Culinary Schools in California: An Overview
1. The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) – St. Helena is one of the non-profitable culinary schools in California offering traditional bachelor and associate degrees in culinary arts. The school also offers hospitality courses and consulting services for restaurant management. For professional educators, recreational classes for home food preparation are offered. CIA was founded in 1946 by Katharine Angall and Frances Roth. Originally named as “New Haven Restaurant Institute”, it was changed to “Culinary Institute of America” after World War II in 1951. The St. Helena Campus offers Bachelor of Professional Studies (BPS) and Associate in Occupational Studies (AOS) in culinary arts. Requirements for admission includes six months of experience in food management.
2. The French Culinary Institute (FCI) – San Francisco is an affiliate institution of the prominent Italian Culinary Academy. Founded by Dorothy Hamilton in 1984, the San Francisco Campus offers undergraduate programs in culinary & pastry arts, wine studies & preparation and special programs in food management. FCI – San Francisco is currently one of the top culinary schools in California. From 2006 to 2010, the International Association of Culinary Professionals awarded the FCI – San Francisco Campus for its excellence in offering vocational cooking and baking programs. The FCI is home to some prominent names from the culinary arts, including Jacques Pepin, Andre Soltner, Alan Richman, Chris Ely and Jacques Torres.
3. The Professional Culinary Institute of California (PCIC) – is a branch campus of the French Culinary Institute. Located in Campbell, California, PCIC offers the following programs: Diploma in Professional Baking & Pastry Arts, Diploma in Culinary Arts and Certified Sommelier Program. The PCIC is noted for its state-of-the-art equipment and “small-class” environment. A relatively new institute, PCIC also offers “hobby” classes and trainings for non-professionals. The “Housing Assistance” meanwhile is offered for students from nearby cities and towns in California.
4. Le’Ecole – is a public culinary institution and restaurant owned by the FCI. Le’Ecole specializes in offering courses on pastry making, cake and wine preparation. The restaurant is regularly open during lunch and dinner, as well as weekends and holidays. Students and graduates of Le’Ecole gains experience during their part-time “back-of-the-house” kitchen duties. Le’Ecole is home to these notable alumni:
Chef Dan Barber – One of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People of 2009.
David Chang – 2007’s “Rising Star Chef” winner and one of Time Magazine’s Most Influential People of 2010.
Lee Anne Wong – Top Chef Season One 4th Placer.
To learn more about culinary schools in California, please feel free to consider our main blog about culinary arts, as we have written many different blogs on various topics revolving around specific cooking classes, culinary arts schools, and colleges in CA. You can find more of our content by visiting our main blog by clicking here.
Fish Prep Requires Proper Gadgets
Filed under: Cooking, Easy Recipes, Feeling Healthy, Healthy Eating, Simplify Life
When you purchase fish from the fish monger, your initial decisions will revolve around how much you want, and how ready to cook it is. For instance, do you want fillets ready to pan fry, or are you willing to take a whole fish and take care of the flesh, fins, scales, gills, and guts yourself? Do you want tail off or tail on? Fillets J cut or V cut? Pan dressed fish or whole round? Fish steaks? Do you want the skin on so that you get the good healthy fat, or deep skinned fish? Lots of decisions!!
The advantage of buying a whole fish uncleaned is the price. If you are willing to put in a little sweat equity as it were, you can save a bundle. In order to prepare the fish for eating, you will have a little work to do in the kitchen, and you will need to have the right equipment at hand. This article will tell you some of the things that can come in handy. They will likely pay for themselves over time, based on the money you save each time you buy fish at the market!
Here are the basic tools that will come in handy when it comes to fish:
- Glove hand covering is wise if you are dealing with things like shelling shellfish. Those oyster shells can cut you!
- Fish pliers are not just for when you are out in the boat catching the little guys. They come in handy in the kitchen for taking out salmon tines. The home improvement store can supply you with needle nose pliers, and you can clean them afterwards for kitchen use.
- Fish scaling has got to be the ickiest of all fish cleaning jobs, and you know that if you have ever cleaned a whole bunch of fish. While electric fish scalers exist, manual ones will serve you just as well.
- A fish gutting knife or two is essential. It is curved and especially designed for the task.
- Kitchen shears should be clean and sharp.The ones you use for cutting poultry will work, but again, make sure they are clean before using.
- Having a fillet knife is a good thing if you want to be like the pro chefs. You can live without it, but personally, it’s a good thing.
- If you are going to clean shellfish, make sure you have knives for clam, shrimp, and oysters.
If you are embarking on a weight loss plan that includes fish, like the diet HCG weight loss plan, all of these utensils will come in handy. Just assemble them before beginning the diet days. This way you will know in advance that you have on hand all of your necessary and useful HCG diet tools.
Reasons For Weighing Your Food
Filed under: Feeling Healthy, Kitchen Appliances, Simplify Life
Up until recent history, if you wanted to measure an object, you needed to have an object similar in size and weight to compare it to. The device was called a balance scale, and you’ll find similar devices in many science class rooms to this day.
In fact, the technology is as old as 2000 B.C. Archeologists have discovered rocks with hieroglyphics denoting weights of rocks in common denominators who balanced them against objects on planks of wood. The good news is that if you want to start measuring your food portions, today’s scales do not require any rocks!
No one disagrees that the overeating problem in America is leading to poorer health and undue death. A recent university study revealed that 49 out of 50 states have an obesity rate that exceeds 30 percent. This is a direct result of huge portion sizes and high sugar/fat content.
With the average fast food meal being 5 times larger than in 1960, or a bagel having as many calories as 5 slices of bread, it’s no wonder our caskets are getting bigger and bigger.
The digital food scale selection we have in this country gives us no excuse for overeating. There are scales varying in quality, price, and size each loaded with features that will make it fool proof to measure your food.
The LCD screens are digital and easy to read. The zeroing out function gives you the ability to add food ingredients into a single bowl without having to do any math. And most models let you pick which metric is easiest for you to understand.
Using a food scale isn’t going to instantly make you loose weight. You have to make the hard choices like measuring tea for your electric tea kettle rather than drinking calorie dense colas.
It will not be a swift transformation, but after weeks and months of dedication you will have a much healthier lifestyle.