The Culinary Institute of America recently published the third edition of Techniques of Healthy Cooking. It's a massive tome, almost 600 pages long and provides a broad overview of nutritional basics such as current dietary guidelines, recipes planning, and recommendations for minimizing fat, salt, sugar and even alcohol in recipes. There are nearly 150 photographs and over 400 recipes, which yield between ten and twenty servings.

Not only is this a book for professional chefs but the recipes sound more like what you might find in a restaurant than a hospital dining room. Some examples include Grilled Veal with Blackberries and Vanilla, Rabbit and Oyster Etouffee, Duck Breast Crepinette, and Strawberry and Rhubarb Strudel. You can see excerpts from the book here.

I was curious how a culinary school might address nutrition, so I got in touch with Certified Executive Chef Eve Felder, Associate Dean for Culinary Arts at The Culinary Institute of America.

Felder has been a chef at Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley and has held just about every other role in the kitchen from Pastry Line Cook at the Quilted Giraffe in New York to Executive Chef at V. Mertz Restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska. She has traveled throughout Europe, the Far East, and North Africa studying the historical connection between the culinary traditions and agricultural practices of different cultures. She also won the first ever educator of the year award from Women Chefs and Restauranteurs, just last year.

Are healthy cooking techniques generally part of a CIA education?
Yes, The Culinary Institute of America approaches healthy food from various perspectives. The first is from the standpoint of ingredients. Are the ingredients sound? Are they seasonal? Have they been treated with care in terms of growing, receiving  and preparing them for a meal.

The second is from the perspective of deliciousness. What do we do to ensure that a meal is delicious and healthy? What techniques can we use in cooking to enhance flavor? What ingredients from the global pantry are healthy and at the same time delicious?

Third, what is the responsibility, as a professional in the food service industry, to provide food that is healthy and good for you? This is much more of a philosophical discussion that we address not only in the college's kitchen and bakeshop classes but in our academic classes as well. Students at the CIA will ultimately be the leaders of the food service industry need to think about their social responsibilities.

What prompted the CIA to revise this book now?
The college's commitment to leading and providing the industry with a text that will elevate the way in which we think about food.

How is this book different from all the other healthy eating books out in the market?
All of The Culinary Institute of America's texts are written to address the needs of the chef, maitre d' and leaders in the foodservice business. The CIA's audience is not only the professional, but also food afficionados who have a curiosity that goes beyond simple recipes.

Chefs don't often have the healthiest diet, in part because of their career. Any tips specifically for chefs trying to live a more healthy lifestyle?
Come to the CIA! We not only address healthy cuisine in our curriculum but have a 52,000-square-foot recreation center.

Seriously, there are health liabilities to being a chef and it is vitally important that we embrace a balanced life that includes a commitment to exercising, reasonable work hours, and being aware of the long term consequences of eating poorly. Eating healthy is part of the discipline of cooking.

Usually, people have come to cooking because they have a passion for sharing the table and food. Once we've become a chef we have to reach back to what it means to sit down, enjoy a meal and enjoy the company of people.

Labels: amy sherman, culinary education, healthy eating

Last week Tutti Foodie, Scharffen Berger, and Marcia Gagliardi of Tablehopper joined forces and unveiled The Chocolate Adventure Recipe Contest with a number of events at local restaurants featuring pastry chefs and chocolate. On Monday August 13 I went to Campton Place to see what Boris Portnoy {pastry chef of Campton Place, the restaurant) might make and talk about. An innovative and forward thinking chef, Boris's desserts guarantee a challenge to the palate as well as mind.

Much to my delight there was more in store than the same old chocolate thang I, and other pastry chefs, often find ourselves at. The afternoon at Campton Place was spent in a small private room on the second floor with some of California's most dynamic food writers, bloggers, bakers and movers and shakers in the local chocolate scene.

Before we set about eating the arranged chocolate on our plates, John Scharffenberger gave a short but thorough history of cacao and chocolate. If you work for a school, or just love chocolate, give this semi-retired chocolate maker a call! His talk was engaging, funny, compassionate and delicious in every sense of the word. While leading us through the earth's best rain forests for cacao growing, harvesting and fermenting, he directed us to eat the disparate chocolate shapes on our plates, in the order his lesson informed.

Much to the surprise of many of our virgin mouths, we tasted a number of chocolate examples which were not chocolate in the truest sense of the word. We learned that when tasting chocolate in its pure form, tongues met with acidity and tannins most commonly found in wine and bitter edges associated with dark-roasted coffees.

After eating 8-9 versions of cacao and chocolate we listened to Boris talk excitedly about his love for cacao nibs; their texture, flavor and versatility tantalized his sweet imagination. And discovering how to make his own chocolate in a food processor appeared to have changed his life! Yes, he encouraged, go and try this at home. After a short demonstration he motioned with a regal flourish, and quiet waiters appeared with a three component cacao nib-themed plated dessert.

You'd think after three hours of smelling, tasting, eating, talking, inquiring, and listening to chocolate I would have left the hotel without a desire to ponder the chocolate contest... But the truth is that my friend and I discussed what we would do if we could enter the contest. {I cannot, but he can.}

I thought I would share a bit of our conversation. Think of these word formations the way you would poetry, a game, an interpretive dance or maybe like you were sitting near us on BART, overhearing our chocolate-meal fueled crazytalk.

Theme: Bacon & Chocolate

Render bacon fat brunoise or dice, caramelize crispy pork fat cubes and make chocolate with this in food processor with cacao nibs.
Pork cracklins (like the snack food found at gas stations) enrobed in bittersweet chocolate.
Bacon lardons half dipped in chocolate.
Fatback chocolate with quince paste.
Pork belly & rosemary infused chocolate pot de creme, quince paste (?) & sea salt garnish.

Don't worry, these ideas won't end up on a dessert of mine.....

The Chocolate Adventure Recipe Contest website. "You. Dark Chocolate. And A Special Ingredient."

The Rules are simple: pair a list of innovative/ aromatic spices and flavors with any of Scharffen Berger's exquisite dark chocolates. The prizes include both money and fame. If you don't want the Bacon & Chocolate dessert to win, enter soon.

And, as Jen Maiser said aptly, "What could be better than the opportunity to create an interesting recipe using chocolate?"

Related Links:
The Art of Tasting Chocolate
Jalapeno Girl
Ladle and Whisk

Labels: bacon, bay area, berkeley, chocolate, culinary education, dessert, food businesses, games, recipe contest, scharffen berger, shuna lydon, tuttifoodie

By the time you read this, I will be in Portland, Oregon, readying to teach four baking classes, back to back, over the course of two weeks. Although it might not sound like much, I have only been teaching 2 classes a month in the Bay Area for the last year or so. But I'm not complaining, I love to teach, and all the better to teach the students hungry to learn, no matter where they are. Portland, Oregon might be one of my favorite places that ever there was, especially in summer.

I'm excited to take the long drive north, and pass on the secrets of flaky pie dough, light cakes, easy biscuits for cobbler and anything else that strikes my fancy after I visit a few of the countless Portland farmers' markets the proud, diminutive city has to offer.

For a complete schedule of my Portland Baking classes and their locations, click here.



