Read The Making of a Chef Online
Authors: Michael Ruhlman
The Making of a Chef (2 page)
They're all spread outâit's a big culinary world and this is a representative sampling of what students who graduated ten years ago are doing today.
Tim Ryan has become president of the place and is aggressively driving it into the future with expanded facilities and campuses and programs. Don't call the place a trade school in his company. He wants it to be every bit as much an institution of higher education as the Ivy League. Anyone enrolling today having read this book will find the curriculum altered to account for the increasing need for specialization in this growing field. Though the CIA has evolved with the times, its fundamental message and ethos remain the same.
Oh, and Chef Pardus, he's still teaching at the CIA in Hyde Park. He's become an expert in Asian cuisines and remains a close friend; he has a daughter the same age as my son. A week ago I e-mailed to tell him I
was writing this introduction. I happened to catch him when he was doing doubles, taking over a P.M. Skills class in addition to his A.M. Asian cuisine class.
was writing this introduction. I happened to catch him when he was doing doubles, taking over a P.M. Skills class in addition to his A.M. Asian cuisine class.
“It's not Day 8,” he wrote (see page 46), “but it's the modern day equivalent. I never thought I'd actually say something like this, but I called everyone together, looked at the pot sink, laughed, and said âThis is funny only because it reminds me of a chapter in a book I once read ⦠.' Told them it was unacceptable and walked away. A few got the reference.
“Man, will I be glad when this block is over ⦠. oh, yeah, you should be laughing hard right now ⦠. I just finished tasting 19 veloutés and 19 cream of broccoli soups ⦠it's disgusting.”
Happily, some things don't change.
MICHAEL RUHLMAN
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
May 2008
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
May 2008
First, my thanks to Ferdinand Metz and Tim Ryan for allowing me into the Culinary Institute of America. I do not remember a single significant request that was turned down. Dr. Fred Mayo was generous with his time and offered valuable guidance through the labyrinthine institute. Andrea Harding likewise worked hard on my behalf, as did Janis Wertz. All chef-instructors were generous with their time in answering my questions; many, however, such as Todd Philbrook (sorry about the show plate!) and Tom Griffiths, do not appear in this narrative though I owe much to them. Of the many reference books I used, the most valuable was the Culinary's own,
The New Professional Chef;
as far as basic cooking methods and standard ratios, I know of no better cookbook. Finally I am grateful to all the chefs and students who appear in this book for their time and their willingness to be a part of this story.
The New Professional Chef;
as far as basic cooking methods and standard ratios, I know of no better cookbook. Finally I am grateful to all the chefs and students who appear in this book for their time and their willingness to be a part of this story.
I would like to thank my agent, Elizabeth Kaplan, to whom I am permanently indebted.
No one can know how judicious and intelligent Bill Strachan, my editor, has been in his work because his effect is so subtle as to be invisible and yet he improved the manuscript enormously. I am grateful to him.
Thanks forever to R.P.
Â
I would like to thank my mother, Carole, who, besides being an awesome mom, is the personification of human generosity and high spirits.
Â
Words do not exist to adequately thank my wife and daughter, as the reader will soon appreciate. They are to me the most miraculous duo on earth, and I would be lost without them.
Skill Development
T
he bundle waiting for me on the couch had been secured with butcher's string and looked as ordinary as laundry. I tucked it beneath my arm and strode out of the office and through Roth Hall, the main building of the Culinary Institute of America, slipped into a bathroom, and closed myself off in the farthest stall. I removed my sweater and jeans and stuffed them into my leather shoulder briefcase. I untied the bundle, shook out one of two pairs of houndstooth-check trousers, and stepped into them, then buttoned the immaculately white, double-breasted chef's jacket over my white T-shirt. I jammed the extra set of pants into the briefcase along with my street clothes, snapped it shut, grabbed my black overcoat and knife kit, and pushed out of the stall.
he bundle waiting for me on the couch had been secured with butcher's string and looked as ordinary as laundry. I tucked it beneath my arm and strode out of the office and through Roth Hall, the main building of the Culinary Institute of America, slipped into a bathroom, and closed myself off in the farthest stall. I removed my sweater and jeans and stuffed them into my leather shoulder briefcase. I untied the bundle, shook out one of two pairs of houndstooth-check trousers, and stepped into them, then buttoned the immaculately white, double-breasted chef's jacket over my white T-shirt. I jammed the extra set of pants into the briefcase along with my street clothes, snapped it shut, grabbed my black overcoat and knife kit, and pushed out of the stall.
