The Culinary School Chronicles

This is the eighth article in a series about attending Culinary School.

This is the seventh article in a series about attending Culinary School.

This is the sixth article in a series about attending Culinary School. Also check out posts on Menu Planning, Cooking in Quantity, Poultry Class, Wine Tasting Class, and the Introduction to the series.

This is the fifth post in a series about attending culinary school. Also check out earlier posts on wine tasting class, poultry class, cooking in quantity, and the introduction to the series.

In my last culinary school update for this series, I wrote about making Peking ducks, the most memorable project our class has undertaken so far. The heart of our culinary program, though, lies not in our afternoon classes but our morning labs. From 7 a.m. until at least 11 a.m., we students sleepily shuffle in to prepare for the school’s breakfast and lunch service.

Now that I’ve provided an overview of Minnesota State Community and Technical College’s Culinary Arts program and also what I learned in my first few wine classes, I’m moving on to our Poultry and Seafood class. Spring break is quickly approaching and will mark the end of our poultry unit and our transition into seafood.

Now that it’s a few weeks into my second semester of culinary school (you can read the introduction to the series here), I’ve got a few wine classes under my belt. Class is truly an introduction to wine, and a non-pretentionous one, at that. There are no wine snobs in our class. Only students like myself, who enjoy drinking wine but admit to knowing nothing about it. When I introduced myself to the class, I included the fact that the first adult beverage I bought and consumed upon turning 21 was a bottle of Boone’s Farm, in the Blue Hawaiian flavor to be exact.

It’s hard to believe that four months ago, I traded I-9’s and benefits enrollment packets for recipes and knives. Last fall, I left my full time job to be a full-time culinary student at Minnesota State Technical and Community College in the sleepy town of Moorhead, MN. The culinary program takes approximately four semesters to complete and I just began my second semester in January. I hope to graduate in Spring of 2014.