Beaten, Seared, and Sauced by Jonathan Dixon Read Free Book Online

stampede of just barely postpubescent students in a frenzy to get their mitts on their knives. A trio of faculty members standing behind several folding tables piled up with our toys was overrun and swallowed by the throng. I sat down on a bench to wait it out. A guy sat down next to me. I recognized him from orientation. He was laughing at the commotion. Another guy sat down next to him. “Man,” the third guy said. “The kids really want those freaking knives.”
    Some kids had freed their knives from their tool kit, and I saw the glint of light on steel as they flashed the blades around and squealedand grunted with excitement. The second guy said, “It’s like they’ve just discovered fire or something.”
    “Yeah, but I have to admit,” I added, “I kind of want my stuff too.”
    “Well, yeah,” the second one said. “But please—a little dignity.” He introduced himself as Adam Walker. The other guy told us his name was Stephen. Adam was from Texas, Stephen from Georgia.
    When the crowd had thinned, Adam, Stephen, and I each went to the tables, gave our names, and were handed a tote bag full of books, a knife roll, and a backpack embroidered with the CIA logo. I didn’t look inside anything; I wanted to wait. I wanted to see what sort of tools I’d be making a future with, what books would be guiding me through it. I said good-bye to Adam and Stephen and drove back to Rhinebeck. I sat on the floor in the waning evening light and methodically went through everything.
    The backpack was stuffed with packages, and inside the packages were things like spatulas, whisks, a wooden spoon, side towels, measuring spoons, a vegetable peeler, a wine bottle opener, and a melon baller.
    I opened the knife kit. A paring knife. A slicing knife. A boning knife. A bread knife. A fillet knife. A long, heavy chef’s knife. They were made of solid German steel, beautiful and gleaming. I tested the edge of the chef’s knife against a piece of paper, and the blade seemed to float right through it without any resistance at all.
    Of the textbooks, I already owned
The Professional Chef
and Harold McGee’s
On Food and Cooking
, but they suddenly felt new. Before, when I thumbed through the pages, they felt unyielding and mysterious, but they’d be giving up their secrets now. Months off in the distance, I’d be taking the Garde-Manger class—also known as the hors d’oeuvre class, encompassing the making of composed salads, appetizers, amuse-bouches, basic charcuterie, things like that—and I flipped through the class’s textbook. How to smoke a duck. Making my own pancetta. Making sushi. A recipe for sausage en brioche. Empanadas. Tenderloin and horseradish on toast points. Shrimp quesadillas.
    I immediately thought about the wedding Nelly and I had gone tothe summer before. After the ceremony, servers worked the room with plates of appetizers just like the ones in this book’s pages. I situated myself near the door to the kitchen and accosted the servers as they came out with their trays.
I’d
be making this stuff, and I’d be learning to make it perfectly, and that perfection—of technique, of conception—would someday become second nature. This was the best cooking school in the country. And I’d be a product of it. Someday.
    S TEPHEN AND I SAT next to each other in the front row of Culinary Math class. Adam sat a few tables behind us. I rolled my pencil back and forth across the surface of my notebook, made random calculations on my calculator just to see the numbers change, and willed myself to try and pay attention.
    If a pound of carrots has a yield of 87 percent, how many ounces will that be? And if that pound of carrots is meant to serve seven people, what will their portion sizes be?
    Say you wanted to make this recipe for tacos, which serves ten, for thirty-two people—what would the new portion of red onion be? What amount of cilantro? And if that cilantro has a 68 percent yield, how many bunches of it