SUSAN: After all those years and all that work.
KEVIN: Right. Or what else? My asparagus. Why didn’t I make a little soft purée with the rest of it to put in the tartlet? I know better than that. For whatever reason, whatever my mind messed with me a month ago, I didn’t brown my mirepoix for the braise. It’s like one of the cardinal sins. I thought he was going to rip my arms off. Why? I looked at him. I didn’t have an answer. Just drew a blank. Knowing that you’re caramelizing for flavor, because it only makes the finished product better.
SUSAN: Knowing something is right but also executing it precisely, in that moment.
KEVIN: Exactly. In that moment. Pull it together. See what’s going on … it just seems incredible … again, yes, you get the commis, but it’s just one man orchestrating everything that would normally be five or ten frickin’ brigades, putting out a meal like that, for ten people. If you work smarter, that’s one of the pieces we try to ask for the platter service. How are you going to orchestrate the plate if you have only thirty minutes?
A good example was something like rainbow chard: you blanch it and you line a timbale and you put some type of purée, vegetable, grain. Even if your grain was in a mold, you can leave the lid on until service. That’s one less step, because you’re dealing with five books as you cook. You have forty-five separate components between all those dishes and even though you have the pictures, your brain goes, That goes on course two, even though you have it in your hand and you want to put it on course one. No, that doesn’t go on course one. It’s prioritizing when you read your list and sticking to your list, because when you read your list you have a clear head, if that makes sense. There’s no pressure sitting in the hotel room. Or you do things so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time. Cook with what you’re comfortable with. I’m not going to frost a cake for my dessert. That’s not one of my strong points. So yes, acknowledging that it’s a weakness, but why am I going to expose it if I don’t need to? Cook good honest food.
SUSAN: When you were first approached about this a few years back, how you were vetted?
KEVIN: In late 2006, we were in Las Vegas for a conference and I was asked if I’d be part of the team that was going to Germany. I just said, “Okay, yeah, I’m down with anything, all right.” I had no idea what I was getting myself into. We practiced at the Balsams. It took me eighty minutes to peel nine pieces of asparagus correctly. My family would go away for long weekends and holidays at a vacation home, and here I am practicing. I think what hurt the most was during this practice, I learned every possible scenario that can go wrong with lobster tandoori when making my platter, because I never had the same negative results. I think through it, adapt my next run. I’m going to fix it. Well, it wound up being too high. I overcompensated. Finally, I send Chef a letter. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m full of myself. I work thirty hours in three days, and I’ve got worse results. I’m prepared until you have the ten issues that could go wrong, and all of a sudden you have an eleventh issue, and “Oh my God, how can this happen?”
But it all did come through, in the end. The last practice wasn’t terrible, and we went back to our own units and got ready to go. If you don’t do something for a couple days you get antsy. You need to get back into it. I was ready, so I think the components that I made there were not terrible. It was enough to get me a bronze, and I think I missed a silver by a couple peas on a platter.
Now, training for the CMC, Chef looks at my work and goes, “You had a better platter five years ago in Germany.”
“But I don’t do it every day, Chef.”
You look through the pictures and your brain goes, I know how to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get rusty. You miss. You get out of sync doing it.
Percy had to jettison a lot of things, and maybe it might be better to under-promise and then over-deliver. Less is more, but if you expect A and B, and I give you A, B, and C, you say, “Ooh, what a nice surprise that is.” Mmhmm … Look, he made that extra thing. Dessert wasn’t required, but it was factored into my schedule. Then, I put out an incomplete product, because I was missing a component. I would have been better off not doing that and then focusing my energy on the salt factors of the other dishes! Those are the pieces that keep you up at night.
SUSAN: Chef Henin was saying, “Today is a perfect day for commis, because the Master Chef candidate is responsible for everything.”
