Authors: Michael Ruhlman
ISBN-13: 9780805089394, ISBN-10: 080508939X
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Date Published: March 2009
Edition: Second Edition, Revised Edition
Michael Ruhlman has written extensively for The New York Times. He is the author of Boys Themselves (Holt, 0-8050-3370-X). He lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
The eye-opening book that was nominated for a 1998 James Beard Foundation award in the Writing on Food category.
In the winter of 1996, Michael Ruhlman donned hounds-tooth-check pants and a chef's jacket and entered the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, to learn the art of cooking. His vivid and energetic record of that experience, The Making of a Chef, takes us to the heart of this food-knowledge mecca. Here we meet a coterie of talented chefs, an astonishing and driven breed. Ruhlman learns fundamental skills and information about the behavior of food that make cooking anything possible. Ultimately, he propels himself and his readers through a score of kitchens and classrooms, from Asian and American regional cuisines to lunch cookery and even table waiting, in search of the elusive, unnameable elements of great cooking.
Beginning with Skills One, where Chef Pardus guides his charges through the complexities of creating a perfect stock, journalist Ruhlman provides an insider's view of the exacting program that many consider to be the best formal training a chef can partake of in this country. In his condensed tour of duty at the attractive, suberbly equipped upstate New York campus of the CIA, Ruhlman spends six months sampling the arduous 81-week regimen the institute employs to both educate and toughen students for the competitive, frantic environment of cooking in fine restaurants. Discerning character sketches introduce the diverse group as the author explores the passion for fine food that makes them pursue this difficult calling. An examination of the curriculum and its philosophical framework is provided along with profiles of the master chefs who deliver this demanding training. The program ends in the institute's restaurants, where recently acquired skills and knowledge are put to the test as students perform everything from menu planning to serving actual customers. Although Jeff Riggenbach's reading is too pedestrian for the occasional comic moments, this audio is recommended for larger cooking collections.--Linda Bredengerd, Hanley Lib., Univ. of Pittsburgh, Bradford, PA
Acknowledgments | xi |
Part I Skill Development | |
Secret Sharer | 5 |
Routine | 29 |
Day Eight | 46 |
Brown Sauce | 55 |
The Storm | 65 |
The Making of Chef Pardus | 74 |
You Understand What I Am Saying? | 82 |
A System of Values | 01 |
Roux Decree | 110 |
Part II The Formative Kitchens | |
Introduction to Hot Foods | 117 |
Lunch Cookery and the Burnt Parsnip | 133 |
President Metz | 144 |
Part III Keepers of the Food | |
Garde Manger | 151 |
The Second-Term Practical | 158 |
Bewitched | 164 |
Externship | 178 |
Part IV Second Year | |
Thermal Death Point | 187 |
St. Andrew's Cafe | 203 |
St. Andrew's Kitchen | 223 |
Taste | 244 |
Part V Bounty? | |
Theater of Perfection | 261 |
The American Bounty Restaurant | 275 |
Afterword: Benediction | 304 |
Appendix: The CIA Curriculum | 306 |