After two long, delicious, educational weeks in Portland, I drive to Seattle for what may be one of the most delectable weddings I've been privy to an invitation to. Seattle is also home to, as I barely need to explain to you all, a concentration of possibly the best coffee houses in the country, (I like Vivace best), and some of my all-time favorite desserts can be found at Capitol Hill's B & O Espresso. I have been known to beg those coming to the Bay Area from Seattle to bring me a piece of their lemon pie on the airplane!

I'll be staying with the ever elusive Tea, meeting the beautiful and prolific Molly, and generally enjoying a summer that's a little behind Northern California's, but among those Pacific Northwesters as proud of their region as we are.





I come back for a minute, and then jump on a plane to get to Chicago, a city I have never visited, to attend and speak at BlogHer 07. I'm looking forward to eating BBQ, riding the L, going on an architectural tour, eating innovative raw desserts at Charlie Trotter, and touching base with Gale Gand again. Think there's something I must absolutely do or eat? Feel free to leave suggestions!



By the time I land once and for all in Northern California, it will be August and summer will be in full, opulent swing. Stone fruits will sweeten, tomatoes will overwhelm our kitchens, salads will be the dinner of choice, melons will arrive in a profusion of their sexy, musky, refreshing, honey-sweet selves, restaurants will have basil in everything and I'll be happy to go to the Ferry Building and pick up some Pimienton de Padron from Happy Quail and the love of my late summer life, okra from Short Night. It will be time to make sweet corn ice cream.



Strawberry varietals will get more tender, verbena will perfume the air, and figs in all their guises will be born out of their coconut leaf-scented trees second pregnancy. Eating and cooking will become easier and faster. When there are so many choices, summer's cup spilleth over and we are drunk with its heady voluptuous bounty.



It is in this sumptuous, sensual spirit I am announcing my August classes. I'm taking a gamble and offering 3, as opposed to my normal 2 per month. If you want to skip the descriptions below, follow this link to the current calendar of my upcoming Bay Area classes.

On Sunday August 12 I will teach a Knife Skills Class. Find a review of my last Bay Area Knife Skills Class at Albion Cooks by clicking on this link. The class is 1/3rd lecture, 1/3rd demonstration and 1/3rd hands-on. If you're not too shy you'll learn a lot. I bring all my various knives and explain the whys and hows of different metals, blades, brands etc. The class is vegetarian: we do not butcher meat or fish, and hopefully no one will butcher himself or herself after taking the class!

One week later, on Sunday August 19 I will teach another Ice Cream Class. In the last one students learned how to make Real Butterscotch from scratch, saw and felt how to bring creme anglaise to nappe by look and feel, heard the scientific reasons behind the secret to melt-in-your-mouth chocolate "chips" in creamy, frozen desserts, debated the pros and cons of various home ice cream makers and ate more than their fair share of the spoils. The frozen treat most people were surprised by liking so much? Redwood hill Goat Yogurt Granita. What was the easiest? Lemon Sherbet. Kat, of Kung Foodie took a lot of photos from the first and last Ice Cream Class, get there by following this link. Dolores of Culinary Curiosity wrote a very funny review of the class. If I know nothing else as a pastry chef, I know ice cream and sorbet. I've been making both for over 15 years.

And lastly, Sunday August 26 will usher in my third and very popular Seasonal Fruit Dessert Class. As a fruit-inspired pastry chef, the plated dessert possibilities are endless! In the first class rhubarb and strawberries were most of what was in season. We still managed to make and eat 8 separate items! In the second class we conquered 5, as cherries and stone fruit began their early march. Anita, one half of Married With Dinner reviewed my first Seasonal Fruit Dessert Class. Initially it had been Anita's idea for me to teach the class. So, see, I really do take requests!

All classes take place in North Berkeley, minutes from Downtown Berkeley BART on the Richmond line and close to plenty of parking.



I hope you'll consider taking one or more of these classes. I thoroughly teach the hows as well as the whys, both being major avenues which will lead to understanding the basics of baking and cooking so you can feel more comfortable with a myriad of cookbook recipes, innovative and modern or traditional cooking styles.

In the baking classes I make room for 2 students at $55, if cost is what's keeping them from attending. Email me directly if you feel you qualify. The Knife Skills Class is $68 and the baking classes are $100. Payments can be made by using the Paypal link on Eggbeater or you may email me for a snail mail address if a check feels more comfortable. {I also have a private mailing list if you want to get the information without trekking over to Eggbeater for it. To be placed on it, email me directly. I share it with no one; it's for the purpose of announcing future SF/Bay Area classes only.}

San Francisco Magazine recently covered my classes as well as many other individual and small cooking school classes, see the whole spread by clicking on this link.

See you soon?

Come One, Come All. Come Hungry To Learn!

Labels: bay area, culinary education, dessert, pastry chefs, shuna lydon

This Sunday June 10th I will be teaching my second Seasonal Fruit Dessert class in North Berkeley from 1 - 3:30 pm. Might you wish to join me as I conjure a number of sweets simple and complex, whose main focus is fruits at the peak of their early summer season's best? Those who took the first class were lucky enough to eat: Verbena & Meyer Lemon ice cream, Redwood Hill Goat Yogurt Pannacotta with rhubarb miroir, Roasted Lucero Strawberries, Rhubarb-Cornmeal Cake, Crunchy Poached Rhubarb Dice, Strawberry Coulis, Pavlova with whipped cream and strawberries, and Rhubarb-Walnut Crisp.

But now, there's so much more in season!



The possibilities are endless...

Shall we conjure a sublime cherry clafouti? Roast apriums in black pepper and Banyuls vinegar? Concoct a clear peach leaf consomme? Try our hand at whole almond frangipane with noyau and pluots? Layer light vanilla cake with brown butter pastry cream and fresh peaches? Finesse a batch of fresh cherry granite? Whip up some biscuits for cobbler? Fill the kitchen with the heady scent of warmed blackberry compote? Whip up an easy fresh fruit and cornmeal cake? Tremble with joy at the lightness of pannacotta? Learn what to do with a cherry pits' inner secret? Sneak some herbs from the garden and see what goes with what best?



I've lost count of how many classes I've taught now. And I'm happy to report many of us independent cooking instructors in the Bay Area were recently featured and reviewed in this months issue of San Francisco Magazine, click here to see the whole spread. I always have a lot of fun, but moreover, I love getting reports back about how people are less afraid to tackle homemade pie dough, ice cream and caramel or were excited to learn the secrets of how to make egg whites do what they want them to do, use their knives better or allowed my class and instruction to break down the last wall between them and their pot de creme molds.

This Sunday's Seasonal Fruit Dessert class will be my last Bay Area culinary class until August. On June 21 I'll be teaching my popular Knife Skills Class in NYC and come July I will teach 4 (!!) Pie Dough & Seasonal Fruit Dessert classes in Portland, Oregon. A good friend of mine said I should buy a silver Airstream trailer and take my show on the road! Hey, where the students want to learn, that's where I'll go, I say.



This Sunday's class is filling up quickly. Although the 2 spots I offer at almost 1/2 the price are still empty. I keep these spots open for those who love to bake but might not be able to afford the full cost. Those two folks come a wee bit early and stay a little later, to help me clean up.

