Chef's Delight

By Sharon Jans
May 2008

PDF of article ( 7 pages )

Two cooking professionals talk about the rewards and challenges of preparing other people’s food.

Almost everyone has watched a TV chef prepare a meal, from the late Julia Child in the 1960s on public television to the vast number of celebrity chefs on Food Network including Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray.

We watch TV chefs chop, slice, dice and add a pinch of this and a drizzle of that, mix ingredients together, sometimes in a food processor, and then put them in a pan and slip it into an immaculately clean oven. After the commercial break the chef returns to the oven, opens it and pulls out a dish that’s cooked perfectly and then plated beautifully. The close-up camera shot of this beautiful work of art makes every viewer’s mouth water. After watching the show, viewers often wonder, “Is this what it’s like to be a chef?”

Two local professionals, one a chef and one a cook, will tell you that a restaurant or institutional kitchen is very different from a cooking-show kitchen and that the non-celebrity chef/cook has to prepare food in “real time” to be eaten now, and not just one meal but many. However, there is great diversity for chefs and cooks both in the types of jobs available and the places where they can work.

This article takes a look at some aspects of the diverse work of chefs and cooks.Currently there are more than 900 chef or cook-related jobs vacant in Minnesota (see Table 1). Employment is projected to grow by 12 percent between 2004 and 2014 with an addition of 4,300 jobs.¹

Sous Chef

Chef is a term commonly used to refer to a person who cooks professionally. In a professional kitchen setting, the term is used only for the person in charge of everyone else in the kitchen, the executive chef.

Jessica Jensen is the sous chef at Kincaid’s restaurant in downtown St. Paul. She graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Minneapolis/St. Paul eight years ago, started working at Kincaid’s six months after graduation, and has been there ever since. “I started at the bottom working at the salad station and moved up station by station over the years,” Jensen said. As a sous chef she manages the kitchen and is second in command to the executive chef.

“The responsibilities of this job include training and scheduling the kitchen staff. I’m given a weekly labor budget, and I staff the kitchen accordingly. I’m also in charge of purchasing all the food and maintaining the kitchen equipment,” Jensen said. “But during the time of food production I’m responsible for checking the quality of every food item before it goes out to the customer. Customer satisfaction and serving consistent high- quality food is very important in the restaurant business.”

Jensen wants her staff to follow a simple philosophy: “What would you think if somebody put that plate in front of you at Kincaid’s? Every plate every time must be quality.”

Chefs can learn basic skills in school and then develop their area(s) of expertise on the job. The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) lists time management, service orientation and instructing as top skills for chefs including sous chefs. Jensen enjoys training the new cooks for each station and helping them learn their way around the kitchen.

“Generally, when we hire new staff [cooks] they have formal culinary education,” she said. “So the areas of basic safety and sanitation are already known. Here I teach them the skills they need to know that are unique to this establishment.

“I’m also a role model for the others, and I must communicate clearly. Sometimes I have to be a coach. For instance when we’re in the height of [food] production and it’s very chaotic, I swing from being a coach or motivator – ‘good job,’ ‘that looks great,’ ‘keep it up!’ – to a drill sergeant – ‘that’s not right,’ ‘you can’t send that out,’ ‘it has to be done over.’”

As part of the training each cook must learn all the recipes for a particular station and produce the food quickly and consistently. In order to make sure the product out of the kitchen has the right quality, the cooks are tested. “We want to see how well they have learned the recipes, including plating and service timing,” Jensen said. She, along with the executive chef, conducts random kitchen tests by ordering menu items without the kitchen staff’s knowledge.

“All food needs to pass FATT – flavor, appearance, temperature and texture,” Jensen said. “When the food is served I look at the presentation, take the internal temperature and weigh it to make sure the recipes are followed to the letter.”

Asked if cooking has always interested her, Jensen replied, “Not really. While I was growing up, my parents did a lot of entertaining. They would throw gourmet parties, and their friends put on dinner parties, too. So, I was exposed to cooking. Then I received a pamphlet in the mail from Brown College and took a tour of Le Cordon Bleu and thought working with food looked interesting, and I could do it.”

Jensen has a unique skill in that she is able to break down a whole fish (without head) into equal-sized pieces with little waste. As she put it, “Not everybody can do that. A lot of people have a hard time cutting fish.”

