If all of you are as clueless as I was, this week I answered a very niche question: who else goes to a cooking school?
Le Cordon Bleu is a well-oiled machine, firing at all cylinders to produce the chefs who will shape the kitchens of the future. Given COVIDâs impact on the restaurant industry globally, it was fascinating to hear how my peers are adapting. A Brazilian chef with 10+ years of experience in kitchens studying pastry to bolster his Youtube career and hopes of being a TV personality. Or the newest owner of her family restaurant in the south of France, taking this off-season as an opportunity to build out her dessert menu for an impending reopening.
In a matter of a week, these are the faces of chefs in my mind now. Future culinary conquistadors, first trying not to kill one another with a hot pan to the head or losing a finger. In my home kitchen, I am used to the creativity of endless time, nobody watching, and a random assortment of pantry ingredients. Here, creativity is a privaledge that you earn, first having the master the basics of filling a tart tin or the precision in each fold of puff pastry. Tradition is of utmost importance, for both cultural homage and business savvy.
âAnyone can cook,â said one of the most iconic chefs in cinematic history - Gusteau from Pixarâs Ratatoullie. When I wrote about that lineâs influence on me for my application to the school (no joke), I was anyone - able-bodied, curious, and hungry (literally and figuratively). However, at Le Cordon Bleu, cooking is a state of mind. The chefs harp that - Yes, anyone can cook - but, it takes passion, respect for ingredients, a positive attitude, and willingness to see incremental growth day by day and be satisfied with it in order to be a real chef. The tradition, while I may roll my eyes at 3 hours of T55 vs. T45 flour, is what the school is built upon, and it is up to those I bump elbows with while here to uphold and evolve this. That is true of cooking itself, the chefs that shaped my life - like Anthony Bourdain - and the peasant baker who invented the Basque cake I made on Wednesday are the same blip in the timeline of the ancient art-form that is cooking.
Okay, enough philosophy for this week. If you canât tell, itâs hard for me to even contain my observations and enthrallment with this experience in these Substack emails. Letâs get on to the good stuff:
Whatâs cookin? week 2
Tarte Bourdaloue
Chaussons aux pommes
Pithiviers
Pavé aux amandes
Croissant
Pain au chocolat
Brioche
Pochage
Mille-feuille vanille
This is the chef I am still. Despite being surrounded by the highest-quality equipment, French culinary veterans, and passionate pupils all day, tearing up a baguette from Ernest & Valentin down the street, nuking it in the micro, and slathering it with cheese from Thomas Artisan Fromager (LCB student discount appliedđ) = my dinner. The only element of the kitchen was slicing the tomatoes, but even that simple act I have more appreciation for now. Cooking has sank its teeth fully into each waking moment of the day, and I love it.
Also: is weekly too much? Considering biweekly as to spare you from flooded inboxes, but also chances are if you made it this far you are on team weeklyđ
Chloe -love hearing about your experiences at LCB! Keep the amazing blogs coming. Send us any recipes we need to tryâ€ïžâ€ïž
youâre the goat and Iâm an AOTE fan for life now. Keep em coming Chlo!