The Making of a Chef
Read The Making of a Chef Online
Authors: Michael Ruhlman
For my father,
Rip,
provider of the feast
Rip,
provider of the feast
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Table of Contents
W
hen I return to the august halls of the Culinary Institute of America, I feel a visceral jolt. To be around all that foodâthose dozens of teaching kitchens taut with the work of cooking, the air electric with the food knowledge of more than a hundred chef-instructors, and the palpable passion of men and women entering our flourishing culinary worldâcharges me with energy and excitement.
hen I return to the august halls of the Culinary Institute of America, I feel a visceral jolt. To be around all that foodâthose dozens of teaching kitchens taut with the work of cooking, the air electric with the food knowledge of more than a hundred chef-instructors, and the palpable passion of men and women entering our flourishing culinary worldâcharges me with energy and excitement.
I delight in telling new students that never has there been a better time in America to be entering the world of food and service, a time when chefs have earned prestige unimagined by their forebears, when excellent ingredients are increasingly available, and food issues both serious and light are front page news. I tell new students to learn the fundamentals of cooking and the rest will follow, and more, that the degree of excellence with which they master those fundamentals will very likely determine their success for the rest of their culinary careers. I tell them to ask questions, to absorb as much culinary knowledge and wisdom as possible during this brief time.
It's an exciting journey, a culinary education. It transforms you from the inside out. It alters your understanding of time and your relationship with elements. A good culinary education, whether it happens in a restaurant or in a school, will change the way you respond to the world, the way you organize your life, your expectations of yourself and of others, the way you face challenges. The rules of a kitchen and its unusual work ethos are different from any other I've encountered, and in the best kitchens, this ethos is among the most honorable to strive for and the most difficult to maintain.
A culinary education conveys voluminous information about the plants and animals we eat and how they behave in heatâa body of knowledge that
is inexhaustible and infinitely nuancedâbut the education is also about working with your hands, the physical experience of the skill and the repetition of that experience. Cooking at its most basic and at its most refined levels is fundamentally a craft, and crafts must be practiced over and over; with repetition comes increased speed and precision.
is inexhaustible and infinitely nuancedâbut the education is also about working with your hands, the physical experience of the skill and the repetition of that experience. Cooking at its most basic and at its most refined levels is fundamentally a craft, and crafts must be practiced over and over; with repetition comes increased speed and precision.
Most important of all, though, and what is least often explicitly stated, is that a culinary education is about being pushed and about learning to push yourself: You can do more than you imagine and you can do it better than you think possible. That's what you should be imbibing every day as you learn to break down a chicken or to cure a ham or chiffonade herbs or cook and cool a
crème Anglaise
âgetting better every day. A good culinary education is ultimately about this push, to learn more, to work harder, faster, better. Forever.
crème Anglaise
âgetting better every day. A good culinary education is ultimately about this push, to learn more, to work harder, faster, better. Forever.
The Making of a Chef
is the record of one culinary education at one of the most influential culinary schools in the country, a portrait of the students, the chef-instructors, the classes, the cooking lessons, and the food. But it's also about the transformation that can happen when you make the journey. I'm a writer, but I became a cook in order to write this book, and this has done more to direct my life than any one thing I've done before or since.
is the record of one culinary education at one of the most influential culinary schools in the country, a portrait of the students, the chef-instructors, the classes, the cooking lessons, and the food. But it's also about the transformation that can happen when you make the journey. I'm a writer, but I became a cook in order to write this book, and this has done more to direct my life than any one thing I've done before or since.
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I
arrived at the CIA at a fortuitous moment. In 1996, chefs were on the cusp of what would become full-blown celebrity. The Food Network was in its infancy (
Emeril Live
would debut that summer). The call for local ingredients and naturally raised food was a murmur, mainly among chefs. America's gathering interest in ingredients, cooking, and restaurants had yet to be called a “food revolution.”
arrived at the CIA at a fortuitous moment. In 1996, chefs were on the cusp of what would become full-blown celebrity. The Food Network was in its infancy (
Emeril Live
would debut that summer). The call for local ingredients and naturally raised food was a murmur, mainly among chefs. America's gathering interest in ingredients, cooking, and restaurants had yet to be called a “food revolution.”
I was among 29,000 students in the United States who had entered one of 157 culinary degree programs that year. Last year, according to the CIA, more than 62,000 students were enrolled in 301 programs. Today 56 schools offer bachelor's degrees in the culinary arts. When I entered only two did, the CIA and Johnson & Wales (which enrolls the highest number of students in its five campuses).
