By Carly DeFilippo

In the European tradition, aspiring chefs would learn their trade through apprenticeships. Even in this age of professional culinary schools, all ICE graduates fulfill this traditional on-site training as part of their graduation requirements. Daniel Boulud’s DBGB is just one of the Dinex Group restaurants where ICE Culinary Arts and Pastry & Baking Arts students serve as externs. Executive Chef Eli Collins represented the group at a recent cooking demo, featuring DBGB’s “Espagnole” – a fresh chorizo sausage with piperade and basil oil.

Central to the creation of said sausage is Chef Charcutier Aurélien Dufour, who joined Collins for the live demo. Dufour manages the production of more than twenty signature sausages for DBGB alone, in addition to overseeing the entire charcuterie program for Chef Boulud’s other New York locations.

As Chef Dufour began to grind the pork shoulder and belly for the chorizo links, Collins explained that he chose the piperade because it was a traditional recipe, featuring simple ingredients, elevated by skill and technique. While preparing the tomato concassé, for example, he described how different ways of cutting vegetables changes how they cook, affecting the taste of the finished dish. He also reflected on the importance of an apprenticeship, in that it provides the opportunity to perfect a technique or the flavors of a dish through repetition. For example, small details – like cooking tomato paste long enough to reduce its bitterness or gently puncturing sausage with a fine casing pricker – can determine the ultimate success or failure of even the most rustic dish.

As the room filled with the smells of sautéing midnight vegetables, Dufour deftly twisted the fresh sausage into links, with the metered regularity of a true craftsman. It was a pertinent demonstration of the skill one only gains through repetition, of the progression from apprentice to master.

The finished piperade was, as promised, a comforting classic. But far from the simple home-cooking of France’s Basque Country, it had transformed into a restaurant-worthy dish. Even under the unfamiliar time constraints (and the watchful eye of forty aspiring chefs), Chefs Eli and Aurélien produced a truly enviable plate.

Piperade

Ingredients

• 2 roma tomatoes
• 3 tbsp chorizo oil
• 5 piquillo peppers
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 medium red onions, cut in large dice
• 1 tbsp piment d’espelette
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 4 red bell peppers, peeled, seeded and cut in large dice
• 4 yellow bell peppers, peeled, seeded and cut in large dice
• 5 piquillo peppers, seeded and cut in large dice
• 2 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
• 1 tbsp chopped oregano
• salt and ground white pepper

To serve:

• 6 fresh chorizo sausage links
  
• 1/4 cup basil oil

Instructions:

1. Bring a small pot of water to a boil over high heat, and set a bowl of ice water on the side.
2. Using a small knife, remove the stem of the tomatoes and score the ends. Boil tomatoes for 10 seconds, then chill in the ice water.
3. Peel the tomatoes, cut in half, remove the seeds and cut the remaining flesh into a small dice.
4. Warm the chorizo oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic, onion and a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and gently sweat for 10 to 15 minutes.
5. Add espelette pepper and paprika and cook, stirring to toast, 1 to 2 minutes.
6. Add the tomato paste, peppers and continue to cook for about 10 minutes, until softened.
7. Stir in the sherry vinegar, basil, oregano and diced tomatoes, and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed.
8. To serve, grill or sear the sausages in a large saute pan until cooked through. Serve on top of warm piperade with drizzled basil oil for garnish.

Years ago, when I was starting out in restaurant kitchens, a well known chef said to me, “I can tell how good a cook someone is by watching them work for five minutes.” At the time, this mystified me. What did he see so quickly? Was he judging everyone too quickly? Didn’t he want to taste their food? Didn’t he want to see how many derivative sauces they could name?

Now after years in the kitchen, I know what he meant: it’s not just about the cooking. Of course mastering cooking techniques is essential, but being successful in a restaurant kitchen means more than knowing how to cook a few classic recipes. It’s also about having the right attitude and work habits. How you cook is just as important as how well you cook.  A couple of tips I often share with my students: know how to organize your mise en place, work in a clean setting and with a sense of urgency, never standing around if others are busy and integrate a sense of teamwork into the kitchen. These are ingrained in every successful chef. Along with all the cooking, we work on these skills in class from lesson one. Sometimes these may seem like quirky details to the students, but they are important parts of their education.

