Three years ago I made the decision to enroll in culinary school at The San Diego Culinary Institute. Over the 9 months that followed, I worked harder than I ever thought I could. The amount of things that I was not only taught but LEARNED -- both in & out of the kitchen -- are innumerable. I was going to make this a "Top 10" but I just couldn't narrow it down. So here is an even dozen of some of the things that stick out the most in my head.
1. Kitchen Safety & Sanitation.
This is probably the single most important aspect of cooking. Before setting foot inside the kitchen classroom, we were required to take this course. It was boring as hell, I'm not going to lie. But preparing food for people is a very dangerous business. There are so many things that could go wrong with food product from the time of delivery to the time you put it in your mouth, it's scary. Being aware of ways to reduce the risk of getting people sick or even injuring someone is of the utmost importance.
2. Clean as You Go.
Maintaining a clean workspace is crucial for a number of reasons. The first, obviously, is to prevent cross contamination. If you just finished fabricating a chicken on your cutting board, do you start prepping salad ingredients without washing it? (Not to mention your HANDS!!!). Of course not! As a personal chef, I do a lot of work in small kitchens (my own being the smallest!). If I don't stay on top of my dishes, utter chaos will ensue. Suddenly I can't use my sink or see the counter or use my cutting board because everything is buried in cooking debris. Then you start to panic because you can't find anything, you're out of clean pans and you pretty much want to scream. However, if you clean things as you use them & put things away when you are done with them (not only dishes, but ingredients you are working with), you are better able to stay focused, which means you work faster and more efficiently.
3. Knife Skills
What are knife skills? Safety, speed and accuracy; handling your knives properly; knowing which knife to use for which task. The knife is the single most important tool in the kitchen, and knife skills are key. Not only slicing & dicing vegetables, but also meat & poultry fabrication -- knowing how to trim a tenderloin without throwing most of it away and how to cut a chicken into parts without mangling it.
4. How to Safely Puree Hot Soup
I included this because I witnessed something horrible happen in a kitchen I worked in. The sous chef was making a pureed soup and put the hot contents into the blender. Almost up to the top. Now what happens when you puree something hot, is that it expands. So, when she turned the blender on (without pulsing it), it was like Mount Vesuvius. She had 2nd and 3rd degree burns on her face and in her eye. The next day she looked like she had stepped in the ring with Mike Tyson.
So, PLEASE follow these rules the next time you want to make a pureed soup:
- NEVER fill the blender more than halfway.
- Remove the small piece from the center of the lid, then place the lid on the blender, holding a towel over the opening.
- PULSE it a few times (you will see how the contents sneak up to the top).
- Once it stops rising to the top every time you pulse, you can blitz away to your heart's content.
5. "Always Work Like You're Behind"
The director of my school always repeated this to us and it has stayed stuck in my head. In a restaurant situation, you never know how fast those tickets are going to start to come in. For me, as a personal chef, when I have multiple clients I need to get to in a day it is important for me to stay on task, and to move both quickly & efficiently from the moment I load up my car in the morning. I work like I'm behind all the time so I don't actually end up behind at the end of the day.
6. Adapt & Overcome
Every now and then, things don't go as planned. In culinary school, my problem solving capabilities were acutely sharpened. I made a pudding pie for a lady the other day from a recipe she gave me. The pudding part would not thicken. You don't want to cut into a pie and have it be a runny soup all over your plate. So, instead of throwing the whole thing away I asked myself, "How can I fix this??" I added gelatin to it. It was perfect.
Or maybe I'm missing a tool, or an ingredient -- this happens quite often when I cook in other people's homes. I assume every kitchen has a vegetable peeler, or tongs, or a certain type of pot, or FLOUR. Sometimes I assume wrong and have to make due; you have to make it work. It's not always easy, but it's never impossible.
7. Recipes from magazines & celebrity "chefs" are sometimes wrong and don't work.
I touched on this in #6. In school we were not so much taught recipes as TECHNIQUES. For my job, I read recipes every single day to get ideas for the meals I plan for people, and there are many times I make modifications because the technique is WRONG, or the ratio of ingredients is way off. There is a certain technique to blooming gelatin; there is a butter to flour to liquid ratio in a roux if you want to thicken a sauce. There are specific WAYS to incorporate that roux into a sauce so that it doesn't end up a lumpy disaster. Sometimes you just have to tweak things -- both in the kitchen and in life.
8. "Let it Cook, No?!?!"
Another one of my favorite sayings from a French chef instructor! When you are searing a piece of meat, you have to wait and not touch it; if you want your port wine to reduce to a nice, syrupy consistency ........ LET IT COOK: A life lesson in patience.
9. Mise en Place
Simply stated: "Things in place". This is sort of the Boy Scout mantra of the kitchen. Be prepared. Do I have enough onions? This recipe requires a stand mixer: do they have one in their kitchen or do I have to bring mine? Do I have my knives? Do I have all the ingredients I need sliced, diced, weighed and measured properly? I ask myself these questions from the moment I wake up in the morning to the time I put my head on my pillow at night.
10. The Importance of a Timeline
There is also mental mise en place: knowing what you need to accomplish and having a plan of attack to get the job done. This is my strong suit. In school, I was ridiculed and nicknamed "Timeline Girl" (by those that were jealous of me!). The chef instructor made a copy of my timeline for my baking & pastry final and passed it out to the class so they would know how to write one properly. I'm not bragging. I'm super anal about timelines. Every time I cook for one of my clients, before I step foot in the kitchen -- theirs or mine -- I write a timeline. It allows me to organize how I am going to multitask, and in what order makes the most sense and will save me the most time. There are moments where I DO feel "in the weeds" -- I have to be to my next client's house in an hour and I'm still cooking!!!! I freak out! But I look at my list with all the tasks crossed out and see I only have 2 things left out of 30 to do and I know I'm right on schedule. That means I can focus, finish what I have to do, and move on to my next victims!
11. Taste EVERYTHING.
Does it taste good? No? OK, what does it need? I made a shrimp curry yesterday. My client doesn't like spicy food, so I left out the chili peppers. It had cumin, coriander, ginger, garlic, turmeric, coconut milk, coconut flakes, lime and tamarind in it. When I tasted it, I could taste NONE of those flavors. It was just FLAT. I added salt. Nope, still not right. After looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was looking, I added a pinch -- just a teeny tiny one -- of cayenne pepper. I tasted it again and the result knocked my socks right off of my feet. Suddenly I could taste every ingredient that was in that dish. Knowing how flavors work with each other and how to balance them is what makes food taste not just good, but AWESOME.
12. ALWAYS be sure to check the "Open-Eye" shelf before asking the chef ANYTHING!
The chef is a busy guy (or gal!). The chef doesn't want to be bothered and most certainly does not have time to compensate for your stupidity. Don't ask where the thyme is when it's right there in front of you on the spice rack. Ask yourself the question first and be sure to look good and hard before making a fool out of yourself.
