Ok, I could go on and on (and on) about my current teammate, but I’d rather keep things positive...
Oh, who am I kidding? Like I can stop myself from ranting. I’m a pirate, goddammit. She turned our creme anglaise into scrambled eggs twice today. She was about to go 0-for-3 when I just stopped what I was doing, walked over and took the spoon out of her hands and finished it. As Flirty Jesus is my witness. On Friday I learned that she didn’t know the difference between a French meringue and an Italian meringue. Maybe non-pastry folks are thinking "don’t be picky, meringue is meringue," but they have different preparations, ratios and uses. It’s like a geography student getting France confused with Italy.
Deep breath. Two more weeks. Not even. Nine more days. I can do this.
Always looking on the bright side of life (Pythons, cue whistle), I’m glad I’m paired with her this class, when we have Young Chef Santa at the helm and not one of the intensely scary, suffer-no-fools chefs I’ll be encountering in the coming months (my next chef has a reputation for making people cry, while two other chefs waiting for us regularly toss people out of their classes for the smallest infraction... granted, the people telling me it was for the smallest infraction tended to be the people who got thrown out, but still.) My current chef is still phenomenally laidback and jolly and doesn’t get stressed in the least. He’s sort of like, well, a young Santa, but with a strong north New Jersey accent that makes him sort of like... uhm... a cross between young Santa and Tony Soprano.
He has a really jovial sense of humor, but he’s still Chef and misses nothing. Another team had a quiet tiff and he pulled them aside and suggested some anger management in his jolly "I’m laughing, but not really" way. I know he’s paying a lot of unobtrusive attention to our team, which is the only reason I have not yet hauled my teammate into the pot room and clobbered her with a sautier. Instead, I’m trying to take the lead and show initiative and hold her freakin’ hand as we redo our bavarian yet again, because yelling at her would lose me almost as many points as the aforementioned aggravated assault with sautier option.
And, despite his jovial demeanor, Chef is amazingly fast and talented. He whipped out about ten different chocolate decorations in a 15 minute demo this afternoon... and that includes the tempering. I think he may be the most natural teacher of the chefs I’ve had so far, which is saying something.
I was thinking Friday in fact, after a series of incidents, about how I really love every chef I’ve had as an instructor here. Why is that? I thought a lot about it and decided they’ve all got very different personalities, but they’re all intense, in their own way, and every one of them is engaged in what he or she is doing. Not one of them phones it in, you know? And they know what they’re talking about and can demonstrate it. No offense to Dr. Virago and my other academic friends who work extremely hard and are as dedicated, but I’ve met too many teachers and professors who just yammer on about the theoretical without ever having to prove they had a skill other than being fluent in pretentious b.s., or who act like teaching is such a chore.
The series of Friday Incidents include Young Chef Santa taking that other team aside and handling the situation without drama, without fuss - and without any question that he was the guy in charge and expected a little attitude adjustment. I really respect that kind of leadership.
He also made us fresh mozzarella with sun-dried tomato pesto with a balsamic dressing on baguette slices, giving us a make-your-own-mozzarella demo. "It’s got nothin’ to do with cakes, but how can we have fresh basil and not make mozzarella, right?" he explained (we had basil for our lemon, raspberry and basil mousse cakes, which were themselves delish).
It was the most fabulous mozzarella I’ve ever had. Yum. I respect that kind of leadership, too.
Later that afternoon, on my way home after a 12-hour day of food stewarding, class and back-to-back tours, I was enroute to talk to der Brotmeister during his dinner break about The Job Hunt. More on that in a bit... but first, I ran into der Erlkonig, my most beloved chef, who wanted to know what I had for dinner. As I wasn’t hungry, I said a banana and a diet Coke.
"No, no, that’s not enough, hyaaaaah," he said in his endearing German-Swedish accent. "You come here, young lady."
