tifosi77 wrote:
First, and I hope Chefpatrick would agree, that 'chef' is a title, an honorific. It's not a cooking philosophy. It means that you have a set of responsibilities over and above what happens in the kitchen and on your diner's plates that includes everything from menu creation, to HR, to dealing with purveyors. But it doesn't necessarily mean you are any more attuned to the processes of actually making food. I believe very strongly that any chef worth their apron will consider themselves first and foremost a cook.
Second, I am reminded of the words of Captain Barbossa when talking about the Pirate Code. He said it was "more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules". That's what a recipe is. It's a list of ingredients and a suggested method for putting them together in a certain way. I'll defer to Chefpatrick here again, but I think it's far more important to cook with the consistency that a recipe provides in a professional setting, than it is in a home kitchen. But even in a professional kitchen no recipe can really take into account things like variable humidity and barometric pressure, how two saute pans from the same manufacturer might differ slightly in their mass and so cook the same ingredients at slightly different speeds on the same flame. There are literally a ton of variables at play.
The best cooks are not necessarily those who react best to the curves those variables throw their way, but rather they are the ones who do their best to minimize the impact those variables have on their cooking.
And don't feel bad about reading cookbooks all the time. I've probably spent $2,000 on cookbooks and related materials in the last few years, but I rarely make any recipes from the books. As you develop as a cook - when you are no longer simply cooking because you need to sustain yourself and figure you might as well make it tasty, but are cooking to satisfy an intellectual hunger as well as a physical one - I think the real value in good cookbooks is the exposure to various ways of thinking about food, about new ways to approach ingredients and flavor combinations, new textures that you might otherwise never have thought of. In that light, I have Ferran Adria and Heston Blumenthal and Jose Andres on the shelf next to Eric Ripert, Tom Collichio, Mario Batali and John Besh. (David Chang occupies his own unique strata) But there are also two books by Lynn Rosetto Kaspar and a couple generalized food science books.
So as I've grown up as a cook, I'm more instinctual in the way I put things together. But I will always be voracious in my consumption of good cookbooks.
Yeah the title Chef all depends on who you ask. Ask those at Culinary School and its someone who has paid into the CCA or some sort of culinary group, w/e. IMO, its the person who creates the dishes, all else, myself included are just cooks. I find it playfully annoying when I work with some jagoff fresh out of school that thinks he should be a chef, lulz. However, you can be the chef of your household, as I would say tifosi77 is. A chef is creative, not afraid to try something that might fail, and not concerned with prices, cheap or expensive (this is why I hate Corp. run kitchens, its depressing), and most all loves all things food.
Consistancy only matters in a professional setting where every table, should be getting the same dish every time they order it, sadly, as most people know, sometimes it just doesnt work out. I always say the best line cooks are those who just can forget everything around them, and just move, nonstop, it takes a few weeks at a new place, but when you find the flow (haha happy gilmore) its awesome how you can have 10-15 things going at any given time, and have them all go out correct, its a nice feeling.
However, it is SOOOOOO much more fun to cook at home, where you can use a recipe as only a guideline, and do what you like to do with it. No boundries. And as for cookbooks, I have a degree, and have spent the last 6 years in professional kitchens, and still enjoy buying and reading cookbooks, you can never, ever, stop learning when it comes to food. The chef who thinks he knows it all is a lazy liar.
