Before coming to ICE, you were an economics major. What was it that inspired you to come to culinary school? I worked as a cook in good kitchens while I was in college and I really caught the bug. I...
The revelatory burger and wine pairing was Frog’s Leap’s Shack Red, a blend expressly designed to pair with the Shake Shack "Shackburger," and was just one of the many surprises I experienced during...
Eventually, as we moved on to different cooking methods—learning to sauté, braise, grill, roast and fry—we worked in teams of three or four. The real test here was learning to communicate within a...
ICE students were recently treated to a rare demonstration of "whole hog" butchery, as Master Butcher Rudi Weid broke down an entire 150-pound pig into primal and individual cuts in real time. Today...
What were you doing before you enrolled at ICE? I was living in Minnesota—in a cabin in the woods—growing a garden, canning and working part-time as a breakfast cook at a diner on the main street of...
I don’t need an over-priced souvenir or a slew of photos (though I take them anyway); I remember the places I’ve traveled by the unique tastes I experienced there. From past trips to Italy, I can...
To initiate students into the wide range of Spanish charcuterie, ICE invited Chef Jeffrey Weiss to speak about his new book, Charcutería: The Soul of Spain—the first exhaustive work on the subject to...
Yet there seemed to be a significant shift somewhere around 2003, when the New York Times ran a front-page story in its Sunday Magazine declaring — once and for all — the death of French cuisine. The...
They may look like chicken nuggets, but I assure you, they're sweetbreads.[/caption] Yet of all the unexpected ingredients I’ve discovered as a student, there is none so bizarre—and cool!—as caul fat...
If you know me, then you know that I have become a bit of a dairy nerd, always looking to better understand the composition, structure, and function of milk and all of its derivatives. And while I...
Chef Kamal Rose started working at the famed Tribeca Grill after graduating high school, enrolling at ICE as a way to further advance his technical skills. As the years went by, he worked his way up...
Of all the significant sources of flavor, the first (and possibly, most important) is the fond. This word, which literally means “the base” in French, refers to the brown bits created when you heat...