Knives, Forks And Pizza Etiquette

It's Not “Wrong” Or “Weird” To Use A Knife And Fork

I was dining with family at an Italian American place. I had ordered pizza and was, as per my usual, employing a knife and fork in its consumption. My Gen Z great-niece watched me for awhile and then asked why I was using a knife and fork instead of just picking it up like “everybody else” does. I explained it to her as I'll explain it to you, lettore cara.

First of all, it's a topic of great controversy depending upon where you are. In the vast pizza metropolis that is New York City, eating a slice of pizza any way other than by using your hands to fold it in half is considered heresy, punishable at the least by great mockery. Witness what happened a few years back to erstwhile mayor Bill de Blasio when he took utensils to slice at a place called Goodfellas on Staten Island. He was derided mercilessly and the press even hounded him again a few months later when paparazzi caught him with a knife and fork in a pizzeria in Naples. (The one in Italy, not its counterpart in Florida.) But de Blasio had a defense: he said he was being “authentic” and that he had picked up the cutlery habit while visiting his “ancestral homeland.”

On the other hand – no pun intended – if you try to pick up and fold a slice of the tomato and cheese casserole that passes for pizza in Chicago, you'll wind up with quite a mess.

Anyway, de Blasio was right. Protestation and ridicule from the Italian American contingent aside, the proper Italian way to eat pizza is, indeed, with a knife and fork. At least, according to formal galateo (etiquette.)

You see, in America pizza is always served one way – pre-sliced. You can buy it by the slice, of course, or you can purchase a whole pie. But even then, that pie will come pre-sliced, generally into eight pieces. In America, pizza is the ultimate sharing food, the ultimate party food. But that's not the case in Italy.

Italian food traditions are very particular and very specific. One of the specifications dictates that foods should not be combined. That's one reason why Italians don't mix, say, chicken and pasta. And it's why Italian pizza options are pretty limited by American standards. In Italy, you will seldom see a pizza with more than one or two toppings. The all-out pizza with pepperoni and cheese and mushrooms and green peppers and olives and sliced tomatoes and sausage and whatever else they happen to have in the kitchen would absolutely bewilder an Italian pizzaiola.

Italians are also not very big on sharing food or on leftovers. I'm not talking about family-style sharing, of course, but specifically to people sharing dishes in restaurants and formal settings. It's really not done. Nor is asking for a box or bag for leftovers. In the Italian mind, there aren't supposed to be any leftovers. They bring you what they consider to be reasonable portions of food and you're supposed to consume all of it. That includes pizza.

Although politically unified in 1861, in many ways the Italian peninsula is still twenty different regions. Nowhere is this more evident than in food culture. There's really no such thing as “Italian food.” Instead, there are the foods of the country's twenty regions. Occasionally, there's some overlap. Pizza, for instance.

Just as in the US, where you have Neapolitan-style and Sicilian-style and New York-style and Chicago-style and Detroit-style and St. Louis-style and California-style and seemingly endless other styles of pizza depending upon where you are (Altoona-style pizza, anyone?), there are different types of pizza in different regions of Italy. Obviously, the most popular comes from the generally accepted birthplace of modern pizza, Naples. But pizza Romana is a close second in and out of Rome. Sicily boasts of its own style as do other regions like Puglia, which produces a thick crust pizza topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and lots of onions.

Although some form of flatbread “pizza” has been around since ancient times, the “modern” pizza, as mentioned, rose from a simple, modest, affordable street food eaten by the poorer classes of southern Italian society. That all changed, however, after World War II, when a combination of social and economic factors caused the spread of the Neapolitan peasant dish to all parts and regions of the Italian peninsula and across the face of the globe. By the 1960s, pizza was ubiquitous.

“All very interesting,” you say, “but what does it have to do with using a knife and fork?”

Okay. Despite some regional variations, most Italian pizzerias serve a thin-crust pizza that comes in one size. It's a small pie by American standards, about the size of a dinner plate. It does not come pre-sliced and it is not intended to be shared with others, but rather to be eaten by one person as a single course. As such, the use of utensils is required as the individual diner must cut bite-sized morsels from the whole pie, a pie he or she is expected to finish. Don't even think of asking for a box.

Thus when de Blasio and other misunderstood knife and fork users say they are honoring their “cultural heritage” or whatever, they're right. By and large, pizza in Italy is eaten with a knife and a fork.

Oh, there are exceptions. Tourist places, for instance, will serve pizza in a more universally recognized form, i.e. whole pies sliced for sharing or individual slices made for folding over and carrying. Actually, the latter is often offered in the form of a calzone – and that's “kal-ZOH-nay,” not “kal-ZOHN,” – which is basically a folded-over pizza, made from the same dough and toppings as a regular pizza, designed to be carried and eaten with one hand.

And one more exception, which may validate all you devotees of the notion of pizza as a finger food: In Italy, unless in a very formal setting, it is permissible and sometimes even common to begin eating your pizza by cutting it with a knife and picking up the bite-sized pieces with a fork, then transitioning to picking up the remainder of the slice and eating it from your hand, often after folding it over. This is especially true of the end of the pizza slice at the cornicione, or the outer edge of the crust.

After a somewhat abbreviated version of this admittedly lengthy explanation – basically I told her, “That's how they do it in Italy” – I was gratified to note that my young great-niece picked up her knife and fork and followed my lead. Would that the rest of America's pizza-eating society do the same, we would have a much better mannered – and probably less messy – Italian dining experience.

But even if you personally choose to continue in the common American or Italian-American method of pizza eating, now, armed with appropriate knowledge of etiquette, would you at least please refrain from disparaging those whom you observe using a knife and fork? Because now you know that they are, indeed, not weird, but quite correct in doing so.

Buon appetito!

Basic Rules For Eating Italian Bread

Italians Love Their Bread, But There Are Rules

You've just been seated at your favorite Italian restaurant. The server has taken your order and the menus have been collected. Moments later – perhaps along with your beverages – the first course arrives: a basket full of delicious, crusty bread. Depending on the eatery, there may be little packets of butter in the basket or, more likely, a shallow dish of olive oil, sometimes containing Italian herbs, accompanies the bread. Or you may have ordered garlic bread: lightly toasted slices of bread slathered with garlic-flavored butter. Of course, you dig in immediately, probably emptying the basket long before the next course comes to the table.

