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Letter To A Budding Chef

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HistoricFoodie View Drop Down
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    Posted: 14 December 2014 at 04:28
A friend of mine’s 12-year old son has just discovered cooking. On his own (his dad wasn’t even aware of it) he’s been watching cooking shows, and playing around in the kitchen. I sent him a cookbook I thought would be helpful, and which could be the start of his own collection.

Miraculously, he actually sent a thank you note. Can you imagine? In today’s world. I responded with the following letter, and thought I’d share it with you, for whatever it’s worth:


Got your note, and was pleasantly surprised. Not too many young people, nowadays, remember the basic courtesies.

As you use the book, keep one thing in mind: While other people’s recipes are a good starting point they are merely guides to how somebody else combines flavors, textures, and aromas. Ultimately you want to do that job for yourself.

This means learning the basics. I cannot stress that enough. I could, for instance, share a recipe with you for pan-fried chicken breasts with a particular breading and sauce. If you learn that you’ll be able to make a great dish. But, if you learn the technique of pan-frying chicken, you’ll be able to make thousands of great dishes.

In short, you have to walk before you can run. I didn’t understand that when I was your age, and I’m sure my development as a cook was delayed because of it.

There are two keys to becoming a great cook. One is knife work. You must learn how to control your knives so as to safely produce the desired result. There is a format to that art, which we can discuss if you like. But the secret is practice. Your goal should be precision, not speed. Speed comes automatically with practice. But nobody is chasing you. Accuracy (consistent with safety) is what you should aim for.

One of my pet peeves with celebrity chefs is that they’ve forgotten that lesson, and spend too much time showing off their great speed. This leads, I’m sure, to many an accident in the home kitchen.

The second key, as I mentioned, is learning basic methods and techniques.

The most advanced, most complex recipe in the world merely combines those two in a series of steps.

One of my signature dishes (Seafood Lollipops) combines making a mousse with poaching, batter dipping, and deep frying. Although time consuming it’s actually simple to prepare, so long as you understand how to make a mousse, how to poach, how to batter dip, and how to deep fry.

You can really see the importance of this in recipes from the 18th century. When writing down a recipe they assumed you already knew how to cook. So many of the things we take for granted in modern recipes---things like ingredient amounts, cooking times, and instructions---are seriously absent. After all, there’s no need to write down what you, as a cook, already know.

They would use instructional words more broadly than we do. For instance, a recipe might tell you to fry something. But they used “fry” interchangeably with saute, pan fry, shallow fry, and deep fry. You would understand which they meant by the context of the recipe. Which takes us back to the presumption that you already knew how to cook.

Again and again I come back to this: Learn the basics!

You are fortunate in that there are all those cooking shows and videos available from which to learn technique. None of that was available when I was your age, and I literally had to learn it all on my own. Plus, of course, there’s your dad; perhaps the best resource available to you. I urge you: do not hesitate to ask him for help. He’s right there to show you the way, if necessary.

There is one further aspect to becoming a great cook: learning how flavors and textures work with each other. And that, unfortunately, only comes with time in grade. Your palate has to be trained both to recognize flavors, and how much or how little of that flavor works in the dish you’re preparing.

As you sample a dish you’ve made, try and analyze how the ingredients work together. In your mind, change them around a little. What if you left such and such out? How about if you increased the amount of X? What if you seared the protein ahead of time? And so forth. If you think a particular change will improve the dish, then, next time, make it that way and see what happens. Nothing will be lost. As Julia Child used to say, don’t be afraid; you can always eat your mistakes.

There is a difference, too, between personal preference and inherent flavor needs. For example, you might like the taste of oregano, and use more of it in a dish than I might prefer. But there is a point beyond preference where the nature of the dish is changed by the amount of oregano used.

But, again, this is learned through time in grade and---need I say it---attention to the basics. One aspect I’ve never seen discussed is that the methods used to prepare a dish can affect the flavor. For instance, many spices are intensified by frying. So the same amount of them will taste stronger on something you fry than on something you roast. Here, again, you’ll develop a feel for that as time progresses.

