern in terms of pastry extends to savory cooking as well. I think I remember you saying you started out doing savory food, and even though I am not obsessed with pastry/sweets it seems to me that I would appreciate moderness more in this context. Personally I feel that pastry sweets are more more playful/open in nature than savory cooking in certain contexts. I know that I can appreciate aspects of el Bulli style cooking, but I find myself somewhat alienated by the extreme compartmentalization and deconstructionism that pervades todays modern cooking. Furthermore, as I am interested in traditional foods from around the world, I find that many traditional cuisines have in their legacy many crazy dishes that would stand up well to a sous vide poached egg or whatnot.

Secondly, I am wondering to what extent you felt like you could make yourself understood/were understood during your time at the CIA. You seem to enjoy analyzing every detail of a particular problem or task, immersing yourself  completely in the details of a project. This is something I also do, and while I don't have anywhere near the exposure you do, I find many people heavily involved with food in whatever way are alienated by this approach. I find it all the more satisfying when I feel like someone "gets" the way I approach food and cooking.

Best of luck to you now and in the future, and thanks so much for putting so much hard work into sharing your experiences with us.

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Well on the first question that is not something easily answered. So many people have so many different philosophies and depths to their philosophy on cooking, modern techniques, deconstructionism, ell bulli style, etc. Its basically all bullshit in my eyes. I am starting to get to the point where I dont care for any titles, french, german, italian, japanese, indian, etc. or modern, classic, traditional, neo-classic, fusion. It's a waste of time to me, but maybe I am jumping the gun on that decision.

What everyone should be focusing on in my opinion is pushing the limits, regardless of what view you are looking from. Maybe you are intrigued by flavor and grabbing the most intense of powerful flavor out of a product. Maybe combination and composition is your thing, where odd flavors/textures/ temperatures that once was not thought of (or at least broadly discovered) now seem to work harmoniously. Maybe you are an expert plater, or an expert laminator, or stock/ sauce maker. There are some of us who like to experiment and look to science. Whatever it is I think it is important to go as far as you can, but dont forget to come back to where you started. I believe the most important thing is to not forget where we started and go back to that. Figure out how to utilize what we learned and place it into everyday situations. For example, fruit cavaviar is neat, but who wants to eat that all by itself when you are paying $150 for dinner. It does work well with certain things though. If you have a persimon sauce with mackeral and thought you were going to put some kind of persimon gel for added texture and plate appeal, then the little caviar beads could work very well for that cause, its all jello in the long run. Another example would be all the de-hydration going on these days. Ok thats cool, but instead of just putting dehydrated berries on the plate, utilize the powder. If you are doing something with phyllo, make a blueberry phyllo dough out of the powder, and then give it a little dusting to highlite how the phyllo was made. There are so many ways to manipulate food these days, but we aren't going back to the start and re-doing things, we are just changing or adding.

It is so easy for us to make concentrated stocks of absolutely anything, why aren't we making bread from that? Wouldn't it be neat to take a tomato consume, evaporate it, and use the strong flavor as our liquid for a tomato brioche that could be used for some kind of tartare? The ideas are there, we just are going back through the rythyms, only finding new rythyms to fall upon.

You see the classics were the best ideas the chefs could come up with for tools, ingredients, and techniques available at the time. For any chef who ever said it was better to do one thing than the other is a chef who is not paying attention nor cares to.

So my idea is to come up with an idea, any kind of idea and develop it, then re-develop it, again and again until it is nothing like it was at the beginning but has become what I was searching for all along. Maybe some of the dishes that were developed so long ago were the best they could come up with, that doesn't mean we can't re-develop an already progressive start of an idea.

One last thing to this answer, I think there is too strong of a psychological line between savory and sweet, it's quite ridiculous. The saddest part is that even if everyone jumps on board to stitch up the gap between the two and start paying attention to one another it will still take decades to centuries for the populace to conform to the idea of all food being the same, yet different. A pastry chef is immensely better if that person knows how to make stocks, clarify them, reduce them, and flavor them properly. And a savory chef may become so much better at what that person does if they are aware of the setting abilities of proteins, fats, and hydrocolloids, as well as baking abilities of those products. Who said you cant have cake with dinner or beets and squash for dessert? Everything should be ..... harmonious ..... though.

Secondly, for the record I don't think I am ever understood, just people daring enough to follow me into whatever territory I find myself engaging at the moment. I can be quite overpowering for anyone, I feel bad about it sometimes but It's likely I won't know if it was the right decision until my life is nearing the end. All I ask is that people trust me once in a while and the answers should fall into place for them one way or another. I am getting better at the "gaining trust" thing, but I started with barely anything. I suppose thats how life is.

Thank you for your post.