Showing posts with label culinary education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culinary education. Show all posts
Monday, October 31, 2011
Top Military Cooks Embrace Week at Culinary School
When Sgt. Arturo Torres joined the U.S. Marine Corps five years ago, he wanted to be an infantryman. After all, the Marines' reputation is largely built on the expertise of its infantry.
But the 18-year-old's mother didn't like the idea one bit - especially in wartime.
When Torres explained that to the recruiter in his hometown of Dallas, the recruiter made a suggestion: food service.
At first it didn't seem that exciting. But when Torres was deployed to Iraq three years ago and got to cook for then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, food service took on a whole new shine.
Air Force Senior Airman Ashleen Cacciatore thinks her last name might have had something to do with the reason she's now feeding 500 people a day at McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, a joint military base in Trenton, N.J. The 26-year-old originally wanted an assignment in mental health but was sent to the kitchen. Now, getting told "35,000 times a day that Air Force food is so much better than any of the other armed forces' grub" has more than convinced her it was the right decision, she said.
Torres, Cacciatore and 23 other cooks from the Marines, Air Force and Air National Guard were selected by the Hennessy Travelers Association's Educational Foundation for the annual Armed Forces Forum for Culinary Excellence at the Culinary Institute of America Greystone campus in St. Helena.
For a week the military cooks hone their skills at the venerable chefs school, learning everything from chopping techniques to how to prepare healthful meals. And Hennessy, an association of volunteers from the food-service and hospitality industries that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars from private donors each year, is picking up the entire tab, said Carmen Vacalebre, a Connecticut restaurateur and president of the group.
The group's mission is to promote educational opportunities for members of the armed forces serving in hospitality as well as help military cafeterias run more efficiently and effectively. The organization also helps former military cooks pursue careers in food service in the civilian world.
"These 25 individuals chosen for the forum have been identified as the cream of the crop," said Jack Kleckner, a Hennessy group member.
The hope is that the young cooks will go back to their mess halls and motivate others with their food and proficiency, said Art Ritt, an officer with the association. "We're trying to teach them how to think out of the box," he said.
One day this week, they were learning how to tart up leftovers, with Greystone instructor Tom Wong showing them how to use up yesterday's tomatoes by making salsa.
"It's a chance of a lifetime," said Jamie Schoewe, a staff sergeant in the Air National Guard in Milwaukee who spends one weekend a month cooking for the troops. "I can take everything that I'm learning back and teach everyone else."
Schoewe, 24, said she requested her kitchen assignment, which sometimes involves cooking meals for as many as 1,200 troops a day.
"There's something about preparing a meal for the people around you," she said. "It's nurturing."
She got some kitchen training in the Air Force's technical school, "but it was nothing like this," she said about the courses she's attended at the Culinary Institute.
Read the rest of the story here.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Chef is Now a Glamour Position, Thanks in Part to Reality TV
A career as a restaurant chef, once a blue-collar occupation, has now become a glamour profession.
Driven by reality TV, the Food Network, and food-related media buzz, interest in culinary education is at an all-time high.
Big-name schools like the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson & Wales University have responded by opening branch campuses across America.
Sensing a business opportunity, numerous for-profit ventures have also jumped onto the culinary education bandwagon. So many have opened in the last few years that fully half the schools currently accredited by the American Culinary Federation are being operated as moneymaking enterprises.
Now, with public higher education facing budget cuts and privately run schools subject to tighter financial aid regulations, the prospects for culinary education seem less rosy.
Compounding these funding concerns is a growing glut of culinary school graduates, many of whom imagined their degrees would be a shortcut to celebrity chef status.
Read the rest of the story here.
Driven by reality TV, the Food Network, and food-related media buzz, interest in culinary education is at an all-time high.
Big-name schools like the Culinary Institute of America and Johnson & Wales University have responded by opening branch campuses across America.
Sensing a business opportunity, numerous for-profit ventures have also jumped onto the culinary education bandwagon. So many have opened in the last few years that fully half the schools currently accredited by the American Culinary Federation are being operated as moneymaking enterprises.
Now, with public higher education facing budget cuts and privately run schools subject to tighter financial aid regulations, the prospects for culinary education seem less rosy.