If this scenario sounds familiar, I can assure you of one thing: you are not in an Italian restaurant.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Italians love their bread and it is, indeed, served as a part of every meal. Bread is integral to the Mediterranean diet. Some deeply religious people in the region even consider it to be a sacred food, broken and shared communally at the table. But bread is never – let me back up and run that by again for emphasis – NEVER served as a separate “course” or as a stand alone appetizer prior to other courses. The only exception there would be in the case of some sort of bruschetta – pronounced “broo-SKET-ah” and not “broo-SHET-uh” – which is a preparation unto itself and is usually considered as an antipasto or appetizer. But plain Italian bread with butter or oil or “garlic bread”? Never.

In the first place, “garlic bread” is an American invention non-existent in Italian culture and cuisine. Although it can trace its roots back to the aforementioned bruschetta, “garlic bread,” as served in Italian American restaurants, is strictly an Italian American creation. Early Italian immigrants to the United States often had to adapt their traditional dishes to match the realities of the local ingredients on hand. Olive oil was all but unheard of in America, but there was lots of butter. So, add a little garlic to make it taste more like home and....the birth of “garlic bread,” subsequently introduced to semi-adventurous American palates at those “exotic” Italian restaurants that began springing up by the mid-twentieth century. But back in Italy? Never.

In fact, let's talk about butter for a second. Let's say you're in Italy and have asked your cameriere for a little butter for your bread. He's going to look at you like you've grown a third eye and then he's going to be embarrassed. “Mi dispiace,” he'll say, “ma non abbiamo burro.” Restaurants in the southern parts of Italy are unlikely to even have butter in the building while northern establishments might try to to accommodate your request by slicing chunks off the big blocks of butter kept in the kitchen for use in some dishes. But the cute little foil-wrapped pats you find in Italian American places? Never.

And oil for dipping? Sometimes with balsamic vinegar added? Not generally a thing in Italy, where it would be considered a waste of good olive oil, and why on earth would you want to taint your taste buds with vinegar before the rest of the food arrives? Besides, if you've ever priced real, genuine balsamic vinegar, you'd know that there ain't no way anybody in their right budget-conscious mind would just dump it on a plate and dip cheap bread in it. Except for in touristy places, it just isn't done.

Now, if you were in Tuscany, you might be served fettunta – literally “oily slice” – which is a predecessor of and the base for bruschetta. You take a nice, thick slice of bread and toast it. Not in a toaster but on a grill or a grill pan. You want a nice golden color and maybe some grill marks. While the bread is still hot from grilling, you cut the end off a garlic clove and rub the surface of the bread with the cut clove. Then you drizzle it with a generous amount of good quality olive oil and sprinkle on just a mere touch of coarse salt, like kosher salt. This would be a type of bread that could be served either as an accompaniment or as a course of its own.

And then there's the bread. A lot of Italian American places at least make an attempt at baking their own bread. I know of a number of such places that use the same dough for table bread that they use to make their pizza crust. It's not exactly “authentic” Italian bread, but it's a start. Far too many Italian American eateries serve up “Italian bread” purchased through their commercial food suppliers. The difference is like night and day.

True “Italian” bread – i.e. bread made in Italy or made according to Italian traditions – uses different ingredients and different baking techniques than its American or Italian American counterparts. Real Italian breads are made with different flours – most often grano tenero flours – and are baked at higher temperatures than their commercial cousins. Olive oil is the fat of choice rather than cheaper oils or butter. Slow fermentation processes are used in making Italian bread, no fast-acting yeast. And there are no preservatives in real Italian bread, something that can't be said of the bread-like substances produced in commercial factory bakeries and shipped halfway across the country on trucks. All this results in thick, rustic crusts that you can really sink your teeth into and that contrast beautifully with the soft, airy, chewy yet almost fluffy interiors. Besides flavor and texture, vero pane Italiano is more digestible and has less gluten and a lower glycemic index than your average American bread. Sadly, most store bought “Italian bread” – the stuff your favorite “Italian” place is likely putting in your basket – is pretty much Wonder Bread shaped like an Italian loaf and wrapped in green, white, and red bags. If you ever luck up and find someplace that serves something like pane Toscano or pane di Altamura or some other authentic Italian bread, you'll see what I mean.

So, anyway, back to the restaurant. If they bring out all that delicious-looking and wonderful smelling bread right off the bat, what are you supposed to do with it? Just leave it sitting there in the basket? Yep.

Didn't your Mama ever tell you “don't fill up on bread?” Well, that's also the Italian philosophy. A lot of the more authentic places won't even bring the bread out until the rest of the food is served. The idea is that bread is there to accompany the meal, not to be eaten as an appetizer or as a course unto itself. It is not a pre-meal filler or a snack. And you don't usually eat it with your pasta or risotto as this would be considered eating a starch with a starch. No, bread is typically reserved as something you eat with your soup or salad or meat or vegetable course. The only real exception here is that it is acceptable to break off small pieces of bread to use as sops for any leftover sauce remaining on your pasta plate. The custom is called fare la scarpetta – make a little shoe – and although it's sometimes frowned upon in the high end, high tone places, it's okay pretty much everyplace else. When in doubt, look about. If you see other people doing it, well, when in Rome – or Florence or Milan or Bologna or wherever.....

Whatever you do, don't cut the bread! Big cultural no-no. In Italy, they take the phrase “breaking bread” literally. You break off a piece of bread for your own use from the communal loaf, and then you break that piece into whatever smaller pieces you intend to use for whatever you intend to use them for. Taking a knife to the bread will get you dirty looks at the very least. And so will taking more bread than you can eat. Food waste and leftovers are not Italian things.

