LBCC culinary program: Recipe for success
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
 |
Every morning at 7:30, something happens at LBCC. While the rest of the school sleeps, dozens of students don white jackets and tall pleated hats to begin a class that lasts upwards of nine hours. What they do is demanding, complicated, and oftentimes messy.
They’re cooking for you. And they’re being graded for it.
The LBCC Culinary Program, while small, provides students with hands-on education in food preparation, restaurant management, food and fermentation sciences, and food and wine dynamics. Students are schooled as restaurant, pastry, and pantry chefs. They even get to experience what it’s like to be a server in a fine dining establishment.
First-year culinary students spend one semester baking in the pastry kitchen, one semester in the quantity kitchen making entrees and sides, half a semester making cold prepared foods like salads and sandwiches as pantry chefs, and another half a semester working as servers in the Santiam Restaurant.
Second-year students attend lectures and food demonstrations for half the day, as well as preparing food for the Santiam Restaurant, before spending their afternoons working in the Courtyard Café. For those in the program, class is like a full-time job; these students spend as many hours a day preparing food and cleaning dishes as most people do in a month.
First-year student Elizabeth Decamillo said, “Some days are more hectic than others. It’s always ‘go go go.’ It gets stressful, but that stress keeps you going. I like working fast.”
Decamillo is spending her winter semester in the Quantity Kitchen, which serves the Common’s cafeteria as well as the school’s Santiam Restaurant. Every Monday through Thursday her instructor, Chef Scott Hurley, leads her group in a food demonstration that shows them how to prepare a food item used in that day’s lunch.
After successfully showing Hurley they can recreate food themselves, they begin their day’s task of cooking the items on the lunch menu. Each week students are assigned to cook the food for a starch (such as potatoes, rice, or pasta) item, one of two entrees, a vegetable dish, a soup, a vegetarian option, or a dish to be served at the downstairs cafe.
Decamillo, like the other students, calls Hurley by “Chef,” not “professor.” To them, the moniker shows a kind of respect; it’s the culinary equivalent of “sir.” Hurley himself is a graduate of the school’s culinary program, and after working a few years at the Big River Restaurant in downtown Corvallis and OSU’s dining center, he came back to LBCC to teach.
“I like inspiring people. Every day there is a little more to learn.”
Pastry chef instructor Katie Newton agrees.
“I love working with the students. Culinary students tend to be a very lively bunch. They really appreciate working at things hands-on, instead of theory alone.”
Every morning Newton has her students go to different corners of the pastry kitchen to learn one of the eight essential baking skills needed to graduate from the program. The skills include rolling and folding, making custard, and working with yeast breads.
One of her students, Ray Francois, owned and operated his own restaurant before he came to LBCC. After being laid off from a more recent job, he decided it was time to go back to school.
“I’m getting retrained. It’s fun because you’re learning new things every day. I was never much for baking, but I like the challenge.”
The courses are rigorous and can create a high-stress environment for students who aren’t used to working under pressure. One of the reasons students must spend half a term as servers for the Santiam Restaurant is to understand what it’s like for those working on the other side of the kitchen who are in direct contact with the customers.
First-year student Darci Spillman understands what it’s like to deal with restaurant patrons who don’t want to wait to be served or have an issue with their meal.
“We try our hardest, especially when we’re short-staffed and we get a little behind. I’ve had some very angry and impatient people.”
One particular broccoli-loathing patron burst into tears when she was served a plate of food containing the offending vegetable. But as heated as things can get in the restaurant, nothing beats the drama being cooked up in the kitchen. While students deny their experiences being as melodramatic as, say, “Iron Chef,” preparing quality food in large quantities in a short period of time can create dangerous situations.
“It’s very fast-paced. When you’re working in a close environment, little things come up with students. You do get burned a lot. One second-year student left a pot without a pot handle on to signal it was hot and my arm got burned while turning on a mixer,” said Spillman,
To Chef Hurley, mistakes like these are okay to make in culinary school, as long as you learn from them.
“It’s intense because this is intense cooking. If a student cuts their finger, they aren’t going to do it again. They can mess up here and it’s okay.”
It’s also a place where students expand their ideas about what tastes good and what doesn’t. Many of LBCC’s culinary students have never traveled outside the United States, so they aren’t as accustomed to foreign fare. The culinary program forces students out of their shells because its classes are based around classical French and European cuisine.
“I see a very consistent pattern of students coming in here without exposure to international cuisine. Students are very timid,” says Chef Newton. “Give them a couple of terms, though, and they’re lined up waiting to taste [new foods].”
For LBCC culinary students, the program offers far more than the opportunity to dice carrots and roll dough. It gives them a chance to experience what it’s like to be a chef working in the industry while simultaneously pushing them to explore new tastes and textures, as well as encouraging them to experiment with creating their own.
“This is an industry that teaches you,” said Chef Hurley.
Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.