The page that always has the current calendar of my classes can be found by clicking on this link. Register by going to the Paypal link in Eggbeater's right hand column and if you want to send a check, email me and I will send you a snail mail address. I also have a private mailing list for those of you who like the info to land on your email-doorstep.

See you soon?

Come One, Come All. Come Hungry To Learn!

Labels: bay area, chefs, culinary education, dessert, farmers markets, fruit, local, organic, organic farmers, shuna lydon, summer

It's that time of year. When Bay Area markets are jumping with stone fruits. Names whimsical, actual and unpronounceable and downright silly fill signage over mysterious glowing orbs. People want to know, "What's the difference between a pluot and a plumcot, a nectarcot and an aprium? Why all the funny names? What happened to the straight up plum, apricot, nectarine and peach?"

The full answer is too wordy for this medium. But, truth be told, there are almost no fruits we eat out hand today which are their true selves in their original form. All stone fruits are hybrids of the bitter almond tree, and all have been developed by horticulturalists for hundreds of years to withstand certain weather conditions, soils and various interfering pests. And in the last one hundred years or so, farmers have been juggling/gambling with different trees in an attempt to provide Americans with what appears to be one fruit during the course of a season. The peach you eat in May is not the peach you eat in June or July. But the hope is that on each of these hot summer days, you can find, buy and eat a peach.

It's almost impossible to keep up with all the stone fruit hybrids once summer begins. They rush at us like stars in a meteor shower. Some varietals last a month, but many come and go within a week or even days! My favorite farm for stone fruit is Blossom Bluff. Ted and Fran Loewen grow dozens of varietals, oftentimes experimenting or sticking with more difficult trees and fruit to provide their customers with a delicious spectrum of complex, aromatic, texturally sensuous fruits.

It's been as big a surprise to me, as anyone else, that peaches and various plum-apricot hybrids are arriving at the farmers' market as early as this. It's May; still spring by the calendar! But here they all are, available for the picking, and in wide sweeping arrays and displays at Berkeley Bowl, Monterey Market and local farmers' markets.

Unless a farmer has stayed loyal to calling these hybrids their proper names, what you buy here will be named something different there. As of yet there's little regulation to insure names stay consistent. Train your nose and mouth to recognize new varietals. Pick fruit that has a strong scent when you go in for the smell. All stone fruit can ripen off the tree. Unless your house is very hot or humid, ripen fruit further by setting fruit on its shoulders, stem side down, until, when pressed, flesh has a bit of give. If the fruit you buy is very ripe, be sure to refrigerate it immediately.

Early fruits will be smaller and higher in acid than their later cousins. Fruit whose color bleeds right down into the stem end will ripen sweeter than those whose color is yellow or green by the stem. Look for fruit with saturated color. The sun's blush is what determines sugar in stone fruit.

But remember, some of these varietals will be gone before you can decide if you'll like them! Buy a few of each as the season progresses and jot down the name on the placard as well as the name of the farm stand. These notes will help you get a head-start on next years stone fruit onslaught.

If you have an interest in the history of these quirky hybrids, Mr. Floyd Zaiger is the first person to learn about. He has contributed more to stone fruit hybridization than any other person to date.

Short Pieces on Floyd Zaiger:

Your Produce Man
News from The Dave Wilson Nursery (where many California farmers buy these various hybrids.)

And if you are a nerdy (budding) fruit historian (pun intended) like me, you'll enjoy words written by and about the infamous David Karp, Fruit Detective extraordinaire:

California Heartland . Org
John Seabrook from The New Yorker spends a few days with our man.
Smithsonian Magazine interview.

Labels: agriculture, bay area, culinary education, farmers, farmers markets, fruit, gardening, local, organic, organic farmers, seasonal, shuna lydon, summer, sustainability

I lined up plates in the order they appeared on the menu. This trick helps cooks plate food with speed and efficiency during a busy service.

Last week many of you participated in having a bit of fun with your food. You played The Plated Dessert Menu Game! Although it began as a lark, I must admit I might make this a regular thing if I get another pastry chef job in a restaurant. Many of you created a menu the likes of which I would not have thought of myself! Thank you! (I hope, of course, that it means you are adventurous eaters as well, supporting dedicated pastry chefs wherever you eat...)

Every day since the dessert tasting/job interview, my phone voicemail and email inbox has been full of one question, "So, how did it go?" But I don't know what to say. They sat, I plated, we ate, we talked, I left. There were 6 of them and one of me. The chef I've been discussing this position with for the last 4 months asked me to speak about what was on the table, another chef asked a lot of questions, a few comments were made and now it's all about the waiting game.



I did get to be really nerdy when it came to talking about the history of butterscotch, and why a graham cracker is called that, and why one need understand osmotic reciprocity when attempting to cook rhubarb. That was extremely fun and satisfying!



And it was amazing to see desserts that had been living in my head, as ideas or a dizzying array of free-floating components, come together on a plate, be set forth in front of humans, and eaten as if they were finished sentences, cohesive concrete visions. Like digital photography, plated dessert making can produce immediate results, an on-the-spot culmination of the conceptual and the actual.

Of course one hopes that one's desserts will also be delicious.

Without further ado, I give you The Menu presented as my dessert tasting on Monday May 14, 2007, 12 noon, at an undisclosed downtown San Francisco restaurant for the purpose of trying out for a pastry chef job:

Butterscotch Pot de creme with Pecan Shortbread
-- Extra component: chantilly.
Cherries & Cream, a Napoleon with Poetic License
-- Double vanilla shortbread, carnaroli rice pudding infused with California Bay Laurel, cherries reduced in cherry vinegar and pitted cherries au natural.
Ricotta Cheesecake with Crunchy Poached Rhubarb
-- Served with rhubarb-rose geranium sauce.
Warm Milk Chocolate with Various Chocolate Textures and Malted Ice Cream
-- El Rey milk chocolate veloute baked atop Devil's Food Cake lifted by cocoa meringue, warmed by hot fudge sauce and garnished with malt ice cream sitting on candied cacao nibs.
Hot Doughnuts with Blushing Sugar and An Egg Cream Chaser
-- Pate a choux doughnuts rolled in sugar made with mesquite flour, fleur de sel and ground cacao nibs served with vanilla bean egg cream.
Bright Lemon Baked Alaska, Brown Butter and Shuna's Famous Graham Crackers
-- Shuna's famous graham crackers sitting against lemon sherbet and brown butter ice cream hiding under torched Swiss meringue.


The cherry Napoleon.


Warm Milk Chocolate with Various Chocolate Textures and Malted Ice Cream.

I've written about a number of plated dessert tastings I've done in the past few years. Interested in knowing more? Click here.

Thank you, all of you, for playing last week's game, reading, imagining, and coming along for the ride!

Labels: chefs, culinary education, dessert, doughnuts, food businesses, games, pastries, restaurants, san francisco, shuna lydon

Shuna Lydon & Sherry Yard, both on team #1.

A number of months ago I received an email from an old pastry chef of mine, Stephen Durfee, who is now an instructor at The Culinary Institute of America, Greystone campus in Napa Valley. He was letting me know I would soon receive an invitation to The Fifth Annual Worlds of Flavor Baking & Pastry Arts Invitational Retreat.

But I thought I would have to respectfully decline, because I am not currently working for a specific establishment. The only name on my chef's jacket is my own. I could not be more grateful that Stephen talked me out of my no.

