Take 20 PhD academics, put them on an island with all the conveniences of a well-equipped modern home, with any ingredient at their disposal (but no cookbooks, no internet), and there’s a good chance they will starve to death.

Take 20 8-9 year olds, put them in a class with a brilliant culinary educator who is convinced these kids can learn anything, and within 90 minutes they’ll be cooking and eating a stirfry with broccoli, snowpeas, cauliflower, peppers, mushrooms, and tofu with skill and the enthusiasm , well, of 8-9 year olds.

That’s exactly what I witnessed when Chef Barb Finley, who has spearheaded Project Chef, invited me to talk at a class not long ago.  As soon as my speach was over, she did her demo using the same verbage and seriousness I use teaching adult classes, throwing them questions that would challenge most people but covered the previous three days, and every question was answered sharply.  The kids were soaking in everything, for Barb, being a professional educator, knows the absorption, unadultered and open-minded powers of kids that age. Within 90 minutes they chopped (yes, with knives), organized, communicated, and cooked a stirfry and devoured every single vegetable and piece of tofu on their plate.  There was no hiding, no deceiving.  In fact, Barb performed the exact opposite:  show, tell, educate, challenge, inspire, and take advantage of a child’s natural disposition to want to do things. 

If any parent could have experienced what I saw they would stop all the presses and demand this was happening in their school, in their home, in their kids’ lives.  I returned to my school to my classes quite humbled by what Chef Barb accomplished.  I was also humbled by the kids – especially their enthusiasm.  Read more about Project Chef  www.straight.com/article-116363/pilot-program-brings-cooking-classes-to-one-vancouver-school

Tony Minichiello, Culinary Instructor

p.s. This is the same Chef Barb who is doing the Kids & Teens summer camps at NWCAV this August!

I’m hearing a lot about this art of deceiving kids to eat healthy by hiding or coating the essence of healthy ingredients.  Dangerous strategy, I would say, for last time I checked decepetion is …well… deception.  I learned an old technique from my grandfather when I was 4 years old.  I lived with my grandparents for about a year, and my grandmother was a very eclectic cook with a repertoire of every organ meat, including brain and chicken feet, to various fishes like carp and eel, to rabbit, quails, live chickens, and every kind of vegetable and cooking green imaginable.  We had no choice but to eat what she made.  But my grandfather had a way to make me covet the foods brought to the table.  For instance, if I never had rabbit, I’d be eating chicken while he was having rabbit, but he’d enjoy his rabbit like it was nobody’s business, ignoring me all the time.  Naturally, I wanted some of that.

I remember one experience when he was enjoying my grandma’s braised eels with an old buddy of his.  They were, it appeared, in heaven, while I enjoyed my plate of pasta with tomato sauce.  The guest noticed my lust for what they were having and asked me if I wanted any.  My grandfather immediately interjected, emphasizing I was not ready yet for the eel experience.  He said I had not yet graduated to eel territory, and had to go through liver and rappini first.  Well, the next time my grandma made liver I was in there elbows high.  The eel, which I had to wait over a month to savour, was indeed everything I expected.

So I took this lesson to educate my kids to eat everything, and I mean everything, without ever once having to deceive or battle.  When they were still on the bottle, I plopped their baby seat at the dinner table and made sure they could see me eat and enjoy the foods I loved.  When, naturally, they wanted a part of the same experience, I made THEM battle for it, not the other way around.  My boys will try anything I like – tripe, octopus, sweetbreads, fiddleheads, snails, you name it.  I figured that if I have to deceive my children when it comes to food, they’ll never trust me down the road.  So what is needed is the opposite: education.  More on that in the next blog.

Tony Minichiello, Culinary Instructor    

The next Serious Foodie Culinary Basics series will start on Monday, May 5, 2008.

This class will sell out, so register early by calling us at 604.876.7653.

Classes will run for 8 consecutive Monday evenings, 6:15-approx. 9:30pm.

