Cooking as Fast as I Can

by Cat Cora

  We were ushered into another room to wait while Prudhomme and the other judges deliberated. I sat and amused myself, adding up the combined years of cooking experience my competitors boasted; I came up with over a century. We were called back in and stood in a long row, our hands clasped behind our backs. Prudhomme and one of the organizers walked toward my end of the line, and suddenly a medal hung on a thick red, white, and blue ribbon was being draped around my neck. I was so shocked. I thought this must be some runner-up prize, some thanks-for-playing award. But no, I had won.

  My picture appeared in the Clarion-Ledger. In my chef whites, the medal hanging around my neck, a big grin on my face, I presented my winning plate to the camera.

  Winning the Taste of Elegance confirmed that I was on the right path, but nothing changed for a while. Paul Prudhomme didn’t call me the next day and beg me to come and work for him. I went to work, then came home and tried to re-create the specials of the day. I got obsessed for a bit with perfecting roast chicken, a simple dish that can be the most delicious thing you’ve ever tasted or dry and completely depressing. I must have been about eighteen chickens into the process when I opened the paper one morning and saw an ad for a book-signing that night down in Natchez, a two-hour drive. Julia Child was coming with her new cookbook, The Way to Cook.

  I worshipped Julia Child. My brother Chris and I had watched The French Chef when we were kids. I always thought Chris might become a chef. He worshipped Justin Wilson, the “cooking Cajun,” and walked around saying, “I gar-on-tee it’s good!” My parents had given me both volumes of Mastering on consecutive Christmases, and I studied them as if they were sacred texts. Like so many other people, both home cooks and aspiring professionals, I felt a special affinity with Julia. I had a hunch that if I could just ask her advice about how I should proceed, she would be able to help me chart my future course.

  I told my mom and grandmom to drop what they were doing and cancel their afternoon plans, we were going on a road trip. They obliged—a testament to how supportive my family was, the degree to which they got on board whenever I got a wild hair. Which was fairly frequently.

  We arrived at the book signing in plenty of time, but the line was out the door. I’d once read in a magazine article that Julia traveled with a minder. She was one of those people who was truly interested in others, and the fear was that Julia would fall into conversation with the first person in line to have her book signed. The minder kept the line moving.

  Julia was a few months from her eightieth birthday, but she had the energy of a woman decades younger. As the line dwindled I watched the grace with which she greeted her fans. I felt sure that if her minder didn’t rush me along, she would speak to me.

  After the last person had closed her newly signed book, thanked Julia, and moved off, Julia capped her pen and straightened up. I placed myself in front of her.

  “Mrs. Child,” I began. Then whatever smooth speech I had prepared about myself and my ambitions evaporated. “I want to cook.”

  She sized me up, then without hesitation said, “Then you must go to school. The Culinary Institute of America is the Harvard of culinary schools. Make it your number one.” Julia warmed to the subject and went on about the joys and tribulations I’d face if I chose this life path. Her minder looked at her watch at least a dozen times, but Julia was on a roll. She encouraged me, saying the culinary life was the best life there was, but also warned me that it was brutal and competitive. “It’s a man’s world,” she said. “You must know this. But be stubborn and intractable in your determination and success will be inevitable.”

  The next morning, swooning with optimism, I called the Culinary Institute of America for an application.

  nine

  I was twenty-six years old when I loaded up my car and drove north to Hyde Park, New York. The Fiat was a memory, and now I drove a more sensible Honda that Grandmom gave me when she was no longer able to drive. I was fired up. My inspirational conversation with the great Julia Child fueled me as I made my application then settled in to wait. I knew I didn’t quite meet the requirements, which were stricter then than they are now. My college GPA was good, but they also liked you to have at least a year of experience cooking professionally. I was short a few months, but I hoped that winning the Taste of Elegance would make up for it.

