The Chef was, in fact, unflappable. But the class was fantastic. He taught us about amaranth and other “ancient” grains. I had my first introduction to quinoa, a previously overlooked complete protein that has as much protein per ounce as cow meat. Triticale. Loquat. Quince. Kiwano. Fiddlehead Fern. Durian. The man was full of stories – travel adventures and culinary experimentation. One day we tasted twenty two grains back to back, picking apart the differences between long- and short grain rices, red and yellow lentils. We had a blind salt tasting, our task to name the origin of a tray full of refined salts – sea, or rock. It was the ultimate foodgeek class, the only time we had during school to just sit around and talk about how neat foods are.

Neat (and too often overlooked) food no. 484: Cherimoya.
The Cherimoya is an Andes native now cultivated in Spain, Ecuador, the US, Chile, Israel, Australia, and Mexico as well and, according to the class’s required text, the Visual Food Encyclopedia, is borne of a thorny-branched tree that can reach up to 24 feet high. The trees often have to be hand-pollinated as the flowers are too fragrant to attract most insects. When ripe, their soft fruit is intoxicatingly sweet, creamy, and a little tangy. Visual Food recommends using the cherimoya in salads, ice creams, yogurts or jellies. Me, I think there’s no better way than standing in the kitchen, spoonin’ the flesh from a halved fruit right into my hungry little mouth.

      They went like this: Nervous students in ridiculous starched hats and bleached aprons line up in the kitchen, waiting to take a shift at the burners. The rules: Every item in the “black box” (which is actually a grey or green bus tub or milk crate) must be used in the preparation of a three or five course meal. Anything in the kitchen – stocks, onions, flour, spices, etc. – is available for use, but one may neither leave the kitchen nor send out for any special ingredient. Meals are served to the Chef in order (appetizer before main, and so on) & all within maybe one or two hours. Some students would sit in faux-calm contemplation and make sketches & lists, tucking scraps of paper into the breast pocket of their chef coats next to the requisite black sharpie and insta-read thermometer.

      ”Black box” ingredients were usually pretty boring – three shrimp, for example, a piece of chicken, two shallots, radicchio, asparagus, a small bag of rice. Grading was done based on the finished meal, of course – appropriate utilization, cooking methods, execution, presentation. Cleanliness (of self & workspace), waste, and grace were also considered in the evaluation. Exams often happened all week long. The PM A la Carte class was responsible for running dinner at the school’s restaurant. During exams, five or ten students were pulled from work as mini-sauciers, salad-platers and grillardins, to perform the test while the rest of the class kept the machine shakily running.

      These exams always made me nervous. In school, I was only ever really “in my zone” in the bakeshop. The remaining 83% of my time was there I passed in a constant state of low-level panic. I got by just fine – at times exclusively on charm and delegation – but, unlike many of my classmates, I had not worked in a “real” kitchen before school. School for me was a challenge. For the more-seasoned among us, it was a vacation.

      A moment from the last black box I took:
       Chef hands me my tub in the middle of some small crisis in class. We are already behind. As soon as I have a grip on the indents on either side of the tub, the chef snaps a nod at me and says, “see you in an hour.” Then he is gone. I look down at the ingredients in my hands. Everything looks normal & an image of the meal I will make begins to form in my mind. I cannot make the words yet, but I know it will be OK. Then I see what is surely intended as my main entrée item: venison. Deer; like, you know, Bambi. The Rolodex inside my head begins to spin on its black plastic axis. I am shuffling through everything I know about venison: appropriate cooking method for this kind of cut (and what the hell cut is it, anyway?), flavor matches, doneness indicators. This list is woefully short. I don’t even know what it tastes like. I take a deep breath as classmates gather to inspect the tub. The look on my face gives me away. One man is gone and back in a flash. He has a small ceramic ramekin & holds it out for me. It is his venison spice rub: he’s been using it for years. I poke through it and nod. We talk about what kind of sauce I might make to compliment it. The guy in charge of the grill that night tells me he’ll cook it for me. He disappears with it, winking, after he asks what time I would like it done.

