A dash of learning and a pinch of fun

Culinary teacher never stops

sharpening skills

By HILARY MATHESON

Daily Inter Lake

Culinary teacher and chef Tamara Fisher likes a challenge and the world of food is simmering with opportunities to test her skills.

“Cooking is not just about working some line somewhere,” Fisher said. “It’s about adventure.”

She’s been a pastry chef and a savory chef. She’s worked with ease in a five-star restaurant and tested her limits on an expensive Alaskan backcountry trip. Through it all, she has never stopped learning — traveling abroad to study from culinary masters and have a chance to cook in kitchens in France, Italy and Greece.

“That’s what I love,” Fisher said about the variety of opportunities.

For many people like Fisher, starting that adventure in a culinary career is a climb that begins at the bottom.

Her start in the food-service industry began as a “basic need and wanting to do something for someone,” she said.

Growing up with five brothers, she described her family as “dirt poor.”

“All I wanted to do was buy my brothers Captain Crunch and Suzy Q’s,” Fisher said, and set out to find a job.

“I started at the age of 13 as a dishwasher, and worked my way up to hostess, and worked way up to a prep chef, and from there, worked my way up to a sous-chef,” Fisher said pausing for a breath. “A sous chef is the executive chef’s right-hand man.”

She began to pick up new skills as she was asked to fill in or help out. Sometimes at a hotel banquet facility where she used to work, she would be asked to waitress or bartend during an event or wedding. Eventually, she was given a leadership role as a pastry chef for champagne brunches.

“In a leadership role I felt I needed to educate myself,” Fisher said.

Fisher didn’t go into formal education until later, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t learn from colleagues or books.

“My philosophy is, if you’re going to do something you better do it well. There’s enough books out there to educate yourself and that’s what I did,” she said.

She particularly enjoyed learning about the science of baking.

“There were a lot of learning curves,” Fisher said. “Why baking powder works or doesn’t. Why, when I cooked a recipe in the East it turned out perfectly and then I visited Utah and cooked the same thing and it turned into a hockey puck.”

Fisher went on to study at Le Cordon Bleu and Universite Reims Champagne Ardenne Gastronomie, both located in Paris, and Temple University in Pennsylvania.

“I just keep learning. I always believe the more you surround yourself with people with the same passion you have, the more you learn,” Fisher said.

It is probably fitting that her career path eventually led to the classroom.

At one point in her career, she became burned out and was “done with food” after being pulled in too many directions. She got out of the food-service industry and began working at an airline, however, cooking was not far from her mind. The job offered free flights and she saw that as an opportunity to learn from chefs abroad to refine and further her skills.

When 9/11 was followed by downsizing in the airline industry, her culinary career path began turning toward what would become a new passion — teaching.

She enrolled in college, but didn’t go into anything food-related. Instead, she graduated with a degree in social work, yet quickly ended up right back in culinary arts, this time as a teacher.

She taught high school culinary-arts students and eventually was asked to start a pastry program at Monroe Career and Technical Center in Pennsylvania, where she also worked while earning her teaching certificate. In 2017, she joined Glacier High School.

Using practical skills in a real-world setting to give students a glimpse of the different opportunities in food service is important to her as a teacher, whether that means having students operate a 65-seat restaurant open to the public, coordinating cooking trips abroad, or the current project she is working on at Glacier, to connect students with food-service industry professionals to serve as mentors while they earn hours working in a real-world setting to earn certifications before high school graduation.

“I found I have passion for teaching because kids think they have nothing to offer or no talent. Maybe that’s what I thought as a kid, but cooking made me feel important,” Fisher said. “Teaching is my passion because maybe I think I can help kids who were poor or had an upside down family life.”

Her goal is to help students discover their own talents and abilities and believe they are capable, even if they don’t become a chef.

When school’s out, Fisher heads right back to work in the industry, always up for a new adventure.

“I spend a month or two in the industry making sure my skills are up to date,” Fisher said.

One of Fisher’s recent memorable adventures was last summer, working for an Alaskan outfitter for multimillionaires.

It wasn’t your typical backcountry food fare, on-site chef or not. Everything was cooked fresh daily. Menus varied from camp to camp and depended on what clients brought in from the hunt.

“I was cooking wild game they caught,” she said, such as moose loins. “They also had a fishing bowl, so I cooked salmon, shrimp and crab.”

She became a familiar face at the town grocery, taking two-hour flights into town to grocery shop.

Once food was prepared — breakfasts, lunches, snack trays and dinners — it was bundled up and airlifted to one camp.

“I’d finish preparing dinner for an air drop and then have to prepare another dinner,” Fisher said.

She didn’t get much sleep.

“I woke up at 5 a.m. and finished by 11 p.m.,” Fisher said. “It was nonstop. I worked pretty hard.”

When she returns to the classroom, she imparts the wisdom she gained from her time back in the saddle to helps students get an idea of the pace of different environments.

After working in five-star restaurants she gleaned how streamlined a restaurant could operate, for example, where staff works in coordination like a symphony.

“That’s why they are five-star. Customers didn’t wait for food. It was awesome,” Fisher said, noting that at this level each job is specialized to include positions such as saucier, or someone whose work is creating sauces and stocks.

She also has experience operating a candy business out of her house, where she specialized in hand-painted fine chocolate in Pennsylvania, but it became too large and she didn’t have the money to open a storefront.

While Fisher has found balance in all her interests she continues to dream. One of her dreams is to open a cooking school.

“… Not for any degree, just for therapy. Come with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, the kids. Come for the smiles and the smells,” she said. “Everyone smells something that reminds them of a memory, or a person, of a time and place — like the buttery rolls my grandma made from scratch, or the spaghetti sauce my aunt cooked all day.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.