Since we have introduced the monthly Five Course Wine Maker Dinners, it gives me a chance to flex my culinary muscles and make some food that is fun, interesting and technique driven. After thirty years of cooking I have a large recipe database from which to draw. Perusing my recipes notebooks brings back great memories and most of the time I can remember exactly how that particular recipe tasted, smelled and looked, even though I haven’t made it some time. Granted, my memory fades a bit more each year that passes, but there are times when it all comes flooding back. I remember what the chef told me, showed me and how to execute it the same way each time it was ordered.
I remember these recipes because of the chef and the kitchen environment. Some chef’s taught by intimidation and their philosophy was “My way or the highway”. You were allowed to mess up once or twice. After that you were usually let go to make room for someone that “really had the dedication” to learn. Other chef’s taught you the recipe by actually showing you and letting you make mistakes. Of course these mistakes never made it to the customer and you rushed to do the order over again, but there is something to be said about getting it right the first time. And after you have “perfected” the recipe and made it about a hundred times; and just when you begin to feel that, yes, I am actually a cook, the chef up and changes the menu! How dare they. Now I have to learn a bunch of new recipes and new techniques. So the cycle continues, mostly going unnoticed, until years later you find you have collected a number of great recipes, and more importantly, you have the technique and the confidence to begin to try original recipes thought up by the years of experience.
This is when cooking really becomes fun. You begin to think of classic recipes and “tweak” them to show your culinary influences, style and philosophy. It usually takes a number of adaptations before you have something that you are proud of, is cost effective and can be pulled off by inexperienced cooks.
Now the hard part begins. How am I going to teach the new generation of culinarians. Am I going to be that hardass chef that teaches by fear and intimidation or one who guides and has the patience and confidence to let mistakes happen. The latter is much more difficult to pull off, because it tests both the student and the teacher. It takes more time, energy and the costs in both ingredients and wages is much higher. But in the long run you end up with a cook that begins to trust their confidence level, their dedication to this practice and they begin to see what working in a real kitchen is all about.
My culinary hero is Eric Ripert, chef and owner of Le Bernardin in New York City. His career path has lead him to work in some of the finest and most respected restaurants of our generation. Now the culinary leader at what most critics say is the finest seafood driven restaurant in the world, Chef Ripert is the type of chef I want to most emulate. I urge you to visit his on line cooking show “Avec Eric”. Watch his technique with eyes wide open. Don’t think "I could never do that”. Instead, say to yourself, “I want to make that”, and know the first couple of times it won’t be the same. In time, with patience, dedication and a few tears, you will have something that is pretty close. And in life, that is all we should expect.
