Broken Sauce and Broken Dreams — Culinary School Over 40, Pt. 3
It is week three of Culinary School and I am pushed to my limits. Is this end of the line for me? Maybe I am too old for this.
Dicing carrots, making toast, and pouring myself a glass of water were all considered outside of my culinary skill set. The logical thing to do would be to stay out of the kitchen, offering words of encouragement from a comfy chair to whoever was generous enough to prepare me a meal. Yet guilt gnawed at my soul, telling me this might be an unfair arrangement for my wife Ashley.
I signed up for Culinary School at Jefferson Community & Technical College (JCTC) determined to help Ashley in the kitchen and make myself a better informed food and travel storyteller.
These two reasonable objectives were replaced with a more ambitious goal after two weeks of classes. I was ready to declare myself The Next Big Thing in cooking with my own television show a preordained certainty.
Sure, the only thing I had ever cooked was soggy ratatouille, but when shooting for the stars, it is best not to get bogged down in the details.
The whole cooking thing aside, there was one obstacle standing in the way of the prophecy detailing my ascension to culinary greatness and that is I appeared rather silly in my chef’s uniform.
I looked clownish and I needed to do something about it. The pants, if filled with air, could be used as a flotation device while the chef jacket hung limp and shapeless halfway down my thighs. Look away, I’m hideous!
I returned to Amazon, looking for a uniform befit of my future status.
I decided on the Chef Works Morocco Chef Coat and the Lightweight Slim Fit Pants, a combo I hoped would herald me as the latest and greatest culinary fashionista.
They were an exquisite pairing. Finally, a chef’s uniform that fits! I would need to rehearse the line, “Thank you, that’s sweet, but I’m married…please let go of my arm,” before going out in public.
I sauntered into class Monday morning, finally looking the part. “Good morning, friends!” A few nods from fellow students. No prolonged gazes at my new attire. Perhaps I was a bit too enthusiastic for a Monday morning.
Our instructor, Chef Jim, arrived in class and informed us it was going to be a packed five hour class with no time for delay. Station assignments were given and Chef Jim wasn’t joking, this was going to be intense.
We were to learn and prepare the following: mirepoix, roux, veloute, breaking down a whole chicken, dark chicken stock made with roasted chicken bones, a regular chicken stock, fish stock, bechamel, white wine sauce, onion pique, homemade biscuits, sausage gravy, Hollandaise sauce, roasted chicken, some kind of Italian baked chicken whose name I forgot, and honestly a few more dishes that I cannot remember as they were not at my station.
Are you wondering how one feels when given these assignments when last week the only thing you did was sauté vegetables?
The answer is panic as an appetizer, futility as the entrée, and despair for dessert.
All students were to prepare several identical foods, and then were assigned stations in which they would prepare food assigned only to them.
Our common responsibilities were breaking down a chicken and preparing mirepoix and a roux. I do not want to bore you with excessive details, but mirepoix and roux are the building blocks of many dishes and their sauces.
Chef Jim gathered us round a table to demonstrate how to break down a chicken. He removed the wings, legs, and breasts; his blade slicing through flesh and joint with ease. “Just listen to the bird. It wants to show you where to cut. Any questions?” Chef asked.
Is it too late to drop this class?
We retrieved our own whole chickens and returned to our stations.
I pulled out my boning knife for the first time. It is a flexible narrow blade designed to bend and fit in awkward spaces at odd angles, while still being able to slice through joints.
I spent the next ten minutes mangling this poor bird. I would be arrested for animal cruelty had it not already been dead. Chef Jim stopped by to monitor my progress, took the knife from my hand, tried to assist, but the damage was done…to both the chicken and my chances of an internship at Chef Jim’s restaurant.
Other students began preparing chicken stock using leftover bones from breaking down the bird, while other students took the legs, wings, and breasts to roast. My job was to cook fish stock using what was left of a grouper fish.
The first step for making many dishes and sauces, including fish stock, is preparing a mirepoix; a diced vegetable combination of two parts onions, one part carrots, and one part celery.
Chef Jim demonstrated how to further break down the fish so it could fit in the stock pot. The fish was added to the pot along with the mirepoix, peppercorns, parsley, thyme, a bay leaf, mushrooms, and water. It was brought to a boil and then allowed to simmer for around thirty minutes.
Voila! Let’s add fish stock to my repertoire joining the privileged ranks of ratatouille and microwave dinners. Quite the combination. What’s next? I should probably set up a new email address to receive the many culinary job offers coming my way, but it can wait til tomorrow.
Culinary school is similar to a restaurant in that you never stop cooking. I prepared my ingredients to make homemade biscuits while the fish stock simmered away.
I filled a giant mixing bowl with all purpose flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, butter, and milk. I mixed the ingredients by fork and then by hand, making sure the butter was broken up into pea-sized pellets that were evenly distributed throughout the mix.
