There is always something cooking at the Culinary Education Center of Monmouth County on Drury Lane in Asbury Park. And it’s not just food. The experienced instructors are also cooking up a combination of skills that will allow their students to enter the hospitality industry as professionals in the culinary arts and in food service management.
PHOTOS BY FARRAH MAFFAI Culinary student Peter White (l), Manalapan, slices smoked chicken for a sandwich, while Dane English tosses a salad at the Culinary Education Center of Monmouth County last week.
The Culinary Center is a collaboration that began about four years ago between Brookdale Community College in Lincroft and the Monmouth County Vocational School District. Students may pursue an associate in applied science degree in culinary arts or in food service management. There are also two shorter certificate programs, one in culinary arts and the other in pastry arts.
Although the two-year degree program can be completed in four Brookdale terms, courses run in five three-week blocks each term and includes paid externships in local hotels and restaurants during the summer. Or, for those students so inclined, externships can be had as far afield as Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., or Scotland or Cyprus.
An evening/Saturday program is being instituted and should start in the fall with some course work Web-based, said Pat Gallo-Villee, co-director for the Brookdale Community College end of the collaboration.
The curriculum includes classes in cooking, baking, nutrition and menu/recipe development, patisserie, meat identification and cookery, cultural aspects of food and diet, and seafood cookery. In addition, students can take culinary math, storeroom and purchasing operations, as well as sanitation and safety.
The voluptuous triple-layer blackout cake prepared for a recent dinner at the culinary arts school is filled white and chocolate satin mousse.
The ambiance within the building is one of warmth, creativity and activity. Besides cooking, students were setting tables in the dining room, filling the display cases in the bakery, and learning how to order supplies. "We’re like a family here," said chef William Hahn, one of the instructors at the school.
Christine Davis, co-director on the vocational school side, said there are 15 instructors between the two programs, but the high school students take classes at a different time. All of the instructors were hired because of their backgrounds and because they are student centered. They also care about remaining current, Davis said, explaining, "When one instructor is doing a demonstration of some technique, all of the other instructors come to watch."
Hahn graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in New Hyde Park, N.Y., in 1972 and still works as the executive chef at the Spring Lake Bath and Tennis Club. He teaches everything except pastry, but he is also responsible for placing the vocational students in jobs through the school’s placement service.
He believes that the education students receive at the Culinary Education Center compares very well to any school in the country. "I hire a lot of students at the Bath and Tennis Club through the externship program. We’re primarily a summer operation so it works well for the students," he said.
Student Vinny Landri (left photo), Atlantic Highlands, prepares an omelette for a patron during the lunch hour at the Culinary Education Center in Asbury Park. At right, Karen Grieco, head baking/pastry chef for Brookdale Community College’s culinary arts program, works with student Jon Saracino, Howell, on garnishing the triple-layer blackout cake at the center.
He said he hires them as line cooks, prep cooks, pastry cooks, and to work outside on the bistro menu.
They also do banquets and catering, a big part of the business.
Chef Michael Sirianni, who is in charge of the college placement end of the program, said students find jobs and externships in local hotels and restaurants like the Salt Creek Grill in Rumson, the Rumson County Club, and Joe and Maggie’s Bistro in Long Branch.
"An externship often leads to a job," he said.
Millstone Deputy Mayor Cory Wingerter said his company, Eagle Rock Management, has hired graduates from the Brookdale culinary programs.
His company owns the Ivy League and Chapter House restaurants in Howell, the Tiger’s Tale in the Princeton area, and the Thirsty Mallard in Waretown. "I used to own the Varsity Club in Fair Haven," he said, adding that Brookdale’s programs are very useful to the local hospitality industry.
Chef Thomas Leavy, a Long Branch resident who also attended the Culinary Institute, added that one in three jobs in the United States is directly related to food or agriculture. And the Occupational Outlook Handbook for 2000 says that the job picture through 2006 is good.
According to Davis, the Culinary Center co-director, despite the economic downturn, there are more jobs than employees to fill them.
Besides preparing students to work in restaurants and corporate settings, Davis said there are two emerging career options: cooking in assisted living and retirement communities and personal chef. "There are people who have done very well financially, who can afford a personal chef who comes into their home," she explained.
