They'd let us practice our knife work on whole legs of beef, my novice
butcher class-mates and I absolutely destroying thousands of pounds of
meat; we were the culinary version of the Manson Family. Fortunately,
the mutilated remains of our efforts were—as was all food at CIA—
simply passed along to another class, where it was braised, stewed or
made into soup or grinding meat . . . before ending up on our tables for
dinner. They had figured out this equation really well. All students were
either cooking for other students, serving other students or being fed by
other students—a perfect food cycle, as we devoured our mistakes and
our successes alike.
There were also two restaurants open to the general public, but a few
fundamentals were in order before the school trusted us with inflicting
our limited skills on the populace.
Vegetable Cookery was a much-feared class. The terrifying Chef Bagna
was in charge, and he made the simple preparing of vegetables a rigorous
program on a par with Parris Island. He was an Italian Swiss, but liked to
use a German accent for effect, slipping quietly up behind students mid-
task, and screaming questions at the top of his lungs.
"Recite for me . . . schnell! How to make pommes dauphinoise!!"
Chef Bagna would then helpfully provide misleading and incorrect clues,
"Zen you add ze onions, ya?" He would wait for his flustered victim to
fall into his trap, and then shriek, "Nein! Nein! Zere is no onions in ze
potatoes dauphinoise!" He was a bully, a bit of a sadist and a showman.
But the man knew his vegetables, and he knew what pressure was.
Anyone who couldn't take Chef Bagna's ranting was not going to make in
the outside world, much less make it through the penultimate CIA class:
Chef Bernard's "E Room".
Another class, Oriental Cookery, as I believe it was then called, was
pretty funny. The instructor, a capable Chinese guy, was responsible for