Learn proper knife handling skills, stocks & sauces, moist & dry heat cooking methods and more. All of our classes are hands-on, and you will prepare a 3-course meal each night.  For a detailed description of this delicious, enlightening & empowering course, please visit this webpage: http://www.nwcav.com/ncav_othercourses_seriousfoodie.html.

Happy cooking!

Tony, Owner-Chef Instructor

I remember once (in the early 90s) asking a culinary graduate (from another school) starting in her first week of industry experience,to make me a couple of litres of béchamel sauce.  She knew what it was, but did not know how to make it.  Worse was her next line:  “Isn’t it an old-fahioned, passé sauce anyways?”  I was a bit stunned, stupefied, confused, and at the same time annoyed by that comment.  I needed the béchamel to give a lentil moussaka I was making that wonderful binding texture.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to explain the virtues of this classic mother sauce for my present purpose.  I did have the time to point out to her, however, that if I didn’t have 2 liters of béchamel in 30 minutes, her position in the kitchen would be passé.  I pointed out the cookbooks on a shelf to guide her, but her attitude was still one of resistance.  It appeared she was convinced that she was too hip for our kitchen.

A wonderfully, well made béchamel is still a beautiful thing.  And it has its place.  The drawback is the fact its made with flour.  Anything with flour, whether a veloute or a demi glace, was discouraged by the Nouveau chefs of the ‘60s and ‘70s.  So bread, pasta, and pastries are fine, but sauces with flour are forbidden, for they supposedly leave an aftertaste and undesirable texture.  Again, if made well, a béchamel and veloute can be divine, with no flour taste.  In fact, if allowed to simmer properly, the flour proteins in the roux act to purify the sauce much like the proteins in egg whites do for a consommé.  A demi reducing with a brown roux (the true Espagnole) actually finishes with clearer flavours than one without (let’s not be foolish and believe that Escoffier never thought of reducing a brown stock to a demi without a brown roux…sometimes modernists are wishful thinkers). 

Flour is cool.  Butter is cool, as is duck fat.  Duck fat is even cooler because it’s a through-back, as is an all-carbon French knife.  The original 6 hockey jerseys will always be cool.  I thought I was cooler than all my teachers and those old fart industry chefs when I graduated from culinary school.  Then  again, I never thought I was cooler than my grandmother, which means my sense of cool was wishful thinking. 

Tony Minichiello, Culinary Instructor  �

When I studied the culinary arts at ITHQ in Montreal 20 years ago, the Escoffier principles were embedded in me as if they had come down the mountain written in stone.  As a skeptic on anything accepted as gospel, I have to admit my attitude towards Escoffier was not the most positive, especially when the old guard chefs pontificated on the good old days and scoffed the nouvelle ideas.  So in 1988, I was reading George Pralus’ book on Sous Vide, Jacque Maniere’s La cuisine a la Vapeur, and Michel Girard’s La Cuisine Minceur, and everyone from Freddy Giardet to Georges Blanc.  I had respect for the classics, actually read most of Escoffier’s books even prior to commencing my studies, but my enthusiasm gravitated to the new.  My handicap, I guess, was my tendency to distrust the old guard, any old guard.  Thus, my perspective on Escoffier was skewed and not so positive over the years – some past students may know what I’m talking about here.

Well, at 47, I guess I’m part of the old guard these days.  Yesterday I lectured on Escoffier and I focused on his main contribution to our profession.  Escoffier is most notably known for establishing the Brigade System, an organized, systematic kitchen hierarchy with specific tasks and goals that allows a kitchen to function at its peak efficiency.  In essence, Escoffier was an ergonomic genius.  He was the first to do kitchen space, time, and motion analysis, and from his observations figured out a fucntional system which to this day is strictly observed.  More than the food, recipes, and culinary principles he systemized and documented, his work on how to perform in a functional kitchen was paramount.  So when a student does ask how to improve the dance, I guide them to an old guard who understood not only the essence of a cook’s dance, but the essence of a well greased orchestra.  Cooking is, after all, motion/time/space management.