Compounding these funding concerns is a growing glut of culinary school graduates, many of whom imagined their degrees would be a shortcut to celebrity chef status.
Read the rest of the story here.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
For Chefs, Cookbooks Paved Path to Culinary Enlightenment
Looking through some cookbooks these days could almost make a person feel dirty.
“I think you’re first drawn to a cookbook because it’s like food porn,” says Matthias Merges, the chef who ran Charlie Trotter’s kitchen for 14 years. “Most cookbooks — you can see the way that Ten Speed Press does theirs and now [visual art and design publisher] Phaidon is in the cookbook arena — it’s all tabletop-beautiful.”
In other words, cookbooks look better every year. They are great lookbooks. But does anyone actually learn anything from cookbooks? Some of the city’s most celebrated chefs say they have.
Merges credits the Time-Life “Foods of the World” series, which he first read when he was about 8 years old.
“When you’re young, you never know the breadth of the food world,” says Merges, who plans to open his first restaurant, a Japanese yakitori-inspired restaurant called Yusho in Logan Square, in late July or early August. “When my brother and I discovered those Time-Life books, it opened up the whole world to us. It was like, what was that show? Wild Kingdom. Or Jacques Cousteau.”
One night, on their parents’ anniversary, the Merges boys decided to make an ambitious dinner, sukiyaki, or Japanese hot pot, combining beef and vegetables in a single pot. Before he started flipping through the Time-Life series, young Matthias had no idea such a dish even existed, let alone how to make it.
Later, in other volumes, he learned how to cure meats and fish. The Indian book taught him that curry was so much more than just a spice in a bottle labeled “curry.” It is a mix of spices, for one, and it also is a stew, and it differs from country to country. All of this, a boy who would one day become a professional chef, learned from spiral-bound cookbooks.
Some professional chefs learned from cookbooks even after the age of 10.
Jason Hammel and his wife Amalea Tshilds own and operate Lula Cafe in Logan Square and Nightwood in Pilsen. Hammel worked as a chain restaurant line cook in graduate school and is basically self-taught. For years he devoured cookbooks, walking around with one particular volume, The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller, under his arm.
Now, more than 10 years later, he still consults his tattered copy of that seminal book, which introduced him to big-pot blanching.
“The idea is, if you’re going to blanch a green vegetable it’ll be greener and brighter if you use a big pot with a lot of hot water,” he says.
The visual beauty of cookbooks is proof that we eat with our eyes first, and brilliantly green vegetables are much more appealing than vegetables the color of Army pants. But sometimes, even now, Hammel’s cooks crowd their veggies.
“There’s been a million times when I’ve come in and instead of explaining it to them, I just slap down the book with the page open and I say, ‘You need to read this,’ ” Hammel says.
From The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers, Hammel learned about the importance of pre-seasoning.
“Salting ahead of time is one of her major concepts and one part of her book that I love,” he says.
Hammel, who calls Rodgers’ book “probably the best-written cookbook that exists,” often gives the book to his cooks to read.
“One cook didn’t give it back,” he says.
Read the complete story here.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Chefs Add Flavor to High School Cooking Program
Seventeen-year-old Marissa Diaz has a secret -- she loves watching Julia Child's old cooking shows.
"I recently watched her make a fish fillet," the excitable teen said. "She was adding scallops, lobster, eel -- let your imagination go wild!"
Diaz, along with a half-dozen classmates from Adrian Wilcox High School in Santa Clara, experienced all things cooking Saturday. They worked alongside renowned chefs Martin Yan and Sir Roy Salazar at the Art of Home Show at the Santa Clara Convention Center.
The Wilcox students, as well as several from Peterson Middle School in Sunnyvale on Friday, assisted the chefs and even gave their own cooking demonstrations. They are enrolled in the Santa Clara Unified School District's culinary arts program, part of the district's vocational education courses, which range from fashion design to automotive technology.
"It's a great way for kids to link into something they love," said Tabitha Kappeler-Hurley, spokeswoman for the district's career education program. "And maybe they'll make a career of it."
Read the complete story here.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Pastry Chefs Rising Stars of the Culinary World
SAN FRANCISCO — Not too long ago, the pastry chef was a bit of an afterthought.