      The cool thing about these exams is that I learned how to work within constraints – limited ingredients, space, time, and patience. All of these things are in short supply in the “real” world. This is how the specials in your favorite restaurant happen.

      I am still doing black box exams, only much less formally. Emerging from this season’s final exam stupor I discover myself hungry last night, but neither the fridge nor the freezer offered up any obvious solution. I am not dressed, nor have I the inclination to dress, for being seen in public. Without thinking, I pull likely-looking ingredients out on the counter: half of a Hubbard squash, a shriveling yam, a yellow onion. Pinching the phone between my ear and neck, I peel the yam, cut the mold off the squash. A saucepan of water. Salt. Fire. All ingredients are cubed and go into the pot. I open the fridge again. Garlic emerges – and ginger, more onion, corn. Phone call ends. I pluck a drying serrano pepper, rinse it, and throw it in whole. Thyme. Black pepper. Fifteen minutes later, when the squash and the yams are tender, I use the immersion blender to make it smooth. No dairy, no added fat, no stock. A pinch more salt. I begin to imagine fetching some fresh thyme from the yard. I think about how nice a ribbon of crème fraiche would look in the middle of the bowl. Before either transpires, though, I am eating. & it’s good: no worries, no stress.

After 50 weeks – or something near to that – at WCI, I enjoyed a mandatory six week internship before I was granted my freedom from the program and, I suppose, the tacit support of the school that I might be capable of holding my own in the world. Desperately homesick and lacking the creativity and/or inclination to seek out an unknown institution, I picked a well respected pastry shop back home.

It was coming up on the Christmas season and the bakery was in full pre-holiday swing when I arrived. I was nineteen, scared, and – honestly – over my head. The chef/owners threw me right into the mix, assigning me tasks difficult to screw up. They let me make mistakes. They corrected my bad form, confused ideas. They seemed horrified at what I had not been taught at school.

It’s a good story all on it’s own, but it’s not what I am trying to tell here. By the end of my six weeks there, I was an altogether different, confident, skilled little pastry cook. They gave me crash courses in puff pastry, all maners of chocolate, creams, potions, goos, fruits and nuts.

In a commercial kitchen, all things are done in batches. You don’t ever make one cake – you make fifteen of them. You don’t whip a little cream, you whip two gallons of it. So when we made cakes – it was an all-morning event, at certain stages involving four or five people to do the assemblage in a timely manner before the chantilly wept.

No matter the particular flavor profile, all cakes followed the same basic pattern – a sponge of some kind (the “cake” part), a liqueur-laced simple syrup (like frangelico or framboise), creams of some kind (pastry cream, jam, buttercream, etc.). It was not uncommon to have six or seven total layers. That, plus a thin layer of melted chocolate spread on the bottom of the cake – a moisture barrier, purely practical – and the eventual glaze and decoration. It was quite an affair and this manner of making layer cakes became my standard.

Until two days ago, I had not made a proper cake like the one described in at least three years, very possibly longer. Before I begin a project like this, it can seem pretty daunting. I don´t often work off of one recipe, so my first task is auditioning the pieces, finding their formulae, then making and sketch and a shopping list. Which filling did I like so much back in school? Did it have hazelnuts? Pecans? No, it was the bittersweet chocolate! Was it? This can go on for days. Once I have settled on an idea, I set about to finding the recipes, somewhere in my (disorganized) collection of class notes, work binders, cookbooks and scribbles on 3×5 notecards. If I am able to find what I am looking for, I shop.

Day one is making the sponge or biscuit. Day two – or the afternoon of the first day if you’re feelin’ productive – is generation of the rest of the components. Fruit fillings, pastry creams – often these things need a night in the fridge to reach their full glory and/or workability. And then put it all together.

