E-Mail This Article to a Friend Food for thought (continued)

As we speak, Gates and Wheeler are preparing to unmold their konafa — a cream-filled Mediterranean sweet encased in pistachio-studded shredded phyllo dough — with the help of Chef Stephan (as he’s supposed to be called, though such formalities are usually dropped within the first couple of weeks). Watching them, Kristen Coniaris, a former pizzeria manager, sniffs, "It looks like bugs in hay" — to which the characteristically deadpan Viau retorts, "So poetic." He goes on to proclaim to the class, "We’re all waiting for Rob to plate his lamb" — Rob Ocko is in charge of the day’s centerpiece, a whole roasted leg — "but he’s on break right now." Just then, Ocko appears with a bunch of parsley he’s foraged from another kitchen. Without missing a beat, Viau continues, "He’s out picking flowers."

Such is the surprisingly laid-back, even jovial atmosphere of the class, countering the stereotype — not necessarily without basis — of the culinary boot camp led by axe-wielding taskmasters in toques. Which isn’t to say either structure or instruction is lacking: Viau — one of 15 chefs on staff, including Dowling — is constantly demonstrating, suggesting, assessing. (If you want to test the limits of his patience, try substituting kosher salt with iodized.) As the group gathers round their finished dishes, snapping photos for their portfolios, he offers praise for the simple elegance of a molded millet salad, and pointers for plating tossed greens ("you could’ve fanned out a couple of the onions on the side"). When we repair to the table to break bread, he takes the same approach to flavor, noting first the lamb’s proper tenderness, then the beans’ slight under-seasoning ("start with more salt in the cooking water"). The comments prompt a question from me about learning curves; while the students grumble, mostly good-naturedly, about unexpected workloads and weight gain, Viau acknowledges, "It’s usually this week, week eight — week seven is the first time we don’t introduce any new techniques — [that] they get that sense of, ‘We need to get this out and this out and this out,’ " their confidence clearly growing. Coniaris agrees, stating firmly, "This was our best day by far."

NURTURING AND witnessing such "progression" is clearly Stephan Viau’s favorite part of teaching. After class, he speaks of relishing the moments when "students whom I know have potential start to kind of find it and to put things together" down to the minutest detail — placing "perfect dots of sauce, like they were machine made," onto a crème caramel, perhaps, or achieving a "perfect dice" — a uniformly 1/8-inch brunoise, say, having begun with nothing but a chef’s knife and an onion. Moments like the one in which, Viau says, "I was just walking through the kitchen and I overheard two students who were through with Basics and into Classical. They were making these little soufflés and they were saying, ‘This is so simple — what was all the fuss about?’ " Such moments, he’s convinced, depend less on talent or pedigree than on sheer motivation and practice.

Viau remembers another "week eight" during which a student "cleaned this leg of lamb perfectly" — not a bit of membrane or fat in sight. "It was actually kind of odd-looking. Then her classmates told me, ‘Don’t you know she was a surgeon in Japan?’ Oh, so that’s why you can open up and bone out this leg of lamb as if you were going to put it back together." That instance, says Viau, serves to explain why "I make it a point not to ask people, ‘What did you do [before coming to CSCA]?’ I don’t want to know how smart they are, if they’re a trust-fund baby or if they’re working 40 hours a week. I like to really be objective. We have older women students and I have no problem with them hauling stockpots around, because I expect people can do anything to the best of their abilities. Otherwise I’m just putting stigmas on them, on certain economic backgrounds, certain educational backgrounds — ‘Oh, this one has a PhD; oh, this one can barely read.’ Either way, you’re still going to have to skim a sauce."

Indeed, it’s one of the first things you’re going to have to do as a CSCA student — sauces are, after all, one of the hallmarks of the basics course, as are stocks, soufflés and other egg dishes, and dry- and moist-heat cooking methods for meats and fish. The course is taken in conjunction with "Baking," which covers all your pastry and yeast doughs, your sponge cakes and dacquoises, along with their filling, frosting, and decoration. Complete these, as well as the seminars in sanitation, nutrition, butchery, and so on, and you’ll have earned yourself a CCP. Continue on, and you’ll study in-depth classical and nouvelle cuisine, as well as the regional gastronomy of France, Italy, and the US; you’ll get an overview of Asian and fusion cooking; and you’ll take further seminars in recipe writing and cost analysis, cookbook history, wines and spirits, chocolate, and more. In the span of a school year — provided you pass your final written exam and practicum — you will have earned your very own toque and the title of professional chef.

Roberta Dowling freely acknowledges she has modeled her broad-based curriculum on that designed by Madeline Kamman — the famed French chef under whom she both studied and taught. Yet it reflects her personal as well as her professional culinary experience. "When I was 11, I lived in Rome and was taken all over Germany, to Switzerland and to France," Dowling says. "I was on several transatlantic crossings, on some of the great old liners, and we went first-class. I was fortunate enough to experience that, and to experience food in a way very, very few people ever get to. I had family members in the Foreign Service who visited Brazil and Thailand. I remember always being very duly impressed when they came home and told stories about their adventures and the foods they ate. And later on, being an exchange student living in Florence only reinforced what I felt food should be about." As it has evolved, her goal, it seems, has become to translate as much of her own lived experience as possible into the formal education of others.