Chez Christine

New Chapter

Although they've died down recently, I get emails asking me about various things from cuts of meat to restaurant recommendations in cities I've lived in.  The most popular themes, though, are about Le Cordon Bleu, Paris and what I've done with myself since.

A lot of people write when they have questions or doubts about going to the school, about its curriculum, about housing, about whether or not it's worth the (substantial) monetary investment.  The remaining people ask what kinds of positions are available in the food industry to graduates, with some thinking about restaurant jobs but more often than not, what else is out there.

It's been something I've struggled with for the past 3 years since graduation.  My one-week stint at a Parisian restaurant assured me that I was not cut out for restaurant work, at least behind the line.  As much as I was fascinated with the whole process and loved the adrenaline rush, the usually low pay and rough hours were discouraging.  Not to mention potentially having personal relationships suffer if you have such different work lifestyles.

So what CAN you do?  I was lucky that my timing worked well and I got into America's Test Kitchen as an intern.  The application process was not difficult, so the tougher aspect was dealing with working full-time for 3 months unpaid.  The whole experience, not to mention the notoriety that it has, was totally worth it.  I learned a ton on testing professionally, I had 8 hours a day of a wide variety of pure cooking that really honed my skills more than cooking school ever could, and I was dealing with a great group of people who taught me a lot.  It wasn't difficult decision to stay on after my internship to see if staff positions opened up, which also helped me to get asked to help with their TV show taping, valuable and rare experience.

When the stars didn't align for open positions, I was a little lost.  My whole time in Boston during the internship, I had been teaching at a children's cooking school.  I ramped up my hours, got more involved in planning menus for the school year and for summer, and threw all my energy in there.

Then I walked into Stir in Boston, fell in love with the cookbooks and what they do, and asked for a job on the spot.  It's really true that in the food industry, if you see something you want to be involved in, you just ask.  It's not as formal and you just have to be gutsy and passionate about it.  They hired me and I got experience in fine dining / guest services, a little management, and the world of cookbook buying.  More experience in things I never thought I'd be doing.

Fast forward to last year, and I moved back to San Francisco with a vague idea that I would consult with menu and recipe planning, hoping that I'd find more to do.  The work was there, but not in the volume I had hoped for.  Another chapter in 3 years of no to low pay, and sometimes no clear career path.

But the persistence has finally paid off.  I cold-called for food positions out here, including for catering companies and a school lunch program, but nothing hit.  I almost decided to see if I could find something back in advertising, what I did before picking up the knife kit. 

Then it happened - a position that I'm ecstatic about: full-time, with benefits, normal hours - there are so few of these in the food industry!  I'm joining the test kitchen at Chow.com next week, cooking with their small group, doing some editorial work, and basically combining a lot of skills I've picked up over the years into one job, plus picking up a few new ones like food styling and prop/grocery shopping.  I'm thrilled that I'm not leaving the kitchen.

It feels great and exciting - the team seems vibrant, interesting, and passionate.  Looking back, all the jobs I've chosen helped me be the candidate they were seeking.  It was a hard and bumpy road, and not everyone has the patience or support from family and friends that I had.  But there is hope!  Big lesson I learned: take jobs you really are interested in. Only then can you learn and grow, hopefully taking you along a path that ends in where you want to be.

Bon Appétit!

Embarassed to be American

Really, it's quite disturbing.

Today, I was asked to bake a few coffee cake mixes from boxes at work for the TV show filming.  One of the boxes I was given was Aunt Jemima's Easy Mix Coffee Cake.  On the front of the box was a bright yellow sign that said "No Mess Baking."

It came with a flimsy disposable tray that was only about an inch high.  The instructions stated to add an egg and 1/2 cup milk into the cake mix.  The jaw-dropper was adding them into the cake mix BAG.  That's right, I added the liquid ingredients right into the bag, held the top of the bag closed with one hand, and used the other hand to squish all the ingredients together.  No bowl, no whisk, no spatula.  Let's just say that the egg never really fully integrated into the dry ingredients.

To transfer the batter to the flimsy tray, all I had to do was squeeze it from the bag.  Then it was topped with a premade crumb topping, transferred onto a cookie sheet and placed into the oven.  The only equipment (besides the oven) I had to use was a measuring cup and a cookie sheet.  Oh, did I mention that the box said that you could bake the cake in the microwave?!?

