Things My Chef taught me…..

1. Mise en Place – probably my favorite term. Over the years of our relationship, I became his sous chef and dishwasher; his student. I learnt how to chop, dice, julienne.  The importance of prepping  prior to the actual cooking truly made the process easier. Cooking as a couple was more fun over a bottle of wine.
2. He loved books as much as I did. Although, his idea of “reading” was limited to shorter paragraphs and included photos. We have shelves full of cookbooks and magazines he has accumulated over his lifetime. His desire to learn has not decreased over the years, realizing that he will never know everything in his field. The art of Cooking is forever changing. Gifts have included Book binders for him to store pages from magazines, scanners to store on computer but as much as they are accepted and loved, he still loves to receive books.
3. Time Management and Checklist. Cooking for 10 takes the same prep as cooking for 100. It only increases the adrenaline and the satisfaction of a successful event is 10 times greater. His organizational skills are on point. Each Event is different but all require the same attention to the same details, order taking, purchasing, budgeting, setup up etc.
4. How to remove stains.. LOL this is a good one and had nothing to do with “Cheffing”. He has removed many wine stains, bbq sauce stains, curry stains, oil stains from my clothes, our staff shirts, customers clothes.. He gives high praise to his Grandma Jenny.
5. Work began based on your timing to get a project done, not necessarily a schedule. This carried over into our life. It made sense to some degree. If a stew took 1 hour and needed to be served at 10am on a delivery which will take an hour with no traffic, guess what, you don’t go into the kitchen at 9am.. Do the math.
6. Not every dish is prepared the same. However, if the outcome is a success, then the process to get there doesn’t matter. He’s made some traditional dishes from Trinidad. We went back and forth with my recollection of a recipe vs his tweaking the recipe to make it his own and it was quite delicious, making me question my grandmother choices LOL

This is a complete List but I promise to ADD on as I remember.

Thanks for stopping by

Chef and I