First time teaching, nobody died or stabbed anyone!

Today went by in a flash. Woke up to a good fishy breakfast with sable I got from Russ & Daughter's yesterday. I spent the morning writing my first lesson plan and revising two recipes to fit the content of what I was teaching. By the time my momma-in-law came to take over Baby Birdie, I was getting nervous.

I shoved down a piece of rugellah then rode the bike through 50mph winds to a far corner of Brooklyn -- reminded me of the day in my cross-country trip riding through Kansas -- except those winds were steady across a plain, and I had to ride 50 miles through it, not 3.

I arrived early and helped the supervisor load in today's produce, which he got at a discount from a local market based on a list I gave him a few days earlier. A kid volunteer (not in the program) washed the bowls and utensils for me while I set up and checked things, then showed the kid how to use a wet stone to sharpen a knife. Soon, the kids arrived, I sat them down in the dining room, got them in aprons, and off we went.

The class went by in a quick fashion -- I had piled a little too much into our agenda, which meant constant activity....which, based on the feedback from the kids at the end of the class, was probably their favorite part of the whole thing.

We started with a lecture about food and kitchen safety: the definitions of physical, chemical, and bacterial contamination; and how touching a keyboard, a door knob, your face, your hair, or your ownbutt were all ways to get sickness into the food. So maniacal handwashing it was. The kids wanted to get into the thick of it, not hear a lecture, so I kept this lecture mercifully short.

Into the kitchen, basics of kitchen safety -- announcing yourself when passing behind someone, sharps, hots, how a hot pan should exist on a stove top (handle in, towel on handle if handle is hot). Everyone washed their hands and I noticed a bunch of dirty paper towels on the counter and floor. I had to channel Chef M, my mod 1 instructor, and barked, "I don't care you dropped the towels, but someone has to pick them up RIGHT NOW." And just stared at everyone until it happened. That's about as hard as I had to get.

First I demo'd a smoothie -- the basic flow of the class from here until they get comfy is: Me, doing a demo; then everyone mimics me. The curriculum had a horrible smoothie recipe involving juice and ice, thus I substituted my own:

FRUIT SMOOTHIE

Yield: 1 pint

Banana, ripe one
Mixed fruit* 1 cup
Greek yogurt ¼ cup
Whole milk ½ cup
Vanilla bean, scraped ½ bean
Salt to taste

1. Peel banana, break into 2”pieces and drop into blender
2. Drop fruit into blender
3. Add yogurt, milk, and vanilla to blender
4. Return lid to the blender jar and puree the fruit and liquid until very smooth
5. Season to taste
6. Serve immediately

*Use frozen fruit. If using fresh fruit, freeze the recipe’s ½ cup milk in ice cube tray

I had them all taste the smoothie before salt and after salt, and right there I saw I blew most of their minds. I think I won their trust at that point. All the kids used different combos of fruit; each smoothie came out differently. Using only two blenders for 9 kids, this took some time and cooperation, but I quickly got the idlers on dish and cleaning duty. Everyone was happy with their smoothies and when the supervisor came down, he said that compared to last cycle, these smoothies were vastly superior! I don't know if he was blowing air up my butt, but I'll take it!

After a bit of fiddle faddle tasting each other's smoothies, I went over knife safety -- how to hold, how to pass, how to carry, how to cut, then demo'd a simple salsa cruda.

SALSA CRUDA

Yield: 2 quarts

Tomatoes, chopped 2 ½ pounds
Jalapenos, minced 8 ounces
Garlic, minced 2 cloves
Yellow onions, diced 12 ounces
Cilantro, minced 1 ounce
Red wine vinegar 1 fluid ounce
Tomato juice 8 fluid ounces
Salt to taste

1. Mix the tomatoes, jalapenos, onions, cilantro, red wine vinegar and tomato juice.
2. Season to taste

This was a bit tricky to demo because though I requested one we had no scale. Salsa being a forgiving recipe, I eyeballed everything -- it was really about the knife skills anyway. By then we only had an hour left, so I put the hammer down. Two kids to dice tomatoes , 2 kids to dice onions, 2 kids to mince jalapenos, 2 kids to mince garlic, one kid to mine cilantro. I went around and corrected each as they went and approved each batch before being put into the communal bowl. I added tomato juice, red wine vinegar, salt and poof! Two gallons of fresh salsa.