The finished product looked so terrible that if anyone had served it to me, I would've wondered if it came from an Easy-Bake oven.

I'm so disturbed at how dumbed-down American food has become.  What bothers me most about this issue isn't that people are always trying to save time or are too lazy to make things from scratch.  Rather, the thing that saddens me most is that we lose our connection to food.  Things come prepped and covered in plastic, which we then throw straight into the microwave or oven.  Our desires for speed and convenience have replaced a lifestyle that celebrates and enjoys food.

Food should involve all of our senses- we should touch it, smell it, and hear it sizzling in a pan before it finally reaches our taste buds.  Real cooking takes time- time for your senses to kick in and anticipate what's to come.  When you purchase something that just has to be heated up or thrown together, you unfairly deny some of your senses and give yourself no time to enjoy the anticipation. 

It's no wonder that convenience food is usually less enjoyable than slow-cooked food.  Think about why baking cookies are so fun- you get to mix and touch the dough, lick the spoon, smell the cookies baking, strain your ears to hear for the timer to go off.  The anticipation of tasting the warm cookies is almost as good as the eating itself.  I dare you to find the same enjoyment by opening a bag of supermarket cookies.

Lest you call me a hypocrite, I will confess that I don't make everything from scratch.  But at least I don't make cake in a plastic bag.

Bon appétit!

Testing a Winner

When I started as an intern at Cook's Illustrated last fall, one of my first projects involved testing reader-submitted recipes for a contest they were holding through their Cook's Country magazine.  I loved it because you never knew what kind of recipes you would be testing that day, and they usually had interesting names or stories attached to them.  Some were great, some needed work, and some were, well, ummm...interesting.  Let's just say that fortunately, I have an iron stomach.

Testing reader-submitted entries were fun because there was less pressure on me to follow the recipes exactly: I relied on my cooking experience and intuition to fill in the gaps made by unclear directions, unattainable ingredients, or strange techniques.  (By the way, if you ever send in recipes to a contest, make sure you check your submission!  What exactly is a smidgen?!?)

The final winner of the $10,000 prize was something called a Peach Puzzle.  I was the very first person to make it at the test kitchen (the recipe was later retested and refined), and everyone suddenly became really interested in what I was doing.  Lil' old intern me.  Why, you ask?  And why was it called a puzzle?

It was called a puzzle because you would invert a ramekin in a round cake pan and arrange whole peaches around it.  After preparing a syrup, you would pour it over the peaches.  The final touch was a biscuit dough to cover the whole thing.

After the puzzle finished baking and cooled slightly, you would carefully invert the whole thing on a plate.  The result would be a bed of dough, peaches on top, and a ramekin full of syrup.  The magic was in how all the syrup ended up in the ramekin! 

My sudden popularity came from the fact that everyone wanted to be there when I flipped it over to see if it worked- I guess my charming personality wasn't as intriguing as the recipe I was working on.  Some wagered I would fumble and splash warm syrup over my neighbors, some scoffed that it would not work at all, and I just hoped that I wouldn't fling biscuit dough across the kitchen.  I held my breath, tried to ignore my audience, and did a careful flip.  Surprisingly, it worked. 

After the testing was finished for the submitted recipes, there was a vote and peach puzzle became the winner of the contest.  Even though I was no longer involved in the project at this point, I felt a moment of satisfaction that I had been the first one to lay my hands on the peach puzzle.

Chris Kimball talked about the contest in an NPR interview and the accompanying article included some of the runner-up recipes.  (By the way, I've never talked to him.)  As I was listening to the interview, I was tickled pink when he mentioned two recipes that didn't make the cut, pineapple souffle and a bright green clam chowder.  I tested those first, luckily survived, and still live to tell the tale!

Bon appétit!

Claim to Fame

Every week, the front page of Cook Illustrated's website features a candid shot from the kitchens.  When I first started, the photographer took a picture of me cutting corn off the cob.  I was excited when I was told that they would be using the photo.  Then, for some reason or another, they never used it. I was disappointed because now there would never be actual proof that I worked there.

This week's photo was a surprise.  I don't even remember the photographer being there, let alone taking pictures of me as I made pancakes for wraps filled with Chinese roast duck last week.  Look mom, it's me!  Well, at least for a week until they post a new photo up.

