and sheer. I was older than most of my fellow students, many of whom
were away from home for the first time. Unlike them, I lived off campus,
in Poughkeepsie with the remnants of my Vassar pals. I'd actually
worked in the industry—and I'd had sex with a woman. These were not
the cream of the crop, my fellow culinarians. It was 1975 and CIA was
still getting more than their share of farm boys, bed-wetters, hicks,
flunk-outs from community colleges and a few misfits for whom CIA
was preferable to jail or juvenile detention. Hopeless in the kitchen,
happy in their off-hours to do little more than build pyramids of beer
cans, they were easy marks for a hard case like myself. I nearly
supported myself during my two years in Hyde Park playing seven-card
stud, Texas hold-em, no-peek and acey-deucey. I felt no shame or guilt
taking their money, selling them beat drugs or cheating at cards. They
were about to enter the restaurant industry; I figured they might as well
learn sooner rather than later. If the Mario crew ever got hold of some of
these rubes, they'd have the fillings out of their teeth.
It was very easy going for me. The first few months at CIA were spent
on stuff like: "This is the chef's knife. This is the handle. This is the
blade," as well as rote business on sanitation. My food sanitation
instructor, an embittered ex-health inspector (judging from the scars on
his face, the last honest man in that trade), regaled us with stories of
pesticide-munching super rats, the sex lives of bacteria and the ever-
present dangers of unseen filth.
I took classes in food-handling, egg cookery, salads, stocks, soups, basic
knifework. But after spending way too many hours deep in the bowels of
Marioland, peeling spuds, making gallons of dressings, chopping
vegetables and so on, I knew this stuff in my bones.
Of course, my stocks in class always tasted far better than my
classmates'. No one could figure out how I coaxed such hearty flavor out
of a few chicken bones, or made such wonderful fish fumet with fish
racks and shrimp shells, all in the limited time available. Had my