Student Profile: Manuel Pastrana

by Anne E. McBride, January 25, 2012 | permalink |

Every issue of our school newsletter, The Main Course, includes a slice of life at ICE with a variety of interviews, articles and profiles. In the Winter 2012 issue, we looked at the bios of three current students, including Manuel Pastrana, a current student in our Hospitality Management career training program who is exploring his enthusiasm for good service and the future of a career in the hospitality industry at ICE.

Manuel Pastrana
Hospitality Management

Manuel Pastrana comes naturally to the hospitality world after spending more than 12 years working in customer service, including 10 years as assistant manager, of a Sprint/Nextel retail location. He hopes to launch a career that will see him become the general manager of a hotel — anything but being stuck in a cubicle, he says. Pastrana obtained an associate’s degree in hospitality management from Kingsborough Community College in 2003, but took a break from further studies after the birth of his now six-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. Pastrana, whose parents are from Puerto Rico, was born and raised in Brooklyn.  He likes to play softball and football when not at ICE.

Get an inside look at ICE with more student profiles on our website.

 

ICE Hospitality Management Field Trip to Times Square Hilton

by Stephanie Bourgeois, January 24, 2012 | permalink |

Last week, ICE’s Hospitality Management class went on a unique field trip to one of New York’s busiest hotels, the Hilton Times Square. As these students prepare for exciting new careers in the tourism industry, they are learning all the ins and outs of running a hotel, including cleaning guest rooms and managing staff.

After speaking with Ed Staniszewski, the General Manager of Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel about the different departments in a hotel last month, this was an incredibly useful chance to peer inside a huge hotel operation in one of the busiest locations in America. The students visited the Hilton Times Square on Tuesday and Thursday to see the often overlooked aspect of managing housekeeping in such a massive hotel. After being welcomed in the main lobby, the students were briefed on the hotel occupancy status and various policies and practices that make the operation run seamlessly. (more…)

Winter Wonderland with Pastry Chef Instructor Kathryn Gordon

by Stephanie Bourgeois, January 23, 2012 | permalink |

Last night, ICE students took part in a very special demo with ICE Pastry & Baking Arts Chef Instructor and sugar expert Kathryn Gordon who assembled a sugar showpiece from scratch.

Working only with sugar, she created a fun, seasonal showpiece featuring classic sugar techniques. She demonstrated how to pour and cast sugar and how to aerate it so that it can be blown into round shapes or pulled into ribbons or petals. She also used pastillage, an opaque sugar dough, to make snowflakes. The completely edible showpiece featured a variety of textures and colors to be a true aesthetic masterpiece. (more…)

He Said, She Said: Nobody Asked Me, But…

by Julia Heyer & Vin McCann, | permalink |

ICE’s Culinary Management Instructors are seasoned industry professionals who are still active in the industry and working on their own projects while teaching classes at ICE. Here on DICED, two of our Instructors, Julia Heyer and Vin McCann, have regularly been looking at topics and trends in the industry, shedding light on some complicated issues and sharing their in-depth expertise. This week, Julia and Vin are taking off the gloves and putting their own spin on things to watch for 2012 — without holding anything back.

Vin McCann
Julia, let’s kick the New Year off on the right foot, or at least the foot a good portion of the blogosphere kicks off on. Like every columnist, blogger and expert, let’s address trends for 2012… On second thought, forget that! How about a page out of the Jimmy Cannon book of tricks; “Nobody asked me, but…”

Nobody asked me, but the term “foodie’, descriptive of virtually everything and nothing needs to go the way of the pet rock.

N.A.M.B. can the cutting edge, self-appointed experts in the industry please stop trying so hard to create new trends. I don’t need flowers frozen into the ice cubes floating in my drink, or some arcane atomized substance posing as a cocktail.

N.A.M.B. trend identifiers ought to have to put their money where their mouths are when they prognosticate about the future, or, at the very least, publicly own up to their lifetime accuracy percentage. Roulette wheels have more predictable outcomes than restaurant “trend” predictions.

N.A.M.B. sooner or later there has to be an end to the discovery of new, exciting, hitherto unknown vegetables.

N.A.M.B. the endless expert pontificating about the nutritional value of foods is really sapping the fun from food and beverage. Let’s face it — none of us are going to live forever, and 50 is not, nor will it ever be, the new 30.

N.A.M.B. does anybody really believe that in a list of “101 best restaurants” that the author can objectively qualify the difference between number 68 and number 69, or even 89 for that matter?

Julia Heyer
Vin, wow. You seem to have missed my sunny disposition. Let me start by asking you, did your sense of humor drown over New Years? Perhaps eggnog prepared by a “foodie”? May I recommend a bottle of fancy champagne and maybe some scorzonera stew to brighten the mood? It’s a new year, a reset button, and you did ask me, so… (more…)

Up Close and Personal with Maury Rubin of City Bakery

by Stephanie Bourgeois, January 20, 2012 | permalink |

Now celebrating its 20th year in business, City Bakery remains a favorite downtown spot to enjoy both exceptional, handmade pastries, as well as a fresh, market-driven lunch. Yesterday, Maury Rubin, creator, baker, and designer of City Bakery, sat down with author and ICE Instructor Alexandra Leaf for a lecture and discussion with ICE students about how he opened and operates the business. Rubin shared his insights on the business of baking, including current trends and observations, making it an invaluable chance for the ICE students to learn more about owning and operating a business and see his perspective on how a business can be aware of where the food they serves comes from. It was a fascinating discussion with one of New York City’s local food world stars.