KEVIN: During the prep time, we talk about the plan. At any point during the day, we stop for the demo. Let me show you what I’m doing. You’re taking the time, even though you’re putting yourself behind. It makes good points with the judges. You’re teaching, which is mentoring that other person. You gotta keep your cool. They’re trying to do their best. He was saying sometimes the judges would kick you out if you lose your patience with the commis. After all that work, it comes down to just a moment, just like that. It’s incredible.
SUSAN: Any advice to yourself for tomorrow?
KEVIN: Just review notes and … then write the notes to myself. And take a nice long bath.
SUSAN: You guys are going to be here for a while, tonight?
KEVIN: Yeah.
* * *
Percy Whatley, CMC Training Session Interview, Niagara Falls, New York: September 30, 2014
SUSAN: How’d it go, today? You were just talking about the scrapping or “eighty-sixing” of menu items.
PERCY: Yes, if I’m going to eighty-six something, then make sure that the other things are to an acceptable level and then move on. Even though in this particular day, there were too many things I had to end up scrapping. As far as planning, I need to not over-promise and under-deliver. That’s a hospitality-focused statement. I’d rather under-promise on my menu and then over-deliver if possible. At the Master Chef’s level, when you have something soft like my fish plate—a soft custard, a soft texture with the fish, plus a soft and thick texture with the sauce Americaine lobster chunks—it needed a “Crunchy.” I shouldn’t have let that slip by. Same with the soup. There were a lot of incompletes. Chef Henin would agree that everything I did was seasoned properly. Maybe there were some bad decisions with regard to the finished product, but everything had the cooking level that was expected. Still, when you put something that’s 80 percent complete together, that’s all you can hope for, from the score.
It’s the finishing details. He’s like, “Put the finishing touches on your food.” It’s the difference between, say, a 75 score and an 83 score … just a little more. Today’s (score of) 85 can be the buffer for the next day. The math continues with regard to the aggregate score. The cumulative score that you need to pass the exam is 75 while 70 passes the segment; if you pass the day at 70, you’re already climbing uphill, even when you pass the day. You have to bring a new attitude, a refreshed look, and it has to be complete. Chef has mentioned many times before: all the physical stuff is there; our setup is there. It’s the four hours of the day that matter most, when you can fall apart, but if you don’t do the fundamental stuff the night before, then you are not set up for success in the first place.
With his mentorship and pushing us to the brink, mentally, we’re a hundred times better than we were two years ago. We’re a thousand times better than we were three years ago. Kevin and I did nine months by ourselves without his direct involvement. We were just spinning on a wheel. It is him. Henin is an incredible mentor. The sixteen years that I’ve been working with him from being a junior sous-chef to where I am now certainly has a lot to do with him, about his leaning on me in a positive way, as a mentor should.
Mentor/mentee relationships in the culinary world are so important, beyond the ACF or the certification part of things. Thomas Keller is a perfect example, of course. Keller learned that mentorship legacy from Henin, and he carries it on in his own gigantic world-class company. They inspire me and Kevin to do the same thing—take people, and it’s almost a good cop/bad cop kind of thing, where you have to break down walls and say, seriously, it
’s a time for honesty. There are days when he says, “If you do this, you don’t have a chance in the world.” It may hurt sometimes, but that’s not the point. The point is improvement and continuing forward. No soft bunnies floating around. It has to be honest. Kevin and I have to be honest with ourselves. Without his brutal honesty, we wouldn’t be able to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel.
SUSAN: I want to give you a chance to respond, because Chef Henin will say, “Today the commis is perfect, because everything is a reflection of the CMC candidate.” You could extend that logic and say, “Okay, if the CMC candidate is not ready, wouldn’t that be a reflection of the coach (Chef Henin)?”
PERCY: I’m sure he does ask that question to himself. He’s like, “So, is there something wrong with me?” I’m sure he’s asked it many times, “What’s going on? Why can’t I get these guys out of this muddy ditch, with their feet stuck in it?”
