Blood, Sweat & Tears – Maxine’s Junior Chef’s College, Audition Day

The blood and tears were Maxine’s. The sweat was mine. Somehow, two hours after we first stepped into the kitchen, we had two plates of food, a bowl of (mostly) hand-cut crispy potato chips, an agreement to give it another go next week, and big hugs when I left. 

But what an eventful evening it was.

Maxine’s Junior Chef’s College

Maxine is a beautiful, bright, bubbly and energetic 10½ year old, the daughter of a dear friend. Born in the US, she moved to Vietnam as a baby, where she is now attending a French school in Saigon. About two years ago, she moved back to the States to live closer to her family for a year, living in her birth country and attending American school for the first time. On returning to Saigon last year, slotting back into French school, and particularly taking “dictée” in French, was a bit of a struggle at first. When she told me this, while we were all together on a NRL Rugby weekend break in Vung Tau, I offered to tutor her. She would come to my house once a week, and we would practice, was my idea. 

In high school, I tutored younger students in maths and did the same for my boyfriend’s young niece when I was a university student in Amsterdam. I spent a short time as an assistant teacher at Leith’s in London after graduating – older students, of course, but on average still 10 years my junior.

In Marbella, besides the adult Master Classes at Les Roches Hotel School, I thoroughly enjoyed tutoring Georgia, first in Spanish and over the years also basically every other subject. I watched her flourish at school over a two or three year period and have since seen her grow into the beautiful, confident young woman that she is today. I guess, having no children of my own, this is my way of staying in touch with the curiosity and wonder that children possess and most adults lose. I find great joy in it, gain so much from it, and hope that in some little way, our tutoring sessions bring a positive contribution to my students’ life too.

Well, Maxine didn’t fancy more French lessons. She blew up in a huff and stormed off to sulk. Doh! My bad. I clearly hadn’t quite read the vibe. She wanted sympathy, a bitching session perhaps, not encouragement and solutions. And certainly not more French! She told her mother several weeks later that she would enjoy having weekly sessions with me. Her mother and I talked about subjects different to French dictée that she might enjoy more, but all were roundly rejected by Maxine. The girl knows her mind. 

And then, one day, Maxine announced: “Cooking. I want Auntie Barb to teach me how to become a chef.” What a genius kid. We’ll be having fun cooking, sharing a meal every week at the end of class, and, unknowingly I presume, she picked a subject that covers it all: French, maths, chemistry, (home) economics, social sciences, culture, geography, agriculture, history. You name it, there just isn’t an angle that isn’t opened up when the subject is food and cooking. There was no way that I would turn down an opportunity like that. 

Maxine’s Junior Chef’s College was born.

Getting ourselves organized to start took a little longer than we’d hoped – travel plans and the holiday season made it impossible to kick off until this week. On the upside, having agreed on the plan and with Christmas just up ahead, Maxine did well out of the gift-giving season. Her parents gifted her 4 sets of chef’s whites, her grandmother gave her a beautiful set of starter knives, complete with a professional knife wallet. She was looking the part, as if she was ready to start her first day of work in a Michelin kitchen.

The Curriculum

On Tuesday, we finally had our first session. I had asked Maxine to prepare her favourite or “signature” dish for me on our first evening together, so that I could assess her current skill level in the kitchen, before, from next week onwards, we start following an adapted version of the Leith’s Diploma Curriculum that I prepared for her. On our first evening, she would cook, I would assist (if she so desired), and over the meal I would take her through next week’s lesson plan, so she knows what’s up ahead and can prepare before the next time we meet.

Knife skills are one of the most fundamental skills in a kitchen, and so my lesson plan for next week includes a Pommes Dauphinoise; that creamy, cheesy, sliced and layered gratinated potato delight, is the perfect candidate for practicing knife skills.

The NRL crew – the wider group of friends that Maxine, her mum, and I are part of – had engaged in a fierce debate the evening before about the difficulty (and pointlessness) of precision slicing potatoes by hand, when a mandoline is so much faster. I, in turn, fiercely argued that, before gaining access to modern kitchen prep tools, it is essential to master the skill as it has been done for centuries. 

