Salt, Sweat & Steam

Hours in chef's whites in a classroom that doubles as the best-stocked kitchen you'll ever see: 50-quart KitchenAid mixers, balloon whisks in every diameter, CIA-issued knives, bains marie. Also: grueling hours and a giant tuition tab so that—if you're lucky enough—you can land an entry-level job that features grueling hours, low wages, and a giant uniform-and-equipment tab.

Washington, a Trinidadian who came to the U.S. for college, decided to apply to the Culinary Institute of America after a break-up. As editor of CIA's La Papillote: The Voice of the Student Chef, she got to see how the sausage was made (literally). In one day, she would go from studying the five mother sauces in Skills 1 to interviewing Thomas Keller for a front-page feature. Sucked into the brigade system, she believed the gospel that pressure was a privilege. As one of the few students of colour, she stayed sane by reminding herself that where she came from had different—and better—values.

Salt, Sweat & Steam takes readers behind the scenes of the nation's most elite culinary school, through perfectionistic finals and brutal unpaid internships, into days that go from continuously whisking Sauce Bernaise for 300 to being so dead-tired that dinner is a bag of Cheez-Its from the vending machine. It's The Devil Wears Prada for the "yes, chef" era.