I stopped at the mirror. I had not been in a uniform since high school football and I sent myself an ironic lift of the eyebrows, then an uncertain shrug. The figure in the mirrorâdressed as a culinary studentâlooked like me and did not. The figure seemed more a secret sharer. I could not dwell long on this uniformed other selfâI had only a few minutes to find K-8, the Skills kitchen run by Chef Michael Pardus.
I hustled down a dark brick corridorâto my right a long, glassed-in kitchen, to my left display cases inlaid into the brick facade. I turned left at Alumni Hall, the main dining room, once the chapel of this former Jesuit monastery, strode past a dishwasher's station, and turned left again. The
first kitchen on my left was K-8 and I would arrive, thankfully, a minute or so before two, when this class was scheduled to begin.
first kitchen on my left was K-8 and I would arrive, thankfully, a minute or so before two, when this class was scheduled to begin.
I stepped through the doorway and eighteen pairs of eyes cranked in my direction.
Chef Pardus halted in mid-sentence. The seventeen students, already lined at attention along four large stainless-steel tables, two on either side of the room, regarded me curiously. Chef Pardus wore the standard chef-instructor uniform, similar to the students' but with fancy round white buttons on his chef's jacket running up each breast, green and gold stripes along the collar, a green name tag pinned above his breast pocket, and a paper toque that was an inch or two taller than the students'. He was trim, measured about five feet ten inches without the hat, which revealed a few light brown curls kept well above his collar, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses.
“Michael,” the chef said. We'd been introduced the previous week, and he had given me course information and homework assignments.
“Yes, Chef,” I said. “Sorry I'm late.”
“You're number eighteen. I've put you at Table One.” He pointed to my spot, smack in front of him at the head of the class. He stood in front of a beat-up, circa-1960 metal desk. Behind him on the board in bright ink marker he had written:
DAY ONE
2# mirepoix
2 tomato concassé
1 sachet
1/2
minced onion
2 tomato concassé
1 sachet
1/2
minced onion
I took my spot and shoved my belongings on the shelf of the steel table.
“Do you have a hat?” Chef Pardus asked.
“They didn't give me one,” I answered
“A neckerchief?”
“No.”
“You need to have those in this kitchen. I'll call central issue in a minute and see if we can hook you up.” Chef Pardus seemed a little annoyed. I was late
and
my uniform was incomplete.
and
my uniform was incomplete.
But I was here, and that's all that mattered now, the physical fact of my presence. This was a physical place.
Â
Â
I
'd made it to Culinary Skill Development One, the first kitchen in the intricately scheduled curriculum at the Culinary Institute of America. It was a move I felt that, in some ways, had been foreordained a decade earlier.
'd made it to Culinary Skill Development One, the first kitchen in the intricately scheduled curriculum at the Culinary Institute of America. It was a move I felt that, in some ways, had been foreordained a decade earlier.
Shortly after I graduated from college and began work in New York City, my granduncle, Bill Griffiths, wrote a letter to me outlining some definitions of art, and in doing so, he described a meal he'd had at Gallatoire's in New Orleans decades ago. “The total meal involved many things,” he wrote, “but what I have never forgotten is the potatoes. There were no fancy sauces, no tricky seasonings, no admixture with other ingredientsâjust plain small cubes of potato cooked in such a way that the surfaces were delicately crisp and crunchy and the inside, rich, smooth, and flavorful. One was simultaneously aware both of exquisite texture and marvelous taste. The lesson it taught me was that the chef hadn't used the potato as a basis for displaying flashy, flamboyant skills, but had placed his skills as an artist in the service of the potato.”
I found a fundamental truth in these words and I wrote the last sentence on a three-by-five-inch card and stuck it to the wall beside my desk.
Nearly ten years after my uncle Bill wrote those words to meâfaded but still affixed to my wallâI intended to learn how to cook and to write about
how
one learned. And I hoped to use my uncle's words regarding art and potatoes as a kind of lantern to light my way. I would not strive to learn the sort of stuff being photographed for food magazines, but instead how to make the kind of potatoes Bill had described.
how
one learned. And I hoped to use my uncle's words regarding art and potatoes as a kind of lantern to light my way. I would not strive to learn the sort of stuff being photographed for food magazines, but instead how to make the kind of potatoes Bill had described.
