Culinary Courses

If you've got no reservations about occupying Catherine Zeta-Jones's or Aaron Eckhart's place in the kitchen, sample a few cooking classes. You just might develop a taste for cooking school.

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Culinary Courses
"No Reservations" Needed for Hot New Careers with Culinary Courses
By Reena Nadler

The bustling kitchen. Gorgeous ingredients. Imagined aromas wafting from every pot and pan. Little wonder that the global film community has a love affair with cooking movies--of which the Catherine Zeta-Jone/Aaron Eckhart culinary rom com, "No Reservations," is the latest. Does a great kitchen film make you dream about being a professional chef or putting together amazing meals at home? Think that creative cooking only happens on celluloid? Cooking classes can give you all the skills you need to star in your own kitchen or join the culinary cast of your local restaurants.

Culinary Courses Fit Fast-Paced Lifestyles
Culinary careers were made for very busy people. Take the example of the chefs in the recently released "No Reservations." Kate (Zeta-Jones) is the Master Chef at a trendy Manhattan restaurant. She runs her kitchen at breakneck speed, personally coordinating a top notch menu. After her sister dies, she balances caring for her niece with her life as a chef, and even slips in time for a romance with her new Sous-Chef, Nick (Eckhart). The key ingredients in her busy, helter-skelter life are food itself and the immense satisfaction she gets from crafting fantastic meals.

If you have a busy life like Kate, you may wonder: How can I fit it all in and still have time to become a great cook? With cooking classes, you can throw away your reservations. Bakers' dozens of culinary colleges offer a veritable banquet of enticing cooking classes, classes made to order for your busy life. Whether you want to launch a career as a professional chef, or wow your family and friends from your home kitchen, a culinary school can be the recipe for the life you've seen in the movies.

The Inside Dish on Cooking Classes and Family
If you're a woman dreaming of blending a chef career with motherhood a la Kate in "No Reservations" or Martha in "Mostly Marta" (the Euro-original that Hollywood warmed over), take heart. The Women's Foodservice Forum (WFF) points out that culinary teams work better and are more productive when composed equally of women and men--Kate and Nick's culinary competitiveness notwithstanding. After all, "Hell's Kitchen" reality television winner, Rock Harper, credits his wife and two children as motivating his cooking success. Luckily, cooking classes and family commitments go hand in oven mitt.
Look to the most successful chefs, and you'll see that family life pairs well with cooking. Celebrity chef Paula Deen and sons Jamie and Bobby have made cooking the family business, serving their famous Southern cooking at her aptly-named restaurant, The Lady & Sons. Britain's "Naked Chef" Jamie Oliver may have a culinary bad boy reputation, but he's a family man whose interest in children pushed him to reform his country's public school cuisine. Today, even single moms struggling to make ends meet can find the financial support they need to help them through cooking schools and into culinary careers.

Whether you aim to be a celebrity chef, a chef for celebrities, a baker, or a cooking school graduate, you find that the number one perk of cooking for a living: you'll be surrounded constantly by wonderful food. Every day, professional chefs get to put their creativity to work with delicate cheeses, rich fois gras and pates, exotic spices, fresh truffles and the finest wines. Bringing their culinary vision to the finest ingredients, professional chefs have the opportunity to cook up a masterpiece.

Culinary College Graduates Find the World is Their Oyster
Even people with many other commitments can whip up a hot new culinary career. More than 2 out of 5 chefs work part time, reports the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And being elbow deep in bolognaise can really bring in the dough. Chefs and head cooks have median annual earnings of $14.75, and many get full benefits packages. World-class chefs can make about $70,000 to $100,000 cooking their signature cuisines, according to a recent New York Times article.

Though men still outnumber women two to one in culinary schools, the number of female chefs is growing. A major culinary school offering online education now enrolls more than 90,000 students, nearly tripling its enrollment over the last decade. Even with booming enrollments, the BLS still projects the need for culinary workers to remain high, with job openings “plentiful” for the foreseeable future.

Sources:
Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Chefs, Cooks, and Food Preparation Workers”
New York Times, "Serving Chef Under Glass; Kitchen Celebrities Are Relying on Image Builders"


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