“When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmm, boy.” –Jack Handey, American humorist Sweet, savory, hot, cold, dense, gooey, and on and on — when it comes to pies the varieties are limitless.

Last week, the gastronomy of Spain and its role in shaping worldwide culinary innovation, was celebrated in true style by none other than its highest practitioner, Chef Ferran Adrià.

When ICE President Rick Smilow and Anne E. McBride wrote Culinary Careers: How to Get Your Dream Job in Food they discovered a plethora of food jobs they had never heard of before. Since the book's release, they have been discovering even more interesting career paths in the food world. DICED shares some of them with you in a reoccurring feature, “Unique Culinary Careers.”

Every ICE Culinary Management class learns inventory and control, employee-performance standards, and productivity as part of their cost control unit.

At ICE, students learn a variety of advanced and highly technical culinary methods. For example, in the Modern Masters section of the Culinary Arts curriculum, students learn the advanced recipes of Mario Batali, Rick Bayless, Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller. But when it comes right down to it, we still love the classics too. Here is a recipe with barely four ingredients for when you want to try something that is both impressively elegant and practical.

ICE’s Culinary Management Instructors are seasoned industry professionals who have opened and operated their own restaurants and food businesses. They are still active in the industry, working on their own projects while teaching classes at ICE. Julia Heyer is a restaurant consultant and has worked on projects from Dubai to Mexico City. Vin McCann has managed restaurant operations ranging from $500,000 to $400 million in revenue. With such a wide range of experience between these two, we decided to ask these two to take a closer look at some of the trends and culinary businesses we keep hearing so much about. Today they take on idea that food and fashion have become similar forms of high art.

Last night, STREETS International held their Fourth Annual NYC Benefit at Astor Center.

We’ve all heard the old saying of how you hope your children will take care of you when you get old and grey. Luckily for me one of my “kids” (well, actually, I mentored her when she started in the industry) is the pastry chef of a new restaurant and I’ve easily got the grey part covered.

Yesterday, ICE students took part in a very unique demo from some of the people behind the scenes of one of TV’s top-related food shows.

ICE’s Culinary Management program culminates with each student preparing and presenting a fully developed business plan that defines the culinary business of his or her choosing to real-world investors.