Salt, Sweat & Steam
The Fiery Education of an Accidental Chef
-
- $21.99
Publisher Description
High pressure. Hot kitchens. A memoir of ambition, belonging, and coming-of-age in America's premiere culinary school.
"Her fast-moving coming-of-age memoir will appeal to anyone who’s been curious about culinary school."--Eater
"What truly makes Salt, Sweat & Steam exceptional is that it is told from the point of view of a young, female, Trinidadian student. It is a fascinating narrative that is a welcome addition to the list of coming-of-age tales."--Jessica B. Harris, Ph.D. Professor emeritus Queens College/CUNY, Lecturer, culinary historian, and author of High on the Hog
Rich with detail, Salt, Sweat & Steam takes readers inside America's top culinary school and shows what's really required to become a chef: from brutal unpaid internships and gruelling practical exams to late-night vending machine dorm-room dinners while trudging through the rarefied world of fine wine. As editor of the school's newspaper, "La Papillote" Washington, a Trinidadian, meets and interviews food-world luminaries such as Jerome Bocuse, Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller and savors the joys of a life devoted to food. She puts us all in her kitchen clogs as she finally achieves the perfect mise-en-place both in and out of the dignified kitchen of The Culinary Institute of America.
Unwilling to accept a future that was anything but delicious, readers follow along Washington's high-octane journey through the rigors and rewards of the country’s most elite cooking school.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Food writer Washington (Caribbean Flavors for Every Season) takes a blistering look at America's most prestigious culinary school in this vivid memoir. In 2009, the author, then in her 20s, was working for free as a pantry chef at a restaurant in Raleigh, N.C., when its owner, recognizing her talent, encouraged her to apply to the Culinary Institute of America. Washington arrived at the program's stately campus in Upstate New York and found a hypercompetitive environment filled with state-of-the-art equipment, instructors who demanded militarylike uniformity, and a culture that prized pricier, fussier dishes—often American or European—over the simpler fare of her Trinidadian childhood ("The bouillabaisse I learned to prepare... could never dethrone buljol, a salted cod dish and relic from the transatlantic slave trade"). She was struck, she writes, at how many instructors mistook cruelty for rigor, though she acknowledges the humiliation was sometimes effective. She's less forgiving of the disparity between the school's hefty price tag—tuition, fees, room and board "might skirt six figures"—and the fact that graduates often ended up "making substantially less money in a year than the cumulative debt they incurred." Washington successfully mines her experience to challenge some of the culinary industry's excesses, while allowing her love for cooking and the history, culture, and technique that shapes it to shine through. Industry insiders and home cooks alike will be riveted.
