culinary school diaries: why I enrolled

This is a long story about becoming a wife and a mom. The last 13 years often feels like a series of wonderful, meaningful, crucial, beautiful and selfless choices. That includes becoming a stay-at-home mom, moving to the suburbs, losing/finding/losing jobs, trying to find my own space.

For most of my life, that space was writing. I wrote throughout high school, college, young adulthood. It was where I was me. In marriage and motherhood, I lost that thread. I didn’t have the time, the solitude, the stimulation. Instead, I gradually migrated to the kitchen.

It started as a place to own solace when I couldn’t be alone (early motherhood) and became a place I sought when there was nowhere else to go (the pandemic). It became a place where I continuously found myself. I turned to cooking when I wanted to get back into my own head, do my own work, earn my own cred.

The idea of culinary school presented itself after a two-week course I took with one of the ICE chefs. which provided me the opportunity to get out of the house and out of my role there. It was a glorious two weeks—learning, cooking, meeting new people, staying overnight in Brooklyn at the apartment of a friend and regaining some semblance of life as it used to be.

While a full-time culinary arts program is not nearly as luxe as that recreational course — in fact it’s much more strenuous and stressful than I ever expected — it allows me to take time off from home to do the thing that feels most like me these days. It’s a chance to reenter the world, to be in the city, to find my own ground, to reintroduce myself, and to then return to my family with the experience in my back pocket.

Will I become a chef? Everyone asks. Probably not. Will I become an amazing cook? Probably not. But it will lead somewhere else, somewhere new that has flecks of me in the wallpaper. Somewhere other than home, which ironically, will hopefully lead me back to myself.

homemade tofu?

It’s been awhile. And that’s because … I’m in culinary school! I enrolled at The Institute of Culinary Education as a student in the health supportive culinary arts program. It’s amazing, except for the four-hour daily commute. I’ve learned so much (see my IG account @adailydip for details and photos).

One of our classes was “Tofu and Tempeh” (since it’s a mostly plant-based course) and we made tofu from soy milk— and we made that soy milk from soybeans. As I watched chef Jay do his demo I thought to myself, how can I make this easier for myself at home? Now that I’m away from home all day and when I get home there is snack, homework, soccer, dog, dinner, dog, homework, bath and “please go to bed already!” So I asked, “Chef, can you make this with store-bought soy milk?” To which chef Jay answered “Great question!” Cut to me, beaming with pride. “Why don’t you try it at home?” Cut to me, distraught with an extra assignment.

The chef gave me some nigari (the coagulant/chemical which makes soy milk curdle into tofu curds) and told me to report back. I’m sure there are students who would have smiled, pocked the nigari and let it go at this point. But I am a lifelong nerd and so I immediately bought soy milk and started experimenting.

The first two batches were bunk and when I casually reported this back to Chef Jay (who scares the shit out of all of us) he responded in such a way that suggested that 1. he had completely forgotten about giving me the assignment; and 2. he had potentially completely forgotten who I was.

But I persevered. Because, well, see above. I threw out gallons of not-curdled-enough soy milk until I stumbled upon a recipe that clicked. It was an obscure website and yet there were two post-recipe comments that hit home, both of which alluded to the cook failing multiple times (as I did) and then finding success with this particular method.

It worked. I don’t know if it was the amount of nigari, the stirring configurations, the heating method or the fact that the pot was covered during the process. But the store-bought soy milk formed curds big enough to sequester into my tofu mold, and those curds actually formed a rectangle of delicious (creamy, rich!) tofu.

I’m not necessarily saying that I will make my own tofu from now on…but I’m happy that my experiment finally worked and that I can continue being the nerd that I’ve always been.