Just survived five-day Boot Camp at the CIA.

Gee, boulangere, I thought Barbara Walters and probing questions like yours had just retired! Of course, the goal remains to take a half-year smoking cessation program--aboard Oceania Marina--around the world one way, do a Uey, then back again—touching every port on Earth, in the owner’s suite, and it’s tax deductible.

No, no, no…what I mean to say is that I’m now into poaching fish and fowl in a big way. At CIA I got to open an oven, lift the parchment lids from two poaching pans and test for doneness in my snapper while crouching alongside a founder of Le Bernardin. I have to bring that experience (and the notes) home to the ones I cook for. Thanks for the cool question, Babawawa.

Dear Pegeen, ever had a lemon wedge in your iced tea and wondered if it was washed?

Since I'm quite happily retired, I never looked at the experience as a possible return to work, but anyone contemplating a career would surely appreciate this short course.

Hi, Peg. I did go to the local diner almost every day, but that was for a late breakfast/early lunch before class. Every night we, the assistants and Chef would eat what we had prepared, buffet style along with some nice wines. On the Wednesday we all ate lunch at Bocuse, the premier campus restaurant. The food was excellent, but the students doing the service have a lot to learn.

The onion thing was about not using the same blade to cut both the peel and the product. So you would cut a bit away from the stem end, then peel back the skin and trim the hairs away from the root. Then you would clean your knife and board with a solution available at your station. Only then would you go to work on the onion itself. There were a lot of cautions, including the shocking news that that honeydew rind is out to kill you!

Wow. It’s humbling to see that the responses here are from folks I’ve learned so much from, lurking around 52 for the last few years, as I have. I also think that all the good and right questions have been asked, but that my answers are only of a sound-bite size and needing a better effort from me.

I haven’t said anything about the classroom work. Every day included a ninety-minute lecture about the various cooking methods and techniques that we would employ in making that evening’s dishes. We studied poaching, then we poached. We studied roasting and roasted.

Taken together the classroom work adds up to a very good treatise on cooking, with a French bias, as you would expect. Each of us students had a ring binder with all the classroom lessons printed out and room for notes next to the power point frames. I’m just going back over this now.

After classroom, the schedule called for a break of fifteen minutes, but that never happened. Too busy—aprons on and three hours to make dinner in a kitchen as alien as a flying saucer’s. Too bad, because I never got a second daily chance to commune under the smokers’ gazebo with the real school community. I would get there early, before classroom began, and those kids were great to talk to—all unsure of anything in the future, but all excited to be asked how I could work Durum wheat into my market basket menu for Friday.

The school days began late, classroom at 1:00 (in uniform), dinner up and served at 6:45, back to the motel by 9, an hour to catch the news, phone home, regret the day’s screw-ups and crash.

Up on achy legs at seven, decaf, smoke, banana, decaf, smoke, homework, and break down recipes. Repeat.

Thanks, guys. It really didn't try to relate to home cooking at all. It was an accelerated version of what the matriculated students take. At one point I was tossing some fennel with oil on a sheet pan before roasting it. Chef shouted over, "Do that in a bowl--it's more efficient!" What home cook would mess up an extra bowl and consider it efficient?

Hi! I had to bite the bullet and start working the paring knife toward myself, which I find scary. We weren't permitted to cut an onion in half in order to peel it, because of possible contamination from the peel (ugh). Also had to wear gloves when working with anything that would not be cooked, so I chopped up a few floppy glove-ends along with the tomatoes. On the other hand, making a parchment lid for poaching worked very well and was easy to do. Making gnocchi was a first, also.

Don't worry about your education going in...some in the class were there thinking it was more of a social occasion. The CIA has published a book--written by someone who took the course--but it's not available in the campus store. Search "Culinary Boot Camp" on Amazon to find it.

I made some of the sauces we all have made, chef. Made a compote--a chutney with no acid. I made a pork loin, but never again, due to lack of flavor in that cut.

We made dishes that I would never think to make. I made okra and my wife hates it.

Sorry, rt21, I'm thinking I did not answer you well in my fist attempts. In truth the real answer is too big. Eleven students made over a hundred dishes in four days, and in just three hours each day. We made rice at least nine ways. None of the recipes was particularly complicated, but all demanded a degree of total concentration--like having quints, I imagine.

Thanks chef. In addition I've grown accustomed to the blue/white tattersall pants as a leisure-lifestyle choice. I flaunted them all around my motel.