Kitchen Curriculum
Cooking schools across the country offer instruction and entertainment to suit every taste and level of skill
It was 9:00 on a chilly spring morning, right about the time that most people first stagger into work. But here, 15 men and women had been on their feet since 7:00, decked out in crisp white chef's jackets and toques, laboring away in a professional kitchen -- and loving it. They had all signed up for a week of demanding, hands-on culinary instruction, and they were calling it vacation. "Demo in one minute!" bellowed their chef-instructor down the line, andthey all fell to like soldiers before the fish station, ready for a quick tutorial on grilling.
Welcome to Culinary Boot Camp at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y. Although the school is best-known as the nation's leading training ground for professional chefs, it draws hundreds of amateurs each year, too. The CIA enjoys a lovely setting on the Hudson River, but students don't come here to sightsee and unwind. Every morning's lesson involves serious stuff -- on this particular day, the jam-packed itinerary included some 25 recipes, dishes such as San Francisco-style cioppino (fish stew), osso buco alla Milanese with saffron risotto, and mozzarella roulade made with the students' own hand-stretched cheese. Like real kitchen workers, they called their teachers "chef."
"I've never done anything like this before," said Christa Ranalli from Philadelphia. She was beveling a potato, attempting to make it tournéed. "There's so much about professional presentation in this class, and that's something you never focus on at home." Certainly the class's output was nothing like home cooking as most people know it. By morning's end, every dish was textbook perfect, plated and garnished expertly, ready to take its place on the buffet table of a luxury hotel.
Boot Camp, introduced in 1999, is wildly popular; its 20 sessions each year are always filled to capacity. Its success is proof of the growing popularity of cooking schools in the United States. Americans, known for both a love of food and a hunger for education, are taking full advantage of a boom in programs that combine the kitchen and the classroom.
There are schools out there for everyone, from dilettantes to deeply passionate home cooks, from people with time on their hands to those with just a few hours to spare. While the CIA's Boot Camp is almost as rigorous as professional training, other programs are as relaxing as they are educational. Even if you just want to sit back at the end of a long day, wineglass in hand, and marvel at the artistry of a master chef, there's a school that will satisfy your appetite.
You can attend classes after work, on weekends, even on a resort vacation, after a massage or a round of golf. Many couples learn to cook on dates or on romantic country weekends, and single people sometimes go cooking in search of potential mates. You can choose between "hands-on" classes, where students do the cooking, and demonstration classes, where the pros make the food and their students watch, then sample the results. It's supposed to be fun, and it will be, if you choose the experience that's right for you.
"Cooking classes are a new kind of night out," says Gary Danko, a San Francisco-based celebrity chef who loves teaching amateurs. "It's entertainment -- like dinner and theater all in one."
Wine lovers won't be disappointed by any of the programs reviewed here. The Western-style cuisines they specialize in are especially wine-friendly. Many of these schools offer separate wine tasting classes, in a few cases even have whole departments devoted to wine. Wine is usually served, if not discussed, in cooking classes.
Cooking in paradise
The Greenbrier, a huge old Southern grande dame of a resort in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, has been offering cooking lessons to guests for 25 years. While other luxury properties around the nation have introduced culinary programs, none is nearly as well-developed as this one. For people who love cooking as much as they love (or need) pampering and a rural getaway, The Greenbrier is an ideal destination.
During high season (April through October), demonstrations are given in an ample teaching kitchen with a huge mirror over the main work area, angled in such a way to allow the audience a bird's-eye view. For close-ups, students can look to either side at video monitors; a cameraman in a back room zooms in and out at the instructor's request. The teachers are staff chefs, staff instructors and visiting celebrity chefs -- including Anne Willan, founder of the well-regarded Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne, in Burgundy.
Willan usually comes to The Greenbrier in the spring, an annual happening that the resort calls "La Varenne at The Greenbrier." When Wine Spectator dropped in on her, she was in the middle of a demonstration class titled "Great Dishes With Wine," which she taught with the cooking school's energetic director, Riki Senn.
The two women were smooth and personable as they methodically worked their way through five recipes -- oeufs en meurette (poached eggs in red wine sauce); stuffed quail with braised fennel and walnut pesto; roasted fingerling potatoes; peaches in red-wine syrup; and Chardonnay-cornmeal cake -- in less than three hours. The beginners in the crowd were learning plenty -- some, for instance, had never made a simple red-wine syrup for fruit. But the more advanced students were getting bombarded with new information, too. Many were surprised to learn that it's unwise to stir the syrup while it's cooking. "Shake the pan instead," instructed Senn. "Stirring promotes crystallization."
Ingredient samples -- oils, spices, grains -- were passed around to feel, sniff and taste. At the end, everyone ate from a buffet of the demonstrated dishes, prepared during class in another kitchen. Willan and Senn continued answering questions during the meal.
