For the past two years I’ve had the pleasure of sponsoring a Reluctant Gourmet Culinary School Grant in association with Chef4Students.org. It is a great way for me to participate in the industry and make a small difference to these fine young people and future chefs. This year’s recipient is Blair Cannon who is currently attending Johnson & Wales in Charlotte, NC.

You can read his appreciative letter to my friend Chef David Nelson, founder and president of Chef4Students on my blog. Check out A Letter From Culinary Student Blair Cannon. It is letters like this that get me so excited to be involved with this organization.

A Little About Blair

Blair Cannon is a 20 year old who lived in Virginia Beach, VA all his life. Virginia Beach is a beautiful resort city and a great place to grow up. Tourism is big and there are a lot of great restaurants to work.

Before attending culinary school, Blair started out working as a dishwasher at the age of 15 with little training. Then he worked my way up at some of the most popular fine dining restaurants as a line cook. At 16, he was given a great opportunity from local celebrity Chef Todd Jurich, to apprentice at his new restaurant, Zinc Brasserie. He taught him everything there is to know about opening a new restaurant from scratch.

He and Chef Pete Evans taught Blair not only how to be a line cook, but inventory and the financial responsibility of opening a new restaurant. Even though the hours were long and the work grueling, the rewards were great. They even displayed his photo on the side of the restaurant building.

Blair is currently finishing up his training at The Masters, at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. According to Blair, working his co-op at the Masters was a once in a lifetime experience. He never had worked at a golf resort before, especially one that is famous for the Masters Golf tournament. He said it was exciting to overcome the challenges that were presented through working with such a high-volume production.

Interview

At what age did you decide you wanted to go to culinary school and become a professional chef?

Ever since the age of five, I loved to cook. Growing up in a family of “foodies” who had a passion for cooking, it was not until I was 15 years old, that a culinary class I took in high school gave me the inspiration to want to go to culinary school and become a professional chef.

Even though I have enjoyed cooking with my family, I had originally wanted to become an air force pilot. But my mother wanted me to have another profession to fall back on, in case I did not get into the Air force Academy. She suggested I try the C-CAP, Careers through Culinary Arts Program in high school and the rest is history.

Did you take any classes in high school that may have helped you prepare for a culinary education?

While in high school, the C-CAP, Careers through Culinary Arts Program, had the greatest impact on me and gave me the foundation toward my career as a chef.  I cannot speak highly enough of how great this program is!

This culinary program that was taught at my high school, Vo-tech or Technical and Career Education center, is an excellent program for students interested in pursuing a culinary career. Not only do you receive high school credit, but you gain skills that give you an enormous head start before attending culinary school.

This program also offers scholarships through culinary competitions that help a lot. I won many scholarships in these competitions as well as gained a lot of experience.

You are currently enrolled at Johnson & Wales in Charlotte. How did you decide this was the right school for you?

Originally I wanted to attend CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. But after being selected as a finalist in Johnson & Wales University’s National Top Teen Chef culinary competition, I knew I made the right choice in selecting Johnson & Wales as the best culinary school for me.

Not only did I receive a large, renewable scholarship, but the school is closer to my home state. Johnson & Wales in Charlotte, North Carolina, is not only a new campus, but it has state of the art culinary labs and is in a great location. The staff that I met during the culinary contest were friendly and helpful as well.

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Johnson & Wales Culinary Student Receives 2nd Reluctant Gourmet Culinary School Grant

I’m excited to announce that Blair Cannon, a sophomore at Johnson & Wales Culinary School in Charlotte, NC who is pursuing an Associates of Applied Science degree in Culinary Arts, was chosen to receive the 2nd Reluctant Gourmet Culinary Scholarship in association with Chef4Students.org.

The program was established in 2003 to assist culinary students in need of financial assistance. Since that time, over $77,000 has been awarded to future culinarians in the form of $1,000 culinary grants. I was able to get involved in the reviewing process along with a panel consisting of several certified chefs, business executives and culinary professionals from various organizations across the globe.

About the Chefs4Students.org Culinary Grant Program

Chefs4Students.org offers a variety of programs for companies and individuals to participate in this non-profit effort to assist culinary students in need. The Chefs4Students.org Culinary Grant Program is administered by Chef David and Pamela Nelson.

Chefs4Students.org utilizes the Yampa Valley Community Foundation, www.yvcf.org to independently oversee the financial aspects of this non-profit fund.