For 3 1/2 days at the end of April I breathed, thought, emoted, questioned, hypothesized, puzzled over, laughed about, informed, taught, learned, listened, typed, photographed, argued and dreamt pastry and dessert making. {I also "live-blogged" it. Find the blow-by-blow by clicking on this link.}


Notes from the Ideation Session before we went into the kitchen to start creating.


The dessert ideas and chef teams that were formed our team's Ideation Session.

From 8:30 am until near 8 pm every day our 70 plus pastry chef and industry representatives' gaggle went from demonstration, to lecture, to lunch, and then at night many of us went out to dine and commiserate. On the last day and a half we were broken up into 5 teams on the basis of various themes and asked to create 4 desserts each.

Team #1, my own, was themed "Health and Agriculture." In the one hour Ideation Session Sherry Yard and I threw out a lot of excited ideas, were reigned in, we all picked partners and then walked into the palatial kitchens that make up CIA's kitchen classroom. For the 'fruit dessert' my cohort/teammate was Master Bread Baker Mark Furstenberg from Washington DC.

The idea was we would showcase one ingredient, rhubarb. Although rhubarb is not a fruit, it's what's most in season right this minute, and I wanted to show off a special method I have of cooking/treating it, so as to preserve its original integrity, its rhubarb-ness. I like to hot-sugar poach the stalk in such a way as to keep it's crunchy, sour nature. {For a full explanation and recipe, order the Spring 2006 issue of Edible San Francisco, where I went into great detail about osmotic reciprocity and why rhubarb always turns into mushy, stringy baby food when it's introduced to heat.}


Verbena from the Julia Child Gardens at CIA, infused cream and rhubarb juice.

Mark made a slightly savory biscotti of cornmeal and toasted almonds, and besides the rhubarb I wanted something to mediate the textures and flavors of the rhubarb and cornmeal cookie. Plated dessert making is about balance. Pastry chefs are always thinking about texture, flavor, presentation, sweetness, acid, production, size, plating speed, accessibility, temperature, and the food you ate before eating our courses. The best desserts are the ones not made on autopilot. Don't get me wrong, I like my lemon bars, chocolate eclairs and creme brulee, but I want the pastry chef to be paying attention to all the ingredients to produce the best possible taste sensation.

Because of rhubarb's high acid content, it likes to be married with fat. I ate at Gary Danko recently and was not surprised to see rhubarb paired with foie gras. Rhubarb likes butter, cream, creme fraiche, and eggs. But the actual flavor of rhubarb is fairly subtle. If I want a diner to really taste it, I try and make pairings that are of complementary, not competitive flavors.

To this end, I made a light and aromatic, herbaceous sabayon. Instead of wine or alcohol, though, I juiced rhubarb raw through an extractor. If you have time for all these steps I can guarantee you an elegant and voluptuous, seasonal dessert.

David Winsberg of Happy Quail Farms said that he'll have rhubarb through 'til August, but Sabayon is a perfect foil for most fresh fruits, especially berries and stone fruit.





RHUBARB-VERBENA SABAYON

Large Egg Yolks 4-6 each
Sugar 1/4 cup
Honey 3 Tablespoons + (2 Tablespoons: later)
Sea or Kosher Salt Pinch

Rhubarb Juice 3/4 Cup

*Verbena, fresh The leaves from 3 stalks
Heavy Cream, not ultra pasteurized 2 Cups (I use Clover Organic.)

*Knoll Farms has some of the best Verbena available in the Bay Area.

1. Infuse cream and lightly crushed Verbena leaves and stems in a non-reactive pot by heating with low flame until hot. Shut off heat and let steep for at least one hour, preferably more. Do not allow mixture to boil. You can sprinkle in a little sugar to help with infusion.
2. After cream has steeped, turn flame to medium until hot to the touch and strain through a fine meshed sieve. Chill cream in ice batch until very cold. (This step may be done 1-2 days before making Sabayon.)
3. Combine first four ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk yolks to break apart before adding sugar and salt.
4. Set bowl over a pot of boiling water. Bottom of bowl should not touch water. The steam is what's cooking the Sabayon.
5. Whisk thoroughly and rapidly, without pause, and, using your other hand, pour rhubarb juice into yolks a little at a time, letting custard thicken a little before adding more. When all liquid has been added, whisk until mixture holds a visible "trail" and has become quite thick.
6. Place bowl on stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment and set speed to medium. Add extra 2 Tablespoons of honey now. If it looks like honey spun to attach itself to the side of the bowl, stop mixer and scrape down Sabayon with a spatula to combine.
7. Increasing speed incrementally, whisk until custard is light and voluminous.
8. Whisk Verbena infused cream until soft peaks form.
9. When Sabayon is ready, transfer into a larger bowl.
10. Using the most pliable spatula in your kitchen, fold whipped cream into Sabayon in three distinctive additions. Fold intentionally, from the inside of the bowl to the outermost edge. Each stroke counts. If you over mix these two ingredients your Sabayon will deflate to the point of liquidization.


Rhubarb-Verbena Sabayon with Crunchy Poached Rhubarb, Corn-Almond Biscotti and Marshall Farms Star Thistle Honey. Pastry Chef Authors: Shuna Lydon & Mark Furstenberg.

Sabayon keeps, refrigerated, for 1 day, but it is best the day it is made.

Labels: agriculture, chefs, culinary education, dessert, events, gluten-free, Napa, recipe, recipes, shuna lydon, vegetables

Continued from Part One on Monday April 16.

In California we have more than our fair share of live yeast in the air. Catching it and turning it into "sourdough starter" or "natural starter" is pretty easy. All one needs to do is to feed one's starter with cold water and bread flour every week or so. The concept of the 100 years old starter, though, is negligible. But I'm not here to rain on your sourdough starter parade. Although I will mention that sourdough is just that. It was not, originally, a nice thing to say about one's bread. It meant bad. It meant that your bread had gone off.

Like trifle, sourdough was originally a mistake. Or an exaggeration of a mistake. I have heard more than one Master Bread Baker disparage sourdough bread.

Also, for the sake of clarity, sourdough bread and sourdough starter are not the same. It is possible to make bread from live yeast cultures, whether they are from wheat or grapes or some other source, and not have it "taste sour." Although the nomenclature is the same, there's an argument here for saying starter when one means just that, and sourdough starter when one means the starter to make sourdough bread.

Now, who's on first?



All this being said, I had quite a lot of fun and education whilst hanging out with the humble Dylan of Sourdough Monkey Wrangler. A student of the live yeast culture, this man has come far in his self-education of all things involving bread flour. And he's neat and clean to boot.

Is there someone in your community you want to learn from? Maybe pick up a new skill? What stops you from calling them? Do you feel like they need to be paid for their time? Do you have anything to barter?

In my profession we have open doors for barter. I can give my time to just about any chef in whose kitchen I want to learn. We call this a "trail" or a stagiere.

In March, Dylan came to one of my classes, and afterwards brought me some sourdough inspired gifts. Very lucky for me there was a generous bag of homemade English muffins. I could not have been happier!

I love English muffins.



