day one: Margaret N. Shea vs. the <em>batonnet</em>

January 5, 2009

i arrived at kendall college about 2 and a half hours early for introduction to professional cookery. my chef’s jacket and checkered pants were too big, so i felt a bit like i was dressing up in my mother’s clothes on my first day of school. i was terrified.

at 6 pm, Chef Pierre strolled in wearing his tailored whites bearing tiny stitched french flags on the lapel, and a white neckerchief to symbolize his kitchen superiority (ours are bright blue, along with the band-aids we must use if we cut ourselves).

with a heavy french accent that more than 30 years in the United States has scarcely diminished, he is the epitome of what one might associate with culinary school. he has dark, knitted eyebrows and salt and pepper hair, yet his smile is disarmingly warm. “do you think i have an accent?” he asked us wryly. few people could understand him yet, much less the joke.

once we arrived in the kitchen, he warmly gathered us around his demonstration table–”come as close as you like”–and showed us a perfect julienne and small dice of celery, disks of carrot rondelles and a stick-like batonnet of potato.

he assigned each of us to small stations of 3, and we set out to try to make stringy celery stalks, lumpy potatoes and carrots into tiny sticks, perfect boxes and coins, each of the same thickness. next to me stood peter, a retired stock broker and trader with a wife, two kids and three burmese mountain dogs at home. across the table, lauren, a woman who had launched her own catering business, fashioned a perfect box from her potato.

“how did i do, Chef?” i asked eagerly, shoving my potato batonnet toward him with the back of my chef’s knife. he gathered up my little pile of mishapen sticks and examined them. “too big,” he replied, dropping them in a sad heap. “and these ends are uneven. it must be PEAR-fect.” he walked away. how could this be? i thought i was good in the kitchen! as it turned out, my small dice and julienne weren’t much to speak of, either. my heart sank as i cleaned my station and packed up my knife kit.

i cried nearly the whole way home. “but you got through the first day. isn’t that the hardest part?” i told myself. but i was afraid. what if i chose the wrong path?

in kathleen flinn’s book, the sharper your knife, the less you cry, she writes,

“Living is like driving,” my grandmother used to say. “You have to pick a lane.” Have I chosen the right lane? It feels like this place, this moment in time, lies exactly halfway between my past and my future.

i couldn’t piece it together quite so eloquently in that moment. but as the street blurred through my pathetic tears, i definitely knew i was miles from both my past and future. all i could do was show up to class tomorrow.

knives and spatulas and whisks, oh my!