I get lots of emails from home cooks interested in taking some cooking classes in their town or city. I also hear from those of you interested in going to culinary arts school or a restaurant management college to earn a culinary degree and start a career in the restaurant industry. Obviously my responses are much different and today I’d like to talk about finding local cooking classes.

However, if you are interested in a culinary arts education, I wrote an informative article called Back to School – Cooking School That Is that focuses on how to choose the right culinary arts school. You’ll also find a detailed listing of top culinary schools listed by city and state.

On those listings you’ll find two of the biggest named culinary establishments with schools located in several states. One is Le Cordon Bleu and the other is The Arts Institute. I will be writing more about these organizations in future blogs and hopefully get some comments from students who have graduated from them.

There is an interesting article by Chef Alan Bickel called To Cook or Not To Cook – Who’s To Say. The article speaks on life in a professional kitchen from a professional cook’s point of view and describes in everyday terms what you are getting yourself into.

Cooking Classes

Now for those of you not interested in becoming professional cook and would like to take a few classes to learn some tricks and new techniques to help navigate around the kitchen, there are plenty of resources right in your own backyard that you might not even know existed.

You would think that the #1 resource for finding anything including local cooking classes would be a search engine on the Internet but unfortunately you are more likely to find a lot of sites offering culinary arts educations rather than cooking classes for the weekend warrior. If you spend some time and dig deep, you may be lucky to find what you want in your area.

Obviously if you are looking for cooking classes in a big city like New York or San Francisco, you’re more likely to find some decent choices but what if you live in a small town in the middle of no where? Do you think there’s a chance you’ll find affordable cooking classes nearby?  The answer is probably yes!

Local Schools

The first place I would look is at any of the local schools in your area. Best possibility would be a community college. They often offer cooking, baking, or nutrition classes as part of their curriculum but they also have adult education classes at night that include individual cooking courses. You may be limited by what courses they offer, but it’s a great start.

Next, I would look at the local high school. Most high schools offer home economics to their students or at least they did when I went to school (not that I even thought about taking cooking classes back then) so they have all the right equipment to offer night classes or adult education classes. Give the school a call and see what they offer.

(more…)

If you ever wondered what it would be like to cook in a professional kitchen, I think Thanksgiving was a great opportunity to get a small but meaningful feel for it.  If you were responsible for preparing the Turkey feast for lets say ten people, imagine what it would be like to cook for 10 or 15 times that many?

I’m not a professional chef but I’ve been behind the scenes of a kitchen or two to witness the excitement and feel the energy that goes into to putting out great meals to large numbers of people. It’s very similar to what I’ve felt and experienced this and every Thanksgiving but in a smaller way.

In fact, this Thanksgiving, my wife was in charge and I was her sous chef (second in command) but there was plenty for both of us to do starting two days before the big meal leading right up to when we served dinner.

The plan was to cook for the four of us plus a couple of my wife’s friends who were visiting for a total of six but then some local friends were available and decided to join us for a total of ten. Didn’t matter, we were going to cook the same amount of food anyway.

My wife picked a menu out of Bon Appetite and followed it to the letter, well almost to the letter.  We started out with dilled salmon tartare on whole grain bread, wild mushroom ravioli in porcini broth, roast turkey with Port gravy, mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing with fresh and dried fruit, honey glazed oven roasted sweet potato wedges, peas with roasted onions and mint and cauliflower with mustard lemon butter.

(more…)

I have been fortunate to be acquainted via the Internet with Chef Alan Bickel from Nashville, TN who works at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. Right now he is working at their upscale seafood house called Cascade’s Seafood Restaurant. The restaurant serves mostly fresh finfish/shellfish, with a bit of an Asian flare plus a Sushi bar.

I am fortunate because Alan, who says he is not a chef yet but a Kitchen Lead, one of the supervisors who works directly under the chef, has sent me an incredible article on life in the kitchen and what is involved behind the scenes of a professional restaurant to get that entrée you ordered to the table.

This article is a must read for anyone even thinking about going to culinary school as well as anyone who enjoys cooking and dining out. I am providing an excerpt of the article here but you can read the rest of it on my web site at The ‘Rest’ of the Restaurant.

Please let me know if you enjoy this article and I will try to convince Alan to write some more.

From The ‘Rest’ of the Kitchen by Chef Alan Bickel

When you think of the last time you dined out at a restaurant, what are the things that stick out most in your mind? Is it the food, either good or bad, that leaves a lasting impression, determining whether or not you will return in the future? Is it the service that was offered? Was your waiter friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable about the food, or were you ignored and brushed off as just another nuisance in the life of your server?? All of these are expectable questions, and the answers to most are just as common, but have you ever really thought about what goes into the plate that is brought to your table?

Have you realized just how much labor goes into making just one dinner?

It all starts at the back door of the restaurant, where semi trucks unload thousands of dollars of product every morning. Aside from monthly inventory for cost control purposes, most chefs do daily inventory of more perishable products such as beef, poultry, pork, seafood, dairy, and produce. Unless they happen to be working for a large chain restaurant, where food is ordered from a central commissary, independent restaurant chefs order in smaller quantities not only to ensure product freshness, but to be able to take advantage of seasonal availability of many types of foods like produce and seafood. As you are probably aware, most fruits and vegetables are associated with certain times of year, such as squash and pumpkins in the fall, or strawberries in the summertime. Taking advantage of this cyclical rotation allows chefs to experiment, create, and market menus that are fresh, exciting and appealing to customers year-round.

continued at The ‘Rest’ of the Kitchen