Basic Cuisine Certification Le Cordon Bleu (London), Oliver Ogden (2019 cohort)

In September of 2023, I received the Tanglin Foundation Alumni Grant to spend three months at Le Cordon Bleu London completing the Basic Cuisine certification. During this course, I was able to learn about the foundations of French cooking and how to go about preparing restaurant-level dishes in a cooking environment similar to that of a top-quality restaurant.

The course covered a wide spectrum of essential skills to prepare me to be able to work in the industry. This included knife techniques, classical vegetable cuts, fish filleting, and basic butchery of various types of meat. I also learned the fundamentals of the 5 mother sauces, worked with basic doughs such as pasta and puff pastry, and explored various cooking methods including braising, pan-frying, and roasting.

Each week was split into 3 different blocks of lessons: demonstrations, practicals and theory. During the demonstrations, we would sit in a classroom where an industry-leading chef would cook 2 to 5 dishes in tandem as we took down notes on preparation, cutting techniques, cooking times and plating. All we were given in the practicals was the list of ingredients and the notes we made during the demonstration, therefore we needed to make sure that we paid close attention to them so no key steps were missed (the chefs move incredibly quickly!). In each demonstration, the chef also gives us an indication of possible exam questions that could come up in the written exam at the end of the three months.

After this, we would then go into a two-hour practical in a professional kitchen. During this, we would be told which of the dishes from the previous demonstration we would need to prepare, they could ask us to prepare anywhere from one to three of the dishes. At the end of the two hours, we would have to present our dish to the chef who would mark us out of 5 on preparation, hygiene, presentation, teamwork and similarity in taste to the original dish- it is very similar to what you see on MasterChef!

At the end of the three months, we had a written and practical exam. The written exam was based on culinary knowledge that we should have learnt over the course, such as the French words for the different vegetable cuts, the muscle anatomy of livestock, health and safety, and many other areas. This was followed by a practical exam where we had to know 5 dishes off by heart and on the day we had 2 hours to prepare the chosen dish. This was taken off to a tasting room where a board of chefs would decide on a final score out of 100.

I had an amazing time during the course and came away loving cooking even more! Being a part of such an intense course pushed me in a way that is very different to university and it was refreshing to be able to put a hobby first after studying engineering for four years. Having enjoyed this experience so much and to further expand my culinary skills, I have signed up to a Japanese cooking school in Tokyo for 5 weeks during the summer- something I am immensely excited about. I would like to thank Tanglin for this incredible opportunity and for allowing me to pursue a long-time passion of mine.