Branson Courier
- Today: Tuesday, July 8, 2008
- Submissions/Contact Us - To submit press releases, contact the editor, The Ole Seagull, submit "letters to the editior, questions, items for publication, etc. or to otherwise contact us click here.
- Your privacy is very important to us. Click here for our Privacy Policy.
 |
| Candlestick' Chef Alden K. Grant |
“For a chef, the Culinary Institute of America is heaven,” Grant said. “It’s an unbelievable environment. I hated to leave.”
For an aspiring chef, the school, located in Hyde Park, N.Y., is the highest rung on this country’s ladder of culinary education. It's the crème de la crème.
Look over some of the school's information and you get the idea.
“When we speak food, the world listens,” reads their website. “Our faculty, facilities, and academic programs foster the ability to think creatively, solve problems, and understand what it takes to be a leader.”
For a bright renaissance man like Grant who spends his free time writing plays and poetry, working his way through the CIA was a challenge he thrived on.
Grant, head chef at the Candlestick Restaurant, sits down at a linen covered table inside the restaurant and begins explaining a little about what it was like inside those hallowed halls of culinary wisdom, and about his vision to put his creativity to work at Branson's premier fine dining establishment.
He settles into his chair beside a window with the restaurant's panoramic cliff-top view of a crisp autumn day over the city of Branson. The outside light captures a sparkle in the young chef's eye and it does not take too long talking with him to understand way it is there. Apart from a quick and dry sense of humor, Grant is focused and dead serious about his craft. His desire to become a master of culinary arts began early.
An early appreciation of fine food
 |
| Candlesticks's Creme Brule is a special dessert |
“Even as a kid I loved to cook," Grant said. “I used to volunteer to help out at restaurants around Springfield. I graduated from high school at 16,” he said. “I went to Utah, Clearfield College in Utah, and apprenticed as a chef.”
From there, Grant went to San Francisco and Cleveland, where he worked for the Marriott Hotel restaurants. At 19 years old he was accepted into he CIA.
“There was about a three to six month wait to get in after you were accepted and you had to have a minimum of one year’s experience at a full service restaurant,” he said.
Once a student begins the course of study at the CIA, the school literally turns up the heat on full service culinary learning. The college curriculum is an intense academic and hands-on experience that covers more than soup to nuts. Students begin with the very basics and progress to toward classes that divulge the secrets of fine dining magic.
“We started with gastronomy and culinary math,” Grant said. “Next came meat cutting.” The course was a little more involved than it sounds.
“We went out to the farm, inspected an animal then butchered a cow,” Grant.
Did you say butchered a cow?
“Oh yeah,” Grant smiles. “We are talking about the CIA, here. They are unique and individual in their own right, in everything they do. So you are butchering the cow, you start with full-primals (cuts) then break it down to sub-primals. After that, you go into your next class where you take you sub-primals and break them down into restaurant cuts.”
Next came more instruction about knife cuts. Then instruction began in how to make roux, soups and sauces.
“While you are doing that, you are also making an entrée everyday. One for you. One for the chef. You are cooking two plates but they are complete meals.”
From there, the fledgling chefs moved to learning about hot foods. “Now you are cooking for 100 people, but you are only at one station at a time. You might be doing a veal chop, but you are doing it 100 times. The next day, you are doing the roast beef, the next day the lobster, until you do the whole rotation.”
The instruction includes all types of fish preparations and charcuterie (classical french sausage making) and garde manger (pates, salad dressing, salads, ballintines and a variety of cold food).
Once a student survives the first round of initial instruction, they are required to leave the school and go to work in the industry for one year. After they complete and show documentation of that year, they return to the CIA to begin instruction in baking.
“You start out with bread, then go to pies and cakes,” he said. “After that, you go to a higher class of baking - pastries, torts, petit fours, really fancy stuff.”
Next comes instruction in wines.
"After that, comes courses in menus, cost control, supervisory development class, and miscellaneous management classes,” he said.
Next stop on the food chain comes “banquet cooking and quantitive methods” Grant said.
Were the chefs critical?
“Did the chefs criticize you a lot?” Grant repeated, “You better believe they criticized you! It’s all fair in love and war. They hold nothing back, or you can’t improve. If there is too much salt, they throw the plate at you.”
The chef instructors were not above a little high jinx. “It wasn’t unusual for you to turn your back and a chef turns up your stove up. He's in the corner giggling while your food burns up because you should have been paying better attention, and that can happen in a restaurant.”
Precision in the kitchen was more important than speed.
“They would show you a knife cut,” Grant said. “They want to see not how many you can cut, but can you cut it exactly right. If you can only cut four they had all better be perfect. If you can cut four that he can take to a tape measure, then he would say, now cut 16.”
“Students would come in the first day and start cutting onions,” Grant said. “Then an instructor would come along, hold up each piece and say, this doesn’t match, this doesn't match, this doesn't match. Then they would throw everything away.”
After absorbing all the culinary knowledge served up previously, and less the CIA students’ heads swell too big, the college sends them to work as waiters at one of the five restaurants on the campus. Then, comes a stint cooking in the restaurant kitchens.
“There are two, three and four star restaurants open to the public,” Grant said. Students rotate through all the restaurants where everything is made from scratch at lunch and dinner.
“They call it Restaurant Row,” Grant said. The restaurants include, St. Andrews (bold, flavorful family fare), American Bounty, (regional specialties of the Hudson Valley) Apple Pie Café, (sandwiches, soups, pastries and bread), Ristorante Caterina DeMedici, (Italian Villa setting) and Escoffier (classical French).
Students at the CIA go to classes eight to 10 hours a day, then are given three to four hours of homework.
“You would go home and have to hit the books,” Grant said. “You would read the science and chemistry of cooking, plus write papers.”
At the Candlestick, Grant has a very great kitchen team that includes a sous chef, a grill cook, a pastry chef, sauté chef and also an intern from College of the Ozarks, who Grant praises as a “fantastic person with great positive attitude.”
Grant said he enjoys his management responsibilities at the restaurant but, “The kitchen is the sanctuary,” he said. “It’s the part that makes me feel alive.”
The usually packed dining room at the Candlestick is the best testimony to the magic taking place inside that kitchen.
“You are graduating from the world's greatest college for culinary education. You should always dream bigger dreams.”
~ Richard Bradley, who serves on the CIA's Board of Trustees.
Story by Earl Stresak, photos by Colette Stresak. Story furnished courtesy of "Both Sides of the Bridge" Magazine.
PLAN YOUR TRIP