SUSAN: As amazing as he is, he is a human and so is the system. If there’s going to be training in the future, for instance, if you and Chef Kevin are the ones with the baton, might you change how the CMC preparation happens?
PERCY: I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t change the method of taking two people, unless they’re in real close proximity to each other. We’re on both coasts, so we need to find neutral ground that is as distraction-less as possible and be able to cook together and bang our heads against the wall—or whatever you want to call it, where it’s a frustrating day—or celebrate a day where we all feel good about it. The stakes are going to happen in the exam. That’s normal, we’re going to have days like that. Out of the eight days, we’re going to have days of, hopefully, knock on wood, just skating by because of our weaknesses.
Our weaknesses are glaringly different from each other. How do we overcome our weaknesses, going into any given day of the exam? Mine is the transition from cooking into service: Let’s scrap the Crunchy; let’s scrap the dessert; let’s make my window. My service window was less cluttered than it’s been in the past. There’s a little more focus, but not to the level of, Wow. He’s got his stuff together.
You can’t be a bull in a china shop, in the kitchen. It needs to be a seamless kind of flow. My sense of urgency generally can ebb and flow; it may start strong out of the gate, ebb midway, and then somehow into the fourth hour, kick back into gear. Urgency needs to be steady in the first, second, and third hour, then hit third gear and rev up for the next forty-five minutes, and then fourth gear all the way through service. Just like a car’s transmission, you’re getting onto a seventy-five-mile-per-hour freeway.
SUSAN: Chef Henin in the beginning was talking about communication with the commis as being one of your challenges. How did that go today?
PERCY: Ahh …it was okay. There were a couple of commands that I did not execute well or he wasn’t clear with me, and there were some miscommunications. I asked for large diced onions and he quartered them, but that’s going to happen. The physical distance in this kitchen made it a little challenging, but that’s part of the game.
SUSAN: Right. You have to make anything work.
PERCY: Days one and two of the CMC exam are going to be the same way. It would be nice to be acclimated within the first fifteen minutes of cooking, but that’s not how it goes, just from a human nature standpoint—maybe it’s just me. A kitchen is a kitchen is a kitchen, sure, but we all like our home bases. There’s no orientation day. You walk in the kitchen, make sure the workstations look right, see where the refrigeration is, or the dish room. You see it right before you cook in it.
The mastery of anything is still rooted in fundamental knowledge: Can you communicate properly with a commis? Can you show them what you expect and follow through, without his making a bad decision? Can you think in complete sentences from a cooking standpoint? Okay, for Blanquette de Veau, I need this much roux. I need this much veal. “Complete sentences” is the best analogy I can put to it. Can you think in complete sentences when you’re cooking, all the way to the “period”?
SUSAN: Any advice to yourself?
PERCY: The only thing now is the homestretch. I need to perform well the next couple of days and then go home. I have a few weeks planned out of pretty solid cooking. Cooking at home is a little bit different, obviously. Then, just keep my head up. Take the last six or seven days off before Kevin arrives and head down, get settled in, and almost meditate on it for a week. We’re going to head down to L.A. on the twenty-second and have a few days to figure out some logistics. Where is a good dry cleaner? What’s the most traffic-less way to get to the school? [Laughs]
* * *
Roland Henin, CMC Coach, two weeks before the CMC exam: October 13, 2014
Susie,
I need to be careful as to what I’ll say here …
The CMC Exam is a little like a fishing trip …
You plan for the best tides …
You get all your gears in a row, fully ready …
You do your “homework and research” as to where the fish are and what they are biting on … thru all your contacts …
You check what the weather forecast is going to be …
You get the best baits available …
You check all the boats details … Tags, Plugs, Gaz, Oil level, Battery, PSF jackets, etc….