Oh, and be aware, while it's not an issue in American Italian places where bread is usually complementary, even in upscale eateries, if you should find yourself in an Italian Italian restaurant, don't be surprised by the coperto. Yes, there's a cover charge for bread in many establishments. Technically, it is a table charge that covers the table setting, the bread and the basket it comes in, and other small incidentals. It's not a “tip” or a service charge and it goes directly to the restaurant and not to the server. It's generally a euro or two per person and you'll usually see it in small print at the bottom of the menu.

So there you have it: the essentials of Italian bread etiquette in a nutshell. Or maybe in a breadbasket, I don't know. In any case buon appetito e mangiare bene!

Serving Pasta The Authentic Italian Way

There Are A Few Old Traditions Worth Hanging On To

Okay, before we start, let me make this disclaimer: for all of you who are about to go the the “comments” section and scream about having the “right to do whatever the f**k I want with my food” or to castigate me for being a fussy, rule-bound old prig, let me say this: you do, and I am. There. With that out of the way, let's talk about the authentic Italian way to serve pasta.

There are two keys to serving authentic Italian pasta, and I'll get to them in a minute. But first, there are some basic pasta cooking rules that you've probably seen repeated over and over. However, because I am, indeed, a fussy, rule-bound old prig, I'm going to repeat them yet again.

Prima regola, don't break the pasta. Go ahead, I'm braced for it. “What difference does it make? It all tastes the same anyway. It fits better in my pot when I break it. It's easier to eat when it's broken up.” Does that about cover it? Good. Now, the explanation. Long pasta is long just because it's supposed to be long. It's part of the aesthetic of the dish and part of the cultural experience and tradition of making it and eating it. Some say that breaking long pasta is an insult to the skill and the craft of the pasta maker. Since most of what you buy in the store these days is machine made, I don't know how insulted the machines might be, but why take the chance? Bottom line? It's an Italian thing. Some rules are immutable and “don't break the pasta” is one of them. Or break it if you want. After all, you're gonna tell me it's your “right,” and it is. But it's not authentic and authenticity is what we're talking about here.

Secondo, salt the water. The only time you really get to enhance the flavor of pasta is in the cooking process. The pasta literally opens up during cooking to release starches and to take on flavor. After it's done, you can pour all the salt in the world on it and it's just gonna taste like salty noodles. Generous amounts of salt added to the water – about a tablespoon per quart – while the pasta is cooking is the only means of imparting proper seasoning to the finished dish. And save a little of the cooking water to help develop your sauce. The starchy, salty water acts as a flavoring and thickening agent that aids in the ability of the sauce to cling to the pasta as it enhances the overall taste of the finished dish. And you obviously don't want to rinse your pasta. You need some of that starch.

And while we're sort of on the topic, I'd like to find the old wife behind the old wives' tale about putting oil in the water to keep the pasta from sticking. Chemistry 101 says oil and water don't mix. All you're going to get is oily water.

Ultima regola, don't cook the pasta to mush. Al dente is the key. It should be a little firm “to the tooth” when you bite into it. If you want to overcook your pasta until it looks and tastes like something out of a Chef Boyardee can, go for it! It's your right. But it's not authentic.

And now that brings us to the first of those two keys to the authentic Italian way of serving pasta.

I'm old but I'm not old enough to remember how Americans ever came up with the notion of piling a heap of cooked spaghetti on a plate and then dumping a quart of sauce on top of it. But there it is; the typical American way of serving “spaghetti.” I guess it goes back to the early days of the Italian diaspora when everything Italian was still considered mysterious and exotic. Nobody outside the Italian enclaves knew how to cook the stuff, so they just punted. And that's what they came up with.

Now, I can give a little leeway to home cooks because, as I've acknowledged, you can do whatever you want with your food at home. It's the so-called “Italian” restaurants that really gripe me. If you run a place called “Vincenzo's” or “Giuseppe's” or “Lorenzo's” or “Giovanni's” and you serve pasta this despicable way, you should be stripped of your Italian heritage and the final vowel in your last name and you should just call your place “Vincent's” or “Joe's” or “Larry's” or “John's Place.” Because what you're doing ain't Italian and your mamma didn't teach you that way.

And I hear it all the time from Italian restaurant owners: “But that's what my American customers expect!” And I know. I can feel your pain. I once took over running a little American diner for a friend. And he offered a “spaghetti special” on Fridays, which I immediately remade in the authentic Italian way. For the most part, it was a great success, with patrons gushing with praise for the improved quality. Many said it was better than the Italian place down the street. BUT.....and there's always a “butt”.....I had one disgruntled dude who complained that what I put on his plate looked like “leftovers” because everything was “all mixed together.” He demanded his pile of plain spaghetti topped with a quart of sauce. I tried to patiently explain why I fixed it the way I did, but he wasn't satisfied and I never saw him again. He probably went to the “Italian” place down the street.

Anyway, in real, authentic Italian cooking, you always finish the pasta in the sauce. You never, EVER pile plain pasta on a plate and cover it with sauce. And if you're eating at an “Italian” place that does that, I'm telling you that they are just pandering to the lowest common denominator. Don't let 'em do it! Send it back and tell 'em, “Non insultarmi, stupido! Cucinalo come farebbe tua mamma!” Well, don't say it like that or you'll probably get thrown out. But you get the idea. Don't accept mediocrity.

There's a good reason we cook it the way we do. When you take the pasta out of the water a minute or two before it reaches that perfect al dente stage and let it finish cooking for those last couple of minutes in that delicious, flavorful sauce, the flavors – i sapori – of the pasta and the sauce will marry and mingle in a way that is simply not possible to achieve by dumping them on a plate separately. The pasta has already released its starches and opened up to absorb the salt you've added to the water and now it's going to further accept all the nuances of that full, rich sauce. É semplicemente il migliore! It is the considered opinion of anybody with even a drop of Italian blood in their veins that there is nothing worse than a pile of bland, flavorless spaghetti sitting and cooling helplessly on a plate while somebody drowns it in some thin, unremarkable sauce. And yet, that is the typical American standard “spaghetti dinner” preparation and Italians will weep for you.

Yeah, so I'm a little dramatic.

The other key to serving pasta the authentic Italian way is to leave it the hell alone!

