The Insiders View on the Outside of the Kitchen

School at The French Culinary Institute started almost exactly a month ago. In fact, I just completed Level 1 yesterday and I must have been delusional when I thought that I'd have one spare second to sit down and write. Much has progressed during my first month in NY and here is a quick summation: Culinary school has been extremely fun, but ultimately not as challenging as I expected which immediately had me pining for the kitchen environment again. Now I am back at it in the kitchen of Blue Hill but am still hitting the books at school.

It's bittersweet but I just signed a contract at Blue Hill that all at once confirmed me as an intern and forbid me from writing about or taking pictures during my employment, but at least they granted me the permission to say I'm there! The chef, Dan Barber is definitely one of my role models. If you don't know of him, read about him. Here too. If you don't know about Blue Hill or Blue Hill at Stone Barns, you should. Link here, here and here. If you live in the big shitty (as I'm calling NY these days) visit the farm or eat at Blue Hill. It really is a wonderful concept at both restaurants, not to mention they are putting out some fantastic food.

On top of school and work, I've also landed a spot interning with the Director of Culinary Technology at FCI, Dave Arnold who writes a very interesting blog about his activities, check it out.

Here's a few pics from my first day with the FCI tech department:

Working on a gin, concord grape, root and St. Germain drink.

Using sous vide bags, they flavored the liquid with ginger and kaffir lime. Unfortunately, the kafir lime gave off a weird bitter flavor we couldn't shake and eventually named it The 10 Spot because of how many people got their hands on it trying to fix the concoction.

Liquid Nitrogen was used to cool the drinks! What's the point?

Instead of using ice cubes that will eventually melt and dilute the flavor, this keeps the flavor crisp and the drink cold! They also carbonate the whole mix using a couple CO2 tanks, some tubes, and a Sprite bottle that I was convinced could blow me up. The guy is literally into everything, his wall calendar looks like the markers exploded on it and from what I gather, he does't sit down much. I'm really excited to get my hands on some of this stuff!

A lot is going on in the city that never sleeps and in turn, I never sleep. I'm not complaining, in fact, I'm gloating. This is how I wanted it. I'd most closely relate my experience in New York so far as diversifying my portfolio. I've been seeking out all possible culinary outlets in the most culinarily-overwhleming city I have ever been in and forfeiting sleep to squeeze them in. I'll only be in this tornado of trash for a short stint until I get the black plague from breathing in the natural air, so I figured I'd take advantage of everything I can get my hands on while I'm here. Speaking of the tornado of trash, there was an actual tornado in Brooklyn the other day. Now more things are covered in dirt and trash than before, if at all possible.

School is not what I expected. Before I go on this rant, let it be known that I am learning and I will absolutely be eating my words as the levels progress and it becomes more challenging. But for the moment, the best way to put it is "uninspiring." I guess I shouldn't have expected cooking by way of books and tests to be inspiring, but I just thought it would be more exciting. Instead, it's like any other classroom environment with the addition of a few open flames and sharp knives.

The teachers are smart, funny and really easy to level with. Chef Nick used to work at Blue Hill and I could shoot the shit with him about restaurants in the city any time I felt like it. He is wonderful at reminding me not to cut corners and has a keen eye for turnip scraps in the carrot scraps bowl. Unfortunately, we lose him as level 2 begins next week, but we get to stick with Chef Rogers who is hilarious- here's a clip of my professor at Bocuse D'or in 2008 and one of him butchering a rabbit. He's incredibly smart and has a way of making you feel less stupid than you should for whittling your carrot into a matchstick in attempt to "cocotte" the damn thing. The french accent makes a typical lecture a series of hilarious attempts by both parties to understand the other's language. Whenever he describes the heat of oil in a pan, he searches around for a bit for the correct word and then always comes up with "ripple" sending him into a giggle fit. When he says "thick" the whole class wonders if we have to go forage in the forest for that bug that gives you lime disease- a tick. That being said, that kind of learning environment is a little lax for me- but I hear Chef Jeff, our Sous Chef for Level 2 won't let you get away with much and is notorious for bringing students to tears. Sounds like my kind of classroom!

I've had to come to terms with that fact that Chef Steve was right. He told me to stay in the business, that I would learn far more in the kitchen than you can learn in school and that anything in school, I could teach myself with a book or already know.