My goal was both humble and presumptuous: I wanted to learn how to put myself in the service of the potato. This was to me the key phrase,
in the service of,
the axis, the unmoving shaft, of a statement with many ramifications. Is great cooking really art? Are chefs artists? What is wrong with flash and flamboyance? How could the lowly potato become so important in a meal as to be the one thing my uncle remembered decades later?
in the service of,
the axis, the unmoving shaft, of a statement with many ramifications. Is great cooking really art? Are chefs artists? What is wrong with flash and flamboyance? How could the lowly potato become so important in a meal as to be the one thing my uncle remembered decades later?
Also, I love to eat potatoes.
Given these two qualitiesâthe desire to learn to cook and to write about it, with all the notions of artistry, history, gastronomy that inevitably orbit this learning, and a simple and perhaps atavistic love of eatingâI had
hatched a plan to attend the Culinary Institute of America, the most prominent cooking school in the country, a food-knowledge mecca. What did they teach here? According to the Culinary Institute of America, what did a chef need to know above all? What was the inviolable core of a culinary education? What were the secrets of truly great cooking?
hatched a plan to attend the Culinary Institute of America, the most prominent cooking school in the country, a food-knowledge mecca. What did they teach here? According to the Culinary Institute of America, what did a chef need to know above all? What was the inviolable core of a culinary education? What were the secrets of truly great cooking?
All this I wanted to know, and I'd come here to impersonate a student. I would learn to cook as though my future depended on it. When I entered Chef Pardus's Skills kitchen I stepped into a new world. I would learn what it took to be a professional chef. I would start at the beginning, and the beginning of Culinary Skill Development was stock.
Â
Â
“M
aking stock is one of the primary purposes for being in this class,” Chef Pardus said as we began our tour of the kitchen. Our first stop: the steam kettles. The three enormous tanks, each a hot tub for one, were the steam kettles. The three enormous tanks, each a hot tub for one, were bolted to steam pipes and accommodated by two water faucets. Each day, the center kettle would be filled with 120 pounds of chicken bones, 22
1/2
gallons of water, and 15 pounds of mirepoix, along with bay leaves, peppercorns, parsley stems, and thyme wrapped in cheesecloth and called a
sachet d'épices
. This combination would yield 15 gallons of chicken stock by the end of class, to be cooled, labeled, and stored before lecture.
aking stock is one of the primary purposes for being in this class,” Chef Pardus said as we began our tour of the kitchen. Our first stop: the steam kettles. The three enormous tanks, each a hot tub for one, were the steam kettles. The three enormous tanks, each a hot tub for one, were bolted to steam pipes and accommodated by two water faucets. Each day, the center kettle would be filled with 120 pounds of chicken bones, 22
1/2
gallons of water, and 15 pounds of mirepoix, along with bay leaves, peppercorns, parsley stems, and thyme wrapped in cheesecloth and called a
sachet d'épices
. This combination would yield 15 gallons of chicken stock by the end of class, to be cooled, labeled, and stored before lecture.
“You want to cook stock at what?” Chef Pardus asked.
Several voices called out, “At a lazy bubble.” Everyone in the class should have learned this from the video assigned for homework. The library contained about twenty-three hundred videos, some of them made for television by the Culinary Instituteâ
Cooking Secrets of the CIA,
a cooking show featuring individual faculty, had recently begun to air on public stations throughout the countryâbut most were utilitarian, made solely for the students, such as “Making Brown Stock,” “Shucking Oysters,” and “Calf Slaughter.”
Cooking Secrets of the CIA,
a cooking show featuring individual faculty, had recently begun to air on public stations throughout the countryâbut most were utilitarian, made solely for the students, such as “Making Brown Stock,” “Shucking Oysters,” and “Calf Slaughter.”
“Right, a lazy bubble,” Chef Pardus repeated. “A few bubbles breaking the surface every few seconds. Why? Because we don't want to emulsify the fat into the stock and stir up other impurities. We're looking for clarity here.”
Chef Pardus squatted at the end kettle's spigot, opened and closed it, saying, “Make sure this is closed all the way or you're going to have wet shoes.” He turned the knob on the steam pipe and the kettle began to clank like an old radiator as its jacket filled with steam. Chef Pardus hefted a
large white tub from table to kettle and dumped its contents, forty pounds of beef bones. He pushed the faucet over and turned the water on.
large white tub from table to kettle and dumped its contents, forty pounds of beef bones. He pushed the faucet over and turned the water on.
