The Making of a Chef (44 page)

Authors: Michael Ruhlman

W
e managed, just, to get everything done. Service was fast and smooth and over almost before it began.

“We looked pretty good,” Turgeon said, before dismissing us. “Quick service. Basically worked out well. What I really try to do here, in seven
days, is to give you a little sense of reality, a little bit just how things should be done, how fast you need to move. Sometimes I snap at you a bit, but my main goal is really to get you guys prepared to go out and work. I wish you all luck. Have a good one.” A smattering of applause followed and Turgeon said, “Remember, tomorrow, when you're front of the house, I'm not your friend.”

It was done. John would dress the next day in black pants, white shirt, bow tie, and apron to serve the food he'd been cooking for the past week. The next time he wore a chef's jacket would be for graduation, six school days away. The graduating class would be seated on stage, and one by one they would traverse the stage of Alumni Hall and bow their head to President Metz as he draped the graduation cordon over their neckâa brief moment of fanfareâand that was the end of a Culinary education. My class would disperse, some to Europe, Chen to Taiwan, some to New York City, others to the West Coast. No time to think. It was a vagabond life, this life of a cook. Just keep moving, moving perfectly.

Everything is relative but there is a standard which must not be deviated from, especially with reference to the basic culinary preparations.

A. Escoffier
The Complete Guide to the
Art of Modern Cookery

Also by Michael Ruhlman

The Elements of Cooking

The Reach of a Chef

Charcuterie
(with Brian Polcyn)

House

Walk on Water

Bouchon
(with Thomas Keller, Jeffrey Cerciello, and Susie Heller)

A Return to Cooking
(with Eric Ripert)

Wooden Boats

The Soul of a Chef

The French Laundry Cookbook
(with Thomas Keller and Susie Heller)

Boys Themselves

Afterword:

Benediction

T
he first Saturday cooking at Bounty, the day I'd begun cooking for real and my partner John had told Gene he'd never have known I was a writer, I drove out to Chef Pardus's house. In one respect, it was sort of a pilgrimage. He was the reason I was able to hold my own in Bounty, the reason I passed the practical exam, the reason I could move through any kitchen now with confidence. He had been a good teacher. I once asked Chef Turgeon who his Skills teacher had been. He named her and said, “You go through a lot of classes here, but you never forget your Skills teacher.” This was true. Also, I missed Chef Pardus, missed hearing him talk about food, missed arguing about whether the hollandaise had too much acid or not enough salt.

When I called for directionsâmy pretext for meeting him, though I hardly needed one, was to find out how his three weeks in Brazil had goneâhe said, “I live in the wilderness.” He said his nearest neighbors were the kinds of folks who put broken washing machines on their front lawn. Behind his rented ranch-style house, cornfields extended for miles, it seemed, and beyond them were the Catskill Mountains, a hazy blue when I arrived on that warm bright summer afternoon. His dogs Pumpkin and Early yapped and danced as Pardus welcomed me and led me to his kitchen. He was dressed in jean shorts, newly cut off and without fray. He had been crushing ice.

“I was just about to make myself a mint julep,” he said. “Care to join me?” I said I would very much care to. “I've got mint growing in the backyard,” he
said, noting that juleps were the very best possible use of mint he knew of. I was inclined to agree, especially on such a fine warm late afternoon as this.

We sat on a small patio in his backyard and chatted, drinking from our enormous glasses perfect examples of the mint julep, and the sun hovered over the Catskills. He told me about Brazil and how the wheat there was different, and therefore sauce making was different because the roux was different. He went through the logic, returning me instantly to Skills class. “Where is our wheat grown?” he asked me. “What are the characteristics of that wheat?” The harsher the climate, I'd learned from Chef Coppedge, the stronger the wheat; the thing that made wheat strong was protein. Wheat grown in the harsh weather of the Great Plains was very high in protein. “Where is theirs grown?” Pardus continued in his manic way. “So that means what? Theirs is going to be
low
in protein,
low
in gluten, and high
starch
. So to make a roux you need more of everything and you can cook sauces forever without getting the starchy taste and feel out.” Because of their geography, his students in Brazil used pure starch, such as arrowroot, to thicken sauces. “Arrowroot
grows
down there,” Pardus told me. “You can buy it fresh in the market.”

He showed me pictures of the friends he'd made, pictures of the kitchen and his students.

Then we sat back and relaxed. What a fine evening to be drinking a gigantic mint julep, I thought, after a long day cooking, and now surrounded by a sea of corn, hazy and almost glowing, backlit by the sun descending over the mountains, the dogs dashing in and out between the stalks and romping throughout the herb garden. A small fig tree, a gift from Chef Griffiths, grew in a pot beside the garden. We were shaded by a young beechnut tree. It was a perfect summer evening, and, recalling the blizzards of winter, it was an apt time to say what I had wanted to for some time.

“Chef, I want to thank you,” I said. “I know I'm a writer and not a cook”âI was always careful to make this distinction, especially around Pardusâ“but I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing had I not started in your Skills class.”

“Hey, Michael,” he said. “You're a cook. If you're working the grill station in American Bounty on a Saturday afternoon, you're a cook.”

I felt a powerful surge of emotion. My God, I was a cook. This had been something that I'd wanted to achieve, to
be
, since that winter storm. John had given me a great compliment that afternoon, but now the name had been bestowed on me by the only person who could rightfully do it, my Skills teacher. I was enormously, irrationally proud. Proud to be a cook.

Appendix

The CIA Curriculum: Associate Degrees

CURRICULUM: ASSOCIATE DEGREES*

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL RUHLMAN is the author of twelve books, including
The Elements of Cooking
and
The French Laundry Cookbook
. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, daughter, and son and is a frequent contributor to
The New York Times
and
Gourmet
as well as his highly popular blog at
www.Ruhlman.com
.

THE MAKING OF A CHEF. Copyright Â© 1997, 2000 by Michael Ruhlman. Introduction copyright Â© 2009 by Michael Ruhlman. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Originally published by Henry Holt and Company

eISBN 9780805095746

First eBook Edition : September 2011

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Henry Holt edition as follows:

Ruhlman, Michael, 1963â

The making of a chef : mastering heat at the Culinary Institute of America / Michael Ruhlman.âRev. ed.

p. cm.

1. Ruhlman, Michael, 1963â. 2. CooksâUnited StatesâBiography.

3. Culinary Institute of America. I. Title.

TX649.R8A3 2009

641.5092âdc22