I used to say I wanted to go to culinary school so that I could learn the basics. I wanted to learn how to make a stock, how to butcher a fish, and make the five mother sauces. But when I found myself behind a fish with a knife in hand, I discovered I already knew how to do this. Granted, I need to learn how to do it better and will get to butcher many more fish and chicken in school, it was surprising that I actually thought I just plain didn't know how. Vinny and Steve have both instructed me on how to breakdown a few different kinds of fish a handful of times, and they were fantastic teachers who never let me get away with a single mistake. Most likely because the restaurant eventually had to serve the fish I was butchering, forcing them to watch over my should at every knife cut I made and move my knife an inch or two over before I took some important part of flesh off. And, although I'd never physically made the stocks at the Nell, I'd been around them so much that with out even knowing it, I'd absorbed the process of of how to do it. I knew how to make a stock. Stock day consisted of four stocks but for some odd reason they figured that culinary students weren't capable of making all four in one day, so a team of four was assigned to one stock. Just one chicken stock. I still can't claim to have made a brown veal stock, or a white beef stock, but that was the lesson for the day and we are now expected to have learned that process.

I'm mostly surprised at the amount of common kitchen sense I absorbed in one year that seems impossible to teach in a classroom. When Erik was recently being given a tour of the school the tour guide wouldn't allow him in my Level 1 classroom, but would allow him through the Level 5 claiming there was less risk of being stabbed by a Level 1 student who wields their knife like nunchucks through the kitchen. There's simple things that can't be taught in school- all of which I credit to the crew at The Nell or Blackberry.

In my first few days at The Nell, a guy named Sam came up to me and said, "Shannon, it's not all pigtails, laughing, and looking pretty in the kitchen. It's serious work, okay?" The same person taught me to always work with a sense of urgency.

Day 90. From what I understand, it's rooted in a commercial for some physical fitness video and on day 90, this guy was transformed from flabby to fab! Sam would run through the kitchen on seriously long prep days around Christmas and New Years screaming, "IT'S DAY 90!!! DAY 90!!!" Whenever I feel myself slowing down or hitting a wall in the middle of 14 hour shift, I think of Sam and how he would push ten times harder and I'd pick up my pace. Keep in mind this guy never went to culinary school, was our lead line cook and I'd wage my bets that he knows more than every single new graduate that walks out of the FCI. Speaking of Sam, I had dinner with him two nights ago at Gramercy Tavern and he is currently en route to open up a restaurant with his buddy who recently launched a successful food cart in Austin, TX.

In the banquet kitchen, my day would get lost in five cases of potatoes- but Mark came by and insisted that I worked faster. It sounds stupid, but now, no matter what kind of project is in front of me, I set an unreasonable time that I need to be done in order to force myself to work faster. A false sense of urgency. These are the lessons that need to be taught in school. I feel like every second I spend in culinary school is second that chips away at all of the good habits I began with in the kitchen. My favorite line of Mark's is "Time to lean, time to clean." The first time I leaned up against the prep table, this got screamed in my direction and any time I find myself with idle hands, I think of this instantly reaching for a scrubbie bucket, but at school- prep tables are treated like vertical mattresses. Everyone is leaning everywhere- including me. When I get in the kitchen again, it takes me a good fifteen minutes to remind myself this place is constantly under pressure to move a little bit faster, cleaner, and more efficiently.

At the very least, I've learned that the way I started this career is priceless. No school, no professor, and no amount of money can be credited for what I learned during my first year in the kitchen...just a group of really, very patient guys with a passion for food and teaching the new girl how to do it right. I'm still super pumped about Level 2 and the rest of school for that matter- it too teaches you things you can't find in the opposite environment. I owe a big thank you to everyone I've worked with so far that told me and showed me why onions don't get chopped in a robocoup, why you don't refrigerate something meant to be crispy, how to sharpen my knife, debone a chicken without cutting the skin...ish, scale salmon without decorating the kitchen and my hair with shiny scales, how to make perfect, not lopsided grill marks, temp meat, wash lettuce, store my mise, whisk properly without tiring out my arm, how to glaze a vegetable through tears and swarming hives, how to put out grease fires with salt, the list of lessons and techniques I am grateful to have learned in those kitchens reaches beyond infinity, it reaches beyond what I consciously recognized that I knew.

Ps- Congrats to Steve on parting ways with The Nell to open Oak in Boulder! That man is destined to make of the best food Boulder has ever seen. I'm super excited to see how his new venture goes, that guy one phenomenal chef.

