Chef’s Kiss! Visit Your Yorktown Public Library. No Reservation Required.

Back Of House: The behind-the-scenes area of a restaurant, where most of the food preparation and cooking takes place.

The back of the house staff includes the chefs, cooks, dishwashers, and other kitchen workers.

Ever wondered what it would be like to be a chef? The long hours. The complicated dishes. The accolades. Visit your Yorktown Public Library and venture into the “back of house” to learn more about the lives of chefs.

Becoming a chef starts with training and experience in a professional kitchen.

Group of culinary students in chef uniforms posing at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. — Le Cordon Bleu

Many chefs go to culinary school or complete a certificate or associate degree at a community college in order to learn the detailed, technical facets of the career.

One of the most prestigious culinary institutions in the world is Le Cordon Bleu (Julia Child trained there). Le Cordon Bleu was founded in Paris in 1895 and is considered the largest network of culinary and hospitality schools in the world with more than 35 institutes in 20 countries and 20,000 students of over 100 nationalities train there every year- offering various certificates and degrees.

According to Le Cordon Bleu’s website, the various types of chefs are:

Commis Chef - a junior chef in training who is still learning from other team members. The Commis Chef reports to Chef de Partie.
Chef de Partie - responsible for covering a specific area of the kitchen.
Sous Chef - actively involved in the running of the kitchen. The Sous Chef may fill in for the Head Chef and is often considered second in command.
Head Chef- runs the kitchen, managing the entire kitchen team, working with suppliers and managers.
Executive Chef- the kitchen's most senior position. The Executive Chef oversees multiple departments. Executive Chefs are responsible for staff recruitment and development, all kitchen finances, ongoing menu creation and the overall development and the culinary innovation of the kitchen.

Three chefs with dishes, cooking, and posing for the camera. — Gordon Ramsey, Rachael Ray, Ina Garten

And yet not every chef is formally trained. Many chefs get their start by working in a kitchen and consistently improving their skill set as an assistant or apprentice to a more experienced chef. Celebrity chefs such as Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa on HGTV), Gordon Ramsay, and Rachael Ray did not go to culinary school. Many such chefs began their careers in hotel management (Gordon Ramsey), worked in their family’s restaurant (Rachael Ray) or purchased a specialty food store and jumped right in with on-the-job training (Ina Garten).

Regardless of their training path, many chefs share with us their passion for food and offer up stories that bring us together as we gather with friends and family around the table (or TV tray! - Just sayin’!).

Your Yorktown Public Library is serving up the following tasty treats that are sure to satisfy your cravings for all things culinary.

IN THE ADULT COLLECTION:

My Life in France by Julia Child

Although she would later single-handedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul. She spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching.

A person tasting food in a kitchen with pots and utensils. — Julia Child

BONUS DVD: Julie and Julia is a movie that pulls from Julia Child’s time in France.

Based on a true story, Julie Powell is a frustrated insurance worker who wants to be a writer. Trying to find a challenge in her life, she decides to cook her way through Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' in one year, and to blog about it. As Julie begins to find her groove as a cook, and her voice as a writer, the project takes on a life of its own. The project provides the struggling young woman with her life's purpose, to her very pleasant surprise. Julia Child has an amazing love affair with her dashing husband, Paul, all while embracing life and French food. Julie lovingly celebrates the life on one of American food's most influential and beloved figureheads.

Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life from Scratch by Erin French

Erin French was a girl roaming barefoot on a 25-acre farm, a teenager falling in love with food while working the line at her dad's diner and a young woman finding her calling as a professional chef at her tiny restaurant tucked into a 19th century mill. This singular memoir--a classic American story--invites readers to Erin's corner of her beloved Maine to share the real person behind the "girl from Freedom" fairy tale, and the not-so-picture-perfect struggles that have taken every ounce of her strength to overcome, and that make Erin's life triumphant.

IN THE CHILDREN’S COLLECTION:

Who Was Julia Child by Geoff Edgers

Born in California in 1912, Julia Child enlisted in the Army and met her future husband, Paul, during World War II. She discovered her love of French food while stationed in Paris and enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school after her service.

ON THE LIBBY APP:

A chef in a hat is cooking with a large flame on a stovetop, in a decorative venue with colorful lighting. — Marcus Samuelsson

Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson- It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Yes, Chef chronicles Samuelsson's journey as an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden and living in America.

This material is also available as an audio book.

Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsey

Everyone thinks they know the real Gordon Ramsay: rude, loud, driven, and stubborn. In this fast-paced, bite-sized edition of his bestselling autobiography Ramsay tells the real story of how he became the world's most famous and infamous chef: his difficult childhood, his brother's heroin addiction, his failed first career as a footballer, his fanatical pursuit of gastronomic perfection and his TV persona - all the things that have made him the celebrated culinary talent and media powerhouse that he is today. Gordon talks frankly about: his tough childhood: his father's alcoholism and violence and the effects on his relationships with his mother and siblings.

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir by Kwame Onwuachi

By the time he was twenty-seven years old, Kwame Onwuachi had opened —and closed— one of the most talked about restaurants in America and launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars that he made from selling candy on the subway, yet he’d been told he would never make it on television because his cooking wasn’t “Southern” enough. Growing up in the Bronx, as a boy Onwuachi was sent to rural Nigeria by his mother to “learn respect.” However, the hard-won knowledge gained in Africa was not enough to keep him from the temptation and easy money of the streets when he returned home. But through food, he broke out of a dangerous downward spiral, embarking on a new beginning at the bottom of the culinary food chain as a chef on board a Deepwater Horizon cleanup ship, before going on to train in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country and appearing as a contestant on Top Chef.

Aerial view of a campus with classic architecture surrounded by autumn foliage. — Culinary Institute of America

Beaten, Seared and Sauced: On Becoming a Chef at the Culinary Institute of America by Jonathan Dixon

Millions of people fantasize about leaving their old lives behind, enrolling in cooking school, and training to become a chef. But for those who make the decision, the difference between the dream and reality can be gigantic— especially at the top cooking school in the country. For the first time in the Culinary Institute of America’s history, a book will give readers the firsthand experience of being a full-time student facing all of the challenges of the legendary course in its entirety. Each part of the curriculum is covered, from knife skills and stock making to the high-pressure cooking tests and the daunting wine course (the undoing of many a student). Dixon gives readers a look into the inner workings of a celebrated New York City restaurant.

Peppered throughout the collection at your Yorktown Public Library, you will find materials that serve up a tasty treat of stories sure to get your imagination cooking.