What’s next for Jensen’s career? She wants to be an executive chef and is working toward that goal. “I’m working with our executive chef and increasing my food knowledge. I’m experimenting with new menu items – putting different foods or different combinations of foods together,” she said.

Asked what she would tell someone who wanted to become a chef, Jensen quickly responded, “It’s nothing like what you see on TV. Kitchens are hot, chaotic, and there’s a lot of pressure during [food] production, but I like the challenge. For me it’s rewarding.”

Institution and Cafeteria Cooks

Jeff Jensen (who is no relation to Jessica Jensen, the sous chef) has been cooking professionally for over 30 years and has worked for a variety of restaurants and held a wide range of cooking jobs – from a short order cook at Perkins to executive chef at the Hastings Country Club. He now works as a cook at the Federal Reserve Bank cafeteria in Minneapolis and feeds approximately 500 people for lunch daily. When asked why he chose this occupation, Jensen just smiled and said, “I enjoy cooking.”

How he got started is another story. After completing military service, Jensen used his GI Bill to attend chef school at 916 Vo-Tech Institute in White Bear Lake.2 Upon completion of school he worked at a few different restaurants until he met Frank Hofsteadt, his mentor.

“I learned the most from Frank,” Jensen said. “He showed me tricks of the trade and short cuts I could take to reduce prep and cooking time, but not hinder the quality of the food. He also showed me different ideas on the presentation of foods – what looks good together.”

Jensen specializes in making soups and sauces for the Federal Reserve Bank cafeteria. Every day the cafeteria serves two soups, the menu soup and “the soup of the day.” The latter is Jensen’s creation. Each morning when Jensen arrives at work, he looks in the cooler to see what’s left over from yesterday.

“I use the leftovers and other ingredients to create my soup of the day. I like to call it soup with soul or soup with love. I put a lot of heart or love into creating it.” Although the cafeteria menu food is made from prescribed recipes, Jensen doesn’t use recipes when he makes his soups and sauces. “When you’ve been cooking for as many years as I have, you know what works and what doesn’t. It’s all up here,” he said, pointing to his head.

Jensen’s cooking philosophy is simple: “Would I enjoy it if that [food] was served to me?” He also thinks a good cook needs “a critical eye for what looks good.”

“You want to put things [ingredients] together that not only taste good but look good. When making a soup, depending on the type of soup you’re making, you need to change techniques. If it’s an old-fashioned soup, it has to look ‘old-fashioned,’ hearty, with big chunks of meat and vegetables. If it’s an Asian soup, it has to look ‘Asian’ or delicate. I like to cut the vegetables into thin matchstick-like pieces so it looks right.”

Cooks’ work schedules can vary as much as restaurants’ menus. There are morning shifts, afternoon shifts, evening shifts and split shifts, as well as weekday and weekend shifts. This variability is prescribed by the type of restaurant or place of employment. Jensen works 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, serving breakfast and lunch at the Federal Reserve Bank cafeteria. He hasn’t always worked this shift. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true. For most of his cooking career he has worked the dinner service. When asked why the switch, Jensen replied, “It wasn’t my first choice. I was used to dinner service hours and liked them. Now that I’m used to it [early day shift], I like being home in the evenings with my family. Sometimes, I even cook dinner for them. But I don’t bake. My wife does all the baking.”

Besides making the soup of the day, Jensen is the exhibition station cook for lunch service and makes all of the sauces he uses. The exhibition station’s menu changes from day to day. It rotates among omelets, pasta, crepes and stir fry. Jensen enjoys working the exhibition station because he gets to interact with the customers face to face while cooking their food right in front of them.

“I like cooking for an audience,” he said. “It’s fun, and I get to show off a little bit.” He also enjoys helping customers with the selection of different ingredients for their dishes. As he put it, “I know the flavors of all the ingredients and how they’ll melt together. I want to make them [customers] the best dish, even if it’s an omelet. Customer satisfaction is number one.”

Jensen has had an extensive cooking career, cooking for more than half of his life. So when asked what he likes best about this job, Jensen leaned back in his chair and said, “I get to do what I like – cook. I don’t have the headaches that the manager has. It [cooking] has been a good career for me, and I still enjoy cooking.”

 ¹ Long-term Projections, 2004-2014. Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.
² 916 Vo-Tech Institute is now called Century College and no longer offers chef or culinary training.

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