Kitchen word for the day: MISE EN PLACE: Pronounced MEEZ ahn plahs, means to have all your ingredients prepared and ready to go before you start cooking. Translated, “ to put in place.”
What an exciting day! I was up at 6:00 am and ready for my first day of culinary school. My equipment bag and brand new knives were ready, my uniform was ready, and after having a decent breakfast of Fiber One cereal and Bustelo coffee, I was off on a new journey!
We were asked to be at the school by 8:00 to allow enough time to clock in, process our student IDs, get our locker numbers and our books and put on our uniforms. I attempted to chat with my some of my classmates while we were waiting, reminiscent of how I used to get in trouble in grade school for being too excitable and talkative. I hope they didn’t think I was weird or on crack. We went up the 14th floor to our kitchen classroom for the next year. Met Jennifer Fallon, who gave us our orientation, and a serious talk about not wearing our chef uniforms outside of the school (Dang it! I wanted to show off my uniform while taking the subway!). Turn out that it was a health code violation. Okay.
We then met our chef instructor, Chef Chris Gesualdi, a man who impressed me as someone who was really serious about his craft. I was a little disappointed though because I was expecting a chef with a French accent like the one Julia Childs had in that movie, Julie and Julia. Instead I get someone who reminds me of the sergeants you see at boot camp movies. I shall share more about the guy later.
First lesson for the day was about kitchen sanitation, a tour around the kitchen, what a china cap was and why is it different from a chinoise (I learned this already when I used to work for Williams Sonoma!), what a spider was (not the arachnid variety!) and MISE EN PLACE. And boy did Chef Chris teach us that word, because all day, as we proceeded into knife skills, chopping potatoes, onions and shallots like no tomorrow, he would hover around and say “mise en place guys, mise en place!” at the same time reminding us to clean our areas constantly.
MISE EN PLACE. The fact that we always need to have our ingredients ready, prepped and organized before we start firing up the stove, sounds simplistic but does make valuable sense. Cooking becomes even more stress free and fun. I remember how angry I would get at myself when I would attempt to create a dish like “rendang” and realizing as I started cooking that I didn’t have kefir lime leaves and galanga. Or, that time when I wanted to make Pineapple Upside Down Cake; after mixing all my dry ingredients, realizing that I didn’t have sour cream in my fridge!
