The Program, to date

Lisa's great at asking the pointed questions, so at lunch yesterday she had me thinking hard about my experience so far, and whether or not it's met my expectations.

So: I liked Chef Joseph. Of the Basic Skills teachers, he seems (anecdotally) to be the best, and I'm glad I was in his class. His range of experience is broad; he tells a good story, always with a moral; his kitchen skills are impressive; his expectations are high. And he is a kind man who clearly enjoys students. He took a lot of time to enforce, and reinforce, the uniform code, study habits, and the importance of taking personal responsibility, always with an eye to the realities of the workplace. He assumed that we will all be in charge of other people some day, and his lessons were often framed in that manner. He regularly stressed some of the non-glamorous parts of the job, including hiring and firing, OSHA inspections, selecting vendors, unhappy customers. He urged us to Cook Every Day.

While the 2-week Safety & Sanitation course was intense (culminating in the national certification exam), the other two classroom modules, Food Science and Nutrition, covered the material very superficially. The expected project for Nutrition was never actually assigned, and undoubtedly the Chef's absence for radiation therapy had some impact on the coherence of the lectures we received, from both him and our substitute, Chef Glen. I must say, though, that the level of training in the kitchen never wavered, as we received lots of attention and instruction from our assigned chefs as well as from the other CCA chefs who were in "our" kitchen during class time.

Our kitchen skills curriculum started with stocks and progressed through sauces and soups, then on to the various basic methods of cooking protein: sautéing, frying, roasting, braising, grilling. It was never actually acknowledged that we were working our way through the basics of French cuisine, nor was there any attempt to frame our lessons with any historical perspective. For example, I would have appreciated a timeline of the significant people and discoveries that provide the underpinning of classic cooking, as well as discussion of other culinary traditions. Perhaps some of my future Chef-teachers will provide some of this perspective, but it doesn't appear to be part of the "official" curriculum, and I think it should be.

Monday is a staff in-service day, so I don't resume school until Tuesday, this time at the North Campus, up the block from City Hall. I still have to sort my uniform into daily stacks (to prevent a recurrence of apronlessness), but I did dig out my thermal t-shirt from the bottom drawer. Apparently the butchery classroom is refrigerated.