Dylan's English muffin recipe is based on one he found at Nicole's Baking Bites. He adapts his to include favorite locally grown and milled whole wheat flour from Full Belly Farm, as well as milk instead of water.

Milk is a traditional addition to English muffins, as well as Crumpets, which are basically English muffins, but griddled on only one side. In bread, milk becomes a softener. It feeds the yeast an alternative, tastier sugar, and the butterfat relaxes the crumb for a more pliable mouth feel.




When one bakes bread, a baked good of few ingredients, one must really know what each ingredient does, can do and is doing. Yeast, obviously, helps things rise. But the more you use, the faster bread goes stale. (The same goes for baking powder.) Flour and water combine to bind bread. But inherent in most flours is gluten. Gluten is protein, in its simplest terms, and, once "activated," is the structure builder, the 2X4's of bread doughs. Without gluten, there is no barn to raise. This, as we well know in Northern California, does not mean bread cannot be made without gluten. Tall, light bread, though, cannot be made without gluten.

Sugar, even the sugar that exists in the starch of the flour, feeds the yeast. Yeast is an animal, albeit a small single-celled one. (Ask the vegans if yeast is an animal they won't eat, and you will get a myriad of answers.) It eats sugar and emits gas (carbon dioxide), creating the bubbles that will, hours later, become the holes, or the nooks & crannies, in your bread. When flour has enough protein in it, the bubbles will keep their shape as they encircle the gas.

In bread, everything after yeast, flour, and water is dessert. Fat, in any form, is a softener. I'm not talking Wonder Bread here; I'm talking a palatable mouth feel. Think matzoh compared to challah, or French bread compared to brioche. Most people would rather make bread pudding or French toast with brioche, rather than ciabatta.

Flavorings are just that.



When working with natural starters one can develop far more flavor in bread. This is a funny sentence if you've not made bread. The concept is that the longer it takes to "proof" bread, or make it rise, the better the overall end result will be. Yeast does not like to be rushed. In turn, if you give it all the atmospheric elements it loves: humidity, mild warmth, time, it gives you rewards tenfold.

Bread tastes best when all you taste is bread. It's why Tartine's bread has such a following, even though it has more restrictions than a reservation at The French Laundry.

I have never been the type of person to have and keep a natural starter around. Dylan has a worm farm in his kitchen for easy apartment composting. I guerilla compost. Dylan rides his bike, I drive. Dylan feeds his starters on a schedule, I water my plants to keep them looking pretty on my window ledge.

But in the past weeks I've done some natural starter experiments. The recipes he gave me are a 3-day process. Day one you feed the starter and keep it out on the counter. Use a larger bowl than you need and make sure it's not metal. Day two combine starter with milk and flours. Day three add rest of flour, baking soda, salt and sugar, proof and begin muffin production.



English muffin production looks like this:

Knead dough a bit. The longer you knead it, the more likely it will hold it's round shape later and rise evenly. Roll dough out, cut, lay on heavily floured (or cornmeal covered) sheet, proof in a warm-ish, moist place (Dylan puts a measuring cup of very hot water in the oven for a more controlled atmosphere), and griddle until done. "Fork" to open, toast and eat with the best butter you can get your hands on. Have you eaten Clover's new Organic butter line yet? It's the bomb. So to speak.

I wouldn't call this the simplest, most efficient way to get to English muffins, but I will say that all the steps are important and worth it in the end.

Dylan and I use King Arthur bread flour, the blue paper bag. King Arthur has been extremely helpful when it comes to answering my questions about the protein contents and wheat origins of their flours. (Northern wheat is considered "stronger" with higher protein than Southern grown wheat that is considered "softer," White Lily being the best example.) Giusto's is a local company, but I can't seem to get them on the phone to answer questions to save my life. If you long to buy flour in bulk, which is less expensive than paying for the pretty packaging, head over to Rainbow Grocery in SF or Berkeley Bowl in the East Bay.

Most "sourdough" people will share a bit of their starter with you if this is the extra hobby you've been waiting for. For all your spare time.



But even if you take the time to make a starter which you keep alive for a few months in order to make two or three batches of these glorious homemade English muffins, I can guarantee you at least one happy mouth, your own, if not a messianic following. Not to mention the immeasurable learning one acquires from understanding the basics in the relationship between flour, yeast, air and water.

There's a chance that Dylan and I will co-teach a class on this very subject. Keep up with this link for announcements.

Labels: bread, culinary education, foodblogs, local, recipe, recipes, shuna lydon

Almost 15 years ago, at the beginning of my career, I worked at Lulu (SF). Unbeknownst to my very naive self at the time, I would never work at another restaurant that would make all its own table bread. At Verbena (NYC), under the tutelage of Diane Forley, the pastry department was responsible for a number of breads, especially on the weekends when we would produce gorgeous ficelle, brioche and any number of elegant quick breads for the toast cart.

But no other kitchen would be like Lulu. With two stacks of bread ovens, a full time bread baker (who came in at 10 pm and left near 8 am) and custom designed wooden shelves to display and sell the massive pain de campagne (looking much like Poilane's signature loaf) Lulu's bread program was serious.



So serious, an entire walk-in was devoted to the bread's starter, loaf proofing, and our overstock of dairy. A separate refrigerated room for ingredients lacking in strong scents. Except the time when I backed into whole lambs hanging, waiting for butchering. But that's another story.

Because the restaurant made so much bread, our starter was kept in a plastic rolling garbage can sized container. Massively huge. Lets call it 50 gallons for the sake of a good guess. Whoever arrived first thing in the morning was required to roll it out of the walk-in, pull a few gallons for that nights bake and feed the monster. The last duty meant we had to lean over the lip, reach into the sticky abyss, and stir the gloopy gurgling mixture with a large wooden spoon.

No matter how much we rolled up the sleeves of our chef's jackets, some of the starter would creep into our uniform. But this wasn't the worst of it. Natural starter is stickier than glue. When we were done with our duties, we held out our arms like surgeons and entered the dish room, tackling skin with hot water and the high-pressure sprayer.

Even after countless showers, little teardrops of dried starter stuck to my arm hairs, eventually rendering me as soft and hairless as a Tour De France cyclist.



One day I arrived in the kitchen earlier than anyone. I turned on ovens, flipped light switches and then noticed something very weird. The 2nd walk-in door was slightly ajar. Walk-ins come equipped with self-closing doors and, for safety, door handles on the inside as well as the outside. Doors do not stay open, as they are pressure sealed and close with the fwooop! to prove it.

I was alone in the kitchen.

I stood in front of the door. I held my breath. Listened very closely. Nothing but the whir of the fan.

Then I tried the door. Although it was ajar I had a hard time getting it more open. I tried to peer inside. Nothing. Pulling as hard as I could, the door flew open, throwing me on the ground. Recovering just in time to catch the door before it closed again, I stepped inside.

Someone had not sealed the starter's lid. Usually we closed the lid and weighted it with a few half gallons of dairy. To keep the bears out.



Starter grew out of the 50-gallon bucket. Crept down the sides. Grew across the floor like lava. Scaled the cold box walls. Spread its wings, traversing 90-degree angles, and defied gravity by covering the ceiling. Starter dripped on my head, plop. Starter was everywhere. Alive, happy, wet, sticky, growing. I looked down. Like the first man on the moon I saw my shoes disappearing into foreign goo. Starter naughtily walked out the door.