It was past 11am and I had been cooking and on my feet for over three hours. Chef Jim instructed us to take a break, but I was too absorbed in my tasks and soldiered on. But my body was in pain, and it was increasingly difficult to ignore.
My surgically repaired left hip was aching; the pain spreading from my adductors throughout my pelvis and lower back. I shifted my weight to the right side, remembering my knee was severely sprained only a week before classes began. I spent the first couple of classes limping around and only just started feeling better.
The more I shifted my weight to the right, the more aggravated my knee became. There was no good way to stand and I could feel my temper flaring, as I get angry when I’m in pain.
I wasn’t just ready to call it a day, I needed to call it quits.
Or we can make some biscuits.
The fork was useless in incorporating the butter, so I put on rubber gloves and did it by hand. I squeezed lumps of butter and mix between my fingers attempting to create the desired pea-sized pellets.
My lower back, hips, and knees were throbbing and now I could feel my hands, forearms, and shoulder begin to ache and tingle. I knew instantly what this was: an impinged shoulder diagnosed years ago due to many years of working at a computer with poor posture.
You’ve got to be kidding me. Perhaps I could get everything to hurt if only someone would knee me in the crotch and poke me in the eye.
Chef Jim gave a quick demo to my station partner and I on how to knead the dough and we got to work. Kneaded, rolled out, cut into circles, and placed on a baking sheet.
My partner and I put the biscuits in the oven and I left the kitchen to sit down in the classroom. I needed a break and sat down in a plastic chair, relieved to be off my feet. I took four Ibuprofens from my backpack and gulped them down them with water. Hopefully, relief was imminent.
Am I too old for this? I set out on this journey partly to show that age is not the limiter we believe it is; that yes, it may be a little more difficult, but still very much within our grasp. I stared at the class whiteboard, my body sprawled out in a plastic chair, believing I had made an egregious mistake.
A basement classroom at culinary school is not the ideal place for a mid-life crisis. I decided to shake it off, move forward, and hope the Ibuprofen kicks in soon.
“Come over to this side of the kitchen, please.” Chef Jim waited for us to surround him before continuing, “We made stocks, which will be used to prepare the mother sauces. But there is one sauce that each of you will make at your station today. It’s a skill that every chef needs to know, and many restaurants consider this a test for potential hires. If you can’t make it, they don’t hire you.” Wow, no pressure. “We are going to make Hollandaise sauce.”
Oh, nice! I love Eggs Benedict and I can whip up a modified version right now. We have biscuits in the oven, let’s poach some eggs, and I’ll add my own Hollandaise sauce. This is going to be great!
I will save you the complaining and skip ahead to the end. I do not like swearing in my writing. To me, it is a sign of laziness. It is rarely appropriate, not from some moral high ground, but as a creative or descriptive tool.
Yet an exception is in order. Hollandaise sauce can go fuck itself.
This devil sauce requires whisking egg yolks at light speed or they will scramble. Thank goodness I like scrambled eggs because that’s all I made that day.
It didn’t help that Chef Jim was yelling at me, “faster! Faster! Use your wrist, less shoulder!” and saying that if I worked at his restaurant he would put me on the Hollandaise station until I got it right.
Dear H.R., My apologies, but I would like to withdraw my resume from consideration.
I do not recommend making Hollandaise sauce if you have a messed up shoulder, carpal tunnel syndrome, and take failure personally.
My body failed me that day and Hollandaise was a dagger through the heart of my culinary dreams.
This whole day was proving that maybe I am too old for culinary school and that it is too late to get in shape for a restaurant career. I can’t stand for a five hour class, let alone a twelve hour shift.
And who would hire me anyway? Apparently chefs that can’t make Hollandaise sauce are not in high demand.
We began cleaning up and somehow I’m on dish duty, literally the worst thing I could do given my current pain level. I shut up and did it anyways, my back and left hip in horrific pain. I hadn’t felt anything like it since my original injury almost ten years ago when I shredded my hip cartilage and bone grinded on bone for weeks before my surgery.
My new chef’s outfit was stained, filthy, and soaking wet from the dishes. Who cares anyways? This is the end of the line for me. I am broken.
I finished the dishes, grabbed a broom, and started sweeping up the area around the sink. I’m a glutton for punishment, especially when already feeling sorry for myself, so why not clean some more?
Becky, a student from the baking class next door, walked up to me and started making small talk. I was in a lot of pain, and my temper was short.
Sorry, Becky, can’t chat right now. Much too busy being a martyr.
“Which restaurant do you work at?” she asked.
“What? No, I’ve never worked in a restaurant a day in my life. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You just look like a chef, like you’ve been doing this a while.” Who, me? In this old outfit? “Are you done with the broom? Can I take it now?”
“Absolutely, here you go.” She takes the broom, thanks me, and walks back to her class.
Obviously, Becky and I are besties now. Maybe we’ll work together when I’m an award-winning chef on a flexible schedule.
UNTIL NEXT TIME…
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