In the scheme of Italian dining, pasta is a course in and of itself! You don't put anything “in” or “with” pasta. I can't tell you how many times I've been asked, “Would you like some chicken in that pasta, sir?” No, I don't want any frickin' chicken in my pasta! Chicken belongs to the next course, the secondo. This is the primo course and it's fine just the way it is. If you get nothing else out of this rant, get this, please: There is NOTHING wrong with eating a plain, unadorned, unadulterated dish of pasta and sauce.

In the traditional Italian meal structure, pasta dishes are paired with sauces that complement and enhance the overall flavor of the dish. Each ingredient plays its part in achieving a balanced outcome. Throwing chunks of chicken in there – or any meat or fish, really – throws that perfect balance out of whack. Those meats are considered secondary complements to the pasta, hence the term secondo. You serve them by themselves, or maybe in conjunction with the contorno, or vegetable, course, after, but never mixed in with, the pasta course. That's why you'll never find something like chicken Alfredo on an authentic Italian menu. Well.....you'll never find anything Alfredo on an authentic Italian menu, but that's another story. No “chicken tortellini,” no “chicken carbonara.” And Olive Garden's “Tour of Italy” is a visit to a place that simply doesn't exist. “A trio of Chicken Parmigiana, Lasagna Classico, and Fettuccine Alfredo on one plate!” There's so much wrong with that picture that I scarcely know where to start.

Putting aside the actual non-existence of chicken parm, you'll never find a “side” of pasta on a plate next to anything. Pasta is pasta and chicken is chicken. They don't belong together on the same plate. Neither does steak or pork chops or salmon. You don't mix meat with pasta and you don't serve pasta “next to” meat. That doesn't mean that meat can't be an ingredient in a pasta dish, like the pancetta or guanciale in a carbonara, but you wouldn't just slap a hunk of ham on a plate of pasta. Same goes for beef, pork, or veal in a Bolognese or in a ragu served mixed with pasta. But you don't, for instance, put hunks of meat – lookin' at you, meatballs – on top of a plate of spaghetti. And, while you might find some broccoli florets perched on a plate next to your 8-ounce sirloin, you'll never see a “side” of spaghetti there. At least you won't in madre Italia.

Okay, pluck the chickens and warm up the tar. I'm ready for the onslaught of commentary about how Italians are nothing but stuffy, pedantic, ultra-purist, hyper-critical pettifoggers and how food is food and you can fix it any way you damn well please. É vero! And you can wear white after Labor Day, wear socks with your sandals, and drive twenty miles an hour over the speed limit, too. Ain't freedom grand? All I'm sayin' is that authenticity usually comes with rules and that Italian culinary customs have developed over many generations. And that maybe, in this ever-changing world in which we live, there are a few old traditions worth hanging on to.

Want To Make The Kitchen Less Stressful? Follow Anthony Bourdain's “Religion”

A Place For Everything.......

I hear it all the time: “Why don't you open a restaurant?” My answer is usually along the lines of  “been there, done that” and besides, I like to cook. Nothing will spoil a love of cooking faster than running a restaurant. I'll bet I didn't want to go near a stove for six months after the last place I got out of. No, I'm perfectly happy with the occasional work I get as a personal chef and doing some small time catering here and there. But even at that I hear, “I just don't know how you do it. I could never deal with all that pressure.” Or, “Cooking is so stressful!” And for those who feel that way, I suppose it is. But the reason they feel cooking is such a stressful, pressure-ridden chore is because they are such a hopelessly disorganized mess. I've seen some of these people in action in the kitchen and it stresses me out just to watch them. But it doesn't have to be that way. The secret to calm, confident, efficient, and fun cooking is organization. The pros call it “mise en place.”

Mise en place (me-zahn-plahs) is one of those fancy French terms you learn in culinary school. The term literally translates to “setting in place” or “putting in place,” and the concept itself is ridiculously simple: everything has a place and you just need to get organized before you start. Mise en place is a method or a state of mind that, when properly and consistently applied in any kitchen, results in a smooth-flowing, time saving cooking process, thus enabling even a beginning home cook to efficiently produce delicious, quality meals. No pressure, no stress. The late chef Anthony Bourdain often referred to mise en place as his "religion."

Let's prepare some spaghetti sauce, okay? And we're gonna do it right; we're not gonna open a jar, were gonna make the sauce from scratch. “Oh, no!,” I hear you wail. “That's such a mess!” Nah-h-h. Not if you do it right.

First and most importantly, you need to read your recipe. All of it. All the way through. Ingredients and procedure. If you don't, you're setting yourself up for potential problems and stress.

Here's a sauce recipe of Rocco DiSpirito's that I particularly like:

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1/2 yellow onion, peeled and chopped fine

3 tbsp olive oil

2 (28-ounce) cans tomato puree

1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes

1 tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp sugar

1 cup chicken stock

Red pepper flakes to taste

Salt to taste

In a large saucepan, cook the garlic and onion in the olive oil over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes or until the garlic is tender and the onions are translucent, not brown. Add the red pepper flakes to taste.

Add all the tomato products. Pour the chicken stock into one of the 28-oz cans. Fill it the rest of the way with water and add that and the sugar to the pot. Stir and bring to a simmer. Taste and season with salt and cover. Simmer the sauce for about 1 hour. The sauce should be fairly thin, but not watery and very smooth. Uncover and simmer for 3 minutes if it is too thin for your taste; add a little water if it seems thick.

Okay, did you read all that? If you did, you found out you're going to need ten ingredients, five of which are canned, jarred, or bottled and two of which will require cutting and/or chopping. So you'll need a can opener, a knife, and a cutting surface, right? A couple of things need to be measured, so that means measuring cups and spoons. You need a saucepan with a cover and a couple of spoons, one to stir with and one to use for tasting. And you need to allow about an hour for cooking. And don't forget to include some additional time up front for all the prep work.

