‘Have you been to a culinary school?‘ - customers of my Istanbul cooking classes and food tours often ask. Maybe it is my enthusiasm about cooking, maybe the nature of what I am doing or (dare I assume) my dazzling expertise in the domain which makes them think I should have been through a rigorous training. My answer disappoints but even more so - puzzles: I have not gone to a culinary school and got a completely different kind of education at a business school. And then worked as a strategy consultant which may look even more irrelevant to the cooking arts but in fact makes up for a very useful background to run a kitchen.
But then there is somebody I know who went to a culinary school. A young cousin of my husband. When he comes to help at our restaurant kitchen in Sapanca I learn tremendous lot from him. Because as a former consultant you sure know how to benefit from the education someone else has got. So enter my young Turkish cousin Ömer and 5 lessons from the culinary school (he has gone to and I have learned from).
Career-coached by my mother-in-law looking for the successors of her venture within the family Ömer took cooking as a major at vocational high school and then entered university to continue the studies. By the age of 18 he has been studying cooking for 4 years but even more impressive are his two summer internships at the restaurants of 5* hotels in Cyprus and Antalya. As a part-time job during the semester he is working at a spice shop. And whenever he can he comes to help us at Zeliş Cifliği - for instance he stayed for 2 months this time. He is unstoppable at the kitchen and ready to tackle any task from fish cleaning to dish washing. I am looking at him and wondering whether somebody so young can be so fierce and yet have a clue. Ah, how easily we forget what we used to be only a decade ago!. Anyway, the lessons. Even if you don’t cook - read in, I am sure you can relate.
1. Be prepared not to be stressed
On my first days at the restaurant kitchen Ömer impressed me with starting the prep way before any anne’s helper would even come down to the kitchen. Vegetables washed, herbs chopped, sauces ready, fish or meat cut into portions and marinaded if needed, köfte knead and put in the fridge to rest. Being prepared is the key for a smooth meal service. Because when orders pile up you don’t want to find out that you’ve forgotten to take something out of the freezer, you have to go and fetch something else from a cellar and so on.
This simple idea of the simple prep makes a lot of sense for a home cook too. Being prepared may mean different things for different people of course. Özgür tells me how his mother used to spend Sunday afternoon shopping vegetables and dividing them between small bags to freeze and use on the weekdays when she, full-time police officer, had to (without much fuss) put dinner on the table for her husband and two children. When I prepare for my cooking classes I always review my recipes to plan the flow. For instance, grilling peppers for my roasted green pepper salad is something which has to be done first and if delayed we’d have to burn our fingers peeling still hot peppers and trying to catch up with the timing. So, plan and get prepared.
2. If you are not sure what to do - start somewhere
As Ömer kicks off the prep before anne comes down to the kitchen I am asking him, ‘Are you sure green pepper goes inside? Are you sure the onions should be sliced like that?‘ And he says, ‘I will make it this way and she will take it from there‘. In consulting they call it “getting to the next level”. Because you learn nothing from chopping onion only when asked. In the lower stakes situations like much of the kitchen prep is you can just go ahead and do something. In the worst case when you got it totally wrong it could be redone or fixed without much damage and you can learn from doing. And it is by doing most of us learn most effectively. Anne Ömer about way too much self-confidence he has developed before learning enough. But I agree with Ömer: you have to step up, you have to offer solutions to your kitchen bosses. Even if you will be scolded once (or many times) eventually will you learn and grow.
This is how I have been cooking over the few past weeks at our restaurant kitchen when anne was not around - starting somewhere since there was no one to ask. And now as she got back and makes the same dishes or watches me when I make them it is easier for me to see my mistakes and correct them. Because when you have done it with your hands you have noticed dozens of tiny nuances which did not occur to you when you read, listen or even watch. So, when not sure about a particular recipe or a technique stop browsing Internet in search of a perfect answer - do it somehow and learn from that!
3. Clean up after every single step
Busy kitchen becomes chaotic and messy very easily. Here you have not cleared the space after peeling and chopping potatoes and the next thing you know your peeler so needed for carrots gets burred under the potato skins. You have not washed your grater after grating tomatoes for the sauce and all of a sudden you need it to grate some cheese. That’s why if there were just one rule to govern the kitchen it would be - clean after every single step (unless you are a baker which gives you a poetic license to keep chaos around until you are done).
Ömer said he had learned this rule hard way getting screamed at by the kitchen patrons he worked with. Which probably was a very efficient teaching method as Ömer is an exemplary follower of the rule. He trims fish and then cleans the whole area including the sink where he washed the fish to avoid cross-contamination. He is done with chopping - time to clean the working surface, cutting board and the knives. After working with many helpers at our kitchen this virtue of him alone makes me endlessly worship Ömer. And after the day of cooking with him our closing down is a breeze with only stove and flours left for cleaning. Morale? To make cleaning after the cooking easier clean up as you go. And when you are back to the kitchen next time you are ready to start cooking again immediately.
4. Handle big volumes to master cooking
‘Here, look! Press harder here‘, Ömer was showing me how to shape restaurant style köfte, Turkish meatballs that are supposed to get ribs from the three fingers - index, middle and ring one - you put together to leave a rib-like stamp on a soft meatball. And just like when you do something for first time I seemed to do exactly what he showed but could not produce quite the same results. ‘In the restaurant were I worked we used to turn 70-80 kg of meat at once‘, he smiled. Think a 5* hotel at a super-popular resort and you get an idea about the volumes.
We do have volumes at the restaurant of Zeliş Cifliği but not quite the same. Through my brief career as a restaurant cook I may have already overtook any home cook by the number of red peppers I have peeled or onions I have chopped. But then handling 70-80 kg of something can only take place during the preservation season. And still I have learned a lot - handling volumes make your hand quicker as invariably you find more efficient way to perform a certain task and you refine your recipes, cooking times and proportions. Conclusion? Just cook, cook as much as you can, whatever you fell like, when time may not be right or you may not have all the needed ingredients at hand - just cook and a mere volume would teach you a lot.
5. When done enough - do more
Sometimes (as it gets closer to 10 pm) I think, ‘Enough! Let’s just get this on the table!‘ whereas Ömer will be doing a final touch - being it throwing a simple salad to the plate of a fish main, browning that meat on the grill to perfection or artistically pouring mulberry sauce on his recent dessert idea - Turkish-style ice-cream with candy floss. And I think this determination to walk an extra mile and make your food perfect is what separates those who just turns volumes and those who are serious about their food and want their customers come back again.
I feel controversial about perfectionism. It’s a big obstacle for growth in a way and it really slows down your cooking - when you need to put together a meal for a dozen of hungry people you have to draw the line in how perfectionist you can be. But at the same time perfectionism is absolutely required in cooking because feeding people is genuine moment of truth and as Ömer puts it, ‘If they don’t like it they don’t come back‘. Was I also so sensible when I was 18?
