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Are Cakes Overrated?

December 28, 2011 in Careers, The School | No comments

With all the shows about cakes, one question I had to ask was, does one dessert rate its own show or better yet, multiple shows? Even the pipsqueak cupcake gets a prime time slot. I usually like my desserts with lots of fresh fruit, so I am normally a pie or tart eater.  In fact, I will admit to being a pretty good pie maker myself.  But I am going through an intervention at the moment.

You see, The International Culinary Center started a special three month program on cakes.  We have a professional pastry program that lasts six months, cakes are covered within that course. But cakes have evolved…becoming delicious pieces of culinary architecture and we realized we needed a little graduate program devoted just to them, diving deep into the world of this rich, moist and sometimes staggeringly beautiful dessert.

Visiting Master Pastry Chef-Instructor Ron Ben-Israel, Pastry Chef-Instructor Cynthia Peithman, and students, Cake Techniques & Design class

The English word cake comes from the Vikings’ Old Norse, kaka.  Until the late 1400s cake referred to bread-like, often savory preparations. Historically they are round.  They did not take the form of a sweetened dessert until the 1700s, when ovens and refined ingredients first became widely available.  Today cakes are transformed from the traditional rounds into any shape or size you can imagine.  It takes more than a little knowledge and an oven to transform cakes into masterpieces.

To be a professional cakemaker you have to know your ingredients from gum arabic to vitelline membrane.  You have to make fondants, temper chocolate, make ribbons out of blown sugar, shape and color sugar paste flowers, make charlottes, mousses and custards and a huge list of other techniques, all to be assembled with the craftiness of an Egyptian pyramid builder!  Just look at the cakes from our first class which graduated recently.  I can now admit that my beloved humble pie does not have the depth of the cake pedigree (though it still tastes good!).

If you are interested in opening up a cake business, look up our cake program at the International Culinary Center. You are only three months away from creating some amazing feats with flour, butter, sugar and baking soda!

The first graduating class, Cake Techniques & Design, Senior VP of Education & Student Affairs, Christopher Papagni, Pastry Chef-Instructor, Cynthia Peithman

Bogota Gastronomically Speaking

November 3, 2011 in Restaurants, The School, Travel | No comments

Bogota is a unique and beautiful city. The mountains covered with forests and scented with eucalyptus pour into the city. At the end of a street you can see a vertical green rise of thousands of feet. The city itself is 8,612 feet above sea level, the third highest capital city in South America after La Paz and Quito. One walks slowly in Bogota. There are virtually no tourists.  Its eight million residents bustle and know how to eat and party.

We are very fortunate to have a great graduate there, Daniel Castano. We had dinner with Daniel at a wonderful restaurant Arcanos Mayores which oozed local color. A mother and daughter cooked with flair and real home feeling. The kitchen was the center of the restauant and the tables surrounding it were colorfully tiled. Even the second floor tables were placed on a balcony overlooking the kitchen. Needless to say, this was our kind of place.


As usual we started with the house drinks. We explored the exotic fruits and our favorite cocktail contributor was the lulu fruit. Not sweet, it was full of fresh flavor. To me there was a tinge of grass with a fruit feel in the mouth. They paired  this with their local alcohol and some grenadine and marischino cherries. It tastes better than it sounds.

The food products of Columbia are world class. To quote David Arnold our Director of Culinary Tech,(who joined us on his 2nd trip to Columbia), “they have the best eggs in the world!” The chicken was so tasty, I now remember what chicken is supposed to taste like. Aside from this, what they are known for is their meat. Most of the restaurants have the word Carne (meat) in it. We were in gaucho land.  And thank god, they are not an overprocessed nation.  Local is a way of life here.

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Bogota Foodies Meet

October 31, 2011 in Events, The School, Travel | No comments

We were invited by LaSalle College to participate in a gastronomic fair in Bogota. We were so lucky. Tens of thousands of locals and many cooking school students attended. We spoke together the language of food. Words such as sustainable, technology and delicious were the worldwide ubiquitous catch phrases.

Academics and practicioners from all over South America attended. It was a wonderful chance to learn and explore what is happening in the food scenes in the Latin countries. Univerisities from Brazil to Columbia have added gastronomy programs. School food is an important topic. Native fruits, vegetables and historical cooking are passionately defended.

It was great to walk around the food halls and bump into famous Mexican chefs. We got to drink coca tea and find out that the acai berry from Columbia has more anti oxidants than any other. Once again the array of fruits boggled the mind. Stay tuned, you are going to hear about Columbia as one of the next big food countries.

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Visiting the test kitchens at Sunset Magazine

September 26, 2011 in The School, Travel | No comments

Margo True is the strong, silent type. But she is not truly silent, her pen is her sword. She is the food editor at Sunset magazine. I was fortunate to meet Margo in her New York days at Saveur Magazine. When the International Culinary Center opened in Campbell, California, we became neighbors of the magazine. Margo invited me to lunch. Boy not only was I impressed, I was jealous.

Margo True

The magazine is housed in an extraordinary building. It embodies the essence of California. While Margo toured me, I mentioned that it reminded me of the Mondavi winery in Napa. She laughed and told me that Robert Mondavi had visited Sunset and hired the same architect to build his eponymous winery. The one thing Mondavi could not replicate were the extraordinary gardens. There are grass gardens, succulent gardens, exquisite pine trees and the most enviable vegetable garden. We tiptoed into that garden because it was lunch time and some of the staff were practicing Tai Chi in glen! It was an”OMG!” workplace. No wonder the magazine is so beautiful and inspired.