After cleaning, I got the kids out into the dining room for chips n' salsa, as well as a cheese plate of 10 different cheeses, everything from Parmesan and mozz and cheddar to morbier, camembert and tallegio. Had them eat it both with french bread and a crisp, sweet apple. A few of the kid's minds were blown once again. Got a lot of compliments from both the kids and the supervisor, who popped in from time to time to see what was happening. Good times.

The kitchen is clean but a bit lacking in equipment. Though tighter in space than my culinary school kitchen it's a heck of a lot more space than any kitchen I've worked in. All the kids were pretty psyched to be there, and still seemed psyched by the end of class. Everyone helped with the clean-up, and a few just started sweeping and cleaning surfaces even though I didn't specifically ask any one to do those tasks. After the kids split, the supervisor and I finished putting the room away. Then we talked about how the first day went. He seemed really happy -- he was around at the end for the tasting, and was really pleased to see all the kids asking me questions, getting involved eating the cheeses, and sticking around even though we were 20 minutes after the ending time.

Next week, vegetable cookery, maybe some sweet fruit cookery too...

Taking Stock

Today I went to the school I'll be teaching to interview some of the students who applied to the program, take inventory of the kitchen and meet with the head of the school to sign contracts. The kids, almost all female, have little cooking experience outside the home but all seemed genuinely curious about the hows of cooking. One said she never had eaten seafood in her life, because her mom never cooks it. When asked if there is anything they would never eat, one student said there is a lot of things she does not eat, but that's probably because "I never had a chance to try them." Her self-awareness and sharp sense of 'why' surprised me. A lot of kids just think they don't like things because they fear the new and unknown, but this girl already took the mental leap without me coaching her.

The kitchen supply closet was a bit of a mess, with some odd things -- enough apple corers to have two to a student, but no lids to any pot. Whisks enough to double fist any whip cream, but lacking in a functional food processor. Looking at the small production kitchen, I wonder how I'm going to set up 10 kids into mise stations to work with knives.

The director of the school was very kind, taking the time to tell me about the philosophy of their approach to the community they serve. This coming week I'm getting finger printed (all employees of the NYC Department of Education has to be on file), and Wednesday is the first session. I see safety practices, knife skills, chunky salsa, smoothies and massive mashed potatoes in our future....

Ending/Beginning

I never really wrote about graduation from the Culinary Management program for two reasons, really. 1) The excitement of having a new baby was just too much and 2) graduation just didn't feel very exciting. The ceremony was very nice, but uneventful. But, fortunately, the blog is not ended on this off note, for starting in a couple of weeks, I am going back to culinary school....this time, on the other end: teaching!

A month or two ago, I interviewed at a public high school in Brooklyn looking for a teacher to head up a weekly culinary program for a group of 10-15 students. Starting in early October and going for 12 weeks, the curriculum will be based on CCAP materials, but I will have a free hand to structure the class in terms of content, recipes, pace and style. We'll be starting with knife skills, safety, and tastings of staples (funky cheeses, anyone?) and tackle some projects, like a big Thanksgiving meal for a large group of community members.

Next week, we'll be interviewing kids who applied for the program, and classes kick off the following week. I'll be blogging the classes here, and as I prepare lessons, I suspect I'll be referring to my notes in this blog to help get things together.

Today, I was at the school to drum up a little interest to increase our applicant pool. I manned a table in the cafeteria, and presented two trays of brownies for sampling. One were some seriously crappy brownies bought from the supermarket, the other made the night before in my kitchen riffed off this recipe (forget the walnuts, replace extract with the scrapings of the real thing, fold minimally instead of mix in the flour and let the batter rest to absorb the flour and prevent gluten formation.) The kids were happy to see brownies, as the lunch served looked both relatively healthy and like the kind that is more prepared and shipped in rather than cook-cooked. I laid out a little chart (above) listing the ingredients of each brownie, and showed how despite using a lot of expensive, organic ingredients, the homemade were STILL less expensive than the packaged, industrial stuff.

The overwhelming consensus were the homemade were really good and Lil Debbie's really whatever, but I guess I set the bar pretty low. This was my first opportunity to talk to the kids at the school, and it was a lot of fun vibing off their bubbling energy and some of their enthusiasm for the program (and my brownies, he he.) I guess I initially had some trepidation about interacting with the kids -- I ain't hep n' happenin' with whatever these young whippersnappers are "down with" nowadays, but it all seemed pretty natural and smooth. Will this be a "To Sir, With Love" minus the accents situation, or perhaps "Lean on Me" minus the redemption?