If you think the culinary world is glamorous, I beg to differ:  too-large chef's coats, hair permanently pulled back into a ponytail, and well, a weird expression on my face to top it all off.  Strangely enough, this is one of the only photos of me in a chef's coat.  Well, unless you count the goofy ones my parents insisted on taking when I catered a few dinners for them and awkwardly posed with their guests.

Bon appétit!

Smell-icious

Smells.

Usually they're good things.  They can whet an appetite, tell you if your spices or nuts are toasted, or conjure up memories of mom or grandma's kitchen.

Or smells can be nauseating or linger too long.  I've always thought that one of the worst things about the food industry is going home and smelling like what you've been working with all day.  Sometimes it can be pleasant, a whiff of cinnamon or butter and sugar if you're a baker.  Sometimes the smells morph and change character, and everyone knows you were working with fish.

Last week, I went to my boyfriend's apartment after teaching a Thai menu at the kid's cooking school.  As he gave me a hug, he took a deep breath and said, "Mmm...you smell like fried egg rolls."  Gee, thanks.  Nothing makes a girl feel more special than when she's told that she smells like food deep fried in fat.

Even at the test kitchen, where we are given fresh chef's coats everyday, you inevitably take on the smells of what's cooking.  Yesterday it was four pot roasts in slow cookers, short ribs I seared with a black bean sauce, shrimp, nuoc cham sauce, biscuits, and who knows what else.  The smells here seep through the chef's coats and linger on your own clothes.  I find myself doing lots of laundry now or throwing clothes in the dryer with a dryer sheet to freshen them. 

I remember coming home and taking a shower before going out to dinner once because the stench of curry was all over my hair.  Plus, I didn't want my pillow to smell like curry too!  The beginning of the shower itself was gross too- imagine curry smells steaming up all around you as you begin to rinse off.

In cooking school, smells were intensified because of the small kitchens.  Imagine 10 people cooking the same thing in a kitchen about the size of a typical Parisian apartment (that is to say, tiny).  Compound that with the fact that the French like to sear proteins on high heat, generating lots of sizzling, smoke, and you guessed it, smells.  Walking around school, you could probably take a sniff of somebody and go, "Hmm...guess the Intermediate class was making cassoulet today.  Can't you smell the sausage and duck confit on them?"  I guess that's why they gave us 3 changes of coats.

Luckily, there are some smells I'll never tire of.  Well-roasted coffee, chocolate, cookies, apple pie.  Usually they're sweet items, although the smell of freshly-baked bread or croissants is always irresistible.  Still, someone should invent clothing that doesn't absorb odors, unless you really want to wear plastic clothing while you cook.  I know I don't.

Bon appétit!

Another Chapter Ends

Today was the last day of my internship.  It was surprisingly quiet in my department, I only made a creme anglaise, participated in a tea tasting, and did book research.  Ironically, I've been dealing with a lot of French food lately, and I've been enjoying it immensely.

Do I regret doing my internship here rather that one in a Parisian restaurant?  Not really.  To be honest, many of my friends from school quit their internships, even Michelin-starred ones.  It seems that internships there (or stages) aren't meant to teach as much as to break you down and build you back up into a cooking robot controlled by the chefs.  Yes, you learn a lot, but it's also about repetition and speed, compounded by extremely long hours and exhaustion.  It's not for me, yet I applaud those who love it enough to do it night after night.

I was lucky to do my internship at the test kitchen instead.  The hours were 9-5, the environment focused yet relaxed, and the sheer variety of the things I made astounding. You didn't speed through things because mistakes could result, and mistakes skewed your recipe, wasting both time and resources.  Most importantly, the balance of food and writing was right up my alley.

That being said, it wasn't easy.  I was on my feet all day, every day, and interns had lots of non-fun things. Putting away loads of groceries.  Constant cleaning.  Grilling outside in the rain.  An unpaid internship is especially tough when you've just spent all your resources for a cooking school where the chefs ranted and raved in classic French style.

So what's next for me?  What comes after an experience like this?

I'd like to continue in the arena of food writing and recipe testing.  It's a little scary to once again not know what the next step in life will be.  Four months ago I went through the same thing and was relieved when I got the internship and could postpone real life for another few months.   Not having had a real paying job for over a year and a half has been a rickety roller coaster of fun and uncertainty.  The next step will definitely have to include a paycheck, and hopefully I'll still be continuing this crazy path I started when I first stepped foot into cooking school.

