Many young chefs today don’t how to carve up a carcass but luckily several ‘old school’ chefs, fearing the old ways of cooking are a dying art, are keen to pass on these traditions before it’s too late.
By Sue Fea
Vital ‘old school’ cooking skills are becoming a dying art as many restaurant kitchens around New Zealand face constant pressures to turn a profit. Senior chefs, who were around in the days when a deer arrived on the back of a jeep at their kitchen door, fresh from the kill, are concerned that most young chefs these days have no clue how to carve up a carcass. Just where those cuts of meat, which now arrive vacuum-packed and labelled, actually come from is a mystery to them.
There’s a danger the basic traditions of their industry could be lost forever. Those who were mentored in how to do things the old school way say they now feel a responsibility to pass on that tradition to the younger generation of chefs, who simply aren’t being trained this way.
World Association of Chefs Society (WACS) judge Graham Hawkes says menus are now becoming hugely restricted as a result. “They stopped teaching it a long time ago – there’s way too much of the convenience thing coming into the tertiary system,” he says. “We all understand a lot of operators take a short cut but before they do that they [young chefs] need to know the long way round otherwise it can be very tricky....you can only assume it’s what you think it is. In my day they got the whole carcass in, nowadays they’ve got no idea what’s coming in a wee plastic bag with four little pieces.”
Hawkes says many young chefs are now limited to a quick, flash in the pan-style cooking – low, slow and wet cooking such as braising has disappeared off our menus. “If it doesn’t come half-prepared in a packet they don’t know what to do with it and they don’t put it on the menu.”
It’s been a good 10 years since we’ve lost “that more robust style” off our menus, says Hawkes. “The issue’s been around a long time and I’ve been waiting for the tertiary sector to pick it up but I have seen nothing yet. As an industry we need to look at ourselves as we’ve allowed the tertiary education sector to completely dominate our training schemes,” he says.
He’s a great believer in modern apprenticeships where young chefs “earn and learn. We do know it and we will teach you....us old farts do like to show off,” he grins. Like most chefs of his vintage, he still insists on making “real gravy” from scratch – no packets allowed – and is proud of the Lancaster hot pot and steak and kidney cobbler on his Paddington Arms English Pub menu, both made the old school way.
Young chefs arriving in his kitchen are taught how to do it the right way with no pre-packed short-cuts and they actually enjoy their cooking, he says. He also reckons homemade, local and prepared from scratch are all aspects chefs should be “skiting up” on their menus these days.
Dunedin chef Michael Coughlin and Queenstown chef Russell Heron, both experienced chefs, feel they have a responsibility to pass on what they were taught to this younger generation missing out. In the game for 30 years, Coughlin says he’s concerned these traditional crafts of the industry are being lost and that senior chefs have a responsibility to encourage teaching of them. “When I first started there was no accelerated conditioning and aging courier cuts – the whole animal arrived (pig, sheep, cattle) on the back of a truck and it was our job to break it down into cuts.”
As an army chef at Waiouru, this extended down to rendering the fat leftover for the deep fryers. When he started in his first hotel job it was much the same – cutting up the carcass, using the shoulders for the tour group roasts and hind legs for the roast of the day and cleaning up the French racks and cutlets for the a la carte. He remembers the new-found convenience that came with the advent of vacuum-packed cuts – you could ring and order a set amount of meat, there was minimal labour and all of a sudden it became very cost-effective.
Nowadays few restaurants have the time or space to order in a whole carcass so it’s a huge novelty for his younger chefs when the opportunity arises at St Clair Resort’s Pier 24 Restaurant. If they’re having a game dinner, all the chefs huddle around to watch the old master at work – as they may never get another opportunity to watch a carcass being broken down.
Some are still taught “in theory” but have never put it into practice. “They’ll possibly never experience it in a restaurant situation and I feel a responsibility to make sure they understand what to look for and where the cuts of meat actually come from. It gives you a bit more respect for the meat, the quality. Once it’s in an aging bag, the shape becomes distorted and it’s very difficult to tell.”
Coughlin says he knows it’s an advancement that has to happen but it’s left a void in the industry. “The worrying thing is we’ve got to make sure those skills are still there. I think that’s where butcheries come in – I used to take my students there to watch.”
Millbrook Resort executive chef Russell Heron says it all comes down to turning a profit for most operators – time costs money. Senior chefs are usually too busy during restaurant hours to teach these skills but Heron says if his young chefs are enthusiastic enough to give up their spare time to learn then he’s prepared to teach them.
Coughlin agrees: “It’s as much the responsibility of young chefs to ask and learn – if you don’t ask you don’t get.” Training institutions are doing an excellent job, but a young chef’s career path will be more versatile and richer for learning those traditional skills.
Heron served his apprenticeship 15 years ago at the Sheraton Auckland. “We had a butcher, ice carver, and baker and within the first three years all that dropped off. Food and wage costs became apparent.”
Restaurants are buying in more pre-prepared products and the likes of filleted fish to keep labour costs down. “They stopped showing chefs how to do it that way, because of the basic pressure to turn a profit. I was very fortunate that passionate chefs spent a lot of their own time developing and training me – I wouldn’t be where I am today without them. They’re passionate about the future development of a chef – I feel....not obliged....but it’s a requirement for me to pass that down the line.”
Heron spent half his cooking career in Europe and the Kiwi farm boy says it “just crushes him” to see how the industry here is for future generations of chefs. “Young chefs work long hours for low pay and they’re abused non-stop while their mates are out partying...there needs to be some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. Someone spent time with me, developing me, it’s almost like you feel like you owe it to them to make them great chefs for what they’re sacrificing for their career,” says Heron.
It gives him a kick to see the light in their eye when they’ve struggled and got something right for the first time – that special reward is for a senior chef to give something back. “They love to see you do cuts – a whole side of beef, and salmon…I always tell my young chefs that all I want them to be is like a sponge.”
Kiwis and Aussies are famous for their ‘can do’ attitude in restaurant kitchens and he would hate to see that lost. Long time French-Kiwi chef Claude Baudet has taught some of New Zealand’s best chefs since his arrival in 1972. After 50 years in the industry he’s now a hospitality and catering lecturer at Whanganui’s UCOL and says the younger fast-food, pre-packaged generation are losing the real taste of food.
They’re basing their sense of taste on the fast-food and pre-packaged products they’ve had since they were young, says Baudet. Cooking real flavours later on is just not familiar to them. He still teaches “the ABC of cooking” though most students are influenced by books and television and want to cook “fancy dishes. We have to teach the basics first, like making stocks and soups...we do teach filleting of fish in our catering school but it’s extremely rare that people have to deal with a whole fish on a board these days, most arrive already filleted.”
It’s a question of labour costs, real estate premiums for space and even skill, but with places now making stocks from scratch and vegetables and meat pre-cut, prepared, set and washed all ready to a specific restaurant order, the raw product is lacking in our restaurant kitchens.
Baudet says it is a concern as he belongs to a French generation where sitting around the table enjoying a meal was very important. “It was part of my upbringing but that’s not the case today, the faster you go the easier it will be.”
It’s not all bad, it’s part of the development of the industry, but Baudet says basic cooking principles still need to be respected.
