Cooking as Fast as I Can (13 page)

But there was little time to think that first week, a blur of tours, orientation sessions, including a stern lecture on the history of the uniform and toqueing ceremony, the issuing of the culinary tool kit and pastry tool kit, more lectures on how we were supposed to be immaculate every moment of every day, and would get points deducted if our whites were not spotless. I didn't know a soul, not even a friend of a friend of a friend, and no one seemed interested in getting acquainted.

My enduring memory of this time is how out of place I felt, how lame and clueless. I could sit in my dorm room all by
myself and make myself blush to the tips of my hair remembering how proud I'd felt winning the Taste of Elegance with my stuffed pork loins. In class, it was obvious to everyone that I was inexperienced and unprepared. I was terrified at the thought of how much I didn't know. I could make a few tasty dishes in my mother's kitchen, but otherwise I was ignorant. In Jackson we had parsley, and once my mom tried to grow oregano in the backyard, but most of my fellow students already knew how to make a
sachet d'épices
, a little cheesecloth pouch filled with herbs and spices, usually bay leaf, thyme, parsley stems, garlic, and whole black peppercorns, used to enhance the flavor of stocks. I hadn't even heard of it.

I'd never been aware that I had what some folks might consider a thick southern accent, but my instructors had a hard time understanding me. Most of my fellow students were nineteen or twenty, and struck me as squirrely and young. The sopping, mosquito-slapping Mississippi heat was nothing to me, but in Hyde Park I was always cold. It was pure misery from sunrise to midnight, which were the hours they expected you to keep.

Two weeks into the semester I went into the administration office and withdrew, hurled my crap back into my Honda, and drove home, eighteen hours straight through. The Culinary Institute refunded my tuition and fees, no questions asked. Their decency made me feel even more like a failure than I already did, which I didn't think was possible.

Although she was too tactful to say it, I'm sure Hannah was happy to see me for about seventeen minutes, after which my self-pity and wallowing must have been insufferable. I had had some dark days, but these had to have been the darkest. What in the hell was I doing? I had wasted forty-five minutes of the great Julia Child's time, and at her age that was a lot.
I had disappointed my parents and grandmom, who never scoffed at my enthusiasm and thought I had it in me to be a great chef. I had prepared Hannah for a long-distance relationship, only to show up back on her doorstep (actually my doorstep, since she was living with my parents and grandmom on Swan Lake Drive), a coward and a quitter.

What had I done? In those days, every top restaurant insisted on staffing its kitchen with graduates from the Culinary Institute of America. Every newspaper ad began: “Looking for CIA grad.” Closing the door on an education at the Culinary Institute meant closing the door on a life as a chef. Period. Things are more relaxed today. Restaurants would prefer their cooks to have some cooking school experience, but it's no longer a prerequisite. Still, for me, a girl from Mississippi, education would always be my ticket out. I valued the importance of it then and still do.

Also, even though I was in the middle of a meltdown during my short time there, I saw clearly that for me to succeed in the larger world, I would need to make friends and connections with people from New York, at the time the undisputed fine-dining capital of the nation. The whole experience had emphasized the fact that I was a little girl from the rural South with a huge dream and no way of making it come true. Or, in my self-pity, that's what I'd come to believe.

Then one day my dad was in the backyard smoking a brisket and reading a book. He was never one to offer an opinion just to hear himself talk. He told me to pull up a chair. “You know, Cathy,” he said. “Just because you didn't make it this time doesn't mean you'll never make it. There's nothing to say you can't try again. You haven't lost anything.”

I mulled this over for a few days, then I sat down and wrote the people at the Culinary Institute a letter, first apolo
gizing for having wasted anyone's time, then explaining that I was so enthusiastic about their program and the possibilities it offered that I never considered the culture shock that would befall me. It was difficult for me to admit it, but I told them I had simply been overwhelmed. I told them I wanted to reenroll and give it another shot.

These were the days before email became the preferred method of communication. I waited for the mailman. Finally the letter came. The people at the Culinary Institute were gracious in their response, suggesting I take a year to get some more restaurant experience under my belt before returning to Hyde Park to begin again. They ended by saying they were looking forward to having me back.

Then and now, having something to prove lights a fire under me. Since my abuse at the hand of AH, I'd always struggled with feelings of worthlessness, and failure tended to stir up that original feeling. Therapy was years in the future, but one day I would understand that for good or for ill, having something to prove motivated me to push hard to succeed, to show to myself and the world that I was a good person capable of excellence.

Shortly afterward, I got a job at the University Club, a private dining club in Jackson. As luck would have it, the executive sous chef had just graduated from the Culinary Institute and knew the ropes. Paul was a Yankee through and through, a short guy with a huge personality and a thick Philly accent. My initial impression was that he was possibly the biggest jerk I'd ever met, but perhaps it was just a matter of getting used to one another, because one day we just started getting along. I confessed that I'd washed out of his alma mater, and wanted to
learn anything he had to teach me. Perhaps he viewed me as a diamond in the rough, but Paul made it his mission to get me ready. I became his project.