My current class is in Mod 3, the time in the culinary program when students begin to look for externships. This means trailing which is working a shift in a restaurant kitchen to see if it’s a good fit. For many students, this is their first time in a professional kitchen. Understandably many don’t know what to expect. Worried they’ll be asked to cook something we haven’t covered (or worse yet, that they’ve forgotten), I get asked a lot of questions.

My advice is always the same: arrive early and be willing to stay late, ask questions if you have them, don’t be afraid to admit if you don’t know something (you’re students – you’re learning), jump in with both feet and act like you want to be there. If you have basic cooking and knife skills, chefs will show you how they want each dish prepared. Setting up a kitchen station correctly, cleaning and working professionally are skills you should have when you walk through any kitchen door.

None of this should come as surprise to my students because we practice it every day and have been talking about this from lesson one: a good attitude will take you far.

I’ve helped over 300 students select their externship in the time that I’ve been at ICE. So, when it came time for me to decide, I thought I had it pretty much covered. I decided to challenge myself in a restaurant where I imagined I would learn speed and be in a place that feels familiar to me given my past front-of-house experience. My decision was a Spanish restaurant on the Upper West Side named Graffit. Aside from loving all things Spanish, I had known Chef Jesus Nunez for some time and was really attracted to his philosophy of combining food and art as well as building a family-like team. So, I informed my advisor of the details, an agreement for my 210-hour externship was put in place, and I was ready to embark on my first professional back-of-house experience.

All I really remember from my first day at Graffit is that I felt hot. As I made my way up to the kitchen in my checkered pants, an unmarked chef coat and my big black kitchen shoes, I was introduced to my new pastry mentor, Rachel, and instantly felt myself start to sweat. I had a sudden flashback of walking into the kitchen at Extra Virgin, seeing the line cooks with beads of sweat rolling down their faces as they worked through our Friday night rush. At that time, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what it was like to work in a kitchen. Even in my role at ICE, I have visited numerous kitchens and learned about the lifestyle of a cook by reading books like Kitchen Confidential and having countless conversations with chefs. I knew from these experiences, that life in the kitchen was hard and meant long hours. I had stood for hours greeting and seating guests while working front-of-house, but working in a kitchen is just so much more physical than I ever expected — up and down the stairs to the prep area, back and forth to the walk-in, moving in the rhythm of a kitchen that during service is nothing short of organized chaos. Within a week, I learned my first lesson: front-of- house is not back-of-house. More…

I have been telling students for two years now about what to expect on that very important day of their first trail. I’ve been calming them down and assuring them it’s going to be okay. Last week, I found myself at the door of my first trail, hoping I had been telling the truth this whole time and assuring myself that it was going to be okay.

My first trail was at Maialino, Danny Meyer’s Italian trattoria within the Gramercy Park Hotel. The pastry chef, Jennifer Shelbo (who also happens to be an ICE alumnus!) greeted me and introduced me to my first task: washing, peeling, cutting and coring quince to be roasted and used for sorbet. She stood right beside me, doing each of the steps along with me, albeit just a tad bit quicker! I got my first blister from holding a peeler but by the last quince, I actually felt like I was getting used to the process. Chef Shelbo then introduced me to one of the pastry cooks, Ali, who was in the dining room cutting bread and plating some desserts for service. As tickets came in, Ali and I got things ready for the runners who were bringing the dishes to the tables. After moving to the pasta room to help prepare grissini with Chef Shelbo, I had the opportunity to taste some of the delicious desserts I was helping to prepare. Chef Shelbo was also testing some recipes for a new item on the dessert menu, and I joined the rest of the pastry team in tasting. Finally, Chef Shelbo brought me down to the office to discuss the potential for externship at Maialino. All in all, it was a really fun and great first trail that exposed me to a lot of what pastry does at the restaurant. More…