19 Months

For anyone still looking at this, there's a brand spanking new blog from the fingertips of the same author at this address: http://beatensearedandsauced.blogspot.com/ Over and out, Jonathan

http://19months.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-blog.html

I plated the stew, one small serving on each of our plates. I cranked the heat under the root vegetables and then under the green beans. When I saw there was some activity, I plated those, too. I...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2009/09/practical-pt-ii.html

At the end of everyone’s second semester at the CIA—right before you go out on your externship—you are required to take a cooking practical. You walk into a special kitchen constructed for ...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2009/08/practical.html

Well, hello there. It's been a little while since I've posted anything. After a few months of strange weather, things have normalized somewhat. I am also in the thick of my externship at school, ...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2009/06/update.html

19 Months is on a very short hiatus. I've had a ton of stuff going on, am preparing for my big, do-or-die cooking practical in a few days, and need to focus my attention for a brief period. I'm h...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2009/03/static.html

My girlfriend and I became a couple because I told a lie, and the lie involved cooking. At the time we conjoined, I had a freelance job rating restaurants for New York Magazine’s website. I w...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-im-here-pt1.html

But there’s another component to this, too. It’s a little more esoteric. When I encounter the product of people’s skill and vision—real skill and genuine vision—I will often feel a sen...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-im-here-pt2.html

A while back, I wrote about the senseless demise of a particular duck I’d eaten at lunch. I’d been incensed, riled up and pissed about how badly the duck had been treated in the kitchen. I�...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/12/duck-died-honorably.html

A swollen half moon hung bright over the top of Roth Hall. The light from inside the Hall made the stained glass windows glow. It was beautiful but from where I stood in the school parking lot I ...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/12/i-against-i.html

A person’s palate is fickle and idiosyncratic. One night at school, I was making chicken fricassee. My instructor stood at my shoulder watching and commenting on every move I made as I stirred ...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/11/training.html

If you have any questions about the CIA, cooking school, cooking, food in general--please send them. There's a reason I'm asking.

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/11/questions.html

Last Monday, someone remarked to me, “In the past two posts you talked about tasting your food. But mostly it seems that the CIA teaches skills and craft. What does it do to teach how food shou...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/11/hating.html

Two weeks ago, our friend Chesley ventured up from Manhattan to hang out in Saugerties. Chesley, a beautiful, enthusiastic woman who has biked across Viet Nam and India, is one of my oldest fr...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-idea-of-fun.html

(Part one starts below this entry) I stopped myself for a second, watching the medallions sear. I tried to bring to mind what it was I knew I needed moments ago. I had no idea. The heat on the o...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/11/first-and-last-conclusion.html

We’d gotten our menu assignment: beef medallions—sauteed—to be served with a sauce chausseur, along with deep-fried onion rings, potato gratin, and broccolini. The hitch was—as it had bee...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-and-last.html

When I was 12, on New Year’s Eve, my mother made a very creamy shrimp curry. I was allowed a small glass of red wine to go with the meal. The shrimp was spicy and rich; in combination with alte...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-i-got-here-part-1-of-many.html

Around a year before I started at the CIA, Nelly and I were driving back to NYC from her Dad’s place in Rhinebeck, and steered off Route 9 onto the campus grounds, just to take a look. I menti...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/10/anthony-bourdain-what-have-you-wrought.html

I have my midterm tomorrow--making fresh pasta, starch gelatinization, risotto, the protein levels of various flours, and what the hell a chelazae is (for the record, it's a set of knotty cords t...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-posts-comin.html

For the most part, my peers are pretty young. In my class, there were a total of 77 baking and pastry students beginning the first day of June 16th. Of those 77, 8 had degrees. Most of the studen...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-peers-considertion-part-i.html

The farm’s dirt driveway cut through green fields, and a few yards down from the road a sign read “Welcome CIA Students and Brook Farm Friends.” For most of the ride, the four of us in the ...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-i-learned-butchering-part-iv.html

At the kitchen table in Malden, I’m watching an online video—required viewing for the meat butchering class that preceded Fish—called “Calf Slaughter.” The class is taught by an older G...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/09/somethings-got-to-die-butchering-part-i.html

For lunch one day a couple weeks earlier, I had half of a duck, set on top of wild rice, resting on my plate. Most of the eight of us around the table had the same thing. The duck had been pretty...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/09/duck-died-in-vain-butchering-part-ii.html

The meat instructor had asked us if we would volunteer to go with him after class the following Friday afternoon, to a CSA (community sustained agriculture) farm just outside of New Paltz, New Yo...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/09/100-chickens-in-four-hours-butchering.html

I watched my blood trickle bright and red under the heavy fluoresence of the CIA fish room. The gills of a fish—a sea bass, in this case—are heavy, crude syringes, livid with bacteria. There�...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/09/undone.html

When you pull onto the grounds of the Culinary Institute of America (henceforth, CIA), it’s hard to not be impressed. This is intentional. They went at the planning and landscaping with grandeu...

http://19months.blogspot.com/2008/09/where-im-writing-from.html