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Working Your Way Up The Ladder
While you’re in culinary school, you’ll have an opportunity to work your own kitchen station, work at different departments, and eventually create your own restaurant menu. Students at The French Culinary Institute in New York City have the added benefit of working in the school’s own Zagat reviewed restaurant, L’Ecole. It’s here where the students really get into restaurant management. Students have a chance to develop their own menus, based on their own recipes and culinary creations. If you’re a student, keep all of these things for your portfolio. When it comes time to look for restaurant jobs, you should have those things ready to show. Depending on where you work, you may be able to quickly incorporate some of your recipes into the restaurant’s main menu.
Keep in mind that as you go to work in your first restaurant job, the owner may not be interested in letting you take over the kitchen with your own recipes. At least not right away. Build up a reputation in the business, make suggestions, and pay attention to any constructive feedback you get on the job. Remember, if this is your first restaurant job, it’s important to start at the bottom rung and climb your way up. If you’re lucky, you won’t even start at the bottom. A good culinary education might get you on the second or third rung of that ladder!
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To Become a Successful Chef, Attend the Best Chef School
Becoming a chef shouldn’t take years out of your life. Let’s face it, there are no shortcuts in life, but you’d be surprised at what you can learn in a six- to nine-month time frame. Instead of adding unnecessary fillers to the curriculum, schools like The French Culinary Institute in New York City have focused on nothing but quality.
Take either six months of full-time study at the Institute, or continue to work and attend chef school in the evenings over a period of nine months. It’s easy to set up our own road blocks as a way of protecting ourselves from success. However, with The French Culinary Institute, it’s pretty much impossible to come up with excuses not to attend. You get to pick one course, several courses, an entire program, and even the time of day best for you to attend.
When deciding which classes to take, it’s important to find out who the instructors are. Are they well known in the industry? Do they bring a wealth of experience to their instruction? Are they practiced in a variety of techniques? Remember, you’ll only be in chef school a short amount of time, but you’ll have the career for a lifetime. In order to start your career on the right foot, your resume should reflect your skills, practical experience, and highlight the executive chefs who guided, mentored, and taught you along the way.
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Developing Your Portfolio as a Food Critic
The key to becoming a food critic is having experience in the food industry. You’ll need creative writing skills, a keen eye for quality foods, and the credentials to back up your recommendations. Those skills aren’t developed overnight, but you have to start somewhere. If you’re interested in learning how to become a food critic, you first have to draw on your educational and employment history. Are you a recent graduate of cooking school? If so, the more prestigious the school, the better your chances of securing work as a food critic. Like it or not, you need to have the power of prestigious names backing you up in order to be initially taken seriously.
Building a list of credentials and references is the perfect way to build your portfolio. In order to sell yourself as a food critic, those professional affiliations are going to speak volumes, positioning you as a valued, respected food critic. As your portfolio grows, so will your employment opportunities. Eventually, people will be using your name on their portfolio. Becoming a food critic, like anything else, takes a gradual climb to the top through experience and education.
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Bread Baking - Letting Go of the Fear
What’s in your bread box?Maybe you’ve got a package of store-bought white bread and some bagels.Whatever is in there probably doesn’t fill the house with the heavenly scent of freshly baked bread!When bread machines first hit the market, everyone was clamoring to buy one.Finally, an easy way to make homemade bread!It’s true -- you can certainly toss the ingredients into the mixer and voila! “homemade” bread.But wouldn’t you like to be able to get your hands dirty and really make your own bread?
Don’t be afraid of bread baking.Depending on your current age, you may remember your grandmother pounding out the dough, waiting for it to rise, etc.Maybe your own mother or father was into bread baking!For some reason, there’s a huge mystique around bread baking.It’s easy if you know the tricks involved, and the place to learn the tricks is through a continuing education or part-time study course.Imagine being able to serve up a plate of freshly sliced gourmet bread slices to your guests.What a treat to serve hot bread right out of the oven!
You want to know what stops a lot of people from giving bread baking a try?Fear.There are people who are afraid of math and avoid it like the plague.The same holds true for bread baking.Some people just don’t even want to go there.However, if there’s a lingering desire to take bread baking lessons, don’t let fear prevent you from doing it. Sign up for a cooking class right now!
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How to Become a Food Critic
Many see a food critic as a way to eat and get paid, but it's not that simple. Would you like to know how to become a food critic? Here are a few tips that will tell you how you can become a food critic.
1. Learn how to evaluate all features of the restaurant -- service, food, atmosphere, etc. Take a class in restaurant reviews, and check out your local bookstore for reading materials. 2. Find out how to combine your knowledge of the food and restaurant business to make it informative and compelling. Talk with someone in the industry who can share their insights on being a food critic. 3. Take a course in culinary arts, food writing and journalism. 4. Keep a journal for all your restaurant visits. 5. Learn how to taste wines. 6. Be ready to give a bad review if the restaurant's food, service and/or etc. are not pleasing to you. 7. Begin marketing yourself with your local newspapers and other publications. 8. Keep abreast of the new trends in the food and restaurant industry.
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Hoping for the Best; Planning for the Worst
If you’re a culinary institute student moving into Level 4 of your training, it’s time to put on your management hat on because you’re going to be making some big decisions.First there’s a large buffet to plan for, weekly menus to prepare, and ingredients to order.At this stage of the game, you’ll be evaluated on everything you do, from the traffic flow you create to the way you and your team organize and create menus for the college staff.
