NON-ALLITERATIVE TUESDAY: RENT THE KITCHEN

Non-Alliterative Tuesday: no obligations, no rhyme, reason or methodology other than that it's something relevant to food and goings-on in Kitchen Toro...

Learning how to cook professionally has been very rewarding. I've always loved making food that people enjoy, and learning how to make it quickly and effectively in school to be served in a restaurant has been a terrific experience. While school's not over it's certainly coming to a close as quickly as the summer blockbusters fade and the pennant races have been heating up. It means it's time to consider what the next step is beyond culinary school.

Back in June our chef asked us to write up an essay about where we saw ourselves in five years, essentially, what we'd like to be when we grow up. I don't have much to add to that right now beyond that I need to learn how to speak Spanish, working in a three-star restaurant isn't necessarily the penultimate experience and I'm unsure where the money's going to come from for next month's rent, forget sushi school in L.A. for a month or to travel in Europe next year exploring food.

At least, that's what I was thinking before a friend's mother spotted an article in our old friend, that's right folks, the Sunday Job Market section of The New York Times! I'm not saying the article tells you how to kick your feet up and watch as some money-making machine does all the work for you and the greenbacks roll in, but an article, "Can't Stand the Heat? Then Rent the Kitchen," by Joseph Fried, notes that two women in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, have created a commercial kitchen which can be rented by aspiring cooks, would-be mass-producers or my-brand-in-every-home-entrepreneurs, to make their products by the book, in kitchens up to code.

Now I'm not saying I have the next big thing...yet-- I'm still trying to figure out if I want to work in a restaurant or go into catering. But the article was interesting because it brings up the subject of regulations cooks must abide by when making food, the question of what you can make in your home kitchen to sell to the public and at least one solution to consider, in a place not too far away from Kitchen Toro, Brooklyn!