When I mention to people I meet that I work at Culinary College, their next question is usually "So what's your specialty?" When I answer "English", it's met with a laugh, a shrug, or more often, "No, really, what do you teach?"
When I'm through explaining, most people understand that as a College, LCB Portland to be exact, we offer degrees that require a general education component, just like a Bachelor's in English or Business would at a four-year school. At this point the brows begin to furrow and some now likely assume that I must not be a very good cook. While I might not have the chops of many of my fellow instructors, my background as a chef and caterer keeps me involved in club activities and demonstrations year round.
Fact is, the Gen-ed classes offer plenty of opportunities to discuss food. Menus, trends, recipes and notable chefs are common topics in the Management, Writing and Communications courses I teach. My students have come to expect the daily food discussions as part of the learning routine. I try to make the most of the fact that I am both a chef and a teacher; my students appreciate that. I think they also see that the importance of their own education, and that an LCB education can offer more than just a restaurant job.
One of the daily discussions we have is a little 10-minute session we start class with called "Food for Thought." In today's FfT, for example, we discussed the intricacies of a great Joyce Goldstein dessert known as the Aurora Tart.
This tart, as Joyce describes it, is not for amateurs. It requires building a pate brisee crust in a spring form pan and blind-baking it. Then a caramel custard is added, then it's baked again. Then a layer of chocolate ganache is added, then the tart is chilled. It's finished with a pecan-or-hazelnut praline cream, then can be chilled again or even frozen. What you have when you slice it is a profile that resembles the aurora borealis, hence the name. It's a fabulous dessert.
In a typical "Food for Thought" we don't discuss exact recipes per-se, but more importantly the subtle, difference-making techniques that can make or break a dish. In the Aurora tart, it would be to blind bake the crust at just the right time and temp so as to prevent over-browning on the second bake.
Yes, there are written projects, math, adverbs, resumes, speeches, and spelling in Gen-ed, but there's also food in very healthy portions.