  When I received my acceptance, I was only marginally surprised. I felt like I was on a roll. My life had truly begun! I dutifully hassled with the student loan people, then braced myself to talk through the situation with Hannah. We had been together about two and a half years by then, and I was well aware that I often took advantage of her laid-back nature. I didn’t want her to break up with me, but I also knew it was a lot to ask her to agree to a long-distance relationship. She was unfazed by my decision, and believed in my future as a chef wholeheartedly. “Go,” she said. “Do what you have to do, and I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

  The Culinary Institute of America was twelve hundred miles away from Swan Lake Drive. As I drove across Alabama and Tennessee, then up through Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, it occurred to me that I had never been north. I had lived in Mississippi my entire life, and the few times I’d traveled, it had either been west to Texarkana, or to Europe. I didn’t think it would make much difference. I’d never understood how vast and diverse our country truly is.

  Hyde Park struck me at first glance as cold and formal, the light silvery and sad. The air didn’t smell like dry grass and magnolia blossoms, but like something industrial. The Culinary Institute was housed in a former Jesuit seminary on the banks of the Hudson River, a huge brick building with white columns. A lot of people found it elegant and stately, but I thought it was imposing and unnerving. I knew I would be living in a dorm, but once I was standing in the middle of my room with its twin bed, four-drawer dresser, desk, and chair, I was filled with misgivings. Had I actually signed up for this? The last and only time I’d lived in a dorm was my first semester at Hinds Community College with Sandy, when half the time I was drunk, but at least it was with my best friend. Now I was halfway across America in another crappy little room, in the company of strangers.

  But there was little time to think that first week, a blur of tours, orientation sessions, including a stern lecture on the history of the uniform and toqueing ceremony, the issuing of the culinary tool kit and pastry tool kit, more lectures on how we were supposed to be immaculate every moment of every day, and would get points deducted if our whites were not spotless. I didn’t know a soul, not even a friend of a friend of a friend, and no one seemed interested in getting acquainted.

  My enduring memory of this time is how out of place I felt, how lame and clueless. I could sit in my dorm room all by myself and make myself blush to the tips of my hair remembering how proud I’d felt winning the Taste of Elegance with my stuffed pork loins. In class, it was obvious to everyone that I was inexperienced and unprepared. I was terrified at the thought of how much I didn’t know. I could make a few tasty dishes in my mother’s kitchen, but otherwise I was ignorant. In Jackson we had parsley, and once my mom tried to grow oregano in the backyard, but most of my fellow students already knew how to make a sachet d’épices, a little cheesecloth pouch filled with herbs and spices, usually bay leaf, thyme, parsley stems, garlic, and whole black peppercorns, used to enhance the flavor of stocks. I hadn’t even heard of it.

  I’d never been aware that I had what some folks might consider a thick southern accent, but my instructors had a hard time understanding me. Most of my fellow students were nineteen or twenty, and struck me as squirrely and young. The sopping, mosquito-slapping Mississippi heat was nothing to me, but in Hyde Park I was always cold. It was pure misery from sunrise to midnight, which were the hours they expected you to keep.

  Two weeks into the semester I went into the administration office and withdrew, hurled my crap back into my Honda, and drove home, eighteen hours straight through. The Culinary Institute refunded my tuition and
fees, no questions asked. Their decency made me feel even more like a failure than I already did, which I didn’t think was possible.

  Although she was too tactful to say it, I’m sure Hannah was happy to see me for about seventeen minutes, after which my self-pity and wallowing must have been insufferable. I had had some dark days, but these had to have been the darkest. What in the hell was I doing? I had wasted forty-five minutes of the great Julia Child’s time, and at her age that was a lot. I had disappointed my parents and grandmom, who never scoffed at my enthusiasm and thought I had it in me to be a great chef. I had prepared Hannah for a long-distance relationship, only to show up back on her doorstep (actually my doorstep, since she was living with my parents and grandmom on Swan Lake Drive), a coward and a quitter.