I remember in c-school, we had a few hours with a 'career advisor', and we went around the room announcing what we wanted to do with our futures. I think I said something like, "Cook superior pizza, have my own place eventually." I think it was Dora the Explorer, easily the worst cook in the class, the dirtiest working, who barely spoke English (she spoke Portuguese, which meant even the Spanish speakers couldn't really communicate with her), she actually said that she wanted to teach culinary. Yes, there was some eye rolling. Who would go to c-school just so they could teach? He he he. I guess I should eat my eye-rolling about now. I have a new baby, I can't do the 70+ hours a week for little pay that I was doing at L's restaurant, at least until the baby is a bit older. For now, I think this will be a good outlet to keep a finger in a working kitchen, keep my skills sharp, and heaven forbid, maybe learn a bit from these kids I'll be shepherding.

On a final note, here is one bit for those who've followed for a while. This is a video that was part of my PowerPoint presentation for my final project in management. It really didn't have much to do with my project, but I had been telling Louis stories all year, and this was an opportunity for a bit of entertainment to close out the class.

Customer Complaint Resolution / Student Presentations / Bubbly Tasting

Our next to last class started with a brief Odds n' Ends. Everyone spent the weekend working on their final projects, or are in the midst of working on them. Richard told a story of a friend who had a catered event on his boat in Nantucket this past weekend. His caterer canceled less than a week out before the event because one of the caterer's employees quit to work for this friend in some non-food capacity. The friend scurried and found another caterer hungry for work, and as it turns out the caterer did an excellent job, and now this friend has gotten this new caterer a ton of work, and the old caterer's name has been dragged through the mud in a wide circle of friends. Be careful who you choose to punish.

When a customer complains, they are saying, "I would like to purchase again. What are you going to do to fix this?" So when a customer does not complain, they just pay the bill and leave an ordinary tip, they have given up on the company and it is unlikely they will return. A non-complainer's rate of return has been measured at under 10%, but a complainer whose issue is NOT resolved has a rate of return of about 40%. Complaining is cathartic, straight up. And when a complaint is quickly resolved, rate of return shoots up to around 90%.

The non-complainers are the bane of restaurants, and leaving out comment-cards for the customer to voluntarily fill out is not a very strong solution. An owner who sits by dishwashing waiting for full plates to come back so they can approach those particular customers will only go so far. There needs to be management on the floor looking at everything at all times, looking at faces and looking at tables. This may not be a reasonable expectation of a small restaurant on a tight budget, but someone keeping their eyes on a dining room, who is smart enough to react, is a hallmark of a successful restaurant.

An angry customer needs to be handled correctly, appealing to the emotional need to be taken seriously and taken care of. These steps are a framework to defusing a customer on the edge:

• Listen effectively
• Empathize and apologize if necessary
• Determine problem
• Propose solutions and reach closure
• Follow through FAST
• Do something extra

The ultimate objective is to make the customer come back. But on the other hand, there are situations where the customer is a liar. Guytano told a story of a group of 4 who came in on Mother's Day and claimed to have a reservation, though there was no record of it -- they might of called the wrong store. They had to be worked in, and catered to, checked in on -- like the restaurant is doing them a really great service.

We did some role playing, with one playing the host, the other the complaining customer. It definitely takes some fluid thinking to stick to the customer resolution framework while dealing with wound-up, questionably sane members of the public.

One role play was illuminating. A customer calls to make a same-day reservation for a large party, under the gun from his employer. One of the slower students played the reservationist, and her solution when confronted with the insistent customer on the phone was to....pass him off to the manager. And I thought the last 9 months we were here in these classes was studying culinary....MANAGEMENT. The solution, after listening, apologizing, and stating that it's not possible was to what Richard called a "Holiday Inn". Holiday Inn's policy was to never have a 'no vacancy' sign. If a customer came in and there was no space, the Holiday Inn would call other hotels and find a space for the customer. Even though the customer did not spend money on the Holiday Inn, it was an opportunity to leave a good impression and offer something for when they are back to spend money. The reservationist could of made a reservation fro them at another place, and offered a round of drinks or something when the next time the customer does come in.

Next up we went through three student presentations of their business plans (which means we have 15 or so to get through on Wednesday, including mine), and then we tasted a number of sparkling wines. Nothing particular jumped out at me, the Spanish cava was ok, the Italian Prosecco fresh, the French champagne musty.

In the News / Business Plan Review / Sequence of Service / Other Reds

Like with the last few days of the school year every year up through high school, the last few days just feel...wistful, breezy, the last few grains popping through the hourglass. With Culinary Arts, we were jamming on our final buffet, with each student focused on pulling off three heur d'eurves. Now, we're just banging on about a template for a business plan for which much of the research will be made up, as there is not enough time to really get the information.