Sure, there was tiramisu and molten lava chocolate cake. But, for the most part, kitchen celebrity was measured by thrills at the grill, not by teaspoonfuls of baking soda.
That's changed.
Artisan cupcakes are everywhere, Bravo TV's "Top Chef" is spinning off a show "Top Chef: Just Desserts," and TLC has "Cake Boss." Then there's Food Network's "Ace of Cakes," following the adventures of Duff Goldman as he and his crew whip up such concoctions as Viking ship wedding cakes, detailed right down to the breaking waves.
Pastry chefs are the rising stars of the culinary world.
"There's definitely a lot of interest," says Peter Reinhart, baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and author of five books on bread baking, including "The Bread Bakers Apprentice." At Johnson & Wales, one of the nation's leading culinary schools, "we sell out our baking and pastry program faster than any other program, and that tells us a lot."
Dorie Greenspan, author of "Baking: From My Home to Yours," thinks blogging has helped shine a spotlight on sweets. There are cake bloggers, cookie bloggers, macaron bloggers. "There's just been a lot more news about what's going on in the sweet world."
Read the rest of the story here.
Sure, there was tiramisu and molten lava chocolate cake. But, for the most part, kitchen celebrity was measured by thrills at the grill, not by teaspoonfuls of baking soda.
That's changed.
Artisan cupcakes are everywhere, Bravo TV's "Top Chef" is spinning off a show "Top Chef: Just Desserts," and TLC has "Cake Boss." Then there's Food Network's "Ace of Cakes," following the adventures of Duff Goldman as he and his crew whip up such concoctions as Viking ship wedding cakes, detailed right down to the breaking waves.
Pastry chefs are the rising stars of the culinary world.
"There's definitely a lot of interest," says Peter Reinhart, baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University and author of five books on bread baking, including "The Bread Bakers Apprentice." At Johnson & Wales, one of the nation's leading culinary schools, "we sell out our baking and pastry program faster than any other program, and that tells us a lot."
Dorie Greenspan, author of "Baking: From My Home to Yours," thinks blogging has helped shine a spotlight on sweets. There are cake bloggers, cookie bloggers, macaron bloggers. "There's just been a lot more news about what's going on in the sweet world."
Read the rest of the story here.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Career Options Expand for Culinarians
Into the frying pan
By DAN AVERY
Jerome Darby was a successful fashion designer whose clothing sold in
Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. But he never gave up his dream of working in a restaurant.
So he enrolled at the French Culinary Institute in SoHo, and after graduating last June, he went to work as a pastry chef at Mario Batali’s trattoria Lupa.
So how does he feel about trading in a six-figure salary for toiling in a kitchen?
“It’s been awesome,” he says.
As America’s interest in food continues to rise like a well-timed soufflé, more and more people are setting their sights on culinary careers.
“There’s been a huge, huge interest in cooking schools,” says Irena Chalmers, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in upstate Hyde Park, and author of “Food Jobs: 150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers.”
In the past six years, applications spiked nearly 50 percent at CIA, which added a satellite campus to cope with the demand. At the Institute for Culinary Education in Chelsea, the surge in interest has been “staggering,” says admissions director Brian Aronowitz. Meanwhile, after a decade when enrollment doubled, the French Culinary Institute just had “our best year ever,” says founder Dorothy Hamilton.
The weak economy has actually boosted interest, in part because people often return to school during slowdowns, and in part because food careers are popular with career changers — including those motivated by a layoff. And to some extent, the food business is recession-proof.
“There will always be jobs in the culinary field,” says Hamilton, who’s written a new book, “Love What You Do: Building a Career in the Culinary Industry.”
One big change, however, is the sheer range of jobs falling under that umbrella. That range has grown a lot wider in recent years, notes Chalmers, who was inspired to write her book by all her students who “had no idea there were so many jobs outside of working in a restaurant.”
From food historian to recipe tester, “There are so many things you can do,” she says.
With that in mind, here’s a look at a few of the food world’s growing niches.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
By DAN AVERY
Jerome Darby was a successful fashion designer whose clothing sold in
Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s. But he never gave up his dream of working in a restaurant.
So he enrolled at the French Culinary Institute in SoHo, and after graduating last June, he went to work as a pastry chef at Mario Batali’s trattoria Lupa.
