Culinary goes back to the beginning of time. People had to come up with some kind of food source and a way to make it. It wasn't as creative or as well presented as current dishes, but it was still cooking. When people didn't have refrigerator, they used salts in order to preserve the meats and many other types of foods. In today's society we have refrigerators and freezers in order to keep things relatively fresh. But what is so great about culinary and cooking in general? Cooking makes a difference in our lives. Instead of eating the same old dish everyday being able to mix things together giving variety to the dish. People who have become chefs do this everyday, trying to come up with something new that the customer will enjoy and wonder, "What is that?" with the different flavors combined together.
Becoming a chef is a hard process, but what is the reason people want to pursue this dream of being a great and successful chef? Is it that they woke up one day and said to themselves, hey I want to start cooking, or was it that someone had encouraged them into trying cooking in a kitchen, or was it just by chance? Some of the chefs that I had interviews said a combination of these three things. Chef Comar, a pastry chef at Johnson and Wales University in Denver, Colorado told me how he had gotten inspired to start going into this particular field of expertise.
"Chef has been just inspired through the time when I was still basically a teenager. I was working at this one hotel for a summer job and was placed in various locations as far as to help them out and one of them was pastry. When it came to make a decision as far as what I would like to do, I felt I had taste for pastry. No one specifically as a person has inspired me; it was more of just exposure to it that led me to [pursue becoming a pastry chef]."
Chef Comar was the teacher of the section I was visiting while at Johnson and Wales with my culinary teacher, Chef Betty. He was giving us tips on how to do certain things such as make a bubble sugar of sorts. He had some sugar malt melted and dyed blue, he then drizzled it around a sheet of wax paper. After all of the liquid was on the sheet he started moving the paper so the sugar covered the sheet and bent the wax paper slightly to give the sugar a small waved look to it. It was very interesting because there is a delicate touch and knowledge of what you are doing in order to make it correctly. Something that really stuck while I was interviewing him was, "you must have a passion for it."
Chef Comar, Chef Oakley and Chef De la Torre all said basically the same thing when I asked about this industry. Without a certain passion and creativity for making food you cannot succeed in this industry very easily.
If you have the passion and the drive to make it in the industry, what more does it take? If you need passion and creativity and you already have that, what does it really take in order to become successful? You can do chemistry with the food and try new things, add a little spice here and a small bit of garlic there, but there must be more to this job.
"I feared I wouldn't have a shot at ever becoming a successful chef because I hadn't gotten my start cooking in a three-star restaurant at the age of 14. I was surprised and pleased to learn that this was not the case for most of the chefs we interviewed, either. (Becoming a Chef, 123)
From different sources, my interviews and some books about what it takes in order to become a successful chef, you have to start from the bottom and work your way up. You don't need to work at a three-star restaurant to be successful as a chef. Many of the best chefs started out just helping out in the kitchen doing small things, doing dishes, mopping floors and being a helper to the fulltime chefs. I haven't worked in an actual kitchen like in a restaurant, but I have worked in a kitchen at Los Altos High School under Chef Betty and I work at Turkey Legs during the renaissance faire doing breakfasts. It isn't much, but I feel that it is giving me experience that I can use later in life when I choose where I would like to work. Over the two years I have worked at Turkey Legs I have found out that each year things with the equipment changes and one must adjust the new timing it takes for the food to cook in. I was shocked that it wasn't that different but it was still a little weird. In culinary we have made different types of dishes and we need to be able to present it nicely, not just pouring it on a plate. We were assigned groups at the beginning of the year that we worked in for the first quarter on big projects. The first project we needed to do was to make a dish with the meat, starch and vegetables from a certain place of origin. We chose to do a Tuscan T-bone steak with broccoli rabe and baked potato wedges. Finding a way to present it and make it perfect was pretty hard, because you needed to make sure there weren't any messes around the edge of the plates and that the food didn't taste bad.
"It's hard to understand what working as a cook is like until you spend your first week in a professional kitchen. The work is physically hard-a bag of sugar or flour can weigh twenty-five or fifty pounds. At the end of the week, the hand that holds your knife is callused and fatigued, and if you were not careful your lower back might be sore." (Becoming a Chef, 124-125)
Mark Miller, a chef who had started out working at Friendly's Ice Cream, said, "Physical abilities come first, personality comes seconds, and I would say cooking skills come third down my list."
When I read this quote for the first time I wondered, why would it be third on your list, wouldn't that be one of the most important skills to have? I thought about this for a little while then it clicked. Compared the personality and physical condition it would come third because as I said in the previous quote, a bag of flour could weigh 25 or 50 pounds and you would be carrying it by yourself, if you are not careful you could injure yourself by pulling your lower back or straining a muscle. When in a kitchen you need communication skills so you aren't just bossing people around or standing in a corner waiting for someone to talk to you and tell you what you need to do. If there isn't communication on timing some of the food will get done way before another part of the meal and get cold. An example would be cooking the vegetables right when you put the meat on the grill. It will get done maybe 5 or 10 minutes earlier than the meat and will get cold so you would have to re-heat which may over cook the portion of the food.
What truly makes a chef successful? I believe that over the years chefs have become successful and talented by working in the industry.
"Once a cook has developed basic kitchen skills and good work habits [which is easier said than done], further development takes place over a period of years through work at higher and higher levels, ideally under the watchful eye of a skilled chef."
Over the period of time you wish to use to gain knowledge, speed, and status, you are able to work with dishes and transform them easier into something you can call your own.
When I interview Chef De la Torre, the dean of Johnson and Wales University, I asked him about the preparation of the dishes and if they showed a part of himself. I had an idea that it did but I didn't know to what extent. He answered that yes it did show a bit of himself in the way the dish was presented and created. When you think of a dish you must think of what tastes can you incorporate into this specific dish. Chef Comar gave me some example of somewhat "out of the ordinary" dishes that he has had his classes make, one of them was garlic ice cream. I heard this and I was a bit shocked but it wasn't anything that I would consider gross or weird; it sounded very good when he was describing what he had his students do in order to make it. He said that when you become a chef you can't just know basic and "normal" dishes. There is a certain amount of inspiration that must be put into making something. The ability to think of something that would be considered strange to some is a talent you must obtain while working as a chef.