Winston wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 10:29 pm
@hypermak
Well obviously those are unhappy miserable people then, because happy people don't do that. They uplift others, share their happiness and look on the bright side of everything. We all know that instinctively. Even if they claim to be happy, they cannot be.
So how long have you been a chef? Did you have to go to training school in Italy?
Actually Dianne dreams of being a chef too. She has talent in culinary skills. Do you have any advice for her? I tried to put her in cooking school in Angeles, but they were all very expensive, more than I expected. Can she go to chef school in Italy and get an education visa to go there? If so, how? Do you know anyone in Italy who could provide that?
Is being a chef hard work? What do you do? I read articles that said that chefs don't cook, they just prepare meals and direct others. Is that true?
After a while, isn't it all just automatic pilot once you get the hang of it? If so, then it doesn't feel so hard after a while right? When I worked in fast food I noticed that after a while, I just put myself on automatic pilot mode and didn't have to think anymore.
Thanks for the "pat on the shoulder", mate
Oh that's nice of Dianne! I got all of my training in Italy, at one of the country's best (if not
the best) A&F institute.
http://www.berti.gov.it/
Then I did a few courses at the very prestigious (and expensive!) ALMA
https://www.alma.scuolacucina.it/en/cou ... n-cuisine/
Unlike disciplines like engineering and computer science there is no theoretical education that works, when it comes to culinary and gastronomy. 90% of the learning comes from 1) continuous experimentaiton, 2) hard work and 3) good mentoring, in this order.
The A&F learning system in Italy is usually a public high school like the one I did, called
Istituto Alberghiero, or "Hotelier Institute" which of course isn't only about hotel and hospitality. Just an historical name. Most people who go there, about 75%, take the culinary track, not the hospitality management track.
Then there's either direct experience, or a mix of experience and courses at private schools like ALMA near Parma (home of the famous Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, or the Parma Ham). The private schools are very, very expensive. However when I did the Haute Cuisine course I do remember seeing a lot of Chinese, Japanese and Korean students and even a couple of Filipinos. I never got very close to them as they were attending the international course, while ours was in Italian.
I am not as familiar with the culinary school system here in the Philippines. I have been asked to run some short training courses in food technology at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran (
https://www.letran.edu.ph/Academics/CBAA), in old Manila. Have been there a few times and the facilities were pretty impressive consindering it's the Philippines, not Germany. Then I was told that the college is one of the most expensive, with tuition fees starting from 50,000 PHP, which might not be much compared to schools in the US but it's beyond what average middle class families can afford.
Where is Dianne living? Perhaps she can enrol at a private culinary school to get some foundations. After that, nothing beats experience: she would have to be hired as a
commis and work her way up. A commis is basically a junior chef who is assigned to help the
partie, or station chef, completing specific duties on a single aspect of the kitchen: e.g. cooking the vegetables, preparing salads and crudites, garnishing etc.
Learning how to cook in a commercial establishment is completely different from home cooking: you have access to industrial equipment and people who have a lot to teach you. You can learn a lot in a very small amount of time but the key ingredients are always the same: hard work, patience, humility and passion. Passion is right at the end because, at the first stages of your career, without hard work and patience nobody will survive.