So how does he feel about trading in a six-figure salary for toiling in a kitchen?
“It’s been awesome,” he says.
As America’s interest in food continues to rise like a well-timed soufflé, more and more people are setting their sights on culinary careers.
“There’s been a huge, huge interest in cooking schools,” says Irena Chalmers, an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in upstate Hyde Park, and author of “Food Jobs: 150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers.”
In the past six years, applications spiked nearly 50 percent at CIA, which added a satellite campus to cope with the demand. At the Institute for Culinary Education in Chelsea, the surge in interest has been “staggering,” says admissions director Brian Aronowitz. Meanwhile, after a decade when enrollment doubled, the French Culinary Institute just had “our best year ever,” says founder Dorothy Hamilton.
The weak economy has actually boosted interest, in part because people often return to school during slowdowns, and in part because food careers are popular with career changers — including those motivated by a layoff. And to some extent, the food business is recession-proof.
“There will always be jobs in the culinary field,” says Hamilton, who’s written a new book, “Love What You Do: Building a Career in the Culinary Industry.”
One big change, however, is the sheer range of jobs falling under that umbrella. That range has grown a lot wider in recent years, notes Chalmers, who was inspired to write her book by all her students who “had no idea there were so many jobs outside of working in a restaurant.”
From food historian to recipe tester, “There are so many things you can do,” she says.
With that in mind, here’s a look at a few of the food world’s growing niches.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
The GREAT Teacher
EVERY chef, unless he or she works alone, is a teacher. Some are better teachers than others, and some are great. In my opinion, Julia Child was the best ever. Another whom I would place on my short list of the VERY best is Jacques Pépin. Continue reading to find out why.
By Dana Bowen
Source: Saveur
When Jacques Pépin stopped by the SAVEUR offices to show us how to make some of the dishes he wrote about in his memoir and cookbook The Apprentice (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), we were eager to join him in the kitchen. Here was one of the most influential chefs of the past half century—a collaborator of Julia Child's, an alumnus of the legendary New York City restaurant Le Pavillon, and the author of La Technique (Simon & Schuster, 1976), one of the best culinary textbooks ever put into print. We knew we'd glean all sorts of useful lessons from him.
By Dana Bowen
Source: Saveur
When Jacques Pépin stopped by the SAVEUR offices to show us how to make some of the dishes he wrote about in his memoir and cookbook The Apprentice (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), we were eager to join him in the kitchen. Here was one of the most influential chefs of the past half century—a collaborator of Julia Child's, an alumnus of the legendary New York City restaurant Le Pavillon, and the author of La Technique (Simon & Schuster, 1976), one of the best culinary textbooks ever put into print. We knew we'd glean all sorts of useful lessons from him.
Within minutes of arriving, the chef was rifling through our fridge for ingredients and sharing some of his favorite tips. He showed us how to chop herbs without bruising them, by rocking the blade of a chef's knife forward and back. When cracking an egg, he hit it on a flat surface, rather than the rim of a bowl, to keep the egg free of shell fragments and to prevent the yolk from breaking. Instead of scoring and blanching tomatoes to peel them, he simply used a paring knife, a faster method that also yields skins for flavoring stock. And he demonstrated the wisest approach we've seen yet to cutting up a chicken.
These are the kinds of smart strategies we've always learned from Pépin, but to observe his actions up close—such as when he made a last-minute, pitch-perfect adjustment to his mother's apple tart—was to understand that there's more to his expertise than flawless technique. The chef was always tasting, smelling, touching, looking, and then adapting to the situation at hand. When the tart came out of the oven, Pépin decided it needed more color, so he glazed it with a few spoonfuls of apricot jam, even though the original recipe didn't call for it. Of course, it looked—and tasted—divine.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Homeless People Learn to Feed Others as Chefs
By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Chef Cecil Morris Jr., 46, of Mobile, Ala., knows what it's like to be on both sides of the soup kitchen line.
He was homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol in 1992 when he entered the local Salvation Army's adult rehab center.
After a year in the program, Morris asked the chef in charge of the kitchen to teach him how to cook. That chef gave him the skills he uses today as the culinary arts director at the Salvation Army in his community, which serves more than 400 meals daily.
