Fruit Salad

Wow. First day. So much to say. The course is set up so that we have a Demonstration in which the chef makes a given dish and teaches us the necessary techniques. Later in the day, during the Practical, we do just as the chef did in the Demonstration (or attempt to, in my case). The head pastry chef of the school taught us how to make a fruit salad today. Fruit salad...easy, you would say? It took me 1.5 hours to make a frikkin fruit salad!

As I entered the practical, I was really nervous for some reason. The chef told us to take out our knives and the utensils we would need. I was shaking as I took out my knives-- not so safe when dealing with brand-new Wusthof knives. Somehow, I was the last one to take out all my utensils and made the whole group wait a little. What a great first impression to the chef. I could just hear him saying to himself, "Ah, so we've identified the straggler in the group." (except he'd probably be saying it French)

So you must wonder why it took 1.5 hours to make a fruit salad. As we all cut the fruit, it seemed like we had never cut an apple or pear before in our lives. The technique was so particular. Peel the apple, quarter it, then cut each quarter into thirds and dice them in equal pieces. Each fruit had its own technique that was different than the way I would cut fruit at home. We also made a sugar syrup to toss the fruit in, with vanilla, cinnamon, lemon zest, and cloves flavoring. At the end, we needed to present our fruit salad to the chef and he would critique us and grade us on our dish. I was told that "some of these pieces are too small. Fruit salads wouldn't have such small pieces." and "The pieces aren't evenly sized." Oh and obviously, with no artistic fiber in my body my decoration was so ugly.

Other than the intensity and excitement of the first practical, I was really inspired by the chef who did our demonstration. A couple things she said really stuck to me. She told us that if ever, she woke up and didn't want to go to work and wasn't excited for the day of work ahead of her, exactly that day she would quit her job. It was pretty surprising to think of the passion that she has for her work and made me really think about how so many of us don't have that for our careers.

Speaking of passion, it was amazing meeting the fellow students. It's so awesome to meet people just as obsessed with food as I am! All we did was talk about food and cooking (I learned how to make sour cream...yumm!). One kid turned out to be an 18 year old who had dropped out of high school at 16 and didn't want to be a complete burden on his parents, so he decided to take a job as a dishwasher in a kitchen of a restaurant. He slowly moved his way up and realized he really wanted to be a chef. Now, working in the kitchen of a restaurant as a permanent career choice is signing up for long 12-16 hour days in a stress-filled environment. As Chef Julie put it, "the kitchen is no different from other fields, the same office politics, but with knives." Haha, imagine that. So apparently, you pretty much have to be somewhat crazy to throw yourself into that. Yet all these people I met wanted to do just that.

I've always loved meeting new people because they give you different perspective on life as they all come from different backgrounds. Recently, living in the I-House, I've met such amazing people who have really helped shape my views on how to lead my life. Although they all came from different backgrounds and countries, the one thing that kept them all similar was the importance they held for a college education. Here, I met people who dropped out of either high school or college to pursue their passion in cooking. And, usually I would be shocked at why someone would drop out of high school, but it was so refreshing to realize that not everyone has to follow the prescribed path that we're so used to seeing and that success can be achieved in different ways, for different people.

I don't like to completely throw out the option of ever pursuing pastry professionally as an option because who knows where life will take you. Chef Julie told us all to "figure out what you want from this course" and I'm trying to do just that. All I know right now is that I want to work really hard and change that first impression I made on the chef.