Caution: hot trend.
Today's kitchen is where celebrities rise like biscuits. Famous chefs garnish The Food Network and other cooking shows on television. The Internet makes everybody a food expert as quick as powdered peanut butter.
Who needs cooking school?
But cooking is a different kettle of fish at the Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute at Pulaski Technical College in Little Rock. Hundreds of would-be chefs, bartenders, wine stewards and restaurant owners enroll to make a living.
They learn it's not enough to know all that a foodie knows about cupcakes, quinoa, gluten-free, chorizo, kale, mangoes, Hatch chili peppers and the Paleo diet -- pass the Omega-3 enriched eggs.
Joseph Simms, 32, for example: "I can cook anything," he says. From New Orleans, he was all but born knowing how to deep-fry a Cajun turkey. Childhood diabetes taught him to cook for himself, and how to jazz up a healthy meal.
"Herbs and spices," he says like a magician willing to tell what props are on the table, not about to reveal how to work the trick.
Still and all, it takes a degree "to open up doors for you," he says. Not every door is marked "kitchen."
A culinary arts degree, associate of applied science, calls for -- algebra? Yes, and English composition, and knowing how to use a computer.
Simms is enrolled in Chef Jay McAfee
Jr.'s class on product identification and ordering to learn a few more essentials. The class defines 500 fruits, grains, kitchen staples of all sorts, of which the chef's students will be tested on a random 60.
Is it an onion? Or a leek? And how many leeks would it take to plan on potato-leek soup, and what if the wholesaler runs out of leeks?
"You've got to have a back-up," Simms repeats the lesson.
"I like to be creative," 20-year-old Ruthie Murphy says, hoping like Simms to have her own restaurant one day. Her dad taught her the basics of cooking, but she is in Chef Todd Gold's class this summer afternoon to learn how to cut an onion.
Gold, also dean of the culinary institute, says he especially likes working with summer students. They have an extra dash of determination.
Who doesn't know how to whack a vegetable? The home cook might think so little of the job as to reach for whatever paring knife is on top in the clutter drawer. But Gold has his own set of knives rolled in black leather.
Knife skill is an art. First thing to learn: Keep the blade sharp. Dull knives slip, these students learn; sharp knives sliver. Whacking won't do.
Some things are diced, cut in perfect cubes for eye appeal and uniform cooking. Some are julienned, sliced in thin strips. Some are brunoised, but not by just anybody -- julienned and diced to fine bits.
Diced potatoes and julienned green beans come in cans at the grocery story. In the school's apprenticeship program, they come in 4,000 hours on the job.
And still, it's hard to be famous.
...
"The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills, marketing skills, cooking skills, personality and, more importantly, delivering on the plate." -- Chef Gordon Ramsay
...
"Everybody loves to eat," Gold says. "When you have a group of people over to the house, where do they wind up? In the kitchen."
In this sense, every good cook is a star to somebody.
Cooking school supplies knowledgeable workers to a growing industry. Top chefs "can make above six figures in this market," he says.
The odds of doing even better, becoming a celebrity chef? Like those of an actor becoming a movie star, Gold says. He cites a determining ingredient that no pantry can provide: charisma.
Gold tells of the standing ovation he received for a dinner he created at La Scala restaurant in Little Rock -- cooking as a kind of theater. Also, he tells of a shy friend in the business, a top chef he knows, who probably would not have come out of the kitchen to receive the accolades.
Some chefs want attention, he says. Some have the personality to shake hands and schmooze with the clientele, and some just want to cook.
...
"I think careful cooking is love, don't you?" -- Julia Child
...
The Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute is complete with its own bar and restaurant in a two-story brick building on Pulaski Tech's south Little Rock campus.
Things started simmering almost 20 years ago with classes at the Arkansas Culinary School, an apprenticeship program founded by the central Arkansas chapter of the American Culinary Federation. Classes opened to about 50 students. The program became part of Pulaski Tech in 2006.
"We had close to 500 students last semester," Gold says, and about "65 percent of those are culinary arts majors." Culinary arts is a 66-credit-hour degree program that most students finish in five semesters.
Baking and pastries is the second most popular major. Wine and spirits studies is the newest. Hospitality management is how to work in the hotel and restaurant industry, including nutrition, accounting, psychology, marketing and social media.
Yesterday's restaurant manager had newspaper critics to stew over -- today's has to worry about food bloggers, besides, and Urbanspoon reviewers.
Gold started as a 16-year-old dishwasher in an Italian restaurant.
"All I wanted in the world," he says, "was to get out of dishes and get over to pizza." He imagined impressing girls with his ability to throw pizza dough in the air.
Culinary training at La Maison Meridian in Memphis set him on a different track. In nine years, he moved up the kitchen ladder from a Holiday Inn to executive chef at Alouette's -- in its time, one of Little Rock's most elegant restaurants. He was co-owner of the Purple Cow, a chain of four restaurants, home to the purple vanilla shake.
"I tell students we have given them the foundation and building blocks they need to go be the best in their industry," he says. "Then I also tell them they will get out of this industry what they put into it, so I expect to give blood, sweat, tears and time."
...
"You think cooking is a cute job, eh? Like Mommy in the kitchen? Well, Mommy never had to face the dinner rush." -- Collette in the animated feature, Ratatouille (2007), about a rat who wants to be a chef
...
New this summer, the culinary school is training would-be chefs even younger than Gold when he landed his first job. Youth Chef Summer Camp, for students in fifth through 12th grades, covers a range of skills from breakfast and lunch, to dinner and clean-up.
"People were asking for it," lead instructor Cynthia Malik says.
Both camps, July 21-25 and July 28-Aug. 1, sold out. Chef's hats go to 25 campers each week, and Malik expects the school will offer more programs for children.
She learned to cook from her grandmother -- a country cook, she says, and the kind to peel the tomatoes.
But few of today's parents teach their children how to manage in the kitchen, she says. Parents don't know how to cook, having given the job to Colonel Sanders and Ronald McDonald.
If people cooked more at home, then cooking might not have become a spectator sport on television.
"People see these chefs cooking," Malik says, "and it's an amazing thing."
Summer camp is apt to make a difference.
"I can imagine these kids will be cooking at home," the chef says. "I think parents will notice that."
...
"What's cookin'?" -- Bugs Bunny
Style on 07/08/2014