Sunset vinegar

But I also think that has a lot to do with Margo and her colleagues. I was captivated as she told me that she decided to try to have the magazine go a year with eating off their land. That meant raising chickens, canning, making vinegar, crushing grapes with her feet to make wine and finding the wheat to transform into flour. I ate some of the bounty. Delicious!

The test kitchen

And the test kitchen was abuzz…by the way it looked out towards the garden. We were trying salads for an upcoming issue. I wouldn’t know which one to pick. We drank a lovely Pinot Blanc from Chalone and they literally had to pry me out of the door to get me to leave.

A parting gift was their amazing book, The One-Block Feast: An Adventure in Food from Yard to Table, about how they went about living the year making all their own food. It has become one of my favorite food books of all time. Check it out!

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SF Chefs…So Fantastic!

September 6, 2011 in Events, Restaurants, The School | No comments

Cesare, Emily, Dorothy and other luminaries at Opening Ceremony

SF Chefs was an event held the first weekend of August in San Francisco, celebrating the finest restaurants in the city. As the International Culinary Center of California we joined in the fun and had a table at the Union Square tent. We were thrilled to be side by side with such dynamic restaurants as Boulevard, Waterbar and Frances!

Melissa Perello of Frances

Nancy Oakes (Boulevard) and Joyce Goldstein

Cesare Casella, our Dean of Italian Studies happened to be out at our school that week, and became The International Culinary Center of California’s main attraction at the event. We served his scrumptious food to alert all that our west coast campus will be adding Italian classes to its roster.  We were honored to be asked to give a demo to the crowd.  Cesare kept it simple making Pasta al Pomodoro but even with something so simple, I learned a new technique. Cesare always uses canned whole Marzano tomatoes (they are sweeter) and crushes them with his hands.  He adds them to sweating white onions and lets it cook a while.  Then he throws the spaghetti directly into the tomatoes and lets it cook that way. One pot cooking.  Tons of basil are added just before coming off the fire.  Sharp Pecorino cheese finished off the dish. Delicious! Cesare as usual charmed everyone.

Cesare Casella

Interview with Liam Mayclem, "The Foodie Chap"

Cesare and I were thrilled to be at the opening ceremony and help cut the cake, which depicted the skyline of this marvelous food city. It was fun to stand next to Mourad Lahlou from Aziza and our Dean and Pastry doyenne of SF, Emily Luchetti. Thank you San Francisco for welcoming us with open arms!

If you plan on visiting San Francisco for  a food experience, combine it with this event.  You’ll taste a little bit of foggy heaven in a few hours.  Just remember it is cold in San Francisco in August…great eating weather. Under the tent you’ll find an explosion of SF’s best restaurants and wines. You will bob from table to table in a sea of food and drink amidst an amazing and sophisticated crowd.  It is an event not to be missed!

Gary Danko and Joanne Weir

Chantal Keller, Kevin Stuessi, Hubert Keller, Dorothy, Gary Danko, Cesare

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Marcella Siting! (Hazan that is!)

March 25, 2011 in The School | No comments

Marcella…named by Craig Claiborne as the Queen of Italian Cuisine and the inspiration behind The International Culinary Center’s Italian Culinary Academy. Through their poetic and precise books, Marcella and Victor Hazan are the dynamic duo responsible for educating, mentoring and inspiring Americans (and many others in their 20 plus translations) to the deliciousness of authentic Italian cooking.

Now living quietly near Sarasota, Florida, Marcella is 87, and Victor is 84. I was thrilled to visit with them last week.  They look amazing. Their vibrancy and love of good food is palpable. Marcella is even embarking on a new book and they are planning to visit New York in June. We will enthusiastically welcome them home and roll out the red, white and green carpet!

For those of you not familiar with Marcella’s writings, I would encourage you to immediately purchase a copy of her Essentials of Italian Cuisine. For me it is the bible, period. I return to it again and again. For example, how do you properly store parmesan cheese?  Do not put it in plastic wrap. First put it in wax paper, so it can breathe, then in heavy foil and store it in the vegetable bin of your refrigerator.

Marcella teaching her class at The FCI

Book signing

Her writing is eloquent. Her ideas have a unique perspective. For example, people often ask me, “what is the fundamental difference between French and Italian cuisine?”  I respond: “the French defined technique, the Italians celebrate the taste of the product, and both exquisitely.” Listen to how Marcella interprets her insight of the essential Italian “taste” from her book, Marcella Cucina, ” Cooking must express taste, not technique, because technique alone does not communicate anything. To study it otherwise than as a function of taste is an arid academic exercise; it is like mastering the grammar of a language in which you have nothing to say.  It happens too often when I eat the food of highly trained chefs, food that is ingeniously contrived, elaborately described in the menu, and eye-catchingly presented, that virtually nothing registers on my palate.  Such occasions remind me of a plea that the composer Richard Strauss once made to an orchestra he was rehearsing: ‘Gentlemen, you are playing all the notes perfectly, but please, now let me hear some music.’”

Bravo, Marcella. Encore!

Dorothy Hamilton, Victor & Marcella Hazan March 2011

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