You get to bed early in order to get up “earlier” …
You review your LIST over & over again not forgetting lunch or the ice (just in case you get some fish) …
Now that you’ve done all that is under your control … and wonder if you could have possibly done MORE … ?? You just GO … and hope for the best possible situation … focusing on the darn fish … !!! With absolutely NO GUARANTY that they will meet you halfway …
C’est la vie … At least we’ve made an honest effort doing our “HOMEWORK” for the past few years, which is definitely a lot more than what a lot of others people have done … BUT … this is NOT a “Guaranty of anything,” either … Always keep in mind the consistent small percentage that makes it thru …
It’s quite a bit like the swimmers who cross the Channel between England and France or the other way around, France to England … When you jump in at the start, you never know when or if you are going to make it to the other side at all … You just hope for the best!!!!
IT’S a REAL BITCH … R.G.H.
2014 CMC Examination: Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, Pasadena, California
Kevin Doherty, CMC Candidate, Exam Journal, October 26–November 2, 2014
There were a few things I had said long before going to take the test:
1. They will have to fail me. I will not quit, no matter what.
2. I will be better for doing this … no matter what.
3. What are you afraid of? I only need to cook for this test. My dad ran into burning buildings, as a fireman … now that’s tough.
4. Never walk out of a room with your head down in shame. If you did your best, then stand up, because you tried and that takes courage.
Pre-Day One: Meeting with judges and other candidates finally came, we were told the ins and outs of what the time was going to be. Took the healthy test—twenty-five questions, come to find out later our scores were all over the board. I think I did fairly well on this. The judges went over the duties of the commis. The commis cannot do as much as we had practiced in the past. To sum up what they can do: peel vegetables, chop mirepoix, clean and chop herbs, wash vegetables/lettuce. Otherwise they are the “gopher” to wash a pot or pan and bring it back, get a lemon/lime, etc. Another gigantic obstacle to overcome. We were given our basket of ingredients and had to have menu, requisitions, and dietary stamp complete and emailed off by 6:00 a.m., which is when we were due at school as well.
Day One, Healthy Cuisine: Arrive at 6:00 a.m. for my 7:30 a.m. starting time. The reflections become a little diluted as this four-and-a-half hour cooking window and thirty-minute service window became one flash of time in the memory. I was introduced to the commi
s about one hour prior to cooking. We took this time to review the status of what we are going to do for the next four hours. Day one is the first turning point for me. I thought I did a pretty good job at putting the req and menu together, things were going as planned, then BAM, hit the wall. Chef Buchner brought my cart with the req … upon quick review I said, “Chef, there seems to be a problem.”
“What is that, Chef?”
“There are no proteins on my cart.”
He replied, “You did not order them.”
“Oh my God, they gave me a basket, but required me to req the ingredients….” So, there was what seemed like a forever silence.
He said to me, “What are you going to cook?”
I had to think for a second as, at this point in my life, I was scared, I wanted to curl up into a ball and start rocking … but something said, Cook vegetarian.
“Chef, I will cook vegetarian.”
He left, which left me frantic: What do I do now? Ah crap, I am screwed!! I am going home … This lasted a few seconds, and then I started to put items into the cooler. Twenty-three minutes later, Chef returned. He asked me what my basket was, and I replied quickly and politely. Chef handed me my baskets of proteins, but I did not see the fruits, lettuce, etc. I did cook okay from a time point of view. I moved like my ass was on fire, butchering lamb, putting stock on, scaling fish, and proper butchery. I believe my commis was obsessive-compulsive; he was alphabetizing the items on our table as well on the common table … another Oh My God. I did make my service window on time.
Upon the group critique, we were handed envelopes with our score. I could not open my envelope, until we were home. I knew for sure I was going home for my lack of mastery on Day One. We get home and Chef Percy says, “Are you going to open it?” 76.30!! Holy crap, a gift from the gods! Okay, this lights me up again. We start the long haul of menu planning, as it’s due in a few hours.
Roland G. Henin: 50 Years of Mentoring Great American Chefs Page 34