Most of the students -- about 30 in all -- chose to continue their day in the spa or out on the Greenbrier's lush grounds. But for an ambitious dozen, the best was yet to come in the afternoon hands-on class, led by staff instructor Susanne Moats. After an hour-long review of the recipes (five-spice breast of duck, mushroom and romaine roulade, vanilla-pear sorbet, among others), Moats led her students into a second, commercially equipped teaching kitchen, where groups of four set to work making some of the most challenging dishes they'd ever attempted. Moats and her assistant hovered over the worktables offering as-you-go instruction on everything from knife technique to egg tempering for crème anglaise.
At dinner, the group felt exhausted, but confident. "I can actually go home and do this now," exulted Debra Pugel, an Internet retailer from Lawrenceville, Ga.
Learning at the best urban schools
You needn't head out for the wilds of West Virginia -- or the enormous kitchens of the CIA -- to sauté atop powerful restaurant-style stoves or slam puff-pastry dough on huge stainless-steel worktables. Professionally equipped schools are cropping up in cities all over the nation.
The cookware manufacturer Calphalon just opened one in Chicago's West Loop, and public-television chef Jill Prescott is opening another one in the Windy City this fall. The Viking Corp. offers classes in their "culinary arts centers" in Memphis and Nashville, Tenn., with more on the way in Philadelphia, Atlanta and Dallas. In Colorado, there is the Cooking School of Aspen and the Cooking School of the Rockies, in Boulder.
The Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), in downtown Manhattan, is one of the finest in this category. It's a well-established vocational school (until recently known as Peter Kump's New York Cooking School) that also offers 1,200 classes annually for home cooks -- everything from the comprehensive, five-day "Techniques of Fine Cooking" to weeknight workshops on topics such as bistro classics, Mediterranean grilling, pizza, wontons, petits fours, you name it. Most are hands-on, and finish up with a celebratory meal or tasting, usually with wine. Classes are held on the school's spacious 12th floor -- one room has fabulous views of the Empire State Building, the rooftops of Chelsea and a sliver of New Jersey on the horizon. The school is a draw for tourists who want to do a bit of cooking while on holiday in the city.
In San Francisco, Tante Marie's Cooking School celebrates its 23rd birthday this year. It offers an intimate environment -- just two kitchens, both of which feel like rooms in an upscale urban home. At a recent hands-on workshop called "Springtime in Tuscany," instructor Jessica Lasky gave 12 participants a real workout -- 13 recipes, including lamb brochettes with black olive and mint vinaigrette, and carpaccio con salmoriglio (beef carpaccio with a fresh garlic-herb sauce). "Does it seem ambitious to you?" she asked the class. "Yes? Good. Remember -- by default, you tend to volunteer to do the thing you know, but don't forget that you're here to learn."
A handful of the schools we looked at were even smaller. In Phoenix, one of the most admired schools in the business, Les Gourmettes, is run out of director Barbara Fenzl's suburban home. There's no restaurant-style range here, no six-quart stand mixer, not even a convection oven. Students squeeze into the kitchen to watch culinary stars such as Lydie Marshall and John Ash at work, and eat with them around the dining room table afterward. "It feels like a dinner party," says Fenzl. "People love it, because they learn they can do the same with what they have at home."
Take a class where you shop
Perhaps you'd prefer to sharpen your skills in an even more familiar environment -- say, your local supermarket?
At the upscale Draeger's stores in San Mateo and Menlo Park, Calif., you can finish a grocery run with a visit to a smart, modern classroom, and spend the evening sitting back in a comfortable wooden chair fitted with a moveable little table and wine glass holder. During demos, glasses never go empty, and samples are delivered, beautifully plated, by uniformed waitstaff.
A recent San Mateo offering, "Elegant, Early Summer Dining from XYZ," featured Jeffrey Amber, the hip young chef from the San Francisco restaurant XYZ, preparing a menu that included lobster pancakes with caviar and lobster essence crème fraîche, and Gorgonzola flan with sautéed porcini mushrooms and crisped poached garlic.
"This is simple, elegant food you can accomplish at home," Amber told his audience. "All of these recipes actually work." He cracked jokes and regaled the crowd with anecdotes about the oddballs who sell him wild mushrooms. Waving a live, flailing lobster, he promised not to slaughter it in public -- "the last time I did that here everybody went nuts," he complained. Once the creature is dead, he said, "Take out all that goop that's inside the body -- that's the technical term, 'goop.' Some people call it 'tomalley.' "
This was a class that had it all -- amateur-friendly recipes and a winning cutup of a chef. "Three-quarters of our customers want dishes they can do at home, while the rest just want to be dazzled watching a dream meal being prepared," says the school's director, Pam Keith. Together, the two stores offer about 32 classes a month, which are attended by almost as many men as women, most of them local residents. For people who want to apply themselves more seriously, Draeger's offers a comprehensive selection of staff-taught, hands-on, basic classes on topics such as pasta cookery, bread baking and sauces.