There are a lot of things that can go right, and a lot of things that can go wrong.Always be prepared for the things that can go wrong.For students in New York City, ordering a wide variety of ethnic ingredients shouldn’t be a problem.But there’s always the chance that you won’t get your ingredients in time, you get the wrong ingredients, or your grand idea turned flat at the last minute.As a professional culinary arts student, you and your team will really have to work closely together to make it work, no matter what happens.This is where the real testing begins.Do you completely lose it and walk out on your team, or do you work together to come up with a solution?
At this stage of the game, you’re really going to be in the thick of things.You’ve aced the mid-terms and you’re moving quickly into the drama and theatre of the culinary arts.It’s time to think on your feet, utilize your problem-solving skills, and stay focused.
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Choosing Culinary Classes
The one thing you will need to know when choosing your culinary classes is how long you want to study. If you're looking to study for one year or less you may consider choosing culinary classes that will provide you with a certificate -- culinary certificates normally require up to one year of study. If you have two years to spare you may choose to obtain an associate's degree -- this usually requires two years of study. If you are serious about a full time career in the culinary arts, you'll consider enrolling an accredited culinary institution or cooking school.
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Defining Culinary Success
As we move into a much more enlightened age, it’s important to recognize that success isn’t defined solely by dollar figures or material goods. How you define success might be completely different from another point of view. Graduates of culinary schools, for example, might define success as having opened a new bakery, taken over the management of a restaurant, or established their own unique pastry creation.
If you’re considering attending one of the best culinary schools, it’s important to have a clear idea of your goals before you even set foot in the door. Define your success before you get started. That way, as you move through the curriculum, you’ll know where you want to go, what you want to do, and what steps you’ll need to take to get there. If your goals change part-way through the curriculum, don’t worry! The point is to build your foundation for success by keeping goals in sight.
The next thing to do is to evaluate how reasonable your goals are. It’s not negative or weak to take a step back and say, hey! maybe my goals are out of reach at this particular time. That doesn’t mean letting go of your dreams, it just opens up your mind space to be able to accept that your goals might take time to achieve. In the meantime, be open to every new culinary experience that comes along. Keep your options open!
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Cooking Classes in Tuscany
There are many great cooking schools in the Tuscany Region and some not-so-great ones. The Villa Pandolfini Gastronomical Adventure costs about $2,800 per person. The cost includes your accommodations at a Tuscany villa, all meals, all tours and transportation to and from Florence to the villa. There is plenty of “hands-on” participation and loads of camaraderie. By the end of the week, you will make many new friends. You cook every day and shop for ingredients at local markets.
Cooking with Divina Cucina is also an excellent cooking class. Gourmet Chef Judy's classes are of shorter duration and do not include accommodations. The one, two, three or five day sessions are taught at her studio on Via Taddea near the incredible Central Market in Florence.
Classes are hands-on and combine cooking, wine tastings, shopping and even a dash of art appreciation. Prices range from $375 for one day to $1,300 for five days.
A third source for locating Tuscany cooking classes is Shawguides. Caution: Class size and English language proficiency are two key factors to ask about in a Tuscany cooking school. The smaller the class, the more personalized it is. There are more opportunities for hands-on participation and time for questions. Language proficiency is critical. No matter how good a chef may be if you have difficulty understanding him or her, the class will be more frustrating than fun. Before you book a course, speak directly with the chef and make sure you are on the same wavelength. Happy Travels! Mangia!
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Advanced Food Preparation
Cooking classes in advanced food preparation will introduce you to the more advanced cooking techniques and principles. Some of those techniques and principles may include: preparation of cultural and commercial foods, holiday foods, and foods for special events. These are skills that are learned and mastered after you complete the basic courses in cooking. Advanced food preparation can prepare you for a career in catering, and it will help you in your ability to work under pressure. Advanced food preparation gives you hands-on experience.
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Chef Courses at New York Culinary School
If you're thing about becoming a chef then studying in a New York culinary school should be number one on your shopping list. Taking on a job as a chef demands skilled qualification, and this can be obtained by attending a New York culinary school.
There are many courses available, through New York culinary schools, to help you obtain the qualifications for a chef position, and some of those courses are: essentials of fine cooking, essentials of pastry, essentials of Italian cooking, fundamentals of Italian cooking, classic culinary arts, baking and pastry, professional and commercial cooking, and culinary arts.
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Chef Salaries
As with any career choice, you have to start at square one and work your way up. Unless your father’s last name is Trump or Hilton, you’re probably not going to start out as a star chef on a primetime reality show. Even taking cooking classes in New York City won’t guarantee an illustrious career. But it helps. Salaries for sous chefs (the second in command on the kitchen scene) make an average of $45,000, give or take. Naturally, salary earned depends on position, experience, and where you’re employed.
You may have to start out doing voluntary work or intern with a restaurant in order to get your start. Eventually, you’ll work your way into a position, probably somewhere around the bottom of the totem pole. Stick with it though! Work hard, keep your eyes open for new positions that showcase your talents, and align yourself to be able to accept more responsibility, and eventually, more pay.
The number one question culinary students, or people thinking about getting into the field, want to know is how much money they’ll make. That’s a hard one to answer because it isn’t precise. Chef salaries really depend on where you work, your experience, reputation, etc. It’s not unreasonable to expect to earn anywhere from $40,000 upwards of $70,000. Again, it all depends on a number of variables. A chef with an entrepreneurial streak could make a lot more by finding a niche market for their services.
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