He then dragged me into his kitchen, back to his coolers and loaded me up with fruit, telling me to go across the hall to der Brotmeister for some dough so I could make myself a nice tart. I asked him what he thought of some of my job options and he dismissed several as not creative enough, boring, and so forth. When I told him I really wanted to work overseas but worried it wasn’t as easy to do as it used to be, he said "Hyaaa, bloody September 11th changed everything. But there’s a lot of business in Europe, it’s just no one wants to come here anymore and wait in line at the airport."
He suggested I buy a ticket to Iceland or Norway or wherever I want to go and just go. "You find a job in seven days, no problem."
Hmmm. Visas be damned! Who needs the legal right to work, anyway? I asked der Erlkonig that and he gave a dismissive wave.
Across the hall, when I and my fruit-laden bag finally arrived at the door of der Brotmeister, he gave me some great insights into a company I was seriously interested in, where he worked for some time before coming to Cookin’ School. The summary, in his clipped north German accent: "Ya, it’s a lot of bullshit, and I sink you are too smart for it."
As we were talking, by the way, all his Germanic chef buddies were coming in to filch bread for the weekend off him. Maybe you have to be there, but there is something both sweet and funny about a parade of baguette-jonesing Germans trooping through, each one making a furtive nod toward the racks, like guys sidling up to their favorite corner seller for a dimebag.
As for The Job Hunt, Company A is off my wishlist after hearing what der Brotmeister and der Erlkonig had to say about it, as well as some rotten press it’s been getting. I’m still thinking about a standing offer I have from a Major Resort Empire, as well as just driving to Alaska and seeing what the market is there.
Today, however - and you can blame der Erlkonig for this - I ordered "Teach Yourself Icelandic" from Amazon. Stay tuned.
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5 comments:
I LOVE Iceland. Please, go forth... and blog from Iceland.
First of all, if you end up in Iceland, I'm *definitely* doing a sabbatical semester there. (I want to learn Icelandic, too -- or rather Old Icelandic.) Oh, and in case you do end up there, there's a fellowship for foreigners to go and learn Icelandic and you don't have to be an academic. Remind me some time by e-mail to find the link and send it to you.
And regarding this:
I’ve met too many teachers and professors who just yammer on about the theoretical without ever having to prove they had a skill other than being fluent in pretentious b.s., or who act like teaching is such a chore.
No offense taken, since I know this is the case. (Although I have to say that understanding the theoretical *is* a skill. Just sayin'.) But the general problem of bad teachers is systemic, actually, and the reason for the difference in your experiences especially is most likely because your university experiences were all at top tier Research 1 (the old Carnegie classification) universities. You might have had a different experience at a small liberal arts school, but I can't say for sure, because all of *my* experiences have also been at R1s also, and even my own current university is classified as a research university and weights research heavily (though the emphasis on teaching here is heavier than at an R1). In short, at the universities we went to, people are hired first and foremost (and in some departments, only) for their research skills. Teaching is an afterthought. Plus, with the exception of the more applied fields, most of them couldn't find employment doing that research except at universities. So they teach because they must. At Cookin' School, your chefs could be doing other things. Clearly they enjoy teaching (and some, it seems, enjoy terrorizing students, too!).
Like I said, it's a systemic problem. We talk a lot about it, but changing the culture, if it happens at all, will be verrrrry slow. Maybe my imaginary grandchildren will have a different experience.
I just watched an old episode of No Reservations, the one set in Iceland. Bourdain did not paint that country in a kind culinary light.
Alaska, on the other hand, while saddled with a short growing season, has some interesting local products, including birch syrup of all things.
Hey Tommy... every time I try to leave a comment on your blog, I get trapped in a special hell where my comment page keeps loading and reloading itself every two seconds or so. So it's not that I don't care - I care very deeply - it's just that I can't comment. But I do care. And I'll take a hunk of rotten shark meat over having to spend time with Bourdain any day. He's a real backpfeifengesicht.
Hmmm. A daily dose of skyr and dried fish. I'm guessing sykr could be used in a lovely fancy-pantsed mousse cake.
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