In Texas, Central Market has had a similar program in place since 1994. It's actually the nation's biggest, offering some 2,500 classes a year at stores in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano and Houston. Like Draeger's, Central Market relies on a mix of faculty instructors, popular local chefs and celebrities -- Alice Waters made an appearance at the Plano and Austin schools last May.
In Manhattan, there's even a school on the eighth floor of Macy's. In its 22nd year, De Gustibus still packs in cooking enthusiasts every week, year-round. One class last spring, a demonstration given by chef Troy Dupuy and pastry chef Jill Rose of La Caravelle restaurant in New York, attracted a big, enthusiastic group, many of them hard-core foodies who kept interrupting Dupuy to get the names of his suppliers. "No problem," he'd say, whipping out his cell phone again and again to search for the phone numbers of the vendors who sell him quail, olive oil, lily bulbs and coriander sprouts. The tastings, which came in a steady stream, began with a foie gras parfait with Sauternes gelée (paired with Champagne) and ended with lemon-lavender Chiboust cream (a gelatin-based custard mixed with whipped egg white) and glazed strawberries.
Backstage at great restaurants
If you're the type to go after the inside scoop on a celebrated chef's suppliers, you might be one of those people for whom a trip backstage at a famous restaurant is the ultimate thrill. It's a rare chef who likes to open up his kitchen for a cooking class, so students who get to go usually consider themselves lucky.
In New York, The New School escorts the public into working kitchens through a program called "Behind the Scenes at the Great Restaurants of New York." A June session held at Estiatorio Milos, a grand Midtown place specializing in Greek fish and seafood preparations, included a dining room tour by the ebullient owner, Costas Spiliadis, and a trip back into the kitchen to watch a pastry chef layer paper-thin phyllo into baklava. Students finished up in a private dining room, where they were treated to a luncheon of grilled fish, full-flavored meze salad and crisp white wine from Santorini.
The New School holds about three dozen such classes each year in New York; recent participants include Chanterelle, China Grill and the stylish new Blue Fin.
If this kind of experience whets your appetite for even more, perhaps you'd like to don chef's whites and work, really work, someplace -- like Thomas Keller's The French Laundry, or The Inn at Little Washington, side by side with chef Patrick O'Connell. For a fairly hefty fee (up to $2,600 for 5 days) you can, through an "internship" program called L'Ecole des Chefs Relais Gourmand, created by the Relais & Chateaux group of inns and restaurants. Fifteen restaurants in Canada and the United States are participating.
Restaurant Gary Danko is one of them, which is not surprising given the chef's keen interest in amateur education. Last May, Wine Spectator caught up with Dallas financier Kirk Wolverton, 36, in the trenches of this celebrated San Francisco establishment. He was cleaning spinach.
"I got to dice potatoes yesterday," he volunteered. He was not being critical; these are the kinds of chores that are typically assigned to stagiaires, after all, and this up-close and personal encounter was, for him, worth the time and expense. "I observed a lot. The best part was watching service last night. It really gives you a different perspective, to see it in the heat of it. You can read cookbooks all day long and watch chefs on TV, but you're just not going to get the same experience as being here."
The program's literature promises "unprecedented access to the world's greatest kitchens" and "side-by-side" interaction with the chef and kitchen team. Wolverton says great care was taken to see that he was rotated from station to station, so he could see everything.
"The biggest surprise is how fast everybody moves," he said of his time in the kitchen. "You've got three people putting food on a plate at the same time sometimes, and -- boom -- it's perfect. It's kind of trite to say it, but it's like theater in here."
On his second (and last) day, Wolverton quit early and showered back at his hotel. He then returned for a little pampering at the bar, where he was treated to a succession of tasting platters, courtesy of his new back-of-the-house friends. At evening's end, he bought them all a magnum of Champagne. He says he'll do this again, at a different restaurant. But he's not considering a career change.
"Cooking is one of those things that if you take it from a hobby to a vocation, you wonder if it will lose some of its appeal," Wolverton explained, trying to be tactful. "I mean, I don't know how they do it ... . My feet were so tired, and my back was killing me."
Danko likes to tell the story of a lawyer in one of his classes who was assigned the job of cleaning and scaling a single fish. It took him forever. "He said, 'I will never complain about the cost of a meal again,'" laughs the chef.
Certainly anyone who takes a class -- even if he sits back and eats and drinks his way through it -- is going to find himself a better critic when it's through, if not a better home chef. So even if you don't cook, that's reason enough to give this new pastime a test run. All you need to get started is an inquisitive mind, an adventurous palate and a very good appetite.
Laura Stanley is a New York-based food writer and editor. Tim Fish, Ryan Isaac, Pat Mozersky and Bruce Schoenfeld contributed to this report.