“We're going to blanch the bones first,” he said, “to get rid of impurities, mainly blood. The water's going to get a rich, funky, gray color. We'll skim that off and then we'll empty it. In Skills One, I want everybody to make stocks to measure. By Skills Two, you can do this by sight.” On an easel to the left of his desk was a large pad of paper with the stock ratios on itâwater to bones to mirepoix to tomato. For the first three weeks, Pardus wanted us to measure in order to know how high seven-and-a-half gallons of water rises above forty pounds of beef bones. “After four hours, we're going to add what? Mirepoix, right. An hour before finishing, the sachet d'épices.” The stocks would be about 145 degrees when we strained them, he said, and we would cool all stocksâtypically thirty gallons a dayâto 70 degrees in two hours and to 45 degrees in four hours, as sanitation guidelines require. “But don't worry,” Pardus said. “We can go from kettle to cooler in eighteen minutes. The record I think is sixteen minutes.”
“Make sure you skim the fat before you cool it,” he added. “If you forget, and you're making consommé, your classmates are going to hate you because you dropped the consommé grade by two points.”
He introduced us to the ovens. Two banks of ranges ran nearly the length of both sides of the room. “When you come in, make sure your oven
works
. Students don't light pilot lights. We have someone come up from maintenance. If you do it wrong it will blow you across the room.” He crinkled his nose and grinned. “It's kinda scary. You lose all your facial hair.”
works
. Students don't light pilot lights. We have someone come up from maintenance. If you do it wrong it will blow you across the room.” He crinkled his nose and grinned. “It's kinda scary. You lose all your facial hair.”
He then addressed the burners and cast-iron flattops, particularly the latter: “You don't always know if they're hot. If this were hot,” he said, feeling for heat, then pressing his palm to the black metal, “my hand would probably stick to it. These get very hot, and you'll need to use tinfoil rings to regulate the heat when you've got a lot of pans going.”
Chef Pardus returned to the beef-stock kettle, which had begun to steam. Behind him, taped to the wall, a giant piece of paper read:
A great stock is judged by
âFlavor
âClarity
âColor
âBody
âAroma
“A lot of blood is coming out,” he said, peering into the enormous kettle. “As soon as it comes up to temperature it's going to turn gray.”
Chef Pardus continued the tour of the kitchen, moving clockwise past the ranges to the sinks, three basins for hot soapy water, hot rinse water, and cool water with sanitizing fluid. The sanitation steward, a position that changed daily, was responsible for keeping them clean, not easy when eighteen people are making béchamel sauce. Before leaving the sinks he said, “Please help everyone out here if you're not completely in the weeds. You'll get a lot more out of this class if you're not here washing pots all night.”
The food steward, the other position assigned daily, and the sanitation steward were responsible for making sure people helped out. “They are second in command,” Pardus said. “They are the sous chefs in this kitchen. If they ask you to do somethingâif anyone asks you for helpâyou don't say, âI'm too busy, I have a headache, my dog ate it, I lost it in the
sun
.'” He paused, scanned our faces. “You say, âO.K.'”
sun
.'” He paused, scanned our faces. “You say, âO.K.'”
We passed the ice machine, which faced the huge maple cutting boards we would be using; passed the dry storage, where food that didn't need to be kept cold was located; and then went to the cage, which was the size of a large closet and filled with stock kettles, food mills, china caps and chinois, ladles, skimmers, colanders, Robot Coupes, and one giant ladle that we would use for shoveling steaming bones and vegetables out of drained stock kettles. He held or pointed to each item. “This is a solid spoon,” he said. “This is a slotted spoon. This is a perforated spoon.” He alternately held up the slotted and solid spoons. “In some places they call this a female spoon. They call this a male spoon. If you're working with a guy who spent his formative years in Nazi Germany, he may start yelling, âGive me a female shpoon, give me a female shpoon!' And you better know what it is.
But
âit's ancient
history
. We don't use that term here, but you should know what it is.”
But
âit's ancient
history
. We don't use that term here, but you should know what it is.”
He held up bain-marie inserts, hotel pans, and spiders.
Sensing that the large, carbon-encrusted roasting pans he'd put in the oven earlier were hot, Pardus pulled two tubs of veal bones from the reach-in, to the right of his desk at the head of the kitchen. The bones had been delivered Friday and sat for the three-day weekend. He smelled them, turned a few in his hands, scrutinizing them. “These are a little off, but I think they'll be O.K.,” he said.
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