Tony Minichiello, Culinary Instructor

A student approached me after class yesterday and asked the magic question “How can I improve the dance?”, referring to the hands, feet, and body performing with seamless fluidity and producing quality work in effective time.  Unfortunately, there is no magic answer, but only an old-fashioned and simple one:  QUANTITY (i.e. repitition).  Doesn’t sound romantic and sexy at all, for the word QUALITY gets all the accolades and attention.

When I read Persig’s  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance some 25 years ago, it made an incredible impression, especially its major theme concerning the essence of quality.  But in my work as a cook I have only come across this feeling of quality, of Zen, ONLY after much quantity.  Quantity is the workhorse that gets one to quality. So here’s my answer:

Put your head down, just do it, and do it with focus, persistence, diligence, patience, and care; the quantity of work will get you there. 

 Tony Minichiello, Culinary Instructor

There is no greater feeling, I believe, than sharpening a knife to a razor sharp edge with your own hands using a whetstone.  There is no food creation as satisfying as a real good 40 minutes of Zen-like sharpening. Some tell us that even professional chefs have their knives’ edge refurbished by a sharpening service.  Well, the ones I know – the real good professional cooks and chefs – wouldn’t trust anyone with their precious metal.  So I’ve decided to make sure not one of my students shall graduate without at least once successfully sharpening their knife with their own hands.  It’s time, I think, for our profession to return to some semblance of craftsmanship.  My new axiom to all students:   The quality of your knife’s edge will determine your desire and commitment for quality performance. The first time you successfully sharpen your knife on a stone with your own hands will confirm your belonging to your craft. Do not become one of those artist-painters that can only create an abstract becasue they have no skill with mixing paints nor drawing a straight line.

Sometimes going back to old basics is a step forward towards change.

Tony Minichiello, Culinary Instructor

Imagine a reality TV show where the boss in an office shouts and swears at the staff, temper flying at will, flinging staplers, notepads and insults all over the place, and all this aggression directed, supposedly for their own good, at a young staff still in professional training.  Imagine this staff having to work 12-14 hour days/nights, especially on weekends, in cramped, physically uncomfortable conditions, paid close to minimum wage, often no overtime, and forced to do so or else take a hike.  Now imagine a home audience entertained by this insane behaviour at the expense of these poor young people’s misfortune.  And imagine no resistance to all this, no outcry, no human rights groups or legal entities putting a stop to any of this. 

Well, when it comes to the supposed “real world” of professional kitchens, this is exactly what the business of food protects, the media wilfully propagates, and society as a whole condones.  Why?    Because we are all convinced of this insane “that’s the way it is” reality when it comes to the business of our profession.  With all this positive attention towards local, healthy, sustainable food practices these days, we need the same attention directed towards the fine people who do the cooking, not the chefs (who cook less than 5% of all the food we eat), but the professional cooks.  We need to find reasonable, realistic, respectful ways to sustain the life of a professional cook.   

What are needed are media images that focus on the food, the work and skill required to make “real” good food, to better connect the consumer to the fine people who have committed their lives to cooking for a living.  We need to connect to these people the same way we connect to anyone who cooks for us, be it a friend, spouse, mother or grandmother.  In my mind, condoning the abuse of cooks who feed us for a living is as disgraceful an act as abusing a mother or grandmother for a culinary shortcoming at home.  It’s time to move forward & find a new way. 

Expecting change in  2008,
Tony Minichiello – Culinary Instructor

When I was a culinary student I remember fantasizing having my own place one day, and my big night woul be having my instructors around a table at the end of their most perfect meal giving me a big thumbs up.  Some twenty years later I find myself at the giving, not receiving end.  A couple of weeks ago two of NWCAV’s graduates prepared our Christmas dinner at Aurora Bistro.  Chef Jeff Van Geest was at hand to ensure everything went without a hitch, but I appreciated his gesture in giving Hugh and David confidence in creating and executing the menu, and understanding its significance to the teachers that taught them.

The food was excellent, the workmanship quite professional, and it was obvious they cared and enjoyed the process.  It was a proud night indeed, and it is more powerful than I expected to be on the giving end than the receiving end of a thumbs up.  Must be something that comes with age.

Tony Minichiello
Cook Instructor