Over a period of a dozen years I worked for chefs. Thousands of chefs. Never in a kitchen though. Always in convention centers and board rooms or sitting across a desk interviewing them. My role had nothing to do with food; I edited their monthly magazine and then later was their meeting planner.
Even though in my work I did not use knives or ladles, and never stood next to an older, wiser, more experienced chef as a apprentice, I learned concepts and world views that are applicable...have been applied...to my own life in general and specifically to the way I have approached tasks before me ever since.
Two examples: presentation and mise en place.
“The first taste is with the eyes,” was the way a chef once described it to me. When the waiter sets the plate before the diner, so many times the first sound is the diner saying “that looks good.” That is the first bite. The concept is not so different from the School of First Impression, making an initial impact that is positive and receptive. Of course, the second bite, the one requiring a fork and open mouth, has to be an affirmation of the first or there may not be a third.
While I am a cook of no merit, and I prepare nothing I would serve to anyone else, I do feed myself, and for myself I take the time to place the food in a manner that pleases me and perhaps would even please another if only visually. It is almost a reverse golden rule: I am doing for myself as I would do for others.
The second concept is mise en place. The literal translation from French is “put in place,” but as a culinary term it means “everything in place.” The concept is as simple as it is practical: before you start to cook, have everything ready. Vegetables chopped, sauces handy, ingredients pre-measured. Once the cooking process begins, there is not time to turn attention away from the stove to pull carrots from the walk-in, clean and chop and measure out the amount necessary.
The first time I heard the term was in the heat of battle. It was the predawn hours of the day the USA Culinary Team would compete in the international cooking contest known as the Culinary "Olympics." The contest is held every four years and in 1984 it was in Frankfurt, Germany at the Messe Frankfurt, a huge sprawling site with nearly a dozen exhibition halls.
On this morning I stood in a corner of the small competition kitchen taking photographs, out-of-the way of the five team members as they hurried with their preparations. This was the day of the Hot Food Competition when the team would have four hours to prepare two entrees and sides for two hundred people all under the very watchful eyes of a panel of international judges. The team had been working and practicing for months and months. There was a lot of pressure on them but not on me. I was a journalist. All I had to do was watch, make notes, and maybe learn a little.
Then the team captain looked at me, the only civilian and thus the only one not working, and yelled “Go to the prep kitchen and check on the status of the mise en place.”
I understood every word except for that last phrase. I had never heard it before. I had been working for the organization less than six months, hired because I could write and use a camera. I knew nothing about food or cooking, but I knew enough about chefs and those chefs at that moment not to say “What?” I had been given a mission and I embraced it.
The main exhibition hall where the cooking competition was to take place was a half mile from the prep kitchen where the team's support chefs were working on, among other things, the mise en place. I left the main hall, walking, almost running, as quickly as I could through the dark deserted alleys between and behind the buildings, past empty loading docks, all the while repeating, out loud, but softly, “mise en place... mise en place... mise en place” so I would not forget the phrase. I could not even picture the words; I only knew the sound.
As I got closer to the entrance of the building which housed the prep kitchen I started saying it louder, practicing. I entered the kitchen and in a near shout said “Chef wants to know about...” and I paused very briefly, then said it, “...the mise en place.” Instantly the reply came back “Nearly done! Tell him we’re on our way.”
I turned and left as quickly as I had entered and made my way back to the main hall reporting to the team captain that help was on the way. Later in the day, the team won the competition and were awarded the gold medal.
I felt akin to Phidippides, although I did not die from exhaustion, but I did gain the reward of a larger vocabulary, and felt I had some small, very small, part in the victory.
[Photo at the top: Within moments of winning the competition, Pablo gets ready to take a photo of the team captain (Richard Schneider, CMC) and the president of the National Restaurant Association who is being gently prodded into the photo by his wife.]