Prep School

Back at L'Academie's kitchen, cooking assistants scurry about like Santa's helpers, plopping down bowls of pre-measured ingredients and the naked, pink flesh of one dead, de-feathered bird. My new partner, Ben Schneider, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, is a chicken lover who has never actually stared its flesh in the face. He pokes it curiously, as if it could somehow be resuscitated, coddled back to life. I feel like we should pull out a scalpel and start dissecting.

This is such a simple skill, it feels absurd not already knowing it. It's one thing, along with ironing a shirt, sewing a button, balancing a checkbook and driving stick, that Alexander thinks every teen should know before they pack up and move out. What's wrong with my generation, that we know so much useless information and so little that we actually need to survive?

Alexander thinks too many latchkey kids are greeted by too many parents toting takeout.

"The reason you need to learn all of this is that you all eat out too much with your families. It's no longer a priority to eat in, or to learn how to make what you eat."

Alexander is sympathetic. "My own mother was perfectly fine with a bowl of cereal or a sandwich for dinner," she says. That's why she first took up the spatula and cooked for herself. Her own four sons get a hot dinner every night. When she looks around the L'Academie kitchen, she sees kids like herself, who want to eat right but who never got the classic training. "You guys are more motivated than the usual cooking class," she tells me. "You're not here to learn a fancy dish, you're here to survive."

We're here not only to survive, but to avoid the freshman 15. Making your own food, Alexander argues, can be a lot healthier than eating out: You can balance your meals, control how much oil you use and control sodium levels (tip: watch canned produce).

In addition to going over basics, like how to divvy up a chicken, cut an onion without crying and stock your first kitchen, Alexander thinks it's important to teach us a few recipes for comfort food that will make our new homes feel like home. Beneath the angled mirror, Alexander flurries like an octopus with eight arms in eight pots at once, always one step ahead, turning out the sort of flawless dishes that would look great on the cover of Cooking Light magazine. She candies carrots, reduces a creamy sauce for tarragon chicken and purees an absolutely fabulous tomato basil soup. Back at our countertops, we try to mimic her, only in slow motion, learning recipes by preparing them ourselves.

We also try our hand at some dishes designed to impress -- a soy glazed Asian salmon to be dressed with a tangy wasabi mayonnaise, Szechwan noodles loaded with ginger and fresh squash, a shortcake oozing with mixed berry filling and topped with homemade whipped cream. They're all easy as . . . pie?

The only recipe I manage to flunk is, strangely enough, the mashed potatoes. My Irish ancestry appears to be no help: I don't cut my potatoes in even pieces, so they cook unevenly. When I start to mash with the back of a fork, my goop turns gray because I failed to properly remove all the potato "eyes." And when I add some butter, it flash cooks on the side of the pan before it soaks into my under-cooked mass. Luckily, with enough salt and pepper, it still tastes like mashed potatoes.

After preparing six full meals in eight hours, we are pleased to discover that it's actually pretty difficult to mess this stuff up, and we're surprised that nothing takes longer than a half-hour to cook. So why didn't I have time for this before? Why, in my college kitchen, did I so frequently turn to the golden chalice of a Ramen cup, as if such a meal could really satisfy?

What College Prep Cooking gives me is not only an arsenal of recipe ideas, but the confidence to cook them, having already succeeded once (though I won't be trying mashed potatoes anytime soon). Everyone has a different favorite recipe. I love the honey-roasted chicken. It's sweet with a tangy kick, and the flecks of green from chopped rosemary make the dead bird seem almost . . . elegant. I would serve it to a prospective date, or a roommate, or the president of the United States if he wandered back to his alma mater.

"I cannot believe this chicken cordon bleu," says Josh Levinson, shoveling it in. My partner, Ben Schneider, shuns the whipped cream: "This shortcake is the most amazing thing ever and I want to eat it just plain," he says, crumbs in his teeth. Anne Laughlin can't get enough of the Greek pasta salad. "This is absolutely the best." And Max Tanzer is most amazed by the soy-glazed Asian salmon with wasabi mayonnaise. "It was cool how all the bad stuff burnt down and went away," he says, "and then all that was left was the most delicious thing."

Listening to the sighs of a well-fed class, Alexander wipes her hands on her apron front and leans casually against a countertop. "Don't worry guys," she says, "I was once like you. I would stick a bagel on my thumb and eat it as I biked to class."

Everyone laughs the laugh of a changed man. Never again . . . L'Academie de Cuisine (http://www.lacademie.com) has two locations, in Gaithersburg and Bethesda, and offers a variety of food courses.