In a little more than a decade, the number of people seeking a formal culinary education has doubled. Many of the new students are career changers. When I returned to the CIA in 2005, I met students in their forties and fifties who had been bankers, physicians, lawyers, and other white
collar professionals; they had been either unfulfilled in their previous work or they had long harbored dreams of professional culinary pursuits and had at last taken the plunge. But the average age of the CIA student is lower now than when I was there (down to twenty-two from twenty-six), so the career changer accounts for only a small percentage of the extraordinary growth in enrollment.
collar professionals; they had been either unfulfilled in their previous work or they had long harbored dreams of professional culinary pursuits and had at last taken the plunge. But the average age of the CIA student is lower now than when I was there (down to twenty-two from twenty-six), so the career changer accounts for only a small percentage of the extraordinary growth in enrollment.
One reason the numbers have doubled over the past twelve years, I believe, is the growth of opportunities for work in the food world. Students no longer need necessarily to enroll intending to become chefs as they did for most of the CIA's six decades (the school was founded in New Haven in 1946 to offer a trade to American servicemen returning from World War II). Today, the restaurant industry remains strong and growing ($558 billion, up $21 billion from last year), so those wishing to join its ranks as chefs and restaurateurs are assured a strong job market. But new opportunities in media and publishing, in food production, and in business and industry abound as well.
Another reason for the doubled enrollment is that the growing prestige of being a chef has made joining a culinary program cool. It didn't used to be something a parent bragged about for their son or daughter, but now it is, and this is both good and bad. Chefs have television shows. Chefs are famous. Chefs are published authors. Chefs have lines of products. Chefs have many businesses. Some chefs are world-famous moguls. The emergence of the chef as tycoon, embodied by Wolfgang Puck, Mario Batali, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and others who operate restaurants throughout the world and sell food and cooking productsâproves the potential for riches and fame never before dreamed of by professional cooks.
This is a good thing for all chefs. Chefs deserve our esteemâbut for their work, not for their fame and not simply because they wear a chef's coat. It is good that some chefs, through their very hard work, have hit it big and earned the admiration of their peers in other businesses. The extraordinary successes of the relatively few reflect well on the entire industry.
The downside of this phenomenon is that aspiring cooks may be led to believe that the doors of culinary school open onto the land of milk and honey upon graduation. This is akin to thinking everyone who is a committed football or basketball player in high school has a pretty good shot at the NFL or NBA. The fact is, only a handful of the hundreds of thousands of people who enter a culinary program during the next five years will become rich and famous for their cooking or their businesses.
Because of the illusion created by the recent celebrity of chefs, many who enter culinary school are disillusioned or disappointed after leaving itâyoked by student-loan debt and grueling work at subsistence level pay. Yet, this is exactly what one should expect upon graduating, and it is not a bad thing.
When you leave a culinary program you will have the tools to learn the rest of what you need to know to succeed. Learning the rest means building up experience and this requires time. The food industry and industries connected to it are vast, and opportunities are many. Some opportunities haven't even been invented yet, but they will be, likely by an enterprising young man or woman currently at work on their culinary degree.
Because of the expanding opportunities, those students who enroll in a bachelor's program, or studies beyond the associate cooking degree, will have an advantage in the job market. If you have the time and the money for the additional years of study, it's probably worth the additional time and money.
I've gotten a lot of e-mail over the years from people who have read this book. Many thank me for saving them from going to culinary school. A lot more say that this book is the reason they enrolled in a culinary school.
The most frequent question I get is this: “Is it worth it? Should I put myself into debt or should I learn by working in restaurants?”
Only you can make that call. But I believe that either way can work depending on your situation. One costs money and delivers a lot of information in a very short time. The other takes quite a bit more time and will not provide the breadth of information one gets in most schools, but you earn money as you learn; also, many famous and highly regarded chefs trained by working. The latter option is less certain and takes longer. The former is much more expensive, but, in my opinion, is worth the money because it delivers so much information so quickly.
The e-mails I get that are impossible to answer are those from people who are out of their twenties and are wondering if it's too late. “Mr. Ruhlman,” a correspondent wrote me last week, “am I crazy to think that I can embark on a culinary career at the age of fifty?”
