A Few Random Thoughts

I have been doing some reading since I have been here, whenever I can grab a quiet moment in our busy household. I gave myself some time tonight to sit down with a couple of books, my recipe notebook and a few cups of tea. 

It has been so nice to lose yourself in a cookbook, but also since I have been here I have been downloading books on my Kobo (amazing you can travel with an entire book store, but not add any extra weight) mostly chef/food related biographies. I will be mid-chapter or mid-sentence and think there it is - that is the reason I am proud to be a cook and why I take such pride in putting on my chef jacket. When you read about any chefs experience they all have different things that humble them, which is the fun part about this kind of reading. 

You know how everyone has there favorite book, it might sit on your bookshelf and some times you forget to revisit it as often as you feel you should?  Today I said hello to one of my all time favorite cookbooks, one of my very first... "The French Laundry" Thomas Keller.  Morgan had borrowed it from Susan, and as I was finishing one of the cookbooks I was reading, I picked it up and started flipping through the pages I remember so well from my early days in Culinary School when I still trying to perfect a bruinoise. Back then flipping though those white pages at the technique, skill and creativity that went into each plate, excited simply by the endless possiblities of what food had to offer. I got that same excitment today when I flipped open the book.  I began to read and wanted to share a few thoughts from this amazing book...

"There is no such thing as perfect food just the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear:to make people happy" Thomas Keller, French Laundry Page 2

 

"What I love about these braised items is that they're not just saute-and-serve. The process behind them requires thought on the part of the cook, and technique to create something more then what you started with" 

-Thomas Keller, French Laundry Page 186

 

"A cook sauteing a rabbit loin, working the line on a Saturday night, a million pans going, plates going out the door, who took that loin a little too far, doesn't hesitate, just dumps it in the garbage and fires another. Would that cook, I wonder, have let his attention stray from that loin had he killed the rabbit himself? No."

-Thomas Keller, French Laundry Page 205

 

So in a our busy lives it it easy to forget to pick up that favorite book or cookbook. Remember to take the time, pull it off the shelf and be inspired!

Ciao