Morris now teaches other unemployed people his trade. "I believe this is my calling," he says. "I believe I was placed here for a reason. I'm a light to guys who knew me from the street. They see me now, and they see how far I've come."
Across the country, many skilled chefs at homeless shelters and social-service kitchens are offering free culinary arts courses to the homeless, unemployed and underemployed. Most of the chefs teach students the ABCs of working in a professional kitchen — everything from knife skills to sanitation to making soups and sauces. The goal: to help lift people out of poverty and get them back on their feet.
Although there is no official tally on the number of trained chefs working full-time to serve the needy, there may be as many as 500, and an increasing number of them are offering culinary training to unemployed and underemployed clients, says chef Jeff Bacon, 42, of Winston-Salem, N.C. He is on the board of directors for the American Culinary Federation, an organization of professional chefs and cooks.
Sometimes the chefs are volunteers who become employees, and some chefs are "rebounding" from their own problems and want to give back, Bacon says. That's what happened to him.
Bacon spent three years in prison for drug-related offenses, then turned his life around and earned a bachelor's degree in nutrition and food service management. He's now executive chef of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina. He's in charge of the preparation of 14,000 meals a month for various shelters and non-profit agencies and teaches a 10-week free culinary arts course.
"God saved me for a reason from the mess I got into, and I would be greatly remiss if I didn't give that back to folks," he says.
He says placing his students in the food service industry isn't always easy because many of them have criminal records and poor work history. At the end of their first year in their cooking jobs, about 65% are still employed, which he says is a commendable number.
It wouldn't be possible to do all this if it were merely a matter of "human function," he says. "It's divine intervention, every class."
Nationwide, other professional chefs are teaching cooking skills to the unemployed:
•Chef Marianne Ali, 52, a former heroin addict, is the director of culinary job training for D.C. Central Kitchen in Washington, one of the first community kitchens to offer culinary classes. She and her staff teach a 12-week course four times a year. About 500 students have completed the program over the past 16 years.
Read the rest of the story here.
Chef Cecil Morris Jr., 46, of Mobile, Ala., knows what it's like to be on both sides of the soup kitchen line.
He was homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol in 1992 when he entered the local Salvation Army's adult rehab center.
After a year in the program, Morris asked the chef in charge of the kitchen to teach him how to cook. That chef gave him the skills he uses today as the culinary arts director at the Salvation Army in his community, which serves more than 400 meals daily.
Morris now teaches other unemployed people his trade. "I believe this is my calling," he says. "I believe I was placed here for a reason. I'm a light to guys who knew me from the street. They see me now, and they see how far I've come."
Across the country, many skilled chefs at homeless shelters and social-service kitchens are offering free culinary arts courses to the homeless, unemployed and underemployed. Most of the chefs teach students the ABCs of working in a professional kitchen — everything from knife skills to sanitation to making soups and sauces. The goal: to help lift people out of poverty and get them back on their feet.
Although there is no official tally on the number of trained chefs working full-time to serve the needy, there may be as many as 500, and an increasing number of them are offering culinary training to unemployed and underemployed clients, says chef Jeff Bacon, 42, of Winston-Salem, N.C. He is on the board of directors for the American Culinary Federation, an organization of professional chefs and cooks.
Sometimes the chefs are volunteers who become employees, and some chefs are "rebounding" from their own problems and want to give back, Bacon says. That's what happened to him.
Bacon spent three years in prison for drug-related offenses, then turned his life around and earned a bachelor's degree in nutrition and food service management. He's now executive chef of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina. He's in charge of the preparation of 14,000 meals a month for various shelters and non-profit agencies and teaches a 10-week free culinary arts course.
"God saved me for a reason from the mess I got into, and I would be greatly remiss if I didn't give that back to folks," he says.
He says placing his students in the food service industry isn't always easy because many of them have criminal records and poor work history. At the end of their first year in their cooking jobs, about 65% are still employed, which he says is a commendable number.
It wouldn't be possible to do all this if it were merely a matter of "human function," he says. "It's divine intervention, every class."
Nationwide, other professional chefs are teaching cooking skills to the unemployed:
•Chef Marianne Ali, 52, a former heroin addict, is the director of culinary job training for D.C. Central Kitchen in Washington, one of the first community kitchens to offer culinary classes. She and her staff teach a 12-week course four times a year. About 500 students have completed the program over the past 16 years.