It depends. If this man wants to be a restaurant chef, I would say yes, it is too late. Actual restaurant cooking is a young man's gameâit requires extraordinary stamina and endurance. It's a physical occupation more on the level of professional football than the performing arts, and the better shape you're in, the better cook you'll be. It takes at least five years after
culinary school to figure out what you're doing from a culinary standpoint. And another five years to make anything happen on your own, a restaurant or a culinary business. I'm not aware of any sixty-year-old chefs still working the line. And friends nearing fifty who still occasionally do work the line at their restaurants describe their younger colleagues impatiently reading the tickets over their shoulders because they no longer move fast enough. As with any physical occupation, whether in professional sports or heart surgery or cooking, there comes a time in a cook's life when knowledge and experience cannot compensate for diminishing speed.
culinary school to figure out what you're doing from a culinary standpoint. And another five years to make anything happen on your own, a restaurant or a culinary business. I'm not aware of any sixty-year-old chefs still working the line. And friends nearing fifty who still occasionally do work the line at their restaurants describe their younger colleagues impatiently reading the tickets over their shoulders because they no longer move fast enough. As with any physical occupation, whether in professional sports or heart surgery or cooking, there comes a time in a cook's life when knowledge and experience cannot compensate for diminishing speed.
If, on the other hand, this correspondent simply wants to be involved in the food world somehow, then no, he's not crazy. It all depends on what you're after. Fifty is getting up there for any kind of change, but if you can swing it financially, you may find culinary school and the opportunities it opens up for you truly rewarding. Perhaps it will be in writing, perhaps it will be in production, front of the house service, or in research and development for a food company.
I finished my culinary school journey when I completed the manuscript for this book in January 1997 at the age of thirty-four. I had little idea at the time that the culinary education I got as a result of my reporting this book (and some good luck) would become the foundation of much of the writing I've gone on to do and has become the primary source of my income. Alton Brown worked in television until about the same age, foresaw the potential for food television programming and enrolled at the New England Culinary Institute in 1994. He created and sold his show
Good Eats
to the Food Network in 1999 and has become one of the most popular personalities on the network, hosting a variety of shows and documentaries and writing several excellent books on food and cooking.
Good Eats
to the Food Network in 1999 and has become one of the most popular personalities on the network, hosting a variety of shows and documentaries and writing several excellent books on food and cooking.
No doubt there are many examples of middle-aged culinary students who have gone on to be successful in the culinary world. It all depends on what your goals are. If you intend to become involved in any kind of food media, whether in print or on screen, I recommend a culinary education. I believe that people with a solid culinary foundation will be best suited to take advantage of opportunities in traditional media and in the new media.
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y main intention in writing this book was not to create a primer for the incoming culinary student; rather, I wanted to craft a story that would be compelling even for those who have no intention of setting foot in a
culinary school, but who still want to know what happens to you when you learn to cook, what it means to be a cook and a chef, and to know what the work of professional cooking has to tell us about food and cooking generally, whether in professional kitchens or at home. And so this book is filled with the stories and personalities of the actual people I encountered on my journey through the CIA.
y main intention in writing this book was not to create a primer for the incoming culinary student; rather, I wanted to craft a story that would be compelling even for those who have no intention of setting foot in a
culinary school, but who still want to know what happens to you when you learn to cook, what it means to be a cook and a chef, and to know what the work of professional cooking has to tell us about food and cooking generally, whether in professional kitchens or at home. And so this book is filled with the stories and personalities of the actual people I encountered on my journey through the CIA.
I've lost touch with most of the people I write about in this book but still keep up with a few. Adam Shepard is the chef-owner of two restaurants called Lunetta, one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn. Ben Grossman is a chef and an owner of The Smoke Joint in Brooklyn. Both were leaders in my Skills class. Paul Trujillo is the chef of a restaurant on St. John in the Virgin Islands. Travis Alberhasky is a chef at a catering company in Kansas, and is a member of the Missouri National Guard who has been deployed to and returned from Iraq. Eun-Jung Lee earned her Ph.D. and is a culinary educator at a hospitality college in Korea. Last year, I ran into a woman I took bread baking with, Jill Davie, chef de cuisine at Josie in Santa Monica, when she was a contestant on
The Next Iron Chef America
for the Food Network. She also has a show on the Fine Living Network. She told me our friend from bread baking, Jason Dante, had become a nurse. I bumped into Bill Scepansky, with whom I cooked at the American Bounty restaurant, at a food conference at the CIA's campus in the Napa Valleyâhe works as a corporate chef for a large produce company. John Marshall, my partner on the grill station at American Bounty, owned and ran a restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, for many years before selling it to buy a farm in North Carolina where he hopes to start a farm-to-table restaurant.
The Next Iron Chef America
for the Food Network. She also has a show on the Fine Living Network. She told me our friend from bread baking, Jason Dante, had become a nurse. I bumped into Bill Scepansky, with whom I cooked at the American Bounty restaurant, at a food conference at the CIA's campus in the Napa Valleyâhe works as a corporate chef for a large produce company. John Marshall, my partner on the grill station at American Bounty, owned and ran a restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, for many years before selling it to buy a farm in North Carolina where he hopes to start a farm-to-table restaurant.
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