Now, I know a lot of folks who would look at that recipe and proceed like this: they would start by going to the shelf or cupboard for a saucepan. Then they walk over to the stove and place it on a burner. Then they go over to the pantry and find some olive oil and carry it back to the stove. Next, they hunt for some measuring spoons and then head back to the stove to measure in the oil. Now it's back to the pantry again to get some garlic and then a search for a knife or a garlic press. The knife is easy: that's in the drawer with the silverware. But where in the world is that garlic press? Oh, yeah. It's under the cabinet with the aluminum foil and the cereal. Once the garlic is crushed, it's back to the pantry for an onion. Then they locate a cutting board somewhere and go back to the counter where they left the knife. After they chop the onion, they go back to the stove and turn on the burner. Now they add in the garlic and onion and then they look for a wooden spoon with which to stir it. Then it's back to the pantry for the tomato products, moving quickly so the garlic and onions don't burn. Find the can opener in the same cabinet where the garlic press was and open all the cans of tomato product. Ooops! Forgot the red pepper flakes! Back to the pantry. Guess what? No red pepper flakes. Too late now. We'll just have to leave them out. So, now the tomato products are in. Back to the pantry for the chicken stock. Locate the can opener again and open the can. Find a measuring cup – it's in the drawer with the dish towels – and measure out the stock. Over to the sink to get some water then back to the pantry for the sugar. Find the measuring spoons again and measure out the sugar, then go back over to the sink and get the can with the stock and the water. Then over to the stove to dump it all in the pan and stir it up. Go get the salt shaker off the dining room table and then go back to the stove to add the salt to the sauce. Go over to the silverware drawer and get a spoon, then step back over to the stove to taste the sauce. Now, just figure out which lid fits the pan, cover it and the hard part is done! Whew!

That was way harder than it needed to be. And if that's anywhere near your method, no wonder you hate to cook.

Have you ever watched a cooking show on TV and noticed that the chef had all the pots, pans and tools right at hand and all the ingredients neatly laid out in little bowls so they could just dump the prepared contents of the bowls into the waiting pans and create perfect dishes? That's the way the big time TV chefs do it, baby. You don't see them running back to the fridge for a carrot, now do you? Nope. A whole bunch of people in the prep kitchen make sure that everything is laid out and ready before the host chef ever smiles at the camera. That's why it looks so easy on TV. Emeril might be the one to “bam!” his way through the recipe, but there's a lot of folks working off camera to make sure that his mise en place is set up the way he needs it. Well, in your kitchen, you're the prep cook.

Here's the way it should go: after you've read the recipe, clear the decks. Prepare your work area. Get rid of junk and clutter that will only get in your way as you try to work. Clean off counters and work spaces and clean up any dirty dishes you've got lying around. If you start work in a dirty, cluttered, disorganized kitchen, you're just ratcheting up the stress level.

Now set about gathering your ingredients and your equipment. Most kitchen disasters happen when you get halfway through preparing a dish only to discover that you don't have a necessary ingredient. It's those "Darn! I thought I had some of that" surprises that can ruin a cooking experience. To say nothing of a dish.

After you've got your ingredient ducks in a row, work on your equipment. Any necessary pots or pans as well as measuring cups, spoons, mixing bowls, blenders, choppers, spatulas, etc. Get them all together in one place so you're not running all over the kitchen after them.

Open all the cans, measure out all the liquid and dry ingredients and place them in handy prep bowls or containers. You know what works well for me? I love the little plastic cups from individual serving fruits or applesauce. You know, the kind you pack in lunches. I've got stacks of 'em and they make great prep cups. Chop up the vegetables and put them in prep bowls or containers. This is called making things "cooking ready." If you have ingredients that are going to be cooked at the same time, such as in a mirepoix or soffrito, it's okay to combine them at this stage. Now, you just assemble all the prepared ingredients into the prepared cookware and you're done with the hard part, except it wasn't nearly as hard because you were organized from the start.

Running all over the kitchen looking for the salt or a baking pan or a wooden spoon after you've started your recipe wastes time and energy. Preparing ahead of time allows you to cook without having to stop and assemble items, important in recipes with time constraints. Mise en place also allows you to cook in an orderly fashion. Let's face it, trying to chop the carrots while the onions are sauteing is a good way to foul up both. Poor preparation usually leads to poor outcomes. And mise en place is particularly beneficial if you are preparing more than one recipe or one with multiple steps. For instance, if my wife is baking an Italian cream cake, I'll set up her “mise” for her so that all the ingredients for the cake are laid out in one area, the stuff for the chocolate ganache is set up in another area, and the ingredients for the frosting are prepped and waiting in another spot. Having everything laid out in advance enables her to move efficiently from one preparation step to the next, just like those TV chefs!

Another huge and often overlooked aspect of mise en place involves clean up. Since mise en place starts and ends with everything in its place, an essential part of the process is cleaning up as you go. Don't let dishes stack up and accumulate as you're cooking. Clean them up and put them away as you use them. Mess equals stress. Clean as you go. That way, when you're finished cooking, instead of a daunting pile of dirty dishes and cookware, you have a complete meal, a clean kitchen and a low stress level. Win, win! And your kitchen is ready for the next round.

Honestly, I cannot fathom how some people function in kitchens that are disorganized to begin with with and wind up looking like war zones by the time they finish cooking a meal. I am acquainted with several people who just throw things into drawers and cabinets without regard to what goes with what. Mixing bowls live with canned goods, plastic wrap resides with frying pans, silverware inhabits two or three separate drawers. Yeesh! People, the department stores are full of nifty organizers to help you put your kitchen together more efficiently. If I had to go on safari every time I needed a measuring spoon, I'd probably get sick of cooking, too.

And then there are the people who employ every dish in the kitchen in the preparation of a meal and just stack all the used cookware in tremendous piles. I kid you not, I once knew a woman who stacked her dirty dishes on the floor when she ran out of sink and counter space. I don't have to tell you how nasty that is, do I? And then these people survey the nightmare they've created in the simple preparation of a pot of spaghetti and wail about what a chore cooking is! Please!