Read the rest of the story here.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
When The Economy Gets Tough, The Tough Get Cooking
Cutting Costs at Culinary School
By DAWN FALLIK
When Hubert Sawyers signed up for a cooking class last June, he thought it would help make for great date nights for him and his new wife.
With the economy in recession, people are turning to the kitchen to keep costs down. WSJ's Dawn Fallik visits the Culinary Institute of America in New York, where would-be chefs learn everything from knife skills to sauteing at a beginners cooking class.
.
Then he got laid off from his job as an executive assistant at a real estate appraisal company. The $58-a-person "Sautéed Salmon" class all of a sudden seemed like an unnecessary splurge for the 28-year-old, whose cooking skills were mostly limited to grilling. But the tutorial turned out to be a long-term money saver: The couple went from eating out at a restaurant four times a week to once a week, utilizing Mr. Sawyer's newfound cooking skills as he sought to find a job.
"My sauté game is definitely on now," says Mr. Sawyers, who lives in Royal Oak, Mich. "We save between $25 and $50 a week. The class made cooking at home a lot easier."
Nationwide, restaurant diners and take-out folks are turning to the home kitchen, hoping to cut costs and save money during the downturn. But many, like Mr. Sawyers, need some help discerning a simmer from a sauté.
At the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., administrators increased their five-day, $2,095 "Basic Training" boot camp to 14 classes a year, up from 10 three years ago. The Whole Foods in the Soho neighborhood of New York City saw enrollment in the store's cooking classes increase 46% between 2009 and 2008, says a company spokeswoman. The number of classes at that store -- ranging in price from free to $75 -- rose as well, to 247 in 2009 from 184 in 2008. Whole Foods does not collect nationwide data on its stores's cooking classes, but a spokeswoman says there's been an overall rise in interest.
The Kitchen Conservatory in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis, Mo., is on pace to teach 8,000 students this year, a 6% increase in two years, says owner Anne Cori, noting that many of those new students are beginner cooks.
"People take these classes as a reaction to the recession,"says Culinary Institute spokesman Jay Blotcher. "The boot camps help people make better food shopping choices and encourage them to prepare meals more often at home."
Adds Ms. Cori: "Years ago, our classes were all older women. Now we're getting a lot of young male professionals. There's a change in the type of people interested in cooking."
Chefs and culinary teachers are taking note and adapting their classes to address cost concerns by offering grocery-shopping advice and suggestions on reusing leftovers.
In April, the Kitchen Conservatory launched the "Beef Up Your Budget" class, giving hands-on instruction for making short ribs, brisket and sirloin steak – all cheaper cuts of meat. The class sold out within days. This fall, a new "Frugal Fish" class is on the menu, which will teach students how to make low-cost seafood dishes such as tuna burgers.
Students say cooking classes are a good place to ask rudimentary questions without judgment from family, friends or the foodie standing next to them at the farmer's market. And they say it's worth spending money for a class if it means they can save money by eating at home.
"I'm trying to cut back on the money we spend going to restaurants," says Sigrid Miller Pollin, an architect from Amherst, Mass., who took a two-day, $850 CIA boot camp in June.
She and her husband used to eat out two or three times a week and would spend more than $40 each outing. They hoped the class would help them use their vegetable garden more and order out less.
Ellen and Jeremy Amato took the Conservatory's "Pizza on the Grill" class last May to learn how to better utilize their groceries and not be as wasteful. Much of the food they would buy ended up shoved behind take-out containers and then thrown out, says Ms. Amato.
Although Ms. Amato, 28, was a "dabbler" cook, her husband's idea of a fine meal was a fried bologna sandwich, she says.
"My husband was definitely overwhelmed," she says. "We were chopping onions and he'd never diced an onion before."
Now they spent $50 a week ordering out, instead of $150, she says. They joined a community produce-delivery program, and make most of their meals at home. Ms. Amato does most of the cooking, but her husband, 32, will help with the preparation.
"We didn't really know where to start," she says.
By DAWN FALLIK
When Hubert Sawyers signed up for a cooking class last June, he thought it would help make for great date nights for him and his new wife.
