Externship

Externship is one of the most important parts of your time spent at the CIA. There are so many opportunities out there just waiting for you. Pretty much anywhere in the world you want to go you can. Well as long as you can speak the language.
Where on earth (literally) do you go? There are so many things to take into consideration. I think I know where I want to go. Either I want to be at Trotter's or at The French Laundry (cliche, I know). I am pretty sure if I were to go to either of those places I would spent most of my time doing low end commis work, but I do not care.
What I care more about than the hands-on experience is the philosophies. I believe that all the little things that I would be around to see would get stuck in the back of my head as a haunting of sorts to influence every dish I put out for the rest of my life. That is a better foundation for greatness than knowing how to replicate a dish.
My real issue with not surprise is money. Neither of these restaurants offer housing or pay for internships. Then again, why should they. You should be happy to work there for free. Still, I am broke as hell. We are not actually considered registered students while on extern so loans are out of the question. My family is anything but rich, so that is also out of the question. What is a guy to do? I am not sure, but I do know that money sure as hell is not going to stand in my way from such a great oppurtunity. They only thing that might would be not being accepted as an intern.






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Here fishy fishy

Fish is over! I thought that I would be happy about this, but I am not. Class had a very rough start. Not just for me; for everyone in the class.

Clark was out of control the first couple of days. Well, maybe not out of control, but you get the point. I was scared to even pick up my knife when he was nearby. It was as though he expected perfect execution from us our first time doing a task.

The start was also hard since we were directed to take notes during demonstration. Trying to watch what Chef Clark was doing, listen to what he was saying, take notes of what he was doing and saying and then do what he just did was no easy task. I ended up with poor notes, little learned and no idea what the hell I was doing when it was my turn. By class three I had decided that I would only take notes during lecture.

Seven days after class started Clark had become nice, he had become funny (still blunt though) and he became very helpful. You began to want to cut things while he was around just so he would stop and let you know how to do it a better way. The fact that I was paying better attention and not taking notes made it so that I knew everything that was going on by day seven. It just got so much better.

Now fish is over and I am going back to that production kitchen on Monday, during my free time to help cut some more fish. Seven days ago that would not have been the case. I will admit that I am not going to miss my clothes stinking of fish, but I will miss that class even though it had some “tough love.”

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goat pics

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Goat Breakdown

We are breaking down whole, dressed goats tomorrow in meat fabrication class. How awesome is that? My teacher reserved them for us to make sure that none of the people who work in the meat room break them down on us.
Everybody in class seems pretty excited about it. This is kind of hard for me to understand considering the vast majority of people in the US would be appealed to even watch this occur. Honestly I think they should know where their food comes from so they have more respect for it. Most of them think of the package at the store and that is about as far as it goes. The fact that everyone else is excited lets me know that I am finally with my peers. I just hope people can control themselves and don't start playing with the carcasses because my teacher will take them away from us and just do the fab himself like he has to other classes before.
It all makes me wonder what students at other culinary schools are doing tomorrow. Are they breaking down entire animals or pumping out mass amounts of food every day to feed thousands of people or are they just feeding people within their classroom? I don't know, but I do know that my camera will be going to class with me tomorrow. I will post some pics tomorrow.

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MEAT

Today was my first day of meat fabrication. It was pretty fun and pretty damn funny. The funny part is people were cutting themselves in less than 5 minutes after they had begun fabricating a beef shank (my time is sure to come too though). The shitty part however is that class starts at 6:30 in the fucking morning. It was a rough wake up. A very rough wake up, but I did manage to make it to class on time and that is what is important. I just am thankful that I live on campus. I know people that commute up to 45 minutes and that sucks.
We fabricated beef shanks, top rounds and watched a demo on shoulder clods today. We only get to spend the first half of our class in the meat room and the rest, unfortunately is lecture in the class room. We broke all the beef down into stew meat, roasts (which we tied off) and collected the usable trimmings to grind into burger.

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The end of the beginning

Today is the last day of B-block and considering I just finished my last final (which I owned) it is over. For those of you who do not know, the CIA, at least for the time being, is a block system instead of semesters or trimesters. This means every 3 weeks or so you jump to the next class. It is one class at a time so you can be in the kitchen that is set up for whatever class you are taking. If you are in the Asian cuisine class then the kitchen has wok burners etc.

Back to B-block. B-block is all classroom time and nothing that physically involves cooking. For that reason we have to dress in business clothes and not our whites. Well you can wear your whites, but that is just disrespectful to the uniform. A-block most people just test out of and it consists of a math and writing class. B-block consists of Product Knowledge, Food Safety, Writing, Intro to Gastronomy and Culinary Mathematics. None of these classes are hard, but you would be surprised how many students have real problems with them.

Anyway, I am actually sad to see them go. Most people just want to get into the kitchens and I do too, but I am still going to miss these classes and being able to get dressed up every single day. I had some great teachers too. I have nothing bad to say about any of them. My Product Knowledge teacher is an organic farmer. Who better to teach you about produce than a farmer right? He also had some really interesting stories that related to the area which makes it more interesting. My Gastro teacher was great too and is actually involved in the food world. She is extremely smart and even though she has a bad rep, I think she was very mind opening and what I learned from her will relate to a lot of what goes on in my future. Although math was really easy, I still liked my teacher a lot. He made class interesting and was rather funny at times. Food Safety, well I am not sad to see this one go, but I still had a good teacher who at least tried to make it interesting and when the Servsafe exam came around it was cake. Considering that she did her job very well.

Writing is a much longer course than the rest since we have a writing practical, but I don't mind that much. It sucks having more work on my plate going into my next set of classes and that is something I don't want to deal with. On the flip side, I do enjoy the class. My teacher is a bit of a character and sometimes I wonder where her head is at. At the end of the day she makes class fun and leaves our writing pretty open so we can really get into it.

Gastro is what I am really going to miss. I really hope that I will have a chance to learn more from these teachers during my time at the CIA. We really do have some top notch people at our fingertips and this isn't like high school. Teachers want to educate you here and will take time out of their day to help you learn and grow. There are people who would disagree with me on many levels and to them I say, "Get the fuck out of here and go to another school." More on that later.

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The one thing that is drilled into student's heads here is to network. We are where a lot of people would consider the mecca of the culinary world and if by some chance you think the mecca is Food Network then you need to get your shit straight. We have more certified master chefs here than in any other single area of the world. A lot of our teachers are extremely educated and they have a great network. Really no matter where you want to go in the food world, there is somebody here with a connection that can help you get there as long as you ask.

Many educators are published and a couple seem to have done everything and know everyone. We have a lot of presentations on campus. I was lucky enough to catch a miso demonstration from a master kaseiki chef from Japan my first week here. I got to watch him do some amazing things with his knives and more so got to taste his food.

Today we have two events going on. One is Chef John Besh who, if you don't know, was the runner-up on The Next Iron Chef and author Peter Singer who is considered a controversial philosopher and wrote a book on the ethics of eating meat. I am not able to attend either of these due to my class schedule, but that is just life and they are recorded so I can watch them later. On a good note, I did get to meet John Besh earlier today. He seemed like an extremely nice guy. I for one would probably not handle myself so well, but I am glad I got to get a picture.

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