The starter was having a party.

And I would spend the next many many hours cleaning up after it.

Lesson number 1:
Never leave a starter unattended. Never assume it sleeps a deep dormant sleep in a cold box. Never question the power of wild yeast you've wrangled in, microscopically, from the air. Never forget that day. Never say pshaw to a Californian sourdough.

Part 2: Monday April 23.

Labels: bread, culinary education, local, recipe, recipes, shuna lydon

My birthday is tomorrow. Depending on whose age you look at in my family I am either not yet approaching middle age or will die in about 20 years. Supposedly this means I am to look at where I've been and where I'm going.

Up until very recently much of who I was, was one thing. Pastry Chef. The title, the position I'd been working for the last fourteen years, although much of the time unbeknownst to me, towards this goal. I identified myself with the restaurant I worked for. Which is a very good thing, because the second question people ask me, after learning how to pronounce my name, is, "Oh really, where do you work?"

I worked as a pastry cook and assistant for almost 8 years when I was given my first pastry chef job. Many of the assistants I worked alongside went on to be famous pastry chefs themselves. And I watched many cooks and sous chefs become chefs of their own restaurants. From my point of view one worked themselves up in the ranks before being given or holding a chef title.

In the last few weeks I have consumed more desserts at restaurants (A16, Campton Place, Rubicon, Two, Delfina.) than I did all last year. And this week I'll be eating more. In part due to birthday dinners, but also as research for a position I'm interviewing for. The object is to find out who is making what in San Francisco. The goal is to assess the palate of the person I may work with, and for him to see what I might make or what sweet things inspire me. We are both looking at where our foggy city, one of the most food and restaurant-centric in The United States, stands on the platform of pastry chef hiring.

I have even called upon the Chowhounders to help me track down the best sugary courses within these forty-nine miles. Sadly, it's been like getting a straight answer out of a lawyer. One dessert here, another there. Some have even been so bold as to tell me about the artificially-flavored butterscotch pudding at Town Hall. (An article about real butterscotch in The Washington Post here.)

I'm not looking for all the sweets to be the same. One dessert at Chez Panisse will be like another at Zuni, Quince or Oliveto. (In fact, if you look at the lineage, these restaurants practically trade pastry chefs like baseball cards.) I want to try the homey American desserts at Salt House as well as Citizen Cake's kooky innovative concoctions or straightforward, simple, seasonal creations like those found at Delfina or Foreign Cinema.

My hope is that I will be eating a pastry chef's creations. I'm not so interested in restaurants that buy their desserts from an outside source. (Think I'm making this up? Read this short article about the disappearing restaurant pastry chefs in NYC.) I'm also a little biased against the chefs who say they're not only the savoury chef of their kitchen, but also the pastry chef. I realize this saves them a lot of money, but I'm really tired of eating warm oozy chocolate cake, creme brulee and tough crusted out-of-season fruit tarts or dishes that look like they just stepped out of the pastry and baking program at CCA.

It sounds like I'm hard to please doesn't it? I'm actually the biggest fan of delicious food you might ever meet. Give me simple, complex, hole-in-the-wall, humble, bold, a quiet ice cream cone, standard traditional fare, technically seamless, fussily plated or a cookie on the go.

Just let me taste the taste of skill, perhaps a dash of inspiration and/or innovation, a love for my craft, tiny sprinkles of deference, whiffs of hope for mastery, half cup of practice, grams upon ounces of question-asking-inquisitiveness, and, although not absolutely necessary: when I close my eyes I'd like to taste that that person's hard work over the years that they've read and worked and asked questions and eaten and tasted helped them land a job where they were taken seriously, and give them the chef title they deserved.

Might you have a favorite pastry chef whose desserts I must have on my extreme dessert-eating spree this week? Any and all suggestions taken into consideration!

Between Meals: SF Chronicle's Michael Bauer blog on desserts in the Bay Area.

Labels: bay area, chefs, culinary education, dessert, local, restaurants, san francisco, shuna lydon

In this age of Google and Wikipedia, it's easy to forget the joy of getting lost for hours deep in the stacks of a three-dimensional library. To entice you back to these important anchors of our community, here's a short list of culinary exhibits and events worth adding to your list of food adventures:

READING AMERICA: Reconstructed Books by Mary Marsh


"Snack." Mary Marsh, 2004. Coffee, ink, gouache on found book.

Head to the airy, sunny sixth floor of the San Francisco Main Library to find a wonderful exhibit of new work by artist Mary Marsh. Using comfort food as an analogy, Marsh explores the intersection of eating and reading. Discarded books and old library catalog cards (remember those?!) find new lives with bits of linen tape, layers of gouache and coffee as ink. Marsh explores issues of privacy, consumption and narrative with these evocative creations. Her artwork will be on display at the library galleries though April 5, 2007.

While you're at the top of the SF Main, visit one of my favorite local resources: the Koshland SF History Center. If you can't make it there in person, it's almost as fun browsing their amazing photo collection online. Their "Picture This" series includes a line of serious-minded, long-aproned butchers at the Stadium Market in the Sunset District (1935), a proud baker at Dianda's Bakery in the Mission (1980); and a birthday party in the Western Addition, when Japanese-American families still flourished in the neighborhood (1938).

San Francisco Main Library, 6th Floor
100 Larkin Street, San Francisco
(415) 557-4400

TASTE MATTERS: The Role of Food and Drink in Jewish Culture


Detail of "Pesach" by Mary Thorman

The Magnes Museum, a stately building tucked in the foothills of Berkeley, has launched a series of cross-disciplinary presentations of gastronomic narratives in Jewish culture. These intimate gatherings are open to the public ($8 for nonmembers) and offer a valuable resource both for those attempting to understand their own heritage and those trying to learn more about the history of an important but largely invisible group. Last week's conversation with Eleanor Kaufman from UCLA highlighted Eastern European homesteaders keeping kosher under harsh conditions on the plains and utopian farming communities, such as Petaluma's chicken and egg producers, that succeeded for a brief period in the early to mid-20th century.

On May 31, Alisa Braun from UC Davis will discuss the depiction of Jewish foods in films, and on August 16, Benjamin Wurgaft from UC Berkeley will show how food writers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, shape perception and identity.

In addition to its ceremonial, decorative and modern art collections, the Magnes houses an excellent research library for scholars of Jewish history and culture.

Judah L. Magnes Museum
2911 Russell Street, Berkeley
(510) 549-6950

ALICE STATLER LIBRARY


The menu cover from a 1930s "Bohemian" restaurant near Coit Tower.

To support its stellar culinary arts and hospitality program, City College maintains a reading library of books about food, restaurants and anything remotely related to the history, culture, science, politics and business of cooking and eating. Their periodical collection alone could occupy a dedicated cook for years.

Though nearly everyone in the Statler Library is wearing chef whites, it's open to the public. You're welcome to read for hours whether you're browsing for random discoveries, honing a research topic or filling up on glossy food mags.

You can also enjoy the library's beautiful menu collections online. With their covers and inside pages lovingly scanned, the menus highlight restaurants across the nation as well as concessionaries at the 1939 World's Fair in San Francisco.