With the economy in recession, people are turning to the kitchen to keep costs down. WSJ's Dawn Fallik visits the Culinary Institute of America in New York, where would-be chefs learn everything from knife skills to sauteing at a beginners cooking class.
.
Then he got laid off from his job as an executive assistant at a real estate appraisal company. The $58-a-person "Sautéed Salmon" class all of a sudden seemed like an unnecessary splurge for the 28-year-old, whose cooking skills were mostly limited to grilling. But the tutorial turned out to be a long-term money saver: The couple went from eating out at a restaurant four times a week to once a week, utilizing Mr. Sawyer's newfound cooking skills as he sought to find a job.
"My sauté game is definitely on now," says Mr. Sawyers, who lives in Royal Oak, Mich. "We save between $25 and $50 a week. The class made cooking at home a lot easier."
Nationwide, restaurant diners and take-out folks are turning to the home kitchen, hoping to cut costs and save money during the downturn. But many, like Mr. Sawyers, need some help discerning a simmer from a sauté.
At the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., administrators increased their five-day, $2,095 "Basic Training" boot camp to 14 classes a year, up from 10 three years ago. The Whole Foods in the Soho neighborhood of New York City saw enrollment in the store's cooking classes increase 46% between 2009 and 2008, says a company spokeswoman. The number of classes at that store -- ranging in price from free to $75 -- rose as well, to 247 in 2009 from 184 in 2008. Whole Foods does not collect nationwide data on its stores's cooking classes, but a spokeswoman says there's been an overall rise in interest.
The Kitchen Conservatory in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis, Mo., is on pace to teach 8,000 students this year, a 6% increase in two years, says owner Anne Cori, noting that many of those new students are beginner cooks.
"People take these classes as a reaction to the recession,"says Culinary Institute spokesman Jay Blotcher. "The boot camps help people make better food shopping choices and encourage them to prepare meals more often at home."
Adds Ms. Cori: "Years ago, our classes were all older women. Now we're getting a lot of young male professionals. There's a change in the type of people interested in cooking."
Chefs and culinary teachers are taking note and adapting their classes to address cost concerns by offering grocery-shopping advice and suggestions on reusing leftovers.
In April, the Kitchen Conservatory launched the "Beef Up Your Budget" class, giving hands-on instruction for making short ribs, brisket and sirloin steak – all cheaper cuts of meat. The class sold out within days. This fall, a new "Frugal Fish" class is on the menu, which will teach students how to make low-cost seafood dishes such as tuna burgers.
Students say cooking classes are a good place to ask rudimentary questions without judgment from family, friends or the foodie standing next to them at the farmer's market. And they say it's worth spending money for a class if it means they can save money by eating at home.
"I'm trying to cut back on the money we spend going to restaurants," says Sigrid Miller Pollin, an architect from Amherst, Mass., who took a two-day, $850 CIA boot camp in June.
She and her husband used to eat out two or three times a week and would spend more than $40 each outing. They hoped the class would help them use their vegetable garden more and order out less.
Ellen and Jeremy Amato took the Conservatory's "Pizza on the Grill" class last May to learn how to better utilize their groceries and not be as wasteful. Much of the food they would buy ended up shoved behind take-out containers and then thrown out, says Ms. Amato.
Although Ms. Amato, 28, was a "dabbler" cook, her husband's idea of a fine meal was a fried bologna sandwich, she says.
"My husband was definitely overwhelmed," she says. "We were chopping onions and he'd never diced an onion before."
Now they spent $50 a week ordering out, instead of $150, she says. They joined a community produce-delivery program, and make most of their meals at home. Ms. Amato does most of the cooking, but her husband, 32, will help with the preparation.
"We didn't really know where to start," she says.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Documentary Shines Light on Inner City Culinary Program
In 'Pressure Cooker,' a Culinary Arts Teacher Turns Up the Heat
By John Anderson
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Cooking class at Philadelphia's Frankford High School is all about composing salads, sculpting vegetables and weathering teacher Wilma Stephenson, who occasionally boils over. "Get your brain upscale!" Stephenson commands her students, whom she harangues and harasses in the present so they just might have a future.
Stephenson is the irascible star -- there's no way around it -- of "Pressure Cooker," a year-in-the-life documentary about the kids of Frankford's culinary arts class and their teacher, who runs the program the way Rommel ran his desert campaign.