My drawers, cabinets, and countertops are neat and organized and I know where everything is. I don't have baked on messes on my cooktop because if something spills or boils over while I'm cooking, I clean it up on the spot. I keep a sink full of hot, soapy water on hand as I'm preparing dishes and as I use a pan or a bowl or a utensil, I wash it and put it away. The stand mixer and the food processor get cleaned and put back in their corners as soon as I'm through with them. When I finish preparing a four-course meal, my sink, countertops, and stovetop don't look much different than when I started. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Admittedly, on the surface mise en place sounds like a lot of extra time, extra work, and extra dishes. But it's really not and it's also the best route to less stressful cooking. Proper preparation will make any cooking experience a more efficient, productive, and enjoyable one. And the confidence you gain from being more efficient and productive may lead you to try more ambitious and more flavorful recipes, making you an all around better cook. And one who's considerably less stressed.

Mise en place – “set in place.” If, like Anthony Bourdain, you make it your “religion” in the kitchen, cooking will never again seem like such a stressful chore.

Buon appetito!

Buying Celebrity Cookbooks

Is It What You Know Or Just Who You Are?

We live in a world of instant celebrity. Whereas stage, screen, music, television, radio and sports have always given us celebrities, the process has traditionally been somewhat slow to develop. Most celebrities spent years in the trenches “paying their dues” in order to achieve their elevated status. Now, thanks to shows like “American Idol,” we can create celebrities in the blink of an eye. And thanks to “Top Chef” and “Iron Chef” and “MasterChef” and “Next Food Network Star,” and numerous other shows of that ilk, we can now add instant culinary celebrities to our pantheon. Would anybody have ever heard of Carla Hall if not for her popularity on “Top Chef?” Now she's a co-host on a daily network food/talk show, along with fellow celebrity chefs Mario Batali and Michael Symon, who, while exceptional cooks, would also be unknown to the vast majority were it not for TV. Used to be when the pencils came out, culinary stars wrote cookbooks and entertainment and sports celebs wrote tell-alls and biographies. Not anymore. Now they also write cookbooks, defined by Webster as “a book of cooking directions and recipes.”

In our culture of celebrity, celebrity itself is the biggest selling point. In most textbooks and instructional manuals – which, after all, is what a cookbook is – it’s not so much who you are as it is what you know. But not if you’re marketing a cookbook these days. Then it's the exact opposite. As I’m writing this, country singer Trisha Yearwood has a cookbook and a cooking show. International singing and dancing superstars Gloria and Emilio Estefan have a cookbook. Gwyneth Paltrow has a cookbook. Freddie Prinze, Jr has a cookbook and, not to be outdone, so does his wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Chrissy Teigen has a cookbook. Sheryl Crow has a cookbook. Kris Jenner, Patti LaBelle, and Eva Longoria have cookbooks. You can go “Cooking With Kenny Rogers” or partake of “Dolly's Dixie Fixin's.” There’s a cookbook by noted professional Italian chef Tony Danza … well, at least he’s a professional Italian. Speaking of which, you know that famous team of kitchen experts from the TV show “The Sopranos”? Yes, even they have a cookbook. Buy it, if you know what’s good for you. In addition to being Italian and an actor, Stanley Tucci likes to cook so naturally he has a cookbook. And then there are the people who have actually done a little cooking here and there and who, thanks to TV, have achieved “celebrity” status: Mario Batali, Emeril Lagasse, Rocco DiSpirito, Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck, Giada De Laurentiis, Julia Child.

I myself have compiled a great cookbook. I’ve been working on it for years and it’s chock full of recipes and tips. Some are my own creation and some are contributions from family and friends. The vast majority are personal favorites adapted from other people’s cookbooks. So what sets celebrity cookbooks apart from mine? I’m at a loss to explain it. Oh…..yeah, that whole “celebrity” part. I forgot.

What should you look for in a celebrity cookbook? A lot of celebrity cookbooks are actually “ghostwritten” or, at least, co-written by other people. (Not so in my case, I assure you.) But unless you are buying the book based solely on your affection for and appreciation of the person on the cover, you should be looking for the same things in a celebrity cookbook that you would expect to find in a book written by somebody you’ve never heard of. Like me. Things like:

Recipes. Recipes should be clear and concise. They should follow a standard format that includes measured quantities of all ingredients, as well as detailed preparation and cooking instructions. A little backstory on the recipe is a nice touch as are serving suggestions.

Pictures. Everybody likes pictures. It is widely believed that you eat first with your eyes. Pretty presentational pictures of how a completed dish is supposed to look are an essential element of a good cookbook. And, if there are some tricky techniques to be employed in the preparation of a particular dish, step-by-step instructional pictures are important, too.

Tips and techniques. In cooking, some things are very basic. This is a frying pan, this a chafing dish. Both useful items, but rarely interchangeable. What’s the difference between baking powder and baking soda? Ignorance of this can produce some really interesting results. The most difficult part of writing a cookbook is gauging your reader’s level of expertise. Some people have been preparing elaborate meals for their families for fifty years and are just looking for something fresh and new, while others have difficulty boiling water and are just looking for help. A good cookbook provides tips and techniques beneficial to both extremes. Sometimes these tips and techniques accompany individual recipes, sometimes they occupy a section of their own, and sometimes they appear as sidebars interspersed throughout the book. However they are presented, there should be lots of them and they should be as clear and concise as the recipes.

Layout and construction. Nobody wants to read a book that reads like the author is just throwing out random thoughts in no particular order. The same is true of a cookbook. The book should be laid out in a logical and progressive manner. At the very least, appetizers, main courses, side dishes, desserts and beverages should all have their own dedicated sections. These sections can then be subdivided into appropriate groups and types according to the dishes involved. A table of contents up front and a comprehensive index at the back are a must. Otherwise, you’ll just get frustrated looking for that rutabaga salad next to the rhubarb pie.

Style. Okay, you bought the book because there’s a picture of somebody you like on the cover. This person should mark the style of the book. There should be lots of elements by and/or about the celebrity author throughout the book. Again, there should be pictures. Pictures of the author cooking. Pictures of his or her family enjoying the author’s cooking. Pictures of the author in compromising situations…no, wait. Those belong in the tell-alls and biographies. But, there should be stories. Stories about how so-and-so’s grandmother’s cooking influenced their lives, and such. And, of course, there should be a dedication to all the loyal and devoted fans who have so enriched the author’s life, along with their agents and their accountants, and now it’s time to give back something personal and intimate, etc, etc. In short, if the person whose picture is on the cover is not reflected throughout the book, you might as well have purchased something crushingly generic by some wretched unknown. Like me.