He drilled me on my knife skills, required me to take the concept of
mise en place
seriously. From the French “putting in place,” it means assembling, peeling, grating, cutting, and measuring all your ingredients before you begin to cook. This is the foundation of the chef's ability to turn out perfect dishes quickly and seemingly effortlessly. He taught me how to make a flawless stock and from that a flawless sauce. The standards for soups at the Culinary were legendary: consommé must be so clear you can read the date on a dime at the bottom of the pot.

I knew I knew how to cook, but I'd also developed bad habits. He pointed them out to me and implored me to correct them before I went back north. He taught me how to roast, grill, and sauté with the necessary speed, efficiency, and consistency. On a given evening a home cook might grill a few pork chops; in a restaurant she grills a few dozen, and they all have to be perfect and identical. He taught me how to butcher with confidence. He put me on every station in the kitchen. I prepped, worked the flattop firing meat and fish, made cold appetizers and soups, and prepared desserts. Every trick and technique Paul had in his arsenal he generously passed on to me.

I also accumulated the necessary burns and cuts to teach me how to move with grace and efficiency in a small kitchen. Once, minutes before dinner service, I was cleaning something on the fryer with a long hamburger spatula. I was working away, really leaning into it, when the spatula slipped and slapped the hot oil, sending it splashing down my arm. It was easily a second-degree burn, but someone slapped on some
ointment, wrapped it, and the orders were coming up and I was on the grill and I kept cooking.

I had a bucket of ice water on the floor beside me, and every five minutes or so I would unwrap my arm and plunge it into the bucket to draw the heat off the burn. It went on that way all night. Grill up a burger or steak, plate it, plunge my arm into the bucket. Grill it, plate it, plunge it. Only after service was over and the kitchen was spotless did I take myself to the emergency room. That day it became clear to me that I possessed the proper amount of determination, discipline, and sheer crazy to make it as a chef.

I cut myself every day for months on end. Sliced off the tips of my fingers and nicked my knuckles. Once I caught the blade edge of a falling knife with my open hand.

I also learned the most important skill of all: how to keep my jacket clean. I learned not to wipe my hands on my front; not to put down a pan so hard that it splashes; not to drag my sleeve through a hotel pan of marinara sauce; not to squirt myself with demi-glace, purée, or vinaigrette; not to lean against a dirty counter that needs to be wiped down. A clean jacket for the duration of service tells the world that you know what you're doing, and by the time I left the University Club and returned to the Culinary Institute of America, my jacket was spotless. Alongside the skills he passed on to me, Paul taught me to be confident. I've lost track of him over the years, but I remain grateful for his kindness.

A year later the stars aligned for me at the Culinary. My informal training at the University Club served me in good stead. I breezed through the first month with only a few normal episodes of nerves. I didn't have the world's greatest knife skills,
nor could I easily produce the flawless gin-clear consommé our instructors insisted upon, but I was focused and confident.

We were graded hard not just on our cooking but on our appearance. We showed up each morning in full chef regalia—black shoes, checked pants, white jacket, necktie, and nine-inch toque. People with long hair had to keep it pulled back and neat. I wore a ponytail, but as I worked in the hot kitchen pieces of hair slipped out of the elastic. To solve this I went a little punk, shaved the sides of my head so that when I wore my toque the only visible hair was my ponytail at the back of my head. The sides were shaved clean.

Every morning shoes polished. Necktie just so. Spotless whites. Toque balanced on my ponytail. People were impressed. They wondered whether I'd been in the military. The shaved-sides-of-the-head thing became a trend. There were only six women in my class—the most they'd ever admitted in a single class in the school's history—and all but one shaved the sides of their heads.

Until the Culinary, I hadn't given much thought to my essential friendlessness. I had my family and Hannah, but I hadn't made any real friends since Wingfield High School. College had been fraught with doomed romantic entanglements and mostly mind-numbing coursework. I'd steered clear of clubs and organizations where I might actually meet strangers who would become friends.

Now, suddenly, I had a girl gang, a posse of likeminded females, and I was giddy.

My two best friends (just like high school the rule of superlatives didn't apply) were Lorilynn and Kristin. Lorilynn was tall, Julia Child size, with red hair and a big laugh. Kristin was a Jersey girl, also big and boisterous. I was more than a foot
shorter than Lorilynn (she's six four, I'm five two), and we developed a shtick whereby every day at lunch we'd make an entrance. I stood between her and Kristen, bent my arms at a ninety-degree angle, and they would lift me up by my elbows and carry me in.

In our few spare moments away from the kitchen we liked to shoot pool, and it was during one such game that one of them said, “You're up, Cat.”

From that moment on I was Cat Cora. Only my family, close friends, and therapist still call me Cathy.

I also rediscovered my love of extracurriculars. I was vice president of the Epicures of Wine Club, vice president of the Gourmet Society and also coeditor of a self-published student cookbook. We solicited recipes from other students, and created a contest where they had to cook their proposed dishes in order to have their recipes included in the book. We called the book
Kitchen Aid
, and all the proceeds went to charity.

Hannah had decided this time around she would come with me. We rented a beautiful little place in Rhinebeck—a ten-minute drive from campus—a loft apartment with a big picture window overlooking the Hudson. Rhinebeck is a picturesque town, with many historical plaques, antiques shops, and Dutch-style architecture, a holdover from the early settlers. I surprised myself a little by falling in love with it.