I Learn Knife Skills

     I took the plunge and signed up for a year’s enrollment at Rouxbe. For my $99  

I get full access to their website. Lots of instructional videos, practice exercises, quizzes, recipes, and blogs with the instructors and other students. A number of videos and recipes are available without signing up - take a look at rouxbe.com..

     I started out with the knife skill lessons. I was shocked to learn that I’ve been holding my knife incorrectly all these years. I have always rested my index finger on top of the blade, figuring that I was stabilizing it. Wrong - that actually unbalances the knife!   The next part of the video illustrated the “rolling” method of slicing. As I practiced this method and became more and more proficient, I came to realize how dull my prized chefs knife actually was. How I could expect otherwise I don’t know, since its never been sharpened. I don’t think a dull blade can ever be successfully re-sharpened, so I

immediately logged on to Amazon to buy a new knife and sharpener ($45 for both items). Bringing my cooking school expenses thus far to $144. 

     I watched more of the knife skill videos, and have been cutting up lots of celery and carrots - dice, mince, chop, slice, brunoise, chiffonade. Only one chunk of fingernail is missing. Pretty good. So I decided I was ready for my first quiz. Can you believe I got test anxiety. Pathetic, isn’t it. It’s just a computer for god’s sake!! Having realized that, I decided it would be okay to cheat. When I didn’t know the answer to a question I went back and watched that portion of the video lesson. Lo and behold, I got !00%. Pathetic, too, that that made me feel good. The tests are pretty well put together, using photos and videos as part of the multiple choice selections. Some of the questions are pretty lame, though, and some are ambiguous. Not much different from real-life school. I went ahead and took the second quiz, continuing my cheating method (my rationale is that its useful to view the videos several times). To my surprise, I came up with one wrong answer. I hadn’t been paying close enough attention and marked the wrong box even though I knew the correct response. Since your total test score shows up on your rouxbe home page, hopefully this will serve as a reminder for me to be more careful.

     I’ve enjoyed the experience so far, I love learning new things. If you’re an “ignorance is bliss” kind of person though, this wouldn’t be for you. Oh, I have to add the $3 I spent on practice vegetables - $147.

Can An Old Dog Learn New Tricks Online?

     I’ve always loved to eat, but I didn’t become a foodie until after I got married. I delighted in surprising Ken with unexpected flavors in the meals I cooked. Not that that was difficult. He grew up in a household where garlic salt was the only seasoning, then went on to prep school and college cafeteria type food. Our bookshelves became crammed with cookbooks. When we ate out, because we were on a tight budget, we frequented inexpensive ethnic restaurants, so I bought cookbooks featuring those cuisines. Probably if we had spent the cookbook money on restaurants, we could have had steak more often, but then we would have missed out on all the adventure of trying new foods.

     I should have gone to culinary school after I finished college and we moved to New York. But at that time, in the early 70’s there were no local programs and very few women chefs - and, to be honest, the thought never entered my mind. So I went on to do a number of other things, some fun, some not. None of them lucrative. But I continued to cook, collect cookbooks, and with the advent of the internet, spent hours looking at recipes online. 

     A short time ago, Thomas, the 17 year old son of friends of ours, developed a serious interest in cooking and decided to attend a culinary program in Phoenix. I realized I was jealous and decided to do something about that. Since I’m too old and unfit to ever work in the profession, an expensive and demanding (both fiscally and physically) school was out of the question. I happened across an online ad for Top Chef University, a $200 online program featuring past contestants of the show as instructors. The course has just begun, so there was no student feedback, but many bloggers felt that it would essentially be a vehicle to sell Top Chef products and promote the teachers. I watched the snippet of course instruction video that was available, and indeed the camera spent more time focused on the instructor than on close-ups of the food-making process. I looked at the other online courses (there are surprisingly few) and settled on Rouxbe, which provided many free videos to peruse. Except for the hands the instructor is seldom seen - the technique is what’s important. There are follow up exercises and a quiz for each segment. The price is a more reasonable $99. I decided to sign up.

     So, can an already adequate cook become better by following an online culinary school curriculum? Take a look at the Rouxbe.com website, keep reading, and we’ll find out together.