Become the Chef of Your Own Kitchen

Posted Fri, Jun 22, 2007, 12:15 pm PDT

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People always ask me, "What's the difference between a cook and a chef?" I think of it this way: As a cook, you are constantly looking to find your own flavors and seeking to perfect the skills and the craft of the work. Being a cook is climbing the ladder to becoming a chef -- you have to make mistakes and repeat tasks over and over again until you have improved your skills.

What a cook is searching for is something that a chef has -- a strong point of view. If you have this point of view, you can become an artist. It's the same thing with a painter. Without a point of view you are just a craftsman. It takes a vision to make art.

There are a number of chefs out there with this level of vision -- Ferran Adria, Thomas Keller, and Jean Georges Vongerichten are just a few who come to mind. All three have their own voice in the kitchen and their own way of listening to flavors.

Home cooks can act on this too. So often, people are afraid to deviate from a recipe, but I think you should learn to listen to flavors that you like and don't like to create your own personal cooking style. If you don't like cilantro, replace it with another herb you do like. Play with your favorite recipes and have fun with flavors to discover your inner voice and the palate you have developed over years of eating and enjoying food to create your own art in the kitchen.

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4 Comments

1. Posted by Awesome Taylor on Sun, Jun 24, 2007, 11:45 am PDT

This article really inspired me.
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2. Posted by Eve on Sun, Jul 01, 2007, 2:42 pm PDT

I don't know any of those chefs you mentioned but I know a lot of good cajaun chefs and although my Mama and Grandmother wouldn't be called chefs, the should have been. You don't have to go to some fancy cooking school to appreciate the smells of fresh veggies from the garden or the difference between making your own salsa or buying it in a jar. The job of a chef is to please the people who eats his food. If it doesn't taste good, no amount of decoration will improve it. I'm Just saying....
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3. Posted by AngelLyn on Tue, Jul 31, 2007, 3:08 pm PDT

I found this clip very inspiring. I am currently a culinary student at Western Culinary Institute and sometimes people have no idea how true this is. We see a lot of the difference talked about at the school, and those lacking their own point of views are the ones that we end up losing throughout the course of the program. Thank you for this inspiration Chef, and I think I will pass this along to my fellow "Chef's" in training.
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4. Posted by zainab u on Fri, Apr 04, 2008, 11:54 pm PDT

Yours ideas are great and commendable.
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