Gordon Ramsay? The abusive TV chef would be reduced to an unhappy puddle of butter by the imperious Stephenson, although in the end she'd probably wipe his nose and buy him a new spatula.
The film, directed by Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker, follows Stephenson's class a semester after her students have won more than $750,000 in scholarships -- at a school where 40 percent of students don't make it to their senior year.
Consistently successful in getting her graduates out of the inner city and into such culinary cooking colleges as the Art Institute of Atlanta, the Culinary Institute of America and Monroe College in New Rochelle, N.Y., she is no-nonsense, all business.
Her manner may be brusque, but her students are responsive. And what you see in the course of the movie is what every educational trash-talker in America says schools should be doing, usually without providing any means to do it.
Often enough, Stephenson, 63, provides the means herself, which can range from money for cooking-school applications to a waiter's white dress shirt for Frankford football star and chef-to-be Tyree Dudley. ("What size is Dudley," she asks a teammate. Answer: "Gigantic?")
As good as she is to her kids, Stephenson admits she was "horrible" to her directors. "We stayed away from her as much as possible in the kitchen," Grausman said, laughing. "When I first went to her to make the film, she signed on, but she didn't really understand what we were going to do. We kept trying to explain it to her, but I don't think she ever really got it. She thought we were going to be there for a couple of days of shooting. Not a couple of days a week for a year."
Stephenson described herself as a person who needs to know in what direction she's headed and what she's supposed to be doing. "I kept asking, and they kept saying, 'Oh, we don't want you to do anything at all. We're just here.' It wasn't until I saw the movie that I said, 'Oh, that's what they were doing.' A couple of times I asked them to just get out."
The hardest part of shooting, said Grausman, was not getting locked out of the kitchen. "At one point, we were told not to come back to Philadelphia for a couple of weeks."
Read the rest of the story here.
By John Anderson
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Cooking class at Philadelphia's Frankford High School is all about composing salads, sculpting vegetables and weathering teacher Wilma Stephenson, who occasionally boils over. "Get your brain upscale!" Stephenson commands her students, whom she harangues and harasses in the present so they just might have a future.
Stephenson is the irascible star -- there's no way around it -- of "Pressure Cooker," a year-in-the-life documentary about the kids of Frankford's culinary arts class and their teacher, who runs the program the way Rommel ran his desert campaign.
Gordon Ramsay? The abusive TV chef would be reduced to an unhappy puddle of butter by the imperious Stephenson, although in the end she'd probably wipe his nose and buy him a new spatula.
The film, directed by Jennifer Grausman and Mark Becker, follows Stephenson's class a semester after her students have won more than $750,000 in scholarships -- at a school where 40 percent of students don't make it to their senior year.
Consistently successful in getting her graduates out of the inner city and into such culinary cooking colleges as the Art Institute of Atlanta, the Culinary Institute of America and Monroe College in New Rochelle, N.Y., she is no-nonsense, all business.
Her manner may be brusque, but her students are responsive. And what you see in the course of the movie is what every educational trash-talker in America says schools should be doing, usually without providing any means to do it.
Often enough, Stephenson, 63, provides the means herself, which can range from money for cooking-school applications to a waiter's white dress shirt for Frankford football star and chef-to-be Tyree Dudley. ("What size is Dudley," she asks a teammate. Answer: "Gigantic?")
As good as she is to her kids, Stephenson admits she was "horrible" to her directors. "We stayed away from her as much as possible in the kitchen," Grausman said, laughing. "When I first went to her to make the film, she signed on, but she didn't really understand what we were going to do. We kept trying to explain it to her, but I don't think she ever really got it. She thought we were going to be there for a couple of days of shooting. Not a couple of days a week for a year."
Stephenson described herself as a person who needs to know in what direction she's headed and what she's supposed to be doing. "I kept asking, and they kept saying, 'Oh, we don't want you to do anything at all. We're just here.' It wasn't until I saw the movie that I said, 'Oh, that's what they were doing.' A couple of times I asked them to just get out."
The hardest part of shooting, said Grausman, was not getting locked out of the kitchen. "At one point, we were told not to come back to Philadelphia for a couple of weeks."
Read the rest of the story here.
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