Brava: Trainees of the kitchen training course are already prepared for any challenge

Trainer Francisco Almeida, supervisor of a class of 24 trainees in a kitchen training course, today considered that his students are already “professionals” and prepared for any challenge in the kitchen.

The trainer made this statement to Inforpress, when asked about the progress of this and two other training actions that are taking place simultaneously.

According to the professor, this training action, which began in mid-January, was initially aimed at people who already operated restaurants and worked in the area to gain more experience or to have new skills in the area of cooking.

But as there were no enrollments by these people, Francisco Almeida explained that it was decided to open enrollment to other interested parties, constituting the class that today is already at the end of the course and with the feeling of “mission accomplished”.

For this trainer, it was a team that worked together and proved to be “strong”.

According to the professor, these trainees were subjected to different experiences as kitchen professionals, to see how they would act if it were in a real situation.

At this moment, the trainees have already completed the exams and during these days, Francisco Almeida advanced that he invited several people and entities on the island to “witness and taste the art” that they have been making, and the feedback was always “very positive.

For the same source, the kitchen is “something that in any era, in any nation does not close its doors”.

“It only closes when it is not well used and what should be done inside is not well done. Because the kitchen is an art studio, where everything is created, everything is invented”, said the trainer, adding that he is sure that these trainees are ready to be artists in the kitchen.

Francisco Almeida assured that his students are already prepared to be “models in the ornamentation, presentation and parade of the dishes they make inside the kitchen”.

The trainees, according to the advisor, made a little of everything, being prepared to prepare any dish, with the ingredients they have available.

He also stressed that trainees are prepared for "any eventuality", adding that many times, you arrive at a restaurant and when ordering a dish they say that they do not have it available or that the dish of the day has already ended.

He underlined that these trainees were submitted to tests, including exams, and that they worked in groups of four and each one presented a different challenge.

“To one group, I could present as few ingredients as possible and give them the challenge of making a dish, to another, I would give the name of an unknown dish to make and so on”, said the trainer, making an assessment positive performance of these students.

Regarding the difficulties encountered in carrying out a training activity of this type, he stressed that the biggest obstacle is the lack of raw material.

To overcome this obstacle, he added that they travel to every corner of the island and replace ingredients when they are lacking in the local market, to teach future kitchen professionals that if they cannot find an ingredient to prepare a certain dish, they should not give up on doing it, but replace it with the closest one.

The training action has been carried out by the Center for Employment and Professional Training since mid-January and is expected to end in April, but due to the covid-19 pandemic, it will only end in June.