I thought about attending culinary school in 2006, right after I finished college. It seemed like a pretty good idea. I'd always loved food and cooking. It was crazy expensive (and I had a degree so I couldn't justify spending that much just for fun) so I decided to wait a while and earn some money first. Fast forward 4 years, 2 jobs, and 8 moves (Don't get me started. I can't cook or live in a dirty house. Single girls are gross.) and I was ready for change. Long story short, I decided I wanted to attend Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale, AZ and called on July 17 to ask them some questions. Within an hour, I had applied and was in the process of figuring out financial aid. I moved three short months later. I had no job. I found my roommate on Craigslist. I didn't know anyone in Arizona. It was just what I needed.
I packed everything I wanted to take into my little Toyota Camry and drove the 9 hours to Chandler with my dad. I think we stopped twice on the way down. I was so excited to get there that we just drove. Yes, I'm sure Arizona is a gorgeous state. Most of what I saw was on the 101 on the way to and from school. I haven't been to the Grand Canyon or seen... anything. Sorry I don't have anything to say about your state. I will tell you that it is hot. I moved in September and it was still in the triple digits. I hid from the sun... a lot. Plus, I never learned which direction was north, south, east, or west: Everything looked the same. One last lesson learned in AZ, I didn't like the way the water tasted. I went through more bottled waters in that 8 months than most people do in their entire lives.
Back to the story... As we followed the ominous GPS voice (Dad named her Myrtle) into the neighborhood I was supposed to live in, we both started to panic. It was behind target and parts of that neighborhood seemed a bit rough. Luckily, the condo I stayed in was in the safe(ish) part. It took about 2 trips to unload my car. (I love that my vacuum made the list, but the only thing I brought to cook with was a 10" cast iron pan.) I bought a twin size mattress and my little bedroom was complete. Okay, the room was actually huge. I had a hallway with a closet that connected my bedroom to my own bathroom. I had so much space and not so much stuff. It was a perfect little home. My dad flew home two days later. We cried. Don't judge. I'd never gone more than about 3 weeks without seeing my parents. Plus, I was all alone in a state I'd never even visited before.
I was only in Arizona a couple of days before school started. I went to orientation and got my uniforms. Oh, the uniform. This deserves at least a couple of sentences. Black checkered pants. White chef's coats. Steel-toed shoes. Handkerchief to tie around your neck to maintain body temperature in the super hot kitchens. (I scoffed when they told me this. It had to be folded and ironed about 9 times. It worked. It helped keep my body temperature steady even though it was hot in AZ and even hotter in the kitchens.) Terrible chef hat. (The little one that is useful and not attractive at all...) Aprons. All of these things needed to be ironed before you could attend class (Some people were not as obsessed with this as I was, but I still have all of my uniforms and you can't tell all of them were stained when I left school every day. I am proud of that.) I will spare you pictures at this point. You're welcome.
The first day of class proved to be terrifying. I have always been a quiet person in new situations. I like listening and learning about people before I open up. Since this was such a new experience, I decided to be more outgoing than I normally am and started talking to two girls waiting to go to class. They seemed nice and I felt pretty good about myself for doing something that is normally super intimidating for me. We got to class and found out that they were in the wrong class. Really!? I start making friends with the only two girls that read the room number wrong? Everyone introduced themselves and talked about the experience they had in professional kitchens. I was so nervous. I helped my mom and dad in our kitchen. That was my "professional" experience. I was already leaps and bounds behind. That didn't bode well because I am a perfectionist. (Remember the uniforms that I spent HOURS ironing and cleaning every week? Yeah, that was just my clothes. Grades had to be even better. I don't know why.)
My first classes were Safety & Sanitation and Culinary Foundations I. There are only a couple of things you need to know about Safety & Sanitation. First is that one of our "lessons" included food borne illness charades. Most food borne illnesses include vomiting and diarrhea. I'll let you picture how good that class was. Second is that the chef in charge of this class paced back and forth super awkwardly. I played music in my head so it was like she was dancing instead of pacing. That helped.
Culinary Foundations 1 was a great way to start culinary school. We got our knife set in this class. I was so excited for that day! They talked all about what happens if someone cuts themselves. They have first aid kits and you had to tell the chef. If he thought it was bad enough, they had cab service to the nearest hospital for stitches. Pretty sure they tried scaring us into doing a good job because they said that like 3 times before we even got to look at our knives. I was scared into cutting slowly. (Since our cuts had to be consistent. That was the whole point, you know.) The more we cut things, the faster I got. I am happy to announce that I never cut myself. I can't say the same about my peers. Every day someone new sliced a finger off. Ha! Just checking to see if you were really reading. No one cut their fingers off. They just cut themselves enough to need a band aid. No one needed to use the cab service. Not going to lie, I was a little disappointed.
We had 2 chefs in this class and in our class of 19 students (who I was with the entire 8 months), we cut hundreds of pounds of turnips, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, and other random vegetables. My fingers blistered after the first couple of days until they were used to using a knife as much as I did. The chefs lectured about terminology, standards, and kitchen organization. We learned about flavors, stocks, and sauces. Some days of lecture were a little boring. (Especially the ones that didn't involve the chefs demonstrating some kind of food. Let's be honest, part of the reason I went to culinary school was to eat.)
One of the chefs gave me a nickname in this class. It was Champ. I got pretty good at making tourne' cuts. It was usually the hardest for students to learn, but it was the easiest for me for some reason. A tourne' is a two inch, oblong cut with 7 equal sides. (Think little footballs.) They are time consuming, but they make vegetables look pretty. It is easiest to make out of round vegetables (like potatoes or turnips) because you just have to trim it down. The other chef would come over and make blocks out of my vegetables to make it more challenging. I loved it.
After the class stopped cutting themselves all day long, we moved on to mayonnaise. It was so cool to say that I could make mayonnaise. It got a little less cool as people realized how easy it actually is. Either way, this class helped me feel like I was doing the right thing. I was learning things every day and I was happy.
I am going to break up these posts into classes and things that I learned and cooked in each of them. Otherwise, I think these posts are going to become too long for you to stay interested. So, stay with me and I'll share recipes and funny stories. (PS If I mention something in a blog post that I don't elaborate on and you want to learn more about it, let me know. I'd be happy to go into details on things you want to learn about!)
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