Last year at this time, I was traveling through snow-covered Germany, visiting Christmas markets and having too much gingerbread and gluwein.  This year, I'm preparing to make a trek back to San Francisco before jetting back to Paris for a brief visit.  I've gotten used to being rootless, saying bonjour and au revoir to cities with abandon.  Hopefully the next step grounds me somewhere- I think I'm ready for some stability and routine.  Even the restless need to rest eventually.

Bon appétit!

Macaron Madness!

Two days, 200 macarons.  Lucky me- who knew that I would be able to work on these during my internship? Someone must have told then about my obsession.   I feel almost professional when I pipe them out now and hover like a proud parent when they're baking in the oven.  I've also learned a lot about almond flour, sugar properties, and resting periods- it's still a test kitchen after all.  The above fillings are chocolate ganache, vanilla buttercream, and Nutella.  I think they stack up pretty well against the legends, don't you?

Another reason why I'm giddy with excitement is an upcoming 9-day trip back to Paris.  People to see, food to gorge on, markets to browse, and anniversaries to celebrate.  Back to the land of macarons!

Bon appétit!

Tasting

I'm at the two month mark in the internship.  One of the things that I realized recently is the importance of side-by-side tastings.

When developing a recipe, critiques are the obvious method used in evaluating the finished product.  You look at texture, taste, and appearance, using as many senses as possible.  However, our minds can never fully retain the sensations that we experience when we taste food, so tasting two similar recipes at different times aren't very effective.  It's hard to remember how something tasted the last time around, and thus it's hard to evaluate the new recipe fairly.

Enter in side-by-side tastings.  If I was developing a recipe for, let's say, garlic bread, here is how I would do it:  I would make three versions of garlic bread, then serve them side-by-side at the tasting.  The purpose of this is so that tasters can clearly see differences, both visually and taste-wise.  They can go back and forth between the samples to detect subtle differences.  Maybe the garlic is stronger in one than in the other.  Maybe there is too much butter in one.  In any case, side-by-side tastings allow for a level playing field.  It's important when developing a recipe that you do them, because it is difficult to capture the characteristics of a recipe and remember them fully to do a fair comparison with the next recipe.

It's such a simple concept, yet one that I've really come to appreciate.  Unfortunately, this method is also time and labor intensive, as you have to coordinate things to be at the same temperature or finished at the same time.  It is definitely much harder to do at home than in a test kitchen, where resources and equipment are more abundant.  But if you want to do a great evaluation that removes some of the liabilities that human memory can provide, give it a whirl- you'd be amazed at how much more effective your critiques can be!

Bon appétit!

Countries Collide

I'm at the halfway mark with my internship, it's hard to believe that 6 weeks have passed by already.  On the whole, I've really enjoyed my time at the Test Kitchen.  I love the fact that I cook and taste all day.  In fact, sometimes I want to brush my teeth after work to get all the different flavors out of my mouth!

Surprisingly, I haven't had to worry about gaining extra poundage even though I'm working with food all day.  I think it's because I have actual tastes, or bites, of things and never sit down for a real meal.  The interns never go out to lunch, we just snack and munch all day.  All the calories we taste seem to offset the lack of the real meal, plus we stand and walk all day, burning a lot of energy.  The first week there my feet were protesting every night, but now I've gotten used to it and enjoy being so active.  Thankfully I won't leave my internship looking like all I've been doing is eating!

The main thing that I didn't expect was that a lot of what I learned at culinary school wasn't useful here.  Because of my training in classical French cuisine, it was a big change to come to a kitchen where the focus is on traditional American recipes, not fancy plating or sauces.  I've learned that mise en place is even more essential here, because any mistakes really jeopardize the testing process and can skew the results.  It's also refreshing to have a well-stocked kitchen full of gadgets and appliances, and being encouraged to use them!  While I appreciated the back-to-basics approach of LCB Paris in terms of tools, it's great to be back in gadget-land.