Finally, consider cost. Do you really want to take out a loan to buy your favorite singer’s cookbook? Is it worth skipping a car payment to pick up the latest from your favorite TV chef? You could probably purchase the same good, comprehensive cookbook your grandma had in her kitchen for the same money or less. Then you could use the savings to buy a nice celebrity magazine and put it on the shelf next to the generic cookbook.

I'm not saying celebrity cookbooks aren't good: many of them are. A lot of famous people – especially the TV chefs – can cook. But just remember when you're emptying your wallet, you're actually buying celebrity more than recipes, tips, and techniques – things found in abundance in your grandma's Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.

To celebratize or not to celebratize! Along whichever path through the kitchen you choose, I wish you happy cooking!

Who Says Cooking Has To Be Chaotic?

Cooking Chaos? A Rebuttal

Help me, gentle reader, wrestle with a question to which I truly have no answer: why do so many people consider cooking to be such an onerous chore?

Cooking shows like “Top Chef” win Emmy awards. Crappy and derivative as it has become, Food Network and Cooking Channel programming still pulls in large numbers. A recent Nielsen survey found that one in every five households boasts a "budding gourmet chef." Cookbooks top best seller lists. Retail purveyors of fresh and/or organic ingredients are barely able to keep up with increasing demand and local farmers markets are seeing levels of support unheard of a decade ago. Obviously, somebody besides me likes to cook.

So why is it that the late Peg Bracken's time seems to have come again? A small publisher re-released her heretical “I Hate to Cook Book” a couple of years ago. I say heretical because the 184-recipe tome, first published in 1960, is to cooking what “Nuclear Physics for Dummies” is to building fusion reactors. Bracken, a Pennsylvania ad-copy-writer-turned-cookbook-author, managed to convince more than three million buyers that cooking was a matter of combining cans, boxes, mixes, and other processed foods into the palate-numbing concoctions that defined an unfortunate generation of American cooks; a standard proclaiming that busy, modern-day people have better things to do with their time than waste it in the kitchen preparing fresh, nutritious, and flavorful foods. If you can't make it, fake it. It has taken decades for the pendulum to reverse its swing.

And yet, the sentiment that cooking is a chore to be avoided at all costs still echoes and resonates in some circles. I came across an example of this school of thought in the form of an article written by someone who proclaims herself to be a writer on the topics of family life and frugal living. In my estimation, based upon what I read, she is qualified to be neither.

Her basic premise in this execrable scribbling is that eating out is preferable to cooking at home. She begins her assault on common sense by stating that “the whole dinner routine is an exercise in chaos.” She substantiates this opinion with a litany of whines about how time wasting it is to have to figure out what to eat, check the pantry for ingredients, drive to the store, walk the aisles, stand in line at checkout, drive home, put away the groceries, and then start to cook. Cooking takes an hour, she states, and then there's the time involved in eating (?) and cleaning up. This “expert” on family life considers all this activity to be a waste of time. “You could be doing anything else in the entire world with that time,” she opines, “maybe something more productive or beneficial to you, your family, and your world.”

I'm sorry, but what could be more productive or beneficial than preparing a delicious, healthy meal to share with your family and friends? In her questionable point of view, it's better to spend two minutes ordering take out, enjoying thirty minutes of “free time” while you wait, and then taking one minute to toss the containers. At least she doesn't begrudge her family the time it takes to eat the food, something of a reversal of her earlier position.

My wife and I shop together every week. We love searching the aisles for new things to try and hunting for bargains on the foods we enjoy. And we cook together nearly every night. After busy days spent in pursuit of a dollar, cooking – or “playing in the kitchen,” as my wife calls it – is an integral part of our shared time together doing something we both enjoy. Isn't that rather the definition of “family life?”

Our benighted “frugal living” correspondent goes on to praise the “value” in eating out, stating that she could never make a meal at home for the cost of a restaurant meal. She can get a steak dinner with a baked potato and vegetables for about fifteen dollars, she crows, and it's all cooked and seasoned and ready for her to pick up curbside to take home and enjoy. The same items purchased at a grocery store would cost her more, she says.

I'm a former restaurateur who now cooks primarily at home, so I know a bit about both sides and I have to ask, “My goodness, lady, where do you shop?” In my world, a potato and an ear of corn or a couple of carrots are going to cost less than two dollars, which, according to her reckoning, leaves me with about thirteen bucks to spend on a cut of meat, which I can do with change to spare. Of course, what she doesn't bother to mention is how that fifteen dollar figure relates to a family of, say, four. This “expert” wants me to believe that sixty bucks for a single meal for four people is “frugal living?” C'mon, get real. Let's expand this idea to its ridiculous conclusion. Sixty dollars a night times seven nights a week equals four hundred twenty dollars a week. For dinner alone. That doesn't include breakfast and lunch. Lets allow five bucks per person per fast food meal. Seven breakfasts and seven lunches times four people times five dollars comes to an additional 280 dollars a week. Seven hundred bucks a week to eat out? Sounds “frugal” to me.

Catch this one: this “supermom” says she can only cook maybe five things and none of them well. So she “improves” her family's life by exposing them to “a plethora of new foods” courtesy of various ethnic restaurants. She says she's not about to spend “tons of time and money” on ingredients only to mess up the dish or to find that her kids don't like it. So she heroically offers them a varied diet and the opportunity to “ expand their palettes” (I know; that's not the correct form of “palate,” but she's a professional writer, after all) by not cooking for them. That's just weird. How about this option: learn how to cook!

Far from serving the nutritional, educational, social, and cultural needs of her family, this “family life” writer is sentencing her kids to a life of inadequacy and dependence. I look back on my early life and remember a mother (and a grandmother) who could, would, and did cook anything I wanted. And they imparted their knowledge and skills to my sister and me. As a result, either of us can step into a kitchen anywhere, anytime, and prepare almost anything for anybody. What kind of legacy does the “family life” writer leave for her kids? The ability to read a take-out menu and dial a phone?