For More Information: http://www.chefs4students.org

A Letter From Culinary Student Blair Cannon

It’s great to be able to give back a little to the culinary industry with these culinary grants, but it means even more when you hear from the recipients themselves and learn how much these grants mean to them. Here is a letter from this years Reluctant Gourmet sponsored scholarship Blair Cannon to my friend Chef David Nelson who makes this all possible.

April 28, 2009

Dear Chef David Nelson,

I was chosen to receive the Reluctant Gourmet sponsored scholarship for your organization for 2009; and I am writing this letter to express my sincerest thanks to your organization for allowing students such as myself the opportunity to obtain this scholarship.

It has been an honor for me to be recognized for my hard work, and by receiving this scholarship; it motivates me to continue to strive for excellence.

I currently am finishing my sophomore year at Johnson & Wales in Charlotte, NC, pursuing an Associates of Applied Science degree in Culinary Arts and your scholarship support has allowed me to concentrate more on schoolwork without the financial burden. In addition, in my junior and senior years, I plan to obtain a Bachelor of Science degree in Food and Restaurant Management.

The program at Johnson & Wales has been challenging and the instructors inspiring as well. I have been volunteering in many activities at school such as Charlotte Shout and the academic community. Having the opportunity to meet many celebrity chefs as well as gain lots of culinary advice, has been a dream come true. At this time I am away at co-op in Augusta, GA at the Augusta National Golf Club for the Masters Golf Tournament gaining work experience and meeting a lot of celebrities.

This scholarship has helped me to realize my dreams of becoming a Chef and one day owning my own restaurant. I can assure you that as a recipient, I will make your organization proud by excelling in my studies and giving back to the community as a token of my appreciation.

Your generosity has made a profound impact on my life and I am sincerely grateful and truly honored to have been a recipient of this award.

Best Regards,

Blair Cannon

Wow! If anyone is interested in getting involved with Chef Nelson’s foundation to help culinary schools fulfill their dreams, please contact me or Chef Nelson at the web site above.

Constant Motion - The Art of Working the Line

Even if you’ve never been to culinary school or worked in a restaurant or seen cooks putting out food in a commercial kitchen, you’ve probably eaten in a crowded restaurant and wondered, “How do they keep track of it all? How can they possibly feed all these people without screwing up or serving cold food?”

The answer is organization and division of labor. That is a deceptively simple answer, not simple in the sense of “easy,” but simple in the sense of “basic.” I’ve been back there and seen cooks hard at work during a busy dinner service. Even from a layman’s point of view, it may be basic, but easy, it ain’t.

The backbone of any service—breakfast, lunch or dinner—in a restaurant is “mise en place”. Each cook at each station is responsible for getting every component prepped for every dish that comes off that station. The trick is to make sure that, once tickets (orders) start coming in, the cook has everything he needs to fill those orders without ever having to leave his station. This can get very murky for a novice. Let me explain by illustrating.

Say a cook works the Panini station. (For those not familiar with Panini, it is a sandwich served hot or cold but most of us are more familiar with toasted Panini.) On the menu is a grilled vegetable Panini with goat cheese and herbed aioli on focaccia, a grilled Portobello Panini on ciabatta, a Cuban sandwich on Cuban bread and a bacon, lettuce and turkey Panini with Swiss cheese on seeded rye. All items come with fries, potato salad, side salad or chips. That doesn’t sound like too heavy a load, but let’s look at the mise en place for that station:

Pre-slice, pre-toast breads
Make vegetable marinade
Marinate vegetables
Grill vegetables
Make herbed aioli
Prep goat cheese
Make mushroom marinade (if different from veggie marinade)
Marinate portobellos
Pre-grill Portobellos
Slice cheeses
Slice some cheddar—there are always substitutions
Slice pickles (or stage pickles)
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Cook pork shoulder
Slice ham
Cook bacon
Wash and stage lettuce
Slice turkey
Make potato salad
Have chips ready
Oil for Panini press
Salt and pepper
Chop herbs

Being Prepared For Anything

Not only does the cook need to make sure that everything is prepped, but he has to make sure that he has enough of everything to make it through service. While it might be no big deal to send someone back to the walk-in cooler to get another dish of mustard, it’s a huge deal to need more grilled vegetables when the grill cook has the grill full of hamburgers. Often the cook will have two pans of their ingredients ready - ones at the station to start service and ones in the walk-in or in the low-boy under the station for back up.

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