A Place Called Home (APCH) in South Central Los Angeles serves as a school and community center for local youth. APCH offers a wide range of programs, from dance and music to cooking and computer classes.
The new chef apprentices at four-star French restaurant Patina in Downtown LA, are only two weeks into their training, but high school students Patty Ochoa and Danny Rodriguez have already learned they’re not so different from the seasoned professionals.
“The staff at Patina is pretty much kids at heart,” 17-year-old Rodriguez said. “They don’t like to take work serious, but they know when to.”
Ochoa and Rodriguez are two weeks into a 3-month program, and have already learned how to sharpen their knives, butcher a duck and prep a cooking station. Both students are seniors at Santee Education Complex, and have spent their last four school years cooking, cleaning, baking and creating in the school’s culinary arts class.
The first dish Rodriguez ever made was a stir-fry. What started as a simple recipe, Rodriguez began to reinvent with tamarind paste, chives and Napa cabbage, and soon realized he liked the action and adrenaline of being in the kitchen.
“Cooking gives you a rush,” Rodriguez said. “You burn yourself, but you get over it.”
No chef is without injuries, and Ochoa has had her share of kitchen blunders too. She learned the hard way that you’re always supposed to cut away from your hand when using a knife. Now, Ochoa has chopping and dicing skills she can be proud of.
“I can cut, I can mince, I can julienne,” Ochoa said.
These knife skills are being put to work at Patina, where the students work 3-5 hour shifts, Rodriguez said. They show up, don their chef coats, and check in with the Sous chefs for directions. They learn valuable culinary, and life lessons — like where their ingredients come from and how to repurpose scraps and minimize waste.
Rodriguez and Ochoa make risottos and raviolis, shell peas, prep lamb legs and ducks, and learn the importance of a clean work-station. Although both interns are delighted by the way the food at Patina tastes (Ochoa swears she’ll never become a vegetarian after a nibble of the lamb), they also recognize the service aspect of cooking.
“I like knowing that the customers are satisfied and seeing their faces when they get the food,” Ochoa said.
Ochoa’s personal favorite dish is still her mother’s shrimp fried rice, but through her culinary training Ochoa is learning to return the favor. She teaches her mom how to make new meals she might like, such as coconut shrimp. Ochoa often cooks for herself, making French toast, eggs, and onion rings or whatever else she can create from kitchen cupboard staples.
For Ochoa, cooking is a pleasure and a useful skill, but when she graduates this year and heads off to El Camino College, she will trade in her kitchen knives for a fire hose, as she pursues a career as a paramedic firefighter.
Although being a chef is not Ochoa’s dream job, she hopes the Patina internship will help prepare her to always cook for herself, and in the future, hopefully for her entire fire station.
For Rodriguez, the Patina internship is a crucial stepping-stone to opening his own restaurant. Although he wants to pursue Asian style cooking, much of the culinary industry is based on French techniques, so studying Patina’s French cuisine will give Rodriguez a strong foundation.
Rodriguez’s love affair with cooking is deep-seeded and rooted in time he spent as a child in Mexico. He used to visit his grandmother on her farm and help collect eggs, get milk from cows and goats, and help make handmade tortillas for breakfast.
Now, cooking is a professional career that will liberate Rodriguez from the confines of a cubicle — something he is committed to avoiding. Rodriguez will start college at Cal State Northridge this fall, and has already decided to major in food science, a subject that will merge his love of cooking with a love of science and chemistry.
At the end of Ochoa and Rodriguez’s three-month program, they will put the cherry on their education by cooking a meal for staff members from A Place Called Home, the non-profit organization responsible for organizing the internship.
