CCA, Manila partners with Escoffier school to offer full French cuisine course

The Center for Culinary Arts, Manila (CCA) is opening not one, but five more branches as it seeks to be the premiere school for aspiring chefs and restaurateurs. In addition to opening more campuses in the metro, CCA is also offering the first full French course in the country.

In April, CCA will be accepting its initial batch of students who will receive a National Diploma in French Cuisine (from France, no less) after completing a nine-month course in French culinary techniques. CCA has partnered with Institut Culinaire Disciples Escoffier (ICDE), working together for nine months to birth a program that would produce only the finest graduates—all ready to join the culinary industry.

Officials from CCA and ICDE sharing a toast. PHOTOS: Aya Tantiangco

The ICDE is a professional culinary school based in Hong Kong inspired by Auguste Escoffier, known as the "Father of Modern French Cuisine." Currently, they have 25,000 members in 26 countries.

Disciples Escoffier Chair Roberto Fontana talks proudly of what ICDE offers. According to him, even if culinary courses are similar in content, ICDE is ahead because of the quality of their professors and their commitment to maintain an intimate student-to-teacher ratio.

Dishes served at the media event announcing the CCA, MAnila-ICDE venture include red snapper rillettes served with thin slices of pickled jade radish "scales", microsprouts and ginger vinaigrette.

He explained that class operates optimally when the instructor is managing only 12 students and assured interested applicants that the partnership with CCA keeps this in mind. They will only be accepting 24 students for the two pilot batches and all of them will go through a rigorous application process.

Fontana said that they're a little strict—they don't want to waste a slot on people who don't derive joie de vivre from all things food. This stern warning also comes with a promise that each of the 24 students will get to do what they enjoy most: cook.

After nine months, each student—provided that they are dedicated and determined—will have mastered 250 cooking techniques. Fontana enumerated three key learning points: Posture (technique plus gesture), fire, and time.

Sous vide beef medallions, sweet potato gratin, confit of pearl onions, garlic and cherry tomatoes with "bistek-style" demi-glace

The first, posture, means knowing how to properly execute cooking techniques. Every skill requires a mastery of this, from knowing how to poise your fingers on the piano keys to the flick of your wrist when you throw a basketball. The second, fire, means mastering the element that you'll be working with most. Fontana says that good chefs understand what is hot enough for the dish they're preparing and from it, they learn to handle the third most important item on the list: time. Restaurant kitchens is hellish if the people working don't understand how hot the pan needs to be for a piece of steak and how long it needs to stay in that temperature.

Fontana has been cooking for 25 years and he says these basics have the most value when working. French cuisine is a little daunting, but if you have the will to learn (and a lot of change to spare to attend culinary arts classes!), cooking like a pro is not an impossible dream.

Puff pastry with purple yam. Très bien.

The course will be offered at the new CCA campus, soon to open at HV Dela Costa in Makati. The course will also cover practical classes on the daily operations of a restaurant, from expanding the menu to dealing with permits plus other paperwork.

During the launch, CCA presented meals prepared by Chef Michael Cheng as conceptualized by their Culinary Director Chef Sau del Rosario as preview of what they can do for those interested in the culinary arts. — BM, GMA News