Anyway, a few pictures from the life of a Level 1 Culinary student:

Just takin some notes in our auditorium which is absolutely the coolest auditorium in any school. It looks like a demo kitchen on The Food Network, but it's where our guest chefs hold lecture- giving us all sorts of opportunity to see sick pie demos or volunteer with swiss chocolate masters for the Star Chefs Conference.

Trout down.

En papillote: Fish baked in parchment paper. My partner during fish week was always done eons before me- he is super passionate, absolutely nutty and reminds me of Marco Pierre White in this creepy photo.

Gettin our truss on.

When people talk about classic french food being too heavy and too weighted down with butter, and cream, etc. It's not an exaggeration. Everything is finished or started with butter or cream. Escargot? Fill the shell first with butter, then with butter sauteed snails, then top the shell with butter then bread crumbs fried in butter. Start with butter, end with butter, fill with butter, monte au buerre, where's the cream?! I can't tell you how many times I've peered into the Italian classroom wondering how they make their purees...

My dad's fav dish!

The definition of uselessness.

Resembles a useless potato basket barfing up...

Stuffed squab! But wait...those little squab look like frogs?!

Mmm..Duck! The perfect example of the difference between being taught in school versus being taught in a kitchen is hidden in this duck dish. See the orange supremes? When we learned how to supreme in school, they showed us how to peel the orange without removing too much flesh, then how to nicely take the little supreme wedges out and instructed us to not leave too much behind. I remember learning to do citrus supremes at Blackberry while on the entremet station next to the fish cook, Joe. Joe walked over to my citrus supremes, picked them all up in his hands, looked at me blankly and asked if I was "fucking joking?" I insisted I was not "fucking joking." He grabbed my knife and my orange out of my hands and showed me the right way. Different strokes for different folks, but I can assure you I won't serve a supreme with even a microscopic smidge of pith on it.

Lamb! Did you know lamb can only be called lamb if it's less than 1 year old? Otherwise is the couch-textured, cardboard-flavored meat called mutton! This dish was pretty cool because we got to take apart one side of the rack of lamb down to the chops.

My little boys : )

And for a much more responsible and beautifully photographed track of what we've been learning at school- check out my classmate Lisa's blog.

The rest of my culinary life in NY exists inside my 2X5 kitchen.

Tonight, a few of us trainees are getting together for a closet potluck.

Closet potluck...hmm is that some sort of secret private chef dinner event? No. I mean my kitchen is in the closet of my studio apartment and all four of us are cooking in it probably for reasons best explained by insanity and a good sense of humor.

The girls makin it happen. Who said couches can't be prep tables?

I picked up eggs today at the Crossing the Line Farm Fair in Brooklyn that I found out was happening via Twitter. My sage came from Eagle Street Rooftop Farm and my butter from the Brooklyn Larder who also imports Buffalo di Mozzarela every Thursday from the grandmother in Italy of the family he buys mozzarella from in the city and on the walk home, I stumbled on the Brooklyn Book Fair and a food truck convention. This city....hmmm....

The coolest thing about living in this city is seeing the level of creativity that spurs out of necessity and passion. There's no space to have a 15 acre rolling farm, but there is an empty space on a roof and if they can just figure out the irrigation system then you can still have beautiful produce in your "upperbackyard." Food trucks are easily stalked down on Twitter and what your local farmers market is carrying that day has recently been tweeted, too. There's not enough space to have a smoker hanging out of your back porch, so you have to think of a way to infuse a smoke flavor into your food without any real smoking. Some smoke-flavor-lover got creative and made a smoke gun.

John brought it to class and has us try his smoked corn relish and delicious smoked brisket, genius!

It's truly depressing that I can't see, taste or smell a raging flame ripen an oozing beef burger grilling on my back porch anymore, but it's remotely inspiring that people overcome that by expanding their opportunities with a little creativity and elbow grease.

This kind of sums New York for me. Countless moments of anger, frustration, and disgust followed by short stints of happiness that almost make me question, "Do...I...Like...New York?!" But- Then I snap back into reality and realize somewhere out there, vegetables aren't grown on a roof, there's mountains with snow runoff still audibly melting down their sides, air that smells like freshly cut grass, and places like my farm have baby lambies running freely on land that you can't see the end of and somewhere out there you can find parking spaces.

New York Shitty: Where grass is considered an art form.