There are opportunities in the Atlantic City casino restaurants, as well as other hotel chains. Graduates can also work internationally or on cruise ships, Davis said, adding, commercial food companies like Aramark, which is inside of Lucent Technologies, also hire students to do food preparation for big companies. "That’s a good field for those who want to work a 9-5 job," she said.
Chef Sirianni, who teaches a variety of courses and coordinates special events, was on the initial team that developed the culinary arts program.
"We went on tours of all of the top culinary schools, including CIA [the Culinary Institute of America]; Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I.; and the New England Culinary School in Vermont," he said, explaining that the two premier schools are the Culinary Institute and Johnson & Wales. He joked that he went to the other school, meaning not the Culinary Institute, but Johnson & Wales.
Sirianni explained that the block rotation of three, four-day weeks for each class is similar to what Johnson & Wales does. And the kitchen layout and curriculum are similar to both schools. "What is different at the Culinary Education Center is the seafood kitchen, because we’re on the coast," he said.
Before the Culinary Center opened, the nearest culinary arts programs were at Atlantic County Community College or Hudson County College. Besides the Asbury Park building, off-site classes are offered at Lucent Technologies in Holmdel and the Ocean Place Conference Center in Long Branch.
The bakery class starts at about 6:30 in the morning in order to prepare the pastries and other baked goods for the day. The public may come in and purchase fresh bakery items until 12:30 p.m. Plus there are two attractive dining rooms that are open to the public for lunch/brunch between 11:30 a.m. and 12:45 p.m. Monday-Friday.
Students taking the breakfast class or the lunch class are in charge of the menu. It changes every 12 days. During a Feb. 27 visit, the college breakfast class cooked and high school students served brunch in the dining room called Windows on the CEC. Students prepared a full buffet, which included made-while-you-wait
omelets and a carving station. The buffet included French toast, sausage stuffed squash, potato dishes, fruit and desserts.
There are also two bakeries and two instructors. Karen Grieco, one of the baking and pastry instructors, was working with students who were putting the finishing touches on a huge chocolate mousse cake that would be served with the dinner menu.
The Culinary Center is open for dinner Monday through Thursday between 5:15 and 6:30 p.m. Reservations are necessary for the four-course meal that costs between $12 and $18. According to Davis, the restaurant, which is not very big, does fill up.
As with any business, there is language specific to that industry. In cooking, that language is French. Students are encouraged to take four credits of elementary French so that they can pronounce and understand words like béarnaise, canapé and pâté, as well as garde manger and charcuterie.
Hahn explained that the garde manger is the pantry chef or the cook in charge of cold food production, and charcuterie means the cook who prepares cold appetizers and buffet items. They can also have an ice-carving background and artistic presentation skills, he said.
With the growing popularity of cooking shows on television, Brookdale is in the process of revamping its local cable channel and may include a cooking show promoting the culinary arts, Villee said.
Classes are small, with no more than 16 students, and there is a computer lab and a lounge replete with many cooking magazines. The school’s philosophy is to foster individuality, creativity and open-mindedness in the application of theoretical and practical food preparation skills, using high-quality ingredients and attention to skillful preparation. The vision is to develop in each student the characteristics of a professional chef.
The cookery industry has grown considerably since the Joy of Cooking was first published in the 1930s and Julia Child was the guru of recipe preparation in books and on television. Now Jacques Pépin, Emeril Lagasse and Nigela Lawson have become household names.
According to Sirianni, Lagasse was studying at Johnson and Wales at the same time he was there. Lagasse graduated in 1978, and Sirianni graduated in 1979.
Sirianni has a bachelor of science degree in food service management, as well as degrees in hotel and restaurant management and in culinary arts.
American chefs have come into their own now, Hahn said. It’s not just the European chef. Sirianni agreed. "The food networks have heightened our profession and educated the consumer. That makes us work harder at our craft. The field is taking on a more professional air," Sirianni said.
Glancing through the stacks at the library and at bookstores, the cookbook section is among the biggest with every kind of ethnic cooking, gourmet cooking, fat-free cooking, vegetarian cooking, cooking for diabetics and dietetics, and Cooking for Dummies. Given America’s obsession with food, it would seem that the Culinary Education Center is right on the cutting edge of a trend that doesn’t seem to be cooling down.
Bon appetitMonmouth County’s culinary school sizzles
The vision is to
turn students into
professional chefs
By linda denicola
Staff Writer.