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I’m thinking a lot about culinary school this week, because it was exactly one year ago that I entered the professional program at Tante Marie’s Cooking School in San Francisco. I had just left my job of many years in Chicago and felt the exhilaration of starting something new, and hard won. The house I lived in, a Victorian doll house in the heart of Pacific Heights, belonged to Tante Marie herself. So the place was primed for all things cooking, including a massive cookbook collection that included, don’t you know, signed copies of Jacques Pepin’s La Technique and La Methode. How many rental houses can boast bookshelves like that?
Walking to school that first week took my breath away as I surveyed the gorgeous bay views and climbed the stairmaster-style hills that were a necessary evil to get to and from my neighborhood. Or maybe not so evil, since they were a good antidote to the butter, eggs, cream, sugar, etc. etc. etc. that I was eating every day (you have to at least taste everything, at least taste).
When we arrived in the kitchen on the first day, we donned our uniforms as we would every day for the next six months, and sat at the tables in the front kitchen. This place was filled with natural light from an entire front wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and the tables dignified our endeavor with white linens and fresh flowers (which wasn’t just for opening day dazzle; this was the set-up every day). The first order of business: how to hold a knife and how to chop. Chopping skills were not to be taken lightly. We had pop-reviews throughout the program when we would demonstrate our progress slicing a potato in half, then in thin, even discs.
I took heed and did not take the chopping lightly; I practiced religiously on potatoes, carrots, onions, zucchini, whatever took to being chopped. Getting accustomed to using large, razor-sharp knives all of the time was half my battle, and I have a nice scar on my left middle finger to prove it (I gave the finger—that finger—bloodied and angry, more than once to my chef’s knife when it sliced through my skin rather than veg skin).
Often I’ve been asked if culinary school is something like Chopped on the Food Network. Well yes, it is, especially when it comes to the exams. Our final exam went like this: enter the kitchens and discover the mystery ingredients. Spend half an hour preparing your plan of attack—your menu, your timetable. No recipes allowed. No talking allowed. Then let the games begin. An appetizer, main course, and dessert would be presented for review at half hour intervals three hours later.
I won’t reveal all of the mystery ingredients, other than the one that caused me such pain, literally and figuratively: a head of cauliflower. Great, I thought when I saw it, I know what to do with that bad boy. Don’t I? Well, a cauliflower soup to start would make the most sense in terms of time, strategy, and my ability to make it taste great. But I’d been slaving over ravioli for the past month and was bound and determined to demonstrate that I could finesse a fabulous ravioli first course. At that point nothing was going to trump my ravioli, and cauliflower and ravioli just don’t mix. It would have to stand as a side dish. I’d love to fry it up Lebanese-style, I thought, but without tahini since that would clash with my reduction sauce; it’d be easy and delectable.
I won’t reveal all of the mystery ingredients, other than the one that caused me such pain, literally and figuratively: a head of cauliflower. Great, I thought when I saw it, I know what to do with that bad boy. Don’t I? Well, a cauliflower soup to start would make the most sense in terms of time, strategy, and my ability to make it taste great. But I’d been slaving over ravioli for the past month and was bound and determined to demonstrate that I could finesse a fabulous ravioli first course. At that point nothing was going to trump my ravioli, and cauliflower and ravioli just don’t mix. It would have to stand as a side dish. I’d love to fry it up Lebanese-style, I thought, but without tahini since that would clash with my reduction sauce; it’d be easy and delectable.
The rest of the exam went smoothly, except that the cauliflower was nearly forgotten in the shuffle. By the time I had it back on my radar, the parboiling and frying was out of the question; no time. I shoved it in the oven with some onions and olive oil and roasted it at extremely high heat. The exam review sheet said my cauliflower was fine, could have used a squeeze of lemon to brighten it up. Fried cauliflower would have won them over, I lamented. “Fine” just never makes a girl’s day. But my ravioli, I’m happy to say, was given a rare, and welcome, taste rating of excellent.