You can hasten the learning curve by using the one technique shared by all great chefs. Taste as you go. It always amazes me, watching food competitions, the number of cooks, so-called professionals, who do not taste continually as they prepare a dish. For them, the finished item must always be a surprise. Cooking a dish is a process of adding layers of flavor. If you don’t taste after each addition or change, there’s no way you can tell how that addition affected the dish as a whole. So taste, taste, taste constantly.

As you progree keep solidly in mind the one ingredient shared by all recipes: love. If you aren’t cooking with love, no matter what it is, it won’t be your best shot. At base, cooking is hard work. If you don’t do it with love it becomes merely an onerous chore. Add the love, and cooking satisfies our creative needs while we make people happy through food.

Above all, don’t become discouraged. There is much to learn, and always more on the horizon. I’ve been at this near on 60 years, as both a professional and home cook, and still learn something new every day.




But we hae meat and we can eat
And sae the Lord be thanket
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gonefishin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 December 2014 at 08:51
         Smile

   fine job Brook!  In this case, you both done well :)
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HistoricFoodie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 December 2014 at 10:23
Thanks, Dan.

Good to have you back. What have you been up to?
But we hae meat and we can eat
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gonefishin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 December 2014 at 10:46
Originally posted by HistoricFoodie HistoricFoodie wrote:

Thanks, Dan.

Good to have you back. What have you been up to?

   just getting the new house arranged, helping the kids with school work, brewing beer...and trying to get a deer hung in the pole building!  In fact, I'm going out now >>>
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HistoricFoodie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 December 2014 at 11:15
Are you kidding? I'm already cooking this year's deer---venison cranberry pot roast tonight, with garlic mashed and sweet/sour green beans.

Sorry. Considering I didn't get one last year I just had to rub it in a little bit.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Percebes Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 December 2014 at 12:39
I fully endorse all of the truths that are present in your letter to him.
Not my place to add anything, but if it was I might add.
Culinary knowledge can be gleaned from the most unlikely sources.
Some of the most ingenious things I have stored in my memory banks came from dishwashers.

The quickest way to turn off the tap of knowledge flow from a chef is to actually call him chef.
Every problem that a chef encounters in his day is preceded with the word "Chef"
Although many think the term chef is a sign of respect, in my experience the word Chef foreshadows the news that something is burnt, spoiled, too salty or broken.
I am a wine enthusiast. The more wine I drink, the more enthusiastic I become.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HistoricFoodie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 December 2014 at 14:18
Culinary knowledge can be gleaned from the most unlikely sources.

How very true, Murray. When it comes to culinary knowledge there are no class or social distinctions. Everybody knows something the next cook doesn't, particularly when it comes to tricks of the trade.

This is, as you note, even more so in a professional kitchen. Dish washers have seen it all, and can be a great source of knowledge. So, too (shhhhhhh---don't tell I admitted it) can front of house staff. One can be a close-minded snob, or one can stay open-minded, and thereby learn.
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And sae the Lord be thanket
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gonefishin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 December 2014 at 06:20
Originally posted by HistoricFoodie HistoricFoodie wrote:

Are you kidding? I'm already cooking this year's deer---venison cranberry pot roast tonight, with garlic mashed and sweet/sour green beans.

Sorry. Considering I didn't get one last year I just had to rub it in a little bit.

   Lol...ouch!

    Clap  

   be sure to give us updates on the young man as he grows...sounds like you think a lot of the kids father as well.

   
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote AK1 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 December 2014 at 19:59
Another point to add. Emeril used to say, "It ain't rocket science". Don't be afraid to experiment, to try something new. You won't be perfect all the time.  It may not be great, but it's still edible. 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HistoricFoodie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16 December 2014 at 06:24
As an aside, a friend of mine, who is a rocket scientist, hates that expression. He insists there is nothing hard about rocket science; that if you know Newton's three laws you know everything there is to know on the subject.
     Astrophysics, on the other hand......
But we hae meat and we can eat
And sae the Lord be thanket
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