Appetizing 101

D.J. Pitts says people rarely call him by his full name Douglas James unless they're really angry. Thankfully, no one in the kitchen at Ilo, where he's completing a six-week "externship," has done so yet.

"That doesn't mean I haven't made mistakes," says Pitts, 31.

This being the end of graduation season, we wanted to check in with someone who recently went from mortar board to cutting board. We found Pitts on the garde-manger (cold food) line at Ilo, in the chic Bryant Park Hotel.

Pitts said he feels more confident about his future after graduating from the Institute for Culinary Education in Manhattan than he did, years ago, when he earned a psych degree at the University of Memphis. He spent the last few years counseling troubled teens, but when he turned 30, decided to return to his true love: cooking.

Though raised in Memphis, Pitts spent his boyhood summers with his Russian grandmother in Connecticut. She'd drag him to local farms to buy eggs and produce. It was "at her heels that I developed a passion for food," he says.

Pitts was glad to land this unpaid externship at Ilo, he notes, because, like his grandmother, chef Rick Laakkonen honors the seasons and likes to ferret out his own ingredients at market.

Cooking in the womb of a classroom kitchen is sweat-levels apart from the frenzied pace of a top-rated restaurant where, Pitts says in his syrup-thick drawl, "everything moves a 100 times faster."

Week One, he was in charge of prepping and plating the lobster- and-avocado amuse-bouche. Midway through service, he ran out of lobster and panicked. "Lesson learned: Prep more than you need," says Pitts, who quickly chopped up more lobster "without chef noticing."

Laakkonen is known for harmonizing multiple ingredients on one dish, and Pitts initially found it hard to remember each component of a new menu item (like that herring starter).

But his instincts and palate grow sharper every day. The lingering trauma of an oversalted broccoli soup in culinary school makes him grateful for Laakkonen's mantra on the line: "Taste everything!"

There are other lessons. Once, right before service, a senior cook casually asked Pitts if the garde-manger station (staffed by three) was ready. "I told him that I was definitely ready," says Pitts. "He scolded me and said: 'There is no "I" in a restaurant kitchen. Just a team of "we's."'"

After his shift, Pitts usually is much too wired to sleep, so he jots down these kitchen lessons in his journal.

Going from living in Memphis on a decent salary to living in New York on, well, nothing, has been tough. That $70 sashimi slicing knife he just bought? Ouch. "But the most gratifying thing is to finally say 'yes' to what you really want to do." Pitts was asked to stay on at Ilo, where he hopes to earn between $10 and $15 an hour.

"Without question," says Pitts, "my grandmother would be overjoyed."

We will be following Pitts' progress periodically in this column. E-mail: pledraoulec@edit.nydailynews.com