If I Get Laid Off: Damn Fine Cooking

The entire inspiration for this blog was to document different endeavors I am undertaking while laid off (and occasionally rant about politics). Last week I found the ultimate laid-off experience. The class was entitled "The Art of Fine Cooking" and taught by Richard Ruben at the Institute of Culinary Education. I like to eat. From that interest came a love of cooking. This class was five days long, about six hours a day, and between the history and lessons, the professor, the other students, eating a five course meal with wine daily, and getting inspired to go home and cook more, it was probably the best of the free-time activity I've tried so far.

I walked into the lobby on day one and saw a group of relatively attractive middle-aged women assembling. The receptionist informed me "oh no, that's Cooking 101. You're in Fine Cooking down the hall." I continued walking and as I entered the classroom, naturally, was a group of almost all men around 25-60. Not that I expected a crowd of supermodels at a cooking class, but the gender makeup was a bit surprising. Of course, as I walked around meeting people we all came to the realization that over 50% of the class was laid off bankers, including an older English guy I worked with for the past five years (neither of us knew the other would be in the class)! I guess in all these efforts to go out and do original activities I had become the ultimate cliche. The teacher also informed us that until last fall, the class generally had been mostly female, with the 101 class being mostly male. In his words, "half the bankers are laid off and want to really learn to cook. The other half have told their gold-digger wives that the days of eating out every night are over and it's time to learn to boil pasta."

Basically every class consisted of approximately an hour or two of lecture that covered a variety of topics focused on the food we would cook that day. One day we were going to braise lamb shanks and we learned about how the actual process of braising works with regard to the liquid used, how the air interacts, and how different types of meat break down. One day we made souffles and learned that instead of just buttering the sides of the small pans you add sugar, which acts as the rungs of a ladder for the souffle to climb (yes, that is ridiculous to know but I love random knowledge like this). Another highlight was learning how to make compound butter...that stuff if you go to Les Halles or Pastis that they'll top of your Steak Frites with.

The lessons were great, but the teacher made the class. Richard was definitely on the, how do you say, gayer side of the spectrum and started off the class with one sexual allusion after another, and a barrage of attitude-filled hilarious comments. At the end of the first day I turned to one of the older guys in the class, who was a retired steel mill worker who recently discovered a love of cooking, to say how funny I thought Richard was. The only retort was a gruff, "I don't really like his style". Richard's knowledge of a kitchen, technique, and food culture was amazing. What was even more impressive was his self-proclaimed specialization in "food history". At one point I was talking to him about Indian curries and he gave me a whole history of how meat was introduced to Indian spices and curry from when the Assyrians invaded, and then how the Imperial British rule changed the flavors of many dishes. I'm definitely hoping the guy writes a sass-filled book on this stuff some day, and even the steel mill guy was thoroughly won over by week's end.

The class was a pretty amazing composition as well. In addition to the laid off banker crew and the steel worker, there was an awesome older man from Korea named Dean. He didn't really cook much or seem to pay attention, but he had a tremendous smile on his face at all times, took pictures incessantly, and would just get drunk at lunch every day. It turned out that his daughter had a baby recently, and Dean and his wife came to help out. Dean was apparently getting in the way of grandma and mother, so they signed him up for the class to get him out of the house. Now that is childraising we can all believe in.