  What had I done? In those days, every top restaurant insisted on staffing its kitchen with graduates from the Culinary Institute of America. Every newspaper ad began: “Looking for CIA grad.” Closing the door on an education at the Culinary Institute meant closing the door on a life as a chef. Period. Things are more relaxed today. Restaurants would prefer their cooks to have some cooking school experience, but it’s no longer a prerequisite. Still, for me, a girl from Mississippi, education would always be my ticket out. I valued the importance of it then and still do.

  Also, even though I was in the middle of a meltdown during my short time there, I saw clearly that for me to succeed in the larger world, I would need to make friends and connections with people from New York, at the time the undisputed fine-dining capital of the nation. The whole experience had emphasized the fact that I was a little girl from the rural South with a huge dream and no way of making it come true. Or, in my self-pity, that’s what I’d come to believe.

  Then one day my dad was in the backyard smoking a brisket and reading a book. He was never one to offer an opinion just to hear himself talk. He told me to pull up a chair. “You know, Cathy,” he said. “Just because you didn’t make it this time doesn’t mean you’ll never make it. There’s nothing to say you can’t try again. You haven’t lost anything.”

  I mulled this over for a few days, then I sat down and wrote the people at the Culinary Institute a letter, first apologizing for having wasted anyone’s time, then explaining that I was so enthusiastic about their program and the possibilities it offered that I never considered the culture shock that would befall me. It was difficult for me to admit it, but I told them I had simply been overwhelmed. I told them I wanted to reenroll and give it another shot.

  These were the days before email became the preferred method of communication. I waited for the mailman. Finally the letter came. The people at the Culinary Institute were gracious in their response, suggesting I take a year to get some more restaurant experience under my belt before returning to Hyde Park to begin again. They ended by saying they were looking forward to having me back.

  Then and now, having something to prove lights a fire under me. Since my abuse at the hand of AH, I’d always struggled with feelings of worthlessness, and failure tended to stir up that original feeling. Therapy was years in the future, but one day I would understand that for good or for ill, having something to prove motivated me to push hard to succeed, to show to myself and the world that I was a good person capable of excellence.

  Shortly afterward, I got a job at the University Club, a private dining club in Jackson. As luck would have it, the executive sous chef had just graduated from the Culinary Institute and knew the ropes. Paul was a Yankee through and through, a short guy with a huge personality and a thick Philly accent. My initial impression was that he was possibly the biggest jerk I’d ever met, but perhaps it was just a matter of getting used to one another, because one day we just started getting along. I confessed that I’d washed out of his alma mater, and wanted to learn anything he had to teach me. Perhaps he viewed me as a diamond in the rough, but Paul made it his mission to get me ready. I became his project.

  He drilled me on my knife skills, required me to take the concept of mise en place seriously. From the French “putting in place,” it means assembling, peeling, grating, cutting, and measuring all your ingredients before you begin to cook. This is the foundation of the chef’s ability to turn out perfect dishes quickly and seemingly effortlessly. He taught me how to make a flawless stock and from that a flawless sauce. The standards for soups at the Culinary were legendary: consommé must be so clear you can read the date on a dime at the bottom of the pot.

  I knew I knew how to cook, but I’d also developed bad habits. He pointed them out to me and implored me to correct them before I went back north. He taught me how to roast, grill, and sauté with the necessary speed, efficiency, and consistency. On a given evening a home cook might grill a few pork chops; in a restaurant she grills a few dozen, and they all have to be perfect and identical. He taught me how to butcher with confidence. He put me on every station in the kitchen. I prepped, worked the flattop firing meat and fish, made cold appetizers and soups, and prepared desserts. Every trick and technique Paul had in his arsenal he generously passed on to me.

  I also accumulated the necessary burns and cuts to teach me how to move with grace and efficiency in a small kitchen. Once, minutes before dinner service, I was cleaning something on the fryer with a long hamburger spatula. I was working away, really leaning into it, when the spatula slipped and slapped the hot oil, sending it splashing down my arm. It was easily a second-degree burn, but someone slapped on some ointment, wrapped it, and the orders were coming up and I was on the grill and I kept cooking.

