The French Culinary Institute offers students and alumni incredible opportunities to get involved in the community and learn from the leaders in our trade that reside in New York City. Along with many other famous and notable chefs, Jacques Pepin, THE Jacques Pepin, is a dean at the school and does monthly demonstrations in the school's theater. I've attended other demonstrations but have never seen him cook in person, so I decided to use a day off to see the master at work.
First of all, he's very cute, in that older-French-famous-television-personality sort of way. And when I say cute, I mean I want to squeeze him and show him how to program his VCR and listen to his WWII stories. He's also very funny and charming, even though I caught about 82% of what he was saying. Surprisingly, he didn't actually cook anything (aside from a 20-second omelet); he simply talked about his career and offered advice to young chefs while zipping through various vegetables and herbs. I learned an immense amount from him, though; valuable stuff that was never really explained to us from the beginning in terms of proper knife holding and technique. While it seems silly that he took two full hours to review such basic skills, it was amazing to even be in the same room as such a distinguished man. The best part? He deboned an entire chicken (cutting it down the backside) in approximately three minutes…I almost laughed out loud. He stuffed it and had the whole thing tied up and ready to go in about six minutes. And that's why he's Jacques Pepin.
As we entered the kitchen for our last day of production, cutting up the veal portions, ripping apart the squid and quartering the chickens, we tried to hide our tear-stained uniforms and baggy eyes from chef (ok, nobody cried but it was sad). The buffet room, set off from the big kitchen, was quickly becoming frantic, and I started hearing screamed curse words about 45 minutes prior to the start of the buffet. Chef Pepin had brought one of his friends and colleagues, another squeezable older gentleman, on a tour of our kitchens. I mustered up some cajones and approached the two of them as they were bent over something talking animatedly. "Excuse me chef, I just wanted to let you know that I greatly enjoyed your demonstration this afternoon." Good job Jackie: showed some respect, stroked the ego, subtly let them know you were smart enough to attend the demo. They both looked up, and I could all of a sudden see on their faces a trace of anger and disappointment. OMG did I say something wrong? I reviewed the scene in my head, and was sure I hadn't let any curse words slip or said "Yo Jack! What up G! Kick@$$ demo my brotha!" Surely those words were only in my head…but I soon saw the source of their frustration. Some knucklehead in Family Meal had thrown about five pounds of mustard green stems into the compost bin. If there's one thing you need to know about French chefs, it's that they use EVERYTHING. There are rarely any scraps left in a French kitchen that aren't used for stocks, side dishes or marinades. "Non, non, non, zis ees terrible!!" he said, assuming that I was the one who had wasted this valuable product. His friend started going off about how if this was his restaurant, he'd be incredibly upset. They acted like there were litters of discarded puppies in there…but I was already too far into this situation to then convince them that this was not my fault, so I just let them go on and responded every few seconds with "Yes, chef." He picked up one of the stems and peeled back the outer layer, revealing a light green, crunchy inside. "Here, taste." I took a bite, and it was surprisingly refreshing yet incredibly spicy! He murmured something else about what a tragedy this was and walked away. I sputtered a few more "Thank you, chefs," but it was useless. My only interaction with Jacques Pepin and I get yelled at for someone else's idiocy. Awesome.
We had finished up our projects for the night, so I went in to the buffet room try to see if there was some way, any way, that I could be of some assistance. What I saw upon entering the room was upsetting, to say the least: dirty pans flying through the air narrowly missing my head, burnt food being tossed across the room into the compost bin, remnants of crushed dreams and weeks of hard work being scraped off cutting boards and someone crouched in the corner, apparently unconscious. What the hell happened in here?? They were supposed to have the buffet, which is attended by the whole school and all of the chef instructors, set up by 8:30pm, yet we were approaching that deadline and things were not looking good. I got to work putting out tablecloths and setting up menu cards, but there wasn't much I could do in terms of cooking and preparation. There came a point where we all had to just kind of stand around while our classmates ran back and forth (note: never run in a kitchen), setting out endless trays, bowls and platters of delicious food. Several of the items I had seen them plan and prepare apparently didn't make the final cut – I wondered if this was by choice or by accident.
In the end, they had an incredibly impressive menu for their "Summer" theme: cold strawberry gazpacho and mint green pea shooters, foie gras and pork terrines, crostini with fig, apple and parmesano reggiano, shrimp ceviche cups, asparagus rolled with prosciutto and tomato compote, baked halibut with citrus chutney, chicken skewers with peanut sauce, whole lamb with grape/cherry glaze, lamb burgers with tzatziki, fish sausages on homemade rolls, grilled steak with bleu cheese sauce, many gourmet ice creams, a frozen Arnold palmer, cheesecake bites, fruit pizzas and caramel mousse cups with pistachios. We ate and ate and ate until we exploded, making sure to commend our harried and worn classmates on an impressive job well done.
After a brief break, it was time to make the official transition from production to buffet. It was now our turn to plan and create a similarly impressive menu with our "New York Street Food" theme. The recipes I contributed are definitely not as gourmet as the last group's (hot pretzels with cheese [!!!], lamb gyros, jerk chicken skewers, fish tacos, etc.) but I think that's part of the whole process – transforming these common street items into food worthy of the French Culinary Institute. Chef Jason came back from the break looking like he'd just gone to war and dreading the fact that he had to start this whole process over again with a new group. We'll be hosting the buffet in two weeks (June 30th), and I can't wait to see the transformation. This is one of the coolest parts of Level 4, where we're learning for the first time how to cook for the masses.
On a very VERY awesome note, Dave Arnold (who did a few demonstrations for us in Level 3) was on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" a few nights ago with his fellow FCI food technology associate Nils Noren. It is absolutely fascinating, and gives a really cool glimpse into the world of food technology and the kookiness that is Dave Arnold. It's also pretty neat that two of our instructors were on Jimmy Fallon! They're so nutty, it was cracking me up. Definitely check out the clip here.
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