Cooking School Productivity

I have 49 cookbooks in my kitchen. I’ve been to cooking school in France, and I won a blue ribbon at the Ventura County Fair for my cooking. So why is it so hard to come up with an answer to the question “What’s for dinner?”

The answer lies in looking a little deeper. Among the 49 cookbooks is the venerable Joy of Cooking, given to me when I left for college, and the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, also given to me when I was in college. But let’s look at some of the more recent additions: 150 Five-Ingredient Recipes, 30 Minutes or Less, Recipes for Very Busy People, and Seriously Simple. Are you noticing a trend here? There’s only one problem with these books – they lie, lie, lie.

How do they lie? Travel with me to Paris. It’s a sunny April day, and we stand in the Place Vendome, with the Ritz Hotel rising in front of us. We find the Rue Cambon, and walk behind the Ritz to a door at the back of the hotel that lets us descend to a dark, narrow hallway. Halfway down, we push through swinging doors into a gleaming, well-lit kitchen with eight ovens on the wall to our right, and a large island with space for eight work stations in the center. At each work station are the recipes for the day, and the pre-measured ingredients for each recipe. Chef Bruno demonstrates the first recipe, and we follow along. When finished, we walk over to the ovens and pop our creations inside. Then we walk back to our work station, collect all the dirty utensils, walk to the open half door next to the ovens, and . . . hand our dishes to the dish washer. Are you noticing any differences between your home kitchen and cooking school yet?

Chef Bruno understood. One afternoon, he began class with “Today, we will make zee croissant; and when we are done, you will understand why it is worth any amount of money to pay someone else to make them!”

It’s not the cooking I mind, it’s planning the menu, preparing the shopping list, going to the grocery store, and chopping and measuring the ingredients. That takes way more than 30 minutes, and is the reason why the answer to “What’s for dinner?” in my house is usually “Chinese Dumpling House or CJ’s BBQ?”