Whisk egg whites to stiff peaks using the power of your biceps and a hand whisk; make a lump-free bechamel using only a wooden spoon, no whisks allowed; a hollandaise sauce over a bain-marie, no blenders and melted butter shortcuts; a stable beurre blanc, without adding a cheeky splash of cream to achieve the required emulsification. And thinly and evenly slice potatoes for a Pomme Dauphinoise by hand. “Longcuts before shortcuts,” I insisted, feeling rather pleased with my own unfunny pun.

Maxine’s “Masterchef Audition”

Maxine refused to tell me what her signature dish was going to be – she didn’t even want me in the kitchen while she cooked. It was only by reminding her that she was cooking precisely so that I could assess her skills level, that she would allow me to stick my head in the kitchen periodically to check on her progress and do my “assessing whatever”. 10½ is very nearly teenager; the sass is real.

She had told me on the way to her home that she had prepared the dish before – it hadn’t gone quite to plan – but she had figured out her mistake and added a step to her iPad recipe that would remedy the problem she’d encountered the first time. For our first evening cooking, Maxine’s mother was at home, and her father had had a package delivered with some essential equipment Maxine would need. I didn’t question that she was anything less than fully prepared, and capable, of preparing the meal she had in mind.

It was my biggest screw-up of the night. Not because Maxine, in any way, wasn’t ready and capable of preparing that meal. But because I got comfy in my friend’s house and didn’t do my job the way I should’ve. 

The Mandoline

When we arrived at her home, Maxine spent 15 minutes in the building lobby looking for a package – I had no idea that it was the essential equipment her father had sent, until she started pacing and muttering that her side dish would have to change. She wasn’t agitated, just pragmatically going through the alternatives available to her. Shortly after, her mother arrived, carrying the missing package, and Maxine’s face lit up.

I smiled as the mandoline came out of the box and shared the story about the debate the evening before. And there it appeared, as if the mention of it the night before had manifested this mandoline in Maxine’s kitchen. We laughed and, I don’t know, maybe I felt a little unsure if my stance the previous night had been a little too old-fashioned. Was I expecting too much from a young girl if I asked her to slice potatoes by hand next week? 

Maxine ordered us out of the kitchen so she could get started, and, while still pondering the validity of my approach (read: while absorbed with my own thought processes and thus clearly not present with the actions of the young girl in my care), I obediently followed the orders of a 10½ year old.

Enter my second screw-up of the night. I didn’t inspect the equipment.

Slicers of Evil

We retreated to the balcony for a catch-up, giving Maxine 5 or 10 minutes to get started, before checking in on her progress and offering my help. We never got that far. A blood curdling scream pierced through the noise of the Vietnamese youngsters chanting at a festival below. Maxine was clutching one hand in the other under a running tap, tears rolling down her cheeks, but otherwise surprisingly composed after her initial scream to attract our attention. 

A quick scan around the kitchen: gas stove, off, this is not a burn; knives, safely stored in the knife wallet, blade protectors on, this is not a cut; double take, darn, the mandoline, a few crinkled potato slices under it. This is a cut, and possibly the worst kind of cut.  

We held her hand up high, or higher than her heart at least, found a clean towel to apply pressure to the wound, and Maxine walked me to the first aid kit. In between the occasional sob, she pointed out that I was grabbing a plaster that would be too small – she hadn’t allowed anyone to see the wound yet – then directed her mother to fetch her far superior, personal first aid kit out of her school back pack. She finally let me inspect the wound, we cleaned and dressed it, and Maxine stood up, gave a big sigh, and moved towards the sofa and TV remote.

A bit of a breather was much needed, for everyone. While Maxine switched on her favourite TV series of the moment – fittingly, a gory Korean ER drama with an irreverent new doctor – her mother and I moved back to the balcony for our own 10 minutes of letting the adrenaline settle back down.

A high quality mandoline, used appropriately, with all the safety guards in place can be a tremendous time-saver. But trust me, if you’re investing that kind of money, you may as well “upgrade” to a cheap food-processor with slicing and grating discs. It’s even quicker and a million times safer. Mandolines are slicers of evil – avoid them whenever possible.

