Which Chef has inspired your cooking the most?

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
102

No really. I’m just going on memory, but he was a TV producer of some sorts and at one point focused on the then-available cooking shows and thought they all were pretty poorly done. So he got some training as Meekah mentioned then set out to do a better cooking show.

On the show he took a lot of pains to break down the reasons and sometimes the science behind techniques and ingredients and that, along with the humorous nature of the show, appealed to me quite a lot. He often questioned “what everyone knows” about this or that technique and ran side-by-side tests to see if another way of doing something was superior. Sometimes he was wrong and sometimes even when he thought he was right I disagreed with him, but at least he was asking the questions and testing things out.

His later “host” embodiments like the contest shows he hosts, I didn’t find so interesting, and I wasn’t thrilled when he gave up the Good Eats show for being just another foodie celebrity. C’est la vie.



Edit -


I guess this makes me wonder what precisely it means to be a chef. I always thought a line cook at a chain restaurant was certainly not a chef. Or even folks working the kitchen at an upscale restaurant might not be chefs - just locally trained people repeating those dishes they’d been trained to do.
:thinking:

Reminds me of the flap the U.S. media really embraced when a woman working at Yahoo or Google or some such complained that a rando guy had told her “you’re too pretty to be an engineer” so she took to social media with a photo of herself holding a placard saying “This Is What An Engineer Looks Like”. Oh how the media here loved it - more proof of toxic masculinity, or whatever they imagined it to be, rolled up in one nice little meme-able moment.

The thing is - she wasn’t an engineer. Yes, her job title at work was something like “social network engineer” but she had zero schooling in any engineering discipline, nor any OJT in actual engineering. To my way of thinking, an engineer is a graduate of an engineering educational program and has passed at least the first level certification examinations. (And to put a particularly fine point on it, at that point many states in the U.S. consider that person an “Engineer In Training” because to fully become a registered professional engineer (PE - someone who can sign off on and is legally liable for project work) one must work under a PE for 5 years and take the next level cert exam.) My oldest daughter is an engineer and #2 is in her last semester of engineering.

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103

Yeah, that did it for me, too. Good Eats was funny and informative. The other stuff … not so much.

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104

Anyone who has worked in a serious kitchen knows that there is only one chef. Others may be brilliant at their cooking and even the running of the kitchen … sous chef, line cooks, even some chef de commis (trainees) … but there is only one “chief.” No matter how superlative a cook you might be, it is a stretch to call one a chef if they do not have a kitchen under them.

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105

Thanks. That person with the kitchen under them I’ve always thought of as the “executive chef”, while still leaving room in my head for underlings to be “chefs” too. But like I mentioned, my thinking on it is kind of muddled.

I had a neighbor who was the exec chef at a large hotel (convention center type of place) and he sometimes talked about his underlings as “my chefs”, but other times he’d say “my cooks”. I never asked about the distinction, but now wonder if it had to do with level of formal training. Or maybe just sloppy language usage.

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106

Absolutely. The person running the kitchen will be the head chef or, often, just “chef”. But, in a British kitchen, everyone else cooking in there will have the word “chef” in their job title, whether it is the sous chef, chef de partie or commis chef. We don’t have cooks in restaurant kitchens.

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107

Alton Brown’s recipes are very good. He is one of the more trustworthy sources even if he doesn’t fit the definition of Chef.

If I want a good, well-vetted recipe, my go-to sources lately have been: Felicity Cloake, Nigel Slater, Diana Henry, Alton Brown, Akis Petrezikis. I think Akis Petrezikis is the only one who is a chef.

I am inspired by Ottolenghi who is/was a chef, but has become more of an entrepreneur. I don’t exactly follow his recipes. I use my own method, omit what isn’t on hand, and simplify Ottolenghi recipes for weeknights.

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108

I learned about reverse sear from watching ABs episode on Prime Rib. I still use his method - minus the flower pot.

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109

I’ll start an Alton Brown fan thread. I did the same for David Lebovitz, classically trained pastry chef turned food writer.

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I like him, too. Read one of his books this summer - actually about his apartment in Paris, not about food.

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111


Seriously. Who’s got a spare flower pot that big just hanging around, waiting to be used 3 or 5 times a year?

Edit - and I just thought about how that there spare flower pot fits in with AB’s noted dislike of unitaskers. Although I guess it could double as the family umbrella stand between roasts…

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112

LOL - Maybe it’s not a unitasker for AB - but what a hassle to disgorge and replant the ficus over and over.

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113

:rofl::rofl:

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114

Salter worked as a chef, fairly briefly, after he got his college diploma in catering.

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115

Alton Brown is a devoted student of Harold McGee’s clear scientific food writing. All of McGee’s work is worth a try.

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116

I forgot - my wife and I also used to watch Jamie Oliver a fair bit, whatever his first show was in the late `90s. We got a lot of good ideas for relatively easy-prep dinners, and he was entertaining.

Edit -


Thanks! I hadn’t heard of Mr. McGee before. (Correction - when I looked him up I recognize him from TV or Youtube, I just didn’t recall the name. Still - now want to buy at least his “Science and Lore” book.)

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117

Naked Chef.

It referred to his stripped down food, rather than anything else. We still use his his recipe from that book (or the follow-up) for roast chicken.

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118

Re: Jamie Oliver, I watched a show where he quickly, effortlessly, made fresh pasta and used the kitchenaid attachment to roll it out. I also saw Mario Batali do this on the Today Show … gave me the courage to try it myself. Love using the attachment.

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119

From Keats to treats:

https://www.curiouscook.com/site/about-harold-mcgee.html/

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120

Interesting to think about the use of the word “chef”.

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121

A master of their craft?
I’m not sure of the definition either.
Some of the best food I’ve ever eaten has been from short order cooks and pitmasters.
Mexican and Asian too.
I suppose I shy away from lofty titles.

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