Alice Statler Library
City College of San Francisco
Room 10, Statler Wing
50 Phelan Avenue, San Francisco
(415) 239-3460

Labels: agriculture, art, bay area, culinary education, history, Jewish, local, thy tran

It's that time again: time for teaching, inspiring, educating, and eating delicious Spring and Summer produce. Who's not looking forward to rhubarb, strawberries, cherries? Besides the obvious: eating them out of hand, fresh from the farmer's market, wouldn't you love to know how to whip up some Pavlovas, Angel Food Cake, creme anglaise, pannacotta and smooth, silky pot de creme to go with those long awaited warm weather fruits?



I'm teaching two classes this month that may be able to help you with these, and many more sweet projects. By popular vote, the first class on Sunday March 11 will be on the subject of Egg Whites. Understanding what egg whites can do, as well as knowing how to get them to do it might pose a daunting task. Perhaps you've already attempted egg white based desserts? A short, but incomplete, list of confections where egg whites play a starring role: buttercream, mousse, Angel Food Cake, meringue, cupcake frosting, Pavlova, French Macarons, and sponge cake.

And, by perfect reciprocity, the second class on Sunday March 25th will be on the subject of Custards. On that day we'll learn how to use and get to know the whole egg. Achieving light, gorgeously smooth, rich custards is no easy job. But pastry chefs and Jell-O shouldn't have the corner on the market. Learn why water baths are necessary when baking custards, how to get the most out of infusing various flavors and scents, just how rapidly to whisk pastry cream, and more.

I am a student of the egg and have been studying it for almost 15 years. For a post written about my classes from the perspective of some of my previous students, check this one out on pate a choux.



My hope is that those who take my classes will go home and have the confidence and foundation knowledge to not only replicate what we made in class, but more importantly, to understand enough of the "whys" to be able to correct mistakes and experiment further. My hope is that my love and my passion for sweet things will be infectious, touching you with the bug to make beautiful desserts at home.

Future classes include, but are not limited to: more Knife Skills classes, seasonal fruit desserts, chocolate, caramel, and whatever you're in the mood for... Many of the class subjects come from past and future students' requests.



These classes will take place in North Berkeley (exact location disclosed upon registration) on Sundays from 12:30-4 PM. They are $100 per person with two spots in each class for "assistants" at 1/2 price. The format is a mixture of lecture, demonstration, hand-on, and eating the end results. Classes are small, usually no more than 12 students.

If you're interested in signing up for my March classes, or just want to learn more, head over to Eggbeater. There's both an email link for correspondence as well as the Paypal link for direct registration.

Come One, Come All. Come Hungry To Learn!

Labels: bay area, chefs, culinary education, dessert, local, shuna lydon

There appears to be no end to the amount of emails through Eggbeater I get on this subject. The irony is not lost on me. I am a self-taught chef. Trained on-the-job, my resume is my only certificate. It's rare I meet other people like me in my age range. More rare still that I work in a kitchen with anyone who has not gone through a culinary program at all.

And yet, I have been training culinary students for almost 15 years. Whether it's side-by-side training to get them familiar with my station and the kitchen at large, or as their supervisor through an extern/internship (culinary schools use either nomenclature for the same thing: sending students out into the field for work experience before they graduate) or as their direct boss after they've graduated.

The specific, name-brand culinary school students I've worked with and trained have depended on the geographical location of the businesses or their respective fame. Because of this, I have strong opinions on specific schools. I've come to learn their strengths as well as their gross weaknesses. I have become opinionated about a form of education I myself could not afford, time or money-wise. I have been working since I was 14, and have not since had the luxury of learning without pay.

For these reasons, when I receive email missives all over the world on the subject of culinary school advice, I dole out well thought out and experiential words. I have lost count of the people who wish they'd listened to me when I attempted to talk them out of culinary school.

It is not that I think all culinary education outside of the workplace is a waste of time. But I think one should know all their options before signing a check for upwards of $60,000 for two years of education, or less.

I know for a fact that few, if any, culinary schools, lay out all the facts and possibilities for prospective students making bright eyed inquiries on their shiny doorsteps. It used to be that culinary schools required their future students to have at least some experience in the field before even being able to apply. Now the only skill a future cook needs to possess is the ability to sign a check.

When I receive an email the first thing I do is ask the person a number of questions. I realize each person coming to me has a different agenda, various hopes, specific goals and has bravely put forth an inquiry to a complete stranger. It's vulnerable to ask for help, but an amazing resource the www offers anyone trusting enough to think there's someone out there who can answer seemingly impossible or overwhelming questions.

I began my career from a similar place. A friend of a friend of a friend was a chef in New York City. Soon after she graduated from CCAC I took a trip there and contacted her. She did not hesitate to say yes and within hours of arriving I was sitting across from an accomplished chef taking notes on what she was saying. After thanking her profusely for making the time to see me she said something I hope to never forget. I have said it myself more than once and always credit her.

"I always say yes to helping other women in the field because professional cooking is a Men's Club. What we are doing here is the only network for female cooks. If I don't pass it on to other women, no one else will."

Almost a year later, the late Barbara Tropp spoke strikingly similar words at a fundraising dinner announcing what would be the first women's culinary professional organization, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs.

I've written a fair amount on the subject of culinary school advice. My most "Googled" piece is "What is a Chef's Responsibility?" Recently I wrote a piece, so transparent I'm practically naked, about the pastry chef glass ceiling I've hit, especially in the Bay Area since both the Dot Com Bust and September 11th.

It's not easy these days to be excited about my profession, my specific field and the industry I love. But I believe deeply "we keep what we have by giving it away," and I honor those who apprenticed, mentored and educated before me when I answer these missives. As well, I've recently fallen in love with teaching culinary classes myself.

Here are some excerpts of emails I've sent to various people who have asked me for culinary school advice:

"Know why it is you want to go to culinary school, what specific needs and desires you have, and then the education you go after will fill these. The other option is to go after a specific restaurant for on-the-job training.

Some important attitude hints: Be humble. Start at The Bottom-- peeling apples, doing prep, learning to butcher, tempering chocolate by hand, etc. Do not take a job where you're considered "the pastry chef" for at least 5 years. Employers love to give titles to people to entice them, but it only works out for the business in the end-- because you're a lot cheaper than me and it's easier to stroke your ego with a title than the learning that you need to do along the way. Bad habits are formed in those cooks with little or no direction.

It takes more time to unlearn than it does to start off training under the best people you can find. Not every chef is a great teacher. Most chefs do not have the time to teach. A lot of the learning is on you. Supplement your hours in the kitchen with articles, books, library visits, magazines, and eating out whenever you can afford to. Develop your taste memory by using all of your senses when you eat and go to farmers' markets.

You're not going to make very much money in this field, but most especially at the beginning. So it's of utmost importance you work with the (pastry) chef you want to. In the kitchen/restaurant you want to. Whose desserts/food do you love? Do you love the classical or modern stuff? Do you like big kitchens or the small ones? Asian food, French, North African... think about this.

Do a little research: collect (dessert) menus from a bunch of local restaurants. When you go in and ask for the menu, have a pen and write down the (pastry) chef's full name. Then take your resume into each place whose (dessert) menu calls out to you and (make sure to find out when is the best time to go to the restaurant: if they serve lunch visit betw 3-4:30, if they only serve dinner, visit @ noon) go to each place asking for the (pastry) chef by name and ask if they have any positions open. They don't? Would they be willing to have you come in one or two days a week for free? Tell them how much their (dessert) menu interested you and say you are coming there to work for them specifically.