Doctors vs Cooks

Funnily enough, on the ride home, Maxine and I had a silly conversation about doctors vs. cooks – who is more important? I had taken the flippant stance (note to self: pattern detected) that while every single person needs to eat every single day, not everyone gets sick every day. Maxine, a strong debater, argued in turn that while not everyone gets sick every day, every day lots of people do need a doctor. We settled on doctors being essential, but agreed it would also be essential for that doctor to know how to cook.

I watched her through the balcony windows, still holding up her wounded hand high, as she visibly started to calm down. “Impressive self-soothing skills,” I thought. A few minutes later, Maxine got up, fished a bandage out of her still open first aid kit and proceeded to one-handedly bandage her wounded left hand. Maxine is a leftie, so she used her “weaker” right hand to bandage her wounded left hand to perfection. Not just impressive self-soothing skills, impressive ambidexterity and nursing skills too.

Cheese & Bacon Donuts – An Eton Mess Type Affair

With just 10 minutes left on the gory Korean ER episode she was watching, I waited it out before slipping back inside as the credits rolled over the screen. “Impressive one-handed bandaging for a leftie,” I said. “Hm,” she shrugged as she examined her handiwork, pleased with herself, though not wanting to show it too much. “You can’t go back into the kitchen with one hand bandaged,” I ventured, expecting Maxine to be done for the night. We could have a rerun the following week, I figured. “But I can tell you what to do! You still have two hands,” she piped up. Darn, this kid has oomph! And so I sweated, following a 10½-year old’s orders, calling her Chef, asking her for quality control inspections as I carried out the work.

First, as I put the mandoline far out of sight, I took one of Maxine’s knives to slice up the potatoes for the chips – the side dish that had caused the evening’s dramatic events. Then, I received the instructions for the showstopping dish she had in mind: Deep-fried Cheesy Bacon Donuts.

Stack slices of cheese, cut out a circle the size of a donut, then cut out a smaller donut hole in the middle. Partly fry the bacon slices (the step she had missed on her first attempt, and that would fix her failure) and wrap it around the cheese. Egg and breadcrumb this, then deep fry. 

On TikTok, or Youtube, or wherever her inspiration came from, these steps will magically turn into crispy, golden “donuts”, cheese oozing out when you take a bite. In the real world, there is no way that this recipe will work, but I get what she is trying to achieve. On my to-do list over the coming weeks, I will be experimenting with different options to make it work. I have no idea how, just yet, but I trust that the process of testing and iterating will at some point lead to the Cheesy Bacon Donuts that Maxine would like to make. 

As I am attempting to wrap the bacon slices around the cheese, Maxine admits defeat. “The same thing as last time is happening, it won’t hold together,” she sighs. I have no other option but to agree with her. But just as with the other setbacks she faced that evening – the missing package, the mandoline slice – she takes a moment, composes herself, and announces: “I’ll breadcrumb the bacon, and we can put the cheese on top after.” Just as a dropped Pavlova becomes Eton Mess, Maxine flipped our bungled donuts into Cheese-topped Bacon Tempura. A delicious beer snack, her mother and I later agreed.

She wants to cook for me again, stuffed bell peppers, at her dad’s home this time. I think she feels she still has something to prove. If she ever reads this, she will know she doesn’t.  I believe she more than proved she has the mettle, resilience, mindset, aptitude and gumption to be great at whatever she chooses to do. But I said no to a rerun. Next week, we’re cooking at mine. Next week, we’re cooking my way. Next week, I will try to do a better job.

The Learnings

Maxine’s Learning Outcomes: 

• TikToks and Reels Recipes are 99% faked.
• She has as much potential to become an ER Trauma Doctor as a Michelin Chef.

My Learning Outcomes: 

• Never agree to a 10½ year old’s terms to keep the menu secret or the demand to cook unsupervised. 
• Inspect equipment before use.
• Supervise the use of hot oil, knives, and, particularly, equipment like a mandoline. 
• Bypass the mandoline altogether and upgrade straight to a food processor with slicing and grating discs. 
• Buy a first aid kit.

I’m telling you. You learn so much when you’re teaching a young person. I can’t wait for next week, when we’ll be learning how to slice potatoes thinly, evenly, and safely. By hand.

*At her request, my student would prefer to be known as Chef Maxine 🙂