Letters to a Young Chef by Daniel Boulud

Author:Daniel Boulud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

DESIRE, DRIVE AND DISCIPLINE

I had a young chef come to me the other day who had been doing a great job at garde-manger. He wanted to move onto the line as a cook, which is pretty true to form for any aspiring chef. So we moved him to poissonier (the fish station) and right away you could see his lack of experience, speed and productivity. He had to go back to square one. Mind you, his would be a very good square one but we would have to watch over him, to use the French phrase, comme le lait sur le feu—like milk on the fire. In other words, we would have to watch him very carefully to make sure he did not suddenly upset the entire service by overcooking, oversalting, charring, forgetting an ingredient or making other errors in technique and method that can ruin a recipe as quickly as an unwatched pan of milk can boil over.

For him to master the simple technique of controlling heat on the stovetop will take time. As many restaurants do, we have a series of metal rings that cover each burner: By moving the pot closer to or further from that heat epicenter, you can get heat that is over 800° or as low as a lazy simmer. This young chef will get the hang of it. If he has talent and is driven, the day will come in the not too distant future when he can master the heat.

Just be prepared for the chef to throw you a curve. They all do. When I had maybe a year under my belt at my first job, my boss, after a week of hunting in Alsace, arrived with his Citroen DS 21 (the French Cadillac), opened the trunk and it was full of game. Pheasants, hares, partridge, woodcock. All were going on the menu for that night and I had to get them ready for service. Two other guys and I spent the whole afternoon plucking birds, dressing them, and for that evening learning six new recipes to create a wild game feast. I had cooked game that my family and I had shot my whole life; but now, in a serious restaurant, new combinations of ingredients were coming at me from every direction. We had pheasant terrine, partridge au choux, woodcock flambé a l’Armagnac with croutons spread with crushed woodcock giblets and butter. And lièvre à la royale—boneless wild hare stuffed with foie gras truffles and ground pork, braised till spoon tender in a concentrated red wine and hare stock. So much to learn and do so fast. I had to run like crazy to stay up with the service and not make any mistakes.

Of course, these kinds of surprises are not the rule. Most restaurant work is endless repetition of simple techniques. Let me give you an idea of the day you can look forward to at one of my restaurants or Danny Meyer’s or Susan Spicer’s or Wolfgang Puck’s—it doesn’t matter whose, because the work is the same.

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