INTENTIONALLY CHOOSE YOUR EDUCATION, YOUR TEACHERS, YOUR MENTORS.

If you are going to make $10 hour working anywhere, work at the place you want to learn the most. Just like school, just like life: your education is up to you! You will learn a lot from someone who knows a lot. From someone who has a lot of suggestions, can brainstorm, knows the history of food and food science. Is able to teach, to mentor, and to be patient enough to grow a person from seed to sprout, at least.

Don't stay at a job unless you're learning. But don't put any job that you haven't been at for at least 6 months on your resume. Buy and read the SF Chronicle (or your local paper) and the NY Times Every Wednesday. This is the cheapest way to start your regional restaurant education."

But patience on your side is necessary. Chefs who think you're in a hurry will most likely view that attitude as disrespectful. Not a single craft is learned overnight. Few chefs I've worked for have taught me by saying, "Here let me show you a better way." Or, "Take all the time you need to get this right."

Learning on the job has often meant that I learned under fire. It meant I had to pay close attention when chefs and sous chefs didn't teach in an empathetic way.

Learning how to cook professionally is about doing it. It's repetition, teaching all five senses memory. It's about deference and humility, respecting those who have been cooking/baking longer. It's stamina, and a passion so deep and strong it can feel delusional. Professional cooks are best when they are a precarious mix of humble and cocky, and knowing the balance is important. Something besides external validators like money, the public's gratitude or a normal life must drive you.

And lastly:

"There should be thousands of things YOU should look for in a professional cooking job! Is the kitchen clean? How are the Spanish-speaking workers treated? Are the sous chefs helpful? Is the chef absent? The food delicious? Is there a staff meal and is it edible? Are the appliances clean and working properly? Are people caring for themselves and their surroundings? The cooks tasting their food? How many cooks have been there longer than 6 months, a year? Is the sous chef a person who has been promoted, and if so, from what position? Are the cooks happy to be there? Are they learning? Is the pastry chef experienced? How long has the kitchen management been baking/cooking professionally? What's the style of the management team?

School gives you a foot in the door. But that's all. Now the real work is ahead of you."

I am currently mentoring a few people, some of whom have chosen culinary school, some who are going alternate routes. It's thoroughly inspiring and rewarding. No matter what a person chooses, my hope is that my industry will continue to thrive and expand the envelopes and glass ceilings I've been straining against for the last 15 years.

And if more people begin learning a craft that takes a lifetime plus to master, the more wonderful food there will be to appreciate.

Labels: chefs, culinary education, shuna lydon

Every year you have the same holiday dinners. Turkey for this, ham for that. An odd crown roast or duck and maybe cedar plank fish if you have a house in the country. You like the same side dishes to go with these main proteins. With some meals a mixture of sweet and savory gracing the table is important, but sometimes it's all about the salt. Certain holidays are about being American and then there are the ones that remind you of the culture in which you grew up or flavors your grandmother introduced you to.


Each cavity stuffed with a different set of aromatics.


Goose, bound.

You're married or belong to a community or every year you go to a different house for these holidays. Every year is basically the same, except that everyone's a little older, or every other you do what your partner wants. Sometimes you volunteer at your local synagogue or church or soup kitchen and make more food than you thought possible. When you sit down to eat after these days your exhaustion is deeply soul-satisfied with a varied plate of food you let yourself (finally) eat and enjoy.


Elise Bauer makes her famous cranberry-orange relish at the event.

During the year you make dinner parties or bring what the host asks you to make. You shop at the farmers' market differently for these special nights. You pull out your favorite cookbooks and try a new recipe or finesse a favorite from the tried-and-true box. You proudly unfurl your food and wait nervously for people to dig in, hoping beyond hope that what you've made will pass muster and maybe at the end of the night someone asks you for your recipe. You go home feeling warm and full in ways you generally don't after dinner at home.


Basting.

One day you realize you sorely miss a particular holiday dinner you went to year after year. It was German affair complete with goose, red cabbage with chestnuts, a most exquisitely rich pan gravy, lebkuchen and bite-sized marzipan shapes from Berlin. The person who you went with has died, and now every year, at the same time, you miss that goose. Even though you didn't grow up with anyone who ever cooked a goose.


Cookiecrumb and Cranky's bright and tangy sauerkraut crockpot.


Prepping the innards for gravy. (The goose is dense and rich and the gravy begs to be drunk from a glass!)

You have a food blog, or you date someone who has one. You used to cook professionally, or are going to culinary school, or are a professional food writer, or you live in a house the size of a private airplane hanger because you're the most amazing photographer, or you're a meat cooking expert or you have a wine cellar or you're not working right now. You organize a goose making dinner because you realize, in order to satiate this goose-eating-taste-bud appendage you've acquired and now must acknowledge, albeit late in life, you must learn how to cook said animal yourself.


Jessica Wilson taking the temperature of the geese.

You start talking about the possibility of a German Holiday Feast near actual holidays to your food blogging friends. You plant the seed.

A brilliant idea comes to you one night late. February! It's the perfect time for such a dinner. Although you won't get your geese warm from a fresh slaughter as you might near Christmas, you're told all your Bay Area options for goose buying. You're not working much or you're in need of organizing a grand food event. You've recently been to a number of massive community food gathering undertakings for which you only showed up as a guest and now it's your time to kick it into gear. You go to you local meat expert, fellow blogger, someone you refer to sweetly as your personal Meat Angel. You know he's the person to make your first goose with.



You channel the most organized, bossy side of you. You want to eat what you want. You make a list, asking for people to choose from a list and "call" a dish. It reads: "spaetzle, red cabbage with chestnuts, a green salad (for me what constitutes a salad, in, Feb. is head lettuce, cucumbers and radishes), baked potatoes, something sauerkrauty, steamed broccoli or greens or squash something, raw celery root something, something leeky, cranberry sauce/chutney something, chocolate, marzipan tinted dessert and Marc, can you make that Orange Cake?"


Paul Hendry carving with Guy's lucky carving knife.

At the last minute you have to change locations. People you've never met offer their industrial palatial estate. In between dinner and dessert one of the hosts, a distinguished professional photographer, takes portaits of all the guests! The kitchen crew of three gets shot jumping in the air. (All photos from the session will be made public shortly; link will be posted on Eggbeater.)


Molten hazelnut-cocoa nib brittle garnish for pot de creme made on site by Shuna and David Byron.


Marc's orange cakes & caramel sauce plated with David & Shuna's gianduja pot de creme.


"The Kitchen Crew" Jessica Wilson, David Byron, and Shuna Lydon (not pictured) at the head of the table happily eating dessert.

Even though the event tires you out you would do it again. Twenty-four people gather, make the seasonal side dishes you were craving, and bring wine and beverages from all over the map. You make new friends, have a number of inspiring conversations, banter and laugh, navigating a foreign kitchen, and everyone eats the German Holiday Feast of your making, from your heart and imaginings.

Labels: culinary education, events, fowl, Germany, holiday, shuna lydon