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Beaten, Seared, And Sauced: On Becoming A Chef At The Culinary Institute Of America (2011)

by Jonathan Dixon(Favorite Author)

3.48 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

030758903X (ISBN13: 9780307589033)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Clarkson Potter

review 1: A memoir of a two year stint at the Culinary Institute of America. Since I will never get there and I am curious about it this is my best bet. Quite interesting to see how rigorous the training is. The author is somewhat unsympathetic being a conceited ass. He spends $60,000 getting an education and ends up starting a catering service. I wonder how long it will take to recoup that investment.
review 2: Almost forty, freelance writer Jonathan Dixon finds himself at a professional crossroads. A former staff writer for Martha Stewart Living, Dixon heads for Hyde Park, New York to enroll at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). He takes all his savings and signs up for two years of intensive training, even though he isn’t certain what he will do with that... more training once he graduates.He admits the end result was unclear. “I knew I wanted to cook for the rest of my life and I wanted to do it for other people…We are what we nurture. I’d nurtured writing. I hadn’t nurtured cooking. But I felt it there in me, and I was here to coax it out and see how it flourished.”Many readers will no doubt sympathize with Dixon since many of us have entertained a fantasy or two about going to cooking school. But while the CIA does indeed get one prepared for a life in a professional kitchen, Dixon’s account makes it clear that the experience is not an especially pleasant one.For one thing, the schedule is grueling, beginning with twenty-four weeks of classes divided into eight 3-week sessions. Once this is completed, each student is required to find an 18-week externship in a restaurant anywhere in the world – usually for minimum wage or less. And during the externship “students could expect to work about ninety hours a week, with just one day off.” The externship is followed by six weeks of academic classes, and then another twenty-four weeks of practical classes.Of course, no one expects the training to be easy. The Culinary Institute of America is the most prestigious cooking academy in the country. Described by Dixon as a ‘Disneyland for cooks,’ the CIA is home not only to the nation’s second largest collection of cookbooks, but to a faculty that includes members of the U.S. Culinary Olympics Team. It is also a faculty filled with far too many divas, most of whom seem to relish their reputation as terrors in the kitchen.Such bullying behavior is unnecessary and counterproductive, especially compared to the harmonious Baking & Pastry Class taught by Swiss pastry chef Rudy Spears. Dixon writes, “He wore kindness and patience like a nicely tailored suit…By the second week, everyone was excelling.”Temperamental chefs aside, the book is a great resource for anyone who takes a serious interest in cooking. If you want to know how to perfectly roast a chicken, tell if a piece of broccoli is fresh or dice an onion into exact ¼ inch pieces, Dixon provides the details.And prepare to be surprised at just what is involved in earning a culinary degree. Who knew there was a class called Culinary Math, or that students in the Meat Information & Fabrication Class would be asked by their instructor to slaughter 100 chickens at a nearby farm? It was also interesting to learn that at least a third of all students at the CIA failed the Wines & Beverages Class.Dixon’s story is ultimately about the rewards of perseverance. For despite the exhausting curriculum and the frequent humiliations, he discovers that satisfaction he was searching for in the beginning. Most important, he realizes that “To do something right carries with it a set of demands that you will be able to do it again, that you irreversibly elevate your standards…there is a best possible way to do everything.”What he does with his new standards he reveals only at the end of the book. By that time, I was as relieved as he was that his time at the CIA was over. But thanks to what I learned from 'Beaten, Seared, Sauced', next time I watch Top Chef, it will be with a newfound respect for the skills of all the contestants and what it took to acquire them. less

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