  I had a bucket of ice water on the floor beside me, and every five minutes or so I would unwrap my arm and plunge it into the bucket to draw the heat off the burn. It went on that way all night. Grill up a burger or steak, plate it, plunge my arm into the bucket. Grill it, plate it, plunge it. Only after service was over and the kitchen was spotless did I take myself to the emergency room. That day it became clear to me that I possessed the proper amount of determination, discipline, and sheer crazy to make it as a chef.

  I cut myself every day for months on end. Sliced off the tips of my fingers and nicked my knuckles. Once I caught the blade edge of a falling knife with my open hand.

  I also learned the most important skill of all: how to keep my jacket clean. I learned not to wipe my hands on my front; not to put down a pan so hard that it splashes; not to drag my sleeve through a hotel pan of marinara sauce; not to squirt myself with demi-glace, purée, or vinaigrette; not to lean against a dirty counter that needs to be wiped down. A clean jacket for the duration of service tells the world that you know what you’re doing, and by the time I left the University Club and returned to the Culinary Institute of America, my jacket was spotless. Alongside the skills he passed on to me, Paul taught me to be confident. I’ve lost track of him over the years, but I remain grateful for his kindness.

  A year later the stars aligned for me at the Culinary. My informal training at the University Club served me in good stead. I breezed through the first month with only a few normal episodes of nerves. I didn’t have the world’s greatest knife skills, nor could I easily produce the flawless gin-clear consommé our instructors insisted upon, but I was focused and confident.

  We were graded hard not just on our cooking but on our appearance. We showed up each morning in full chef regalia—black shoes, checked pants, white jacket, necktie, and nine-inch toque. People with long hair had to keep it pulled back and neat. I wore a ponytail, but as I worked in the hot kitchen pieces of hair slipped out of the elastic. To solve this I went a little punk, shaved the sides of my head so that when I wore my toque the only visible hair was my ponytail at the back of my head. The sides were shaved clean.

  Every morning shoes polished. Necktie just so. Spotless whites. Toque balanced on my ponytail. People were impressed. They wondered whether I’d been in the military. The shaved-sides-of-the-head thing became a trend. There were only six women in my class—the most they’d ever admitted in a single class in the school’s
history—and all but one shaved the sides of their heads.

  Until the Culinary, I hadn’t given much thought to my essential friendlessness. I had my family and Hannah, but I hadn’t made any real friends since Wingfield High School. College had been fraught with doomed romantic entanglements and mostly mind-numbing coursework. I’d steered clear of clubs and organizations where I might actually meet strangers who would become friends.

  Now, suddenly, I had a girl gang, a posse of likeminded females, and I was giddy.

  My two best friends (just like high school the rule of superlatives didn’t apply) were Lorilynn and Kristin. Lorilynn was tall, Julia Child size, with red hair and a big laugh. Kristin was a Jersey girl, also big and boisterous. I was more than a foot shorter than Lorilynn (she’s six four, I’m five two), and we developed a shtick whereby every day at lunch we’d make an entrance. I stood between her and Kristen, bent my arms at a ninety-degree angle, and they would lift me up by my elbows and carry me in.

  In our few spare moments away from the kitchen we liked to shoot pool, and it was during one such game that one of them said, “You’re up, Cat.”

  From that moment on I was Cat Cora. Only my family, close friends, and therapist still call me Cathy.

  I also rediscovered my love of extracurriculars. I was vice president of the Epicures of Wine Club, vice president of the Gourmet Society and also coeditor of a self-published student cookbook. We solicited recipes from other students, and created a contest where they had to cook their proposed dishes in order to have their recipes included in the book. We called the book Kitchen Aid, and all the proceeds went to charity.

  Hannah had decided this time around she would come with me. We rented a beautiful little place in Rhinebeck—a ten-minute drive from campus—a loft apartment with a big picture window overlooking the Hudson. Rhinebeck is a picturesque town, with many historical plaques, antiques shops, and Dutch-style architecture, a holdover from the early settlers. I surprised myself a little by falling in love with it.