Culinary Schools

Uncut: The Inside Story of Culinary School
$14.95
This book is perfect for those who are considering culinary school, because it gives insight on what to expect. However, the audience is not limited to the future professional chefs of America. Everyday cooks like me and you can benefit from the culinary explanations incorporated within the pages. A few recipes are also provided, so that you can get hands-on experience when you put this book down.

I was fortunate to attend a Valentine's Day cooking class taught by the author. Action-items included mushroom duxelle (found in the book) and reduction sauce for the beef Wellington, twice baked potatoes, shrimp scampi, and creme brulee. This woman is definitely an expert in her field, but remains humble. She infuses enthusiasm, humor, and passion for cooking in both her book and teaching. The lesson that I walked away with was that a few ingredients can make a successful dish, so as long as you perfect the techniques!

Can you handle the kitchen wisdom?

Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School
$25.00
There are things I like a lot about this book. These things include that parts of it are quite well-written, there are some genuine insights into what attending the chef programme at FCI is like, and the recipes work pretty well.

There are things I hated about this book. These things include that other parts of it are ludicrously poorly written, that the author very often comes off as a petulant child, that stories are started but not finished (or told in ways that lessen their impact).

Overall, even when the book works well, it seems like a string of amusing anecdotes about culinary school, rather than a coherent narrative about attending culinary school. Perhaps the subtitle of the book should have warned me about this, but I was still disappointed by it.

One of the main points the author makes is that prior to attending FCI, she was a skilled cook who didn't really understand cooking. She skipped steps in recipes, without realizing what effect that had on the dish. She learned that there's a reason you let dough rest, for example, and when she did it, she found that the resulting pastry was better than when she skipped that step. Well, there's a whole mountain of accumulated knowledge about how to construct memoirs so that they offer more to the reader than a string of memories presented in chronological order. It appears to me that the author is as ignorant of that body of knowledge as she was about the mechanics of cooking before her culinary education. It shows in this book. Much like her pre-FCI omelets were inferior to what she learned to make in Level 1, this memoir is far inferior to what it might have been, had she only known.

Anyway, not a total waste of my time, but I think that this author would have written a better book about this experience had she let it simmer for a few more years.

W���sthof Culinary school Knife bag
$120.00
A wonderful bag! I was a bit skeptical to spend that much on a bag, but I'm glad I did. It's an awesome bag! It has tons of knife slots, three compartments, two zippered gadget pouches, and there's even room for books inside! The only reason I did not rate it five stars is because the knives are not totally secured inside. I fixed this by running a strip of black velcro behind the handles of the knives then stitched the other side of the velcro just beside the knife handles...works like a charm!! It came earlier than expected also!! Great Bag!

Cake Mania
$24.99
Jill returns home from culinary school to find her grandparent's bakery closed down. Help Jill build her bakery from scratch serving customized cakes to a collection of hilarious and hungry customers to save the Evan��s bakery. Customize your kitchen with new ovens, deliver the goods in over 50 fast-paced levels, bake and decorate cakes to-order for a steady stream of demanding customers. Earn enough money each month to keep the bakery open, purchase equipment and upgrade the kitchen. Satisfy hungry grannies, blushing brides, picky food critics and more with hundreds of cake combinations.