GRADUATION

After a long but celebratory weekend which we began as soon as our final came to an end, we all gathered back at school on Tuesday afternoon for our graduation ceremony with parents, siblings and significant others.

More raising of champagne glasses on the jump...

There wasn't much in the way of advance notice the previous week as to the details of how the ceremony would work and how many people you could bring. But my parents and my sister were able to come to the ceremony as well as my girlfriend, Anna (left), and fortunately, everyone was able to sit together. After all the support I'd been given from Anna and my family it was really nice to have them all there. Anna put up with my late hours, grumpy mornings and cooking frenzies for months and I don't exactly know how she did it (though the good food may have helped!).

We were given chef's toques to wear (we'd sized them to our heads and written our names on them last week) and we sat down at the front of the "Culinary Theater," the place where I'd seen Thomas Keller interviewed for a television series with Dorothy Hamilton, founder of the French Culinary Institute. Each chef said a few words about our class and about the culinary world we'd be heading out into and then we lined up against the wall to the left of the chefs. Our names were called out, we were handed our diplomas and we got hearty hugs and warm handshakes from our chefs before returning to our seats. It was a nice juxtaposition to the chiding (as helpful or necessary as it may have been) which we often experienced in the kitchen!

Next, two awards were given out, best GPA and best final project. I thought I might have a chance at best GPA given the fact that my attendance was nearly perfect and that I'd done well on most of my tests. But I didn't do as well on my final as I'd thought I had (58/75). I got slammed because the hazelnuts in the clam sauce were overtoasted and it was a little too salty and because my duxelles were accompanied by a little too much lemon juice. I finished up my time at FCI with an overall grade of 90/100.

I've made headway with my fetish for salt and lemon but apparently not enough for some people! When I open up my restaurant, it will probably be called, Lemon and Salt! Ah well. It would have been nice to win the award but it wasn't something that was terribly important to me. My friend Zoe Brickley (left) won the award and received a new knife.

Best GPA is nice but it wasn't that important to me-- what I was focused on was creative recognition, best final project. I'd worked on it in every spare second I had in the two months before it was due. I'd put everything I had into it, made cheeses and beer from scratch, done more than double the required number of dishes within a creative theme, all packaged in a professionally-bound book. I thought I'd come up with some pretty creative things. Before the ceremony we'd had a chance to look through our projects at the back of the culinary theater and while there were certainly some interesting themes I thought I had a pretty good chance of coming away with the award.

But it wasn't to be. While I received top marks for the project, a score of 15/15, again, my friend Zoe won the award. She created a good menu but it was largely French, featured cheeses (she works at Murray's) and noted the importance of fresh produce. I'll take this opporunity to do two things, first congratulate her, congratulations Zo!

Second, I'll have my sour grapes moment and say that as nice as her project was, there wasn't anything about it that I would say was very innovative. I thought my project was better!

The one criticism I'll make about the school regarding our final projects, there weren't any written commentaries or critiques about what we did. After all that work it would have been nice to get some feedback (I may have to return to talk to some of the chefs and get some details about what they thought, what could have been improved upon, etc.) But I got a lot out of working on the project-- I learned how to make cheeses, beer and kimchi and I had the opportunity to create my own menu. Something which I had trouble imagining at the beginning of January when I started school. And I'd be interested in continuing to come up with variations on other comfort dishes from around the world.

En0ugh, time for pictures. At left, me with Chef Janet who was an instructor with us during much of Level One and Level Two. Chef Janet makes some great dressings for family meal which we benefitted from every night.

Chef Bobby (left) was a favorite chef of most of us. While he wouldn't hesitate to let us know we were doing something wrong and to better instruct us and he could certainly cut you down quickly he didn't need to and he was very chill.


And thus, class is dismissed. We're all heading out into the culinary world in different directions on unknown adventures. Who knows where we'll all end up! After 10 months of cooking, sweating and bleeding together, it's difficult to think of not seeing my FCI friends three times a week. It was a really great experience and one that I'm glad I shared with the classmates with which I was placed. Cheers all.