In the News was abbreviated, but dedicated mostly to pizza. Like last week's Bruni monologue on the state of the pie, this week brought a huge article in New York Magazine. The interview with Una Pizza Neapolitana's Anthony Mangieri made me want to just punch him in the face -- he's everything that is wrong with NYC pizza today. One thing that I really didn't like about NYMag's coverage is that it didn't really address where NYC pizza is going. Clearly, we're in a trend bubble and by this time next year many of the pizzeria's that have opened in the past 12 months will be closed.

Next up, Richard dedicated his time to reviewing the parts of the business plan template -- presentations start Monday. When mine is complete, all will be posted here.

Sequence of Service: basically what it takes to be a waiter or waitress. Up until now, I thought I could easily slip into this role with out experience. Now that we saw a training video for service staff at the Palm chain of steak houses....I definitely could be a server at a restaurant that doesn't suck as hard as the dickwads who are supposed to act like retarded monkeys towards the guests like at the Palm. I like service that is restrained and direct, clear and unobtrusive. At the Palm, they're all buddy buddy touchy feely, ick. SHUT THE F UP, I'M HERE TO ENJOY MY FRIENDS, NOT YOUR SMARMY ACTING!!

Still, there is a lot of detail work that goes into being a good server at a good place. Respect.

The class ended with a tasting of eight red wines, all of which tasted a bit like musty alchy vinegar, except for a barolo, that tasted like musty oaky alchy vinegar.

Legal / Financials

Again, felt a bit zoned out in school today. Only a few sessions left. We opened with a dry discussion of legal issues. In summary, do not discriminate in the hiring or servicing of protected classes. Also, most lawsuits against food establishments are nuisance suits, but cost a lot in time and money if they aren't settled out of court. There was some talk of natural vs foreign rulings (a piece of spatula in lasagna is foreign, a small bone in a fish fillet is natural), and the parsings of various courts.

Class was interrupted by a talk from a eco-conscious caterer named Mary Cleaver, who was not the most compelling speaker. I thought it was just me, but most of my fellow students found her wandering story of her wandering business both unfocused and hard to follow.

The rest of the class was a review of the financial spreadsheets we will have to present in our business plans.

Odds n' Ends / Restaurant Design / Business Plan Review

To be perfectly honest, I spaced out for most of this class. This is the last week. Monday and Wednesday of next week are business plan presentations, and Wednesday afternoon is graduation. Then we're dun, sun. There is a chance I may be TEACHING a once-a-week culinary class to high school students come Fall, and if that happens, with permission of the organization will be blogging about it here.

Anyway, odds n' ends was dedicated to discussing what we saw at Blue Smoke. Richard levelled with us, saying every time he's eaten there he thought the food was lacking. Once, he brought a management class there for their school dinner and the service and food was so over-the-top poor, the restaurant comped the whole meal and invited them to come back.

It IS a Danny Meyers restaurant, and there is a level of service and precision not expected in other restaurants, especially in a casual concept like Blue Smoke. Still, the employees who work in a place like this are different than one who would work in, say, Union Square Cafe -- Blue Smoke has the highest staff turnover of all of Meyer's restaurants.

Richard also went into a few details of the smokers we saw -- these pieces of equipment are so large and unwieldy, they had to be craned over the entire 15 story building and dropped into the backyard and slid into place. The 15-story exhaust flues that are tacked on to the side of the building needed a number of variances from the Department of Health, Department of Buildings, the condo board and on and on. Regardless, the cost and inconveniences of the smokers were built into the the idea of the restaurant from day 1. Literally, the whole concept is built around these very difficult-to-obtain fixtures.

Most of the day was comparing floor plans, casual versus luxury, and the flow. The story that is told when you first walk in is designed. If the first thing you see is a host and monster bar, that's different that a long hallway that opens up on a maitre'd station and a baby grand piano. The experience is designed.

We reviewed some ADA guidelines (a wheel chair must be able to turn in a 5 foot radius in a rest room) and logic of placement of different stations in a working kitchen. Class wrapped up with Richard showing us his CAD drawings of the coffee shop he once owned and ran, and a review of the excel spread sheets that we will fill in for our business plan finals.

In the evening, the majority of us met up at Peryali in the Flat Iron District for our final meal. It was good, with an obscene amount of wine. Funny how well you get to know people without even being aware of it.