Shana Tov! It's the Jewish New Year! I'm a practicing culinary Jew, meaning I spend more time connecting with my Jewish roots in the kitchen than the synagogue. As a result I tend to do more recipe searching than soul searching during the High Holidays (bad for my place in Olam Ha-Ba, good for my dinner guests).

This Rosh Hashanah was my first in New York, and ... Read More

I feel that it goes without saying that if you want to perform accurate and with speed in a kitchen, you should know your way around one and where everything goes.  Well, apparently some people at my school just didn’t get that memo.

It wasn’t until my second trimester at JWU that I started my first lab.  Nervous that not knowing the kitchen very ... Read More

Convenience of Inconvenience?
My second lab at Johnson and Wales was Introduction to Cake Decorating and Petit Fours. On our very first day, we examined the use of convenience products in the work place. We tested out a chocolate and vanilla cake mix and a chocolate fudge icing.

All of previous experience in the kitchen revolves around ... Read More

When I was considering a move to Manhattan, both the French Culinary Institute and my girlfriends enticed me with the same promise: variety. The FCI's material stressed the school's prime location in NYC, with its diversity of culinary opportunities. My girlfriends, on the other hand, emphasized the dating opportunities. This assorted scene was certainly different fro... Read More

After I graduated high school, I decided to take a year off to gain experience in the food industry. I starting working with a woman who was opening a small bakery for the first time in Ann Arbor, MI. The bakery was a cupcake shop that also specialized in wedding and specialty cakes. I agreed to be her assistant pastry chef, full time, and to help her with the ope... Read More

Hello, and welcome to my first post on Chef2Chef! I'm currently in Level 4 of the Classic Culinary Arts Program at the French Culinary Institute, and only two months from receiving my graduation toque. For more about me and my culinary background, please check out my bio.

If you're one of the readers of this blog other than my mother (who may be the only reader... Read More

I want to go on a rant, a rant about the class that frustrated me the most.

My first lab at JWU was Hot and Cold Dessert Preparation. The class was primarily about how to plate desserts but also focused on how to make certain desserts , such as pie... Read More