This is what I made a few days ago:

Chocolate Chiffon Sponge
Simple Syrup w/ Framboise
Heavy Cream + Mascarpone
Fresh Blackberries
Blackberry and Raspberry Compote
Chantilly Icing

Step by step:

Melt Scharffenberger 72%. Spread thin layer on the bottom of the bottom layer of chiffon sponge. Let chocolate set.
Apply boozey simple syrup.
Apply thin layer of berry compote.
Apply layer of mascarpone cream.
2nd layer of chiffon.
Boozey syrup.
Fresh berries.
Mascarpone cream.
3rd chiffon.
Boozey syrup.
Mascarpone cream

Chill.

Finish w/Chantilly cream on top and sides. Garnish top with rosettes, fresh berries, shaved chocolate, and fresh flowers.

It actually goes pretty fast when you have everything ready at hand.

I cannot begin to explain how good this whole process felt a few days ago. Well, aside from the decoration. I’m too neurotic to enjoy decorating cakes. As I confidently wielded my offset spatula and masterfully put that darned chantilly in its place, I felt a bit like I was doing, mmm, what I am supposed to do. That last phrase is riddled with philosophical problems that I shall not address here – - but do you know what I mean? Have you ever felt at home doing something? It is as if these hands were built for puff pastry and poached fruit.

The kicker of it is that I don’t think I’ll go back to the professional kitchen any time soon. When I lived there the first time, I felt my brain going to goo. Maybe it was because I was young and inassertive, but I didn’t often feel very respected. I found it pretty hard to get people to listen to me and, so often, *though not at aforementioned French Temple of Flour and Sugar, corners were cut and quality and crafstpersonship was sacrificed for time and for profit. Plus, I think I am showing signes of the beginning of CTS.

I have long posited that I shall not define my life in terms of a career. The jobs I will hold as an adult (and soon!) are important to me already, to be sure, but I refuse to let them make me who I am. I am a maker of things, a singer of song, a lover of living things and of knowledge. Add to the list, maker of cakes, nourisher of the celebrants… that’s OK, I can do all that…..

      On the other side of that year, I know that whatever skills I honed back there, most have gone soft. I couldn’t make consommé tomorrow, but I doubt I’ll ever want to. I have since learned how to break the rules. I realized this last night as I tried to explain to E how to make granola. When pressed about how much all I could say was enough. And as for how long, all I know is ‘til it’s done. I think I do that a lot. I’m pretty sure it drives my friends a little closer to crazy. After my 3 am mornings with the Frenchman (to whom I owe more than I would ever, ever publicly give him credit for…but I’ll admit this: I learned more in six weeks in that kitchen than I did in a year at school), food doesn’t scare me nearly as much as it used to. Chef Jasso taught me how to read a pastry recipe: how to apply just a little bit of food chemistry to see the finished product – its crumb, texture, thickness – while its still just abstracted on the page. Eggs are binders, thickeners, and a useful source of fat; did you know that? And when I left for my internship, I learned speed, fearlessness, and a whole lotta shortcuts. I learned how to use better ingredients in the most effective way. I learned how to bake in bulk – 15 pounds of butter at each go, ten sheet pans of tiramisu instead of one.

      When I tell people I’m into food, many immediately back down. Oh, I can’t follow a recipe to save my life. Good! Recipes are totally useful guidelines, but they are not commandments. If you really understand pastry cream, for example, either because you have made it a hundred (or six) times, or because you have read Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, then you know how to make it so it turns out the way you want it to. You don’t need a recipe to tell you what tastes good – you already know what tastes good!! At best, recipes are just an offering of someone else’s idea, of the way it’s worked for them.

      It’s a huge, embarrassing cliché, but the greatest thing I’ve figured out in the kitchen is that it just won’t do to fear it. (Just like it just won’t do to cry over my piecrusts, though occasionally I still do.) One bad batch of muffins won’t ruin my life or drive me to drink; neither will a tough breast of chicken, or a loose pastry cream. You don’t learn anything by getting it right the first time. And it’s way more fun when you figure it out – the interplay between your chosen flavors, how to get the texture you want (not too creamy and not too crunchy, mind you!) and, of course, how to make it look sexy…

      So there. Now there’s nothing (important) I know that you don’t. Just mix it ‘til it looks right and then cook it ‘til it’s done.