There are unglamorous parts of being an intern- you help wash dishes sometimes, unload groceries, do a lot of cleaning, and sometimes end up in the back alley for hours at a time, watching the Webers and tending to the grills.  But most days I cook, taste, and talk to people who are even crazier about food than I am.  In the past month and a half, I've made so many different foods that I can't even begin to list it all.   There are also foods that I would rather not ever see again- it's hard to stand the smell of a dish after you've tasted it 15 times in the period of 3 days.

A great perk of the kitchen is being able to take home the food we prepare.  Typically, after a recipe is prepared and tasted, it is put out for the rest of the kitchen and staff to eat or take home.  Some days I leave with a shopping bag full of delicious food, ready to eat for dinner or to go into the freezer for a rainy day.  The boyfriend is usually the lucky recipient of the food, as my palate yearns for fruit & vegetables for dinner after a long day cooking complicated recipes.

I think that one of the things I like most about the environment is the merging of food and writing.  I've expressed before that I don't think I'm cut out to be on the line in a restaurant, but I love to analyze and write about food instead.  The Test Kitchen seems to give people a unique opportunity to do that- I don't know of another place that gives cooks such great opportunities to do both.

(And to answer those unspoken questions: yes, I've worked with the test cooks you see on TV;  no, I haven't cooked with Chris Kimball yet, and no, I won't be on TV (no filming going on right now- I'd be too nervous anyway!)).

Bon appétit!

Sanitation Insanity

One of the first things that struck me about my new internship is the fixation on cleanliness and sanitation.  Welcome back to the good ol' USA, outbreaks of E. Coli and all.  Still, I'm glad that we have such high sanitation standards here.

In France, I was amazed at how relaxed their standards were, both at school and during my one-week stage at the restaurant.  Eggs aren't refrigerated.  All our ingredients were loaded onto the same trays when we divided them up for students, so your raw chicken would probably end up nestled cosily next to the vegetables you were serving as a garnish.  Your single cutting board was used for everything.  The dishwashers (actual people) didn't use machines or sanitation devices- it was hand-scrubbing all the way.  We were lucky if there was hot water, sponges, or dish soap.  In fact, we were amazed when all three were present!

At the restaurant, things were slightly better but still gross.  It would probably be very difficult to make myself eat at that restaurant knowing what went on downstairs.  It wasn't filthy by any means, but not enough precautions were taken, and my bout of food poisoning in Paris really made me wary.

Fast forward to what I do now.  I use so much plasticware it makes me guilty.  But we use Ziploc bags, plastic containers, plastic wrap, gloves, and disinfectant to our hearts' content.  I mise a lot in disposable plastic containers when things need to be prepared the night before.  Leftover food is always stored in the new plastic containers- we never wash them or reuse them.

The dish room has a nice sanitation machine that cleans and sterilizes, producing spotless hot dishes.  We use hot, soapy water to wipe down our stations, then spray sanitizer over the surface.  The grates over the burners are washed every night, and we clean under them to make sure everything is clean and shiny.  The two resident kitchen assistants go over the stainless steel surfaces with spray every night and ensure that everything is polished and not sticky.

There is hand soap at every sink.  Any leftover food is always bagged or contained, then marked clearly with contents and date.  The walk-in is well-organized, with chicken on the bottom rack, then beef and pork next, fish and cured products at the top.  If you think about it, it makes sense- any accidental drippage that may come down will contaminate other products, so you should put the meat with the highest chance of bacteria on the lowest rack.

The simplest things amaze me.  As interns, we put away the groceries that come in.  Special care is always taken to put the newest items in the back.  For example, if a new bag of onions needs to be added to the onion bucket, we empty the existing bucket out temporarily, place the new onions at the bottom, then cover it with the old ones so that those are used first.  This applies to every other ingredient.  It makes so much sense, yet at LCB, we constantly received rotten produce because no one took the time to do that.  It still boggles my mind that a school which uses so much produce in one day, especially mirepoix, manages to give its students rotten carrots and shallots.  Go figure.

Yesterday I bagged some leftover rice in a small Ziploc bag at home.  My right hand instinctively reached for the blue Sharpie that I keep in my chef's jacket at work.  Not having the Sharpie there was strange, as was not marking the contents of the bag and labeling pretty much everything I touched.  In France they would have just laughed at me for marking things.  And who uses plasticware en France?  I don't care- hand me a Sharpie and a bottle of disinfectant!

Bon appétit!