<p>leiti hsu <br/>She?s seen it all. <br/>Restaurateur and chef Suzanne Goin encountered the refrigerator that ?stank like bloody hell? in a restaurant kitchen in southwest France. <br/>?So this is where they keep the dead bodies,? she joked to herself, wondering what the contents were. <br/>The restaurant sat next to a river, and the menu featured ?this from the river? and ?that from the river,? Goin said. But every morning, someone would drive across the border to Spain and restock it from a discount fish market. <br/>Goin realized soon enough that the smelly fridge was not a morgue, but actually the official fish drawer from which they served unsuspecting customers every day. <br/>Culinary greats, all of them women, gathered in conversation about the good, the bad and the ugly of becoming a chef Tuesday night at the Los Angeles Public Library?s ALOUD Speaker Series. <br/>They came together on the heels of the release of the new book ?How I Learned To Cook?; all contributed essays to this anthology. <br/>?The title is a little misleading,? said Barbara Fairchild, editor in chief of Bon Appetit magazine, who moderated the discussion. ?It?s not so much about how they learned to cook, but about the turning point: What made them realize that passion?? <br/>Fairchild talked to Goin of the renowned Lucques in West Hollywood, plus Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken, the dynamic duo of Border Grill in Santa Monica. <br/>Feniger and Milliken are also of the Food Network?s ?Too Hot Tamales? fame. <br/>First, the women?s stories about the ugly side of being a chef continued. You?d think staff meals at respectable establishments would be downright delicious, or at least edible. <br/>Not so. The unnamed fishy restaurant would make ravioli out of wonton wrappers, but it?s common practice to do so ? ?a French thing,? Goin said, and that?s not what is so appalling. <br/>?They would save the scraggly things (after you cut out the ravioli),? she said. ?When you had enough of them, you could deep-fry them.? <br/>Goin suffered through meals of deep-fried wonton scraps paired with ? no kidding ? powdered mashed potatoes. <br/>Moving on to the bad: As if working from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. six days a week weren?t enough, Sundays are spent deep-cleaning until 7 p.m., Goin said, revealing the kind of grunt work and hours all of them endured. <br/>They also revealed givens and stereotypes that may not be apparent to food industry outsiders. <br/>For example, it?s assumed ?if you?re a girl, you have to go to pastry first,? Goin said. <br/>Indeed, although cooking is traditionally a woman?s role in the home, women remain the minority in the professional culinary world. <br/>Milliken was one of two women out of 100 culinary students at the Chicago trade school she attended. She roughed it out with a crowd of plumbers and Vietnam War veterans. <br/>?I learned how to keep up with the drinking at the bar across the street,? she said. <br/>Stereotyping also comes naturally when one has to learn to work with some atrocious characters who gave rise to the saying, ?If you can?t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.? <br/>Take for example, the ?Frenchman.? Feniger described a chef who ?brutalized? her, even though ?he wasn?t even French. He wanted to be French, so he was even more brutal.? <br/>Working in France itself is to becoming a chef as residency is to becoming a doctor, it seems. All three women paid their dues with a stint in France ? which came with the gruesome, as well as the very good. <br/>?I?d never had fresh foie gras until then,? Feniger said. Foie gras, a French delicacy, is the rich, buttery liver of overfed waterfowl. <br/>?Every time I cooked one for a customer, I?d ... ? she trailed off, finishing with a mischievously unsaid admission of indulging at the diner?s expense. ?I had so much foie gras that summer.? <br/>After half a year of heaping garlic on discount fish, Goin found a glimmer of hope at her second job in France. <br/>There was one guy whose sole job was to drive from Brittany to Paris and back again for the freshest fish possible, Goin said. He would make this trip once for lunch and once again for dinner. Anything that didn?t sell at lunch would be eaten at staff dinner. <br/>Ugly, bad or very good, however, women are making headway in the food business. <br/>?California has, per-capita, more prominent women chefs than anywhere I go,? Fairchild said. <br/>Thankfully, women are now faced with increasing career alternatives. True, they could have pursued other careers, but their love of food has permeated their lives since childhood. Perhaps the best part of being a chef is knowing that they pursued food, their life love, over all else. <br/><hr><i>Nothing turns Hsu off from fish, but if you need to find hope again after reading this, e-mail for sushi restaurant recommendations.</i></p><br><br><a href='; target='_blank'>;