Magnets and Soups and Why an Apprenticeship is a Good Thing

I got a big magnet for the car today and hope that will help get the word 

out about Fresh Fun Foods.

 If you see me out on the street, flash you lights a few times.  I'll pull over and give 

you a 10% off coupon.

_____

I’m a big National Public Radio listener.  It is my main source of news. Since I want long-form discussion and interviews with folks who are on the inside, NPR is my go-to when a story is breaking. Their initial coverage is usually just a sketch.  When all the facts are known, they can be counted on for a comprehensive story. Entertainment and lifestyle stories are the same.  I first heard Trombone Shorty on American Routes. The book features at the end of Fresh Air have turned me on to numerous fiction and nonfictions as the listing stack beside our bed will attest. I look forward to Kathy Gunst’s food features on Here & Now.

Earlier today, I heard a promo for Gunst’s bit where she was to tell everyone that there are soups that could be made and served either hot or cold.  That didn’t seem right to me.  When the story came on, I quickly scribbled notes, angry, contentious notes that would voice my disagreement in a snarky blog.  Needless to say, I don’t want to be that way, so I sat down to write a blog that would show respect for Gunst, who really seems like a fine person and a creative chef, while suggesting that there is a vast difference between cold and hot soups, a substantial difference that goes well beyond temperature. 

As I was organizing my thoughts, a promo for an upcoming program came on where a manufacturing executive said that in order to make high quality goods in the US; we need replicate the German apprenticeship program. Yep, and since today is the first day of school here in most of Pennsylvania and since I am a chef who went through a formal apprenticeship in addition to being a retired high school teacher, I am uniquely qualified to comment. 

But first, let’s get the cold/hot soup out of the way.  Ms. Gunst is correct that during this time of year both hot and cold soups can be appropriate. Weather dictates, along with what is in the market, the kind of soup that should be served. During the hot daytime, it is OK to go with a cold tomato soup. Likewise, as the sun goes down and the nights cool, a hot soup ought to be served.  Those hot soups should not be the hearty thick things we reserve for mid winter.  They should be soups made with the late summer bounty of tomatoes, zucchini, onions, peppers and herbs.  Where I very respectfully disagree with Ms. Gunst (especially since she is a published author with a radio show and I’m a guy typing in his kitchen) is that cold and hot soups require different cooking techniques to produce, since their aims are different.  A hot soup demands an extended period of simmering to marry flavors, while a cold soup often is just blended and served.  The flavors in a cold soup are married by careful selection and pureeing, an entirely different way of arriving at a finished product.  Additionally, the texture and seasonings are different.  You palate perceives flavors differently based on temperature. In my opinion, a chef has to decide what soup they are going to make then choose the proper technique to produce it.  Techniques to make cold and hot soups aren’t interchangeable.  Got that?

Back to the apprenticeship thing.  I spent a long time learning to cook and during that time I am grateful that a bunch of French chefs saw something in me that was worth teaching.  Maybe it was that I am reasonably bright and incredibly good looking or that I was willing to work for minimum wage or that I had a special ability where I was able to bully waiters with deft skill…I don’t know.  What I do know that I would not have invested the time and energy into someone as rough as I was in my early twenties.  I am grateful for the work that they put into me. I had the opportunity to teach other ragged kids in a similar way.

When I was coming up, places like the Restaurant School were just opening.  The C.I.A. was not really on the popular radar.  If you wanted to learn to cook you joined the army or sold your soul to a chef for at least five years.  My deal was that I agreed to work for minimum wage, $3.60/hr at the time. I would be paid for 40 hours, but would work as many hours as the chef decreed.  There was no democracy here. Many labor laws were ignored. If I wanted to learn, I had to do whatever the chef asked for however long he said. It was 10 years before I let anyone call me chef.

Later, when I quit the biz and went back to college, you see I found that I really liked my wife and kids; I got a job teaching high school. Since they knew my background, the guidance counselors always wanted me to talk to the kids who were on the fence about tech school. For some reason, after our talk none of these kids signed up for vo tech, which was the sole objective of the counselors, no matter the student’s needs. The reason the kids ran scared from vo tech was that I told them that there was a different route, one that would actually help them in their dream to be a chef. Instead of insisting that they should essentially become free labor for the tech school and be qualified to work in a cafeteria after graduation, I suggested that they stay in the high school and take every business class they could fit in their schedule. Also, they should get a job in the best local restaurant that they could beg their way into, all the while angling to move up in that kitchen or to move on when they have soaked every bit of knowledge out to that chef. They should get Serve Safe Certification and an AS from someplace like MCCC when they graduated, because you need the paper. In this way, they would have about four years experience, business skills, knife skills, a degree and a clue as to whether they liked restaurant work.  As a bonus, their debt would be minimal, probably none, since the student would be working in better and better places while going to school.

The guidance staff didn’t like this and eventually they stopped sending kids to me.  Enrollment at vo tech went up.

The apprenticeship system worked for me. The only hole was business education, something that could easily be built into a more formal program. Maybe, with the crazy changing job market that we have, a system where people enter into a formal agreement to learn job skills would be a better way to go. Right now, all the jobs with growth don’t require a degree, but also don’t pay a living wage or any kind of benefits that would permit someone to raise a family. Something has to change. The Germans might be onto something.