Rubin began his career doing almost anything but pastry. In fact, prior to baking, Rubin was a two-time Emmy Award winning producer and director at ABC Sports Television in New York City. But after a six-day pastry class in 1986, he was inspired. Rubin did an apprenticeship in France, then returned to New York City to open The City Bakery in 1990, calling it an updated model of the classic American neighborhood bakery. (more…)

Beef Meatballs from The Meatball Shop

by Stephanie Bourgeois, January 19, 2012 | permalink |

There are endless variations on the classic meatball. Whether you’re a purist looking for a traditional Swedish meatball or an adventurer willing to sample seafood meatballs, the meatball offers something for everyone. In celebration of the launch of his book, The Meatball Shop Cookbook, and his upcoming ICE cooking class, Chef Daniel Holzman of the celebrated The Meatball Shop on the Lower East Side, shared this recipe with us to include in the Winter 2012 issue of The Main Course.

Ingredients
2 pounds 80% lean beef, ground
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon chile flake
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, ground
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped oregano
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2 tablespoons olive oil (more…)

Super Fast Weeknights

by Beth Rodway, January 18, 2012 | permalink |

When I was a kid, I grew up on hearty, home-cooked meat and potatoes meals every night of the week. Looking back on it now, I don’t know how I missed my mom’s Wonder Woman cape! I have no idea how she prepared a fully cooked meal with side dishes — she must have had super powers.

At 27-years-old, I find myself completely exhausted after work, with very little energy to cook anything other than buttered noodles. But, I work at one of the best culinary schools in the nation and decided I needed, and deserved, to step it up to better, more complete meals.

So with my mom as my inspiration, I had to retire my lazy ways and seize the chance to make better meals. When the winter edition of ICE’s newsletter, The Main Course, came out, I jumped at the opportunity to take the Super Fast Weeknights recreational cooking class. (more…)

Sweet Treats: Lady M

by Chef Nicole Kaplan, January 17, 2012 | permalink |

I found myself on the Upper East Side, killing time with the kids on one of those arduous, winter breaks in the city with nothing to do. What’s a girl to do when she’s feeling glum while everyone else is off skiing or sunning with their loved ones? Eat cake of course! It struck me like a ray of sunlight on a gray winter day. Off we went to Lady M.

Lady M is one of those dainty, elegant shops that are perfect to take a friend to for coffee and a little treat while catching up on a load of gossip. What I enjoy so much about it is that they take the classics and somehow reinvent them, striking the ideal point between enormous coffee shop monsters and overly dainty French confections. They are fun and interesting to look at while still being elegant. Plus, they are light as a feather in your mouth, even when they look like they will be quite filling. I was slightly disappointed to find the selection was full of chestnut cakes. Chestnut is one of the top offenders on my long and boring list of do-not-eat-or-spend-the-day-in-the-emergency-room allergy foods. But never the less, I persevered and managed to find four lovely slices without chestnut to take home. (more…)

Interview with Mark Bittman — Part III

by Anne E. McBride, January 16, 2012 | permalink |

DICED has been sharing our interview with influential food writer Mark Bittman from the Winter 2012 issue of The Main Course, our school newsletter. Bittman is the lead food writer for the New York Times Magazine and an opinion columnist for the New York Times, for which he began writing in 1990. We’ve already looked at his career and his outlook on the food system and our current diet. Today, we are sharing his answers on how he brings his philosophy on food into the kitchen and into his work as a writer.

The first lines of your bio state “I’m not a chef, I’ve never been.” You are very adamant about that.
It’s a bit of a holdover. When I first started doing public stuff, they’d introduce me as Chef Mark Bittman and everybody was like, ‘Oooooh, chefs, wow, how exciting.’ It was the days of Emeril and it wasn’t like now when there are 50 billion chefs out there. So they didn’t know how to deal with somebody like me. I’d get signed up to teach cooking classes, or I’d get signed up to give talks or whatever, and they didn’t know what to do with me because very few people were doing it who weren’t chefs, so they called me Chef Mark Bittman. I’d get up there and I’d say, ‘I’m not a chef,’ and then I would talk about why everybody should cook; that chefs do one thing, but home cooks do another, and that it’s really important to be a home cook, and that there should a 100 million home cooks in this country. (more…)

Chef Instructor Profile: Hervé Riou

by Anne E. McBride, January 13, 2012 | permalink |


ICE releases our school newsletter, The Main Course, three times a year. Every issue is packed with classes, news, articles, and interviews. One of favorite features is reading the in-depth profiles of our Chef Instructors. The depth and breadth of their experience continues to surprise us. This profile, from the Winter 2012 issue, taught us a lot about Chef Instructor Hervé Riou and the incredible experience he brings to our kitchen classrooms.

Hervé Riou
Culinary Arts

Like many French chefs, Hervé Riou grew up in a family where everything was made from scratch, and began cooking as a teenager. He was 15 when he started an apprenticeship at a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Laval, near his native Brittany. He worked his way up, which led to opportunities in Dublin and Galway in Ireland, throughout France, and, finally, the United States in 1989. The Plaza and The Club at Madison Square Garden were some of his first positions here, but he quickly went on to open a restaurant in Morristown, NJ that received such accolades as best new restaurant and best French bistro in the Zagat Guide for numerous years. After 10 years in America, Riou decided to launch his own consulting company; he has since been working for product companies such as Vermont Butter & Cheese and Naturally Delicious, as well as developing business and restaurant opportunities in China, where he has also appeared on television shows. Riou has of course never stopped manning the stove, and when not involved in restaurant projects in New York, is frequently cooking for private parties, weddings, and other events and working with sustainable farming initiatives. In January 2011, he added teaching to his long list of skills, and joined ICE as a Culinary Arts Chef Instructor. He sees his role as giving students the cornerstone of their career, which will then allow them to “build the cathedral.” Knowledge is not the only thing he shares with his students, however: the lifelong passion he has for his craft is another essential element of what he communicates. (more…)

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