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Posted on 01/21/2004 6:14:01 AM PST by Alouette
The worst moment in Danny Reicher's culinary career was when his teacher at the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) in New York pulled out a huge lobster.
"It was particularly horrible," recalls the Orthodox Teanecker who made aliya in 1999. "The chef just grabbed it and tore it apart alive."
It's memories like these that give Reicher - a teacher at the newly-opened Kosher Culinary Academy in Jerusalem - the impetus to make the school work.
Until three weeks ago, there has been nowhere that an Orthodox guy - or girl - can train to be a gourmet chef in a kosher environment. It was either a case of learning on the job, or studying somewhere treif; an experience that Reicher could have done without.
"I felt really uncomfortable," admits Reicher. "It was a very long two years. Training as a chef is a very sociable experience, and the social and cultural life revolves around food. In most culinary schools you get fed two or three times a day. I ate bowl after bowl of salad for two years - it was a very frustrating experience."
The Kosher Culinary Academy, where Reicher now teaches, is the brainchild of 34-year-old Yochanan Lambiase, a British-born chef who trained with Jamie Oliver in London's Westminister Hotel School. When Lambiase studied, he didn't have the same problem as Reicher.
"At that time, I ate everything and anything," says the fourth generation chef, who at the time went by the name of Jon-Ren . "It didn't bother me in the slightest. But when I became frum later on, I realized I couldn't have learned what I learned if I was observant at the time."
Lambiase's idea for a kosher gourmet school was brewing for 10 years before he turned it into a reality. Last year, while managing the kitchens at the Reishit Yeshiva in Beit Shemesh, Lambiase flew to New York's Kosher Fest. Surrounded by thousands of booths filled with gourmet kosher foods, Lambiase started to sound his idea out. He was amazed at the response. In total, Lambiase received 500 e-mail enquiries about the project.
Lambiase found a silent business partner and established a faculty of top-notch chefs, teachers and managers.
A year later, on January 3, 2004, the first Kosher Culinary Academy opened in Jerusalem's Holy Land Hotel. There are currently 27 male students - five Israelis and 22 Americans and Canadians. In the morning, the men study the Halachic aspects of food preparation as well as catering theory. Afternoon sessions are devoted to food preparation, set to become increasingly intricate as the course continues. On the menu are stocks and sauces, meat and poultry preparation, salads and cold sauces, buffet presentation, desserts, ethnic cooking, and cooking for Pessah. The 10-month, full-time course is taught in English and follows the English National Vocational Qualification curriculum.
"There's too much theory and not enough practical experience in many culinary schools," says Lambiase. "It's all about techniques [there.] But we're not making Ph.D scholars in soup making. We're making chefs. The emphasis here is on practice," says Lambiase.
At the end of two months of basic training the group will start to go on trips all over Israel, visiting vineyards, cheese makers, industrial bake shops, and off-premises catering events.
"There's so much out there," says Lambiase, whose rounded BBC vowels belie his bearded, rabbinical appearance.
"There's been an explosion in the kosher food market in the past 10 years. All these products that never used to be available to the kosher chef are now everywhere. Gourmet kosher is where we're headed," Lambiase explains enthusiastically.
It's clear that you need to be a foodie to enjoy this course, and indeed the swelling waistlines of pretty much all the chefs attest to this fact, but not everyone who is studying at the $10,000 course has their sights set on being a professional chef. Some will become professional food and wine waiters and mashgihim (kashrut supervisors). All of them will pick up invaluable skills in business management that will help them if they choose to start their own food business.
"A lot of restaurants fold because they're mismanaged," says Allan Schwartz, managing director of the academy. "You've got a restaurateur who doesn't know how to manage the waiters, or doesn't know how to manage accounts. When they're forced to cut down on staff in tough times, everything collapses."
"When I worked in Levana's [a fine dining New York restaurant where one can expect to walk away from a three-course meal $80- 120 lighter] I remember the chefs bemoaning the fact that the mashgiah couldn't do anything in the kitchen," says Reicher. "They would wash the lettuce in hot water. They were being given a full-time salary to light flames and wash lettuce. It's a drain on the restaurant."
In addition to the present 10-month course, the academy is also hoping to open up shorter programs for a more diverse population. Staff are currently working out a way of offering a shorter two- or three-month course for women, kids' cooking sessions and one-time food theater performances.
"A bit like Jamie Oliver. Actually, exactly like Jamie Oliver," chuckles Lambiase.
Lambiase's celebrity colleague who according to the London Daily Telegraph "sounds like a yob and cooks like an angel," is an inspiration in other ways too. When Oliver set up the Cheeky Chops charity and the Fifteen restaurant to get unemployed youth into the kitchen and back on their financial feet, Lambiase was impressed.
"There's an element of that kind of work in this culinary academy. Many of the guys here aren't academics. They're not cut out for a desk job. We're putting frum people in the workplace, giving them a trade."
For 23-year-old student Michah Katz, who dropped out of school at 17, the culinary academy has provided a way of getting out of a dead-end job and developing his innate gastronomical talents.
"In school I had a lot of problems. I thought that I'd never go back to study. But I guess when it's something you want to learn, then it's different," says Katz. "I love food and I've always cooked for my family, In the army I always used to go into the kitchen and make things. After classes now, I just want to say and learn more. There's a really good atmosphere here."
Thirty-year-old Arieh Meghnaji is equally enthusiastic, even though he comes from a very different place gastronomically speaking. Meghnaji has owned his own catering company together with his wife for a number of years now.
"But I was never really formally trained," explains Meghnaji, "and I want to take my catering beyond what I do now, I want to be able to run more than one restaurant, or cater big functions for several hundred people confidently."
Come late March/April, the Kosher Culinary Academy will open its doors to customers.
"There'll be a restaurant here a couple of evenings a week and people will be able to sample top-notch food for basic prices," says Schwartz. "Everything will be supervised by chefs, but it's a way for students to gain real experience."
"I just dream that one day I'll arrive at class and instead of chopping vegetables, we're making this fancy shmancy food," says Katz. "I can't wait."
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
:-)
Tia
Nothing in here about anyone cooking in the nude.
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Yeah. That was the only reason I read the darned article... |
I'll tell you why....to get people to READ the article! That 'nude' business is why I clicked in! I said to myself...whaa-aat? But the idea and the school sounds fantastic! As a non-Jew, I appreciate some things kosher -- like my vitamins! And I'd enjoy eating at a kosher restaurant.
Since it's Kosher, they don't have to worry about the First Rule of Bachelor Cooking:
Never fry bacon naked.
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