Kitchens don't need to be scenes of chaos and cooking doesn't have to be a chore. Whether in a big professional kitchen or a tiny home galley, organization is the nemesis of chaos. I don't have to scramble around looking for ingredients because I know what's in my pantry and fridge at any given time. I “stock up” on basics once a week and hit the store for fresh meats and produce a couple of times during the week. I don't necessarily write out a full menu for every meal – although I know people who do – but I always have some basic meal ideas planned out a few days in advance.

And my kitchen is organized. I don't have to hunt for every pot, pan, and utensil I own because I always know where they are located within my working space. I know people who store their breakfast cereal in the same cabinet as their mixing bowls and their canned goods in with their pots and pans. Yikes! I wouldn't last two minutes in that environment. That truly does represent chaos. A well-organized kitchen takes a lot of the “chore” factor out of cooking.

So does a well-stocked pantry. Inventory is everything in a restaurant kitchen and it should be the same at home. Knowing what you have on hand is essential to efficient planning and cooking and eliminates the chaotic element introduced by the last minute discovery that you're out of milk.

And then there's self-confidence. My mom always told me that Dad used to eat a lot of Jell-O the first year they were married. With a few years of practice under her belt, she was able to run a home kitchen like a pro. I admit that forty or so years ago, I was a “Peg Bracken” cook. There was little that came out of a box or a can that I couldn't “cook.” But as times changed, I learned better techniques. And once you have a sense of confidence in what you're doing, it stops being a chore and becomes something in which you take pride and find joy. You know what they say about the person who loves what they do never having to work again? It's true in the kitchen, too.

Going back to the idea of stocking up and planning, if you're really so time-crunched that making meals every night is an exercise in “chaos,” how about preparing meals in advance? For example, I had family over for ravioli not long ago. I made enough fresh pasta and fillings that I could portion out some ravioli and freeze it. Whenever I make fresh tomato sauce, I always put some up in the freezer. So, a few days later, I transferred some sauce from freezer to fridge in the morning. That night, I put some water on to boil, warmed up my sauce, and dropped some frozen ravioli in the water. While it was cooking, I toasted a little bread, drizzled it with olive oil and rubbed it with garlic while my wife threw together a little salad, set the table, and poured some wine. In about fifteen minutes, we were sitting down to a perfectly delicious meal. So why does it take the “family life expert” an hour to cook? I don't know.

On Sunday mornings, I grab a couple of potatoes from the bin and slice 'em or dice 'em, depending on my mood. I toss them in a pan with a few seasonings and move on to laying out a few slices of bacon on a griddle. While that's going on, I scramble a couple of eggs and drop some bread in the toaster. The eggs hit the pan as the potatoes and bacon come out and head for the plate. Butter the toast, plate the eggs and pour some orange juice. Twenty, twenty-five minutes tops. Better than a Pop-Tart, cheaper than IHOP, and, excuse me, did somebody say something about an hour?

Let me really put a kink in our correspondent's case: I do the dishes as I go. Takes about ten seconds each to wash out the pans as I empty them and by the time I put breakfast on the table, the kitchen is clean. All that's left to wash post-meal are the plates. Chaotic, eh?

This author of misguided missives claims she can only cook five things. Whose fault is that? Used to be I could only drive a vehicle with an automatic transmission. When I got a job that required me to “drive stick,” I learned how. There are formal and informal cooking classes taking place in culinary stores, restaurants, community colleges, recreation centers, and other such venues in towns and cities all over the country every day. And they cater to every skill level. It's not that you can only cook five things, lady. It's that you're too lazy to learn how to cook more.

Hey, “family life writer.” How about taking a class with your kids? Or are there more “productive” and “beneficial” things you could be doing? Maybe we just see the world differently, but I think that teaching a child to feed himself – by means other than dialing a telephone – is pretty damn productive and beneficial.

Okay. The soapbox is starting to catch fire under my feet, so I guess I'd better jump off.

Demosthenes said it: “A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” And my point is, mealtimes are only as chaotic as you allow them to be and cooking is only a chore if you make it so.

A Culinary Education: Do You Really Need Culinary School?

I'm $100K Richer And I Can Still Make Risotto With My Eyes Closed

As an adjunct to our catering/personal chef service, we occasionally conduct cooking demos or “classes” for interested people in the community. We recently mentored a young person who expressed an interest in attending Johnson and Wales for a culinary education in pastry. That's great and we certainly don't discourage it, but it brings up the question of what exactly constitutes a “culinary education?”

I have a “culinary education.” It started more than fifty years ago when, at age seven, I mounted a step-stool in front of my mom's stove and learned how to cook bacon. By the time I was ten, I had added poached and scrambled eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, boxed macaroni and cheese, instant mashed potatoes, frozen French fries, and Minute Rice to my expanding repertoire. I look back now and say, “Oh my god! Minute Rice?” But hey, it was the sixties. That was as close to scratch cooking as we came in those days. I can do a little better now. The point is I took the initiative to learn. And I've never stopped learning. A “culinary education” is never complete.

I demur a little when I'm introduced as a “chef.” I guess I qualify in the most liberal sense of the word because, yes, I can cook, I can create a menu, and I can supervise the running of a kitchen. And I bill as a “personal chef” because there's no such industry title as “personal cook,” although it would be a more accurate representation. I didn't go to culinary school. I am entirely self-taught. Like a lot of professionals, I started out as a teenager, busing tables and washing dishes. I had grandparents and aunts and uncles in the restaurant business and a mom who had the talent be a professional cook even if she wasn't one. With the notable exception of my ten-thumbed father, everybody in my family cooked and cooked well. So I had a lot of excellent teachers. And I carried on the family tradition: both of my sons can cook. When they were growing up, their mother was a multiple award-winning biscuit baker for a national fast food franchise. My older son was turning out scratch-made cakes when he was ten and he is now a successful restaurant manager, having worked his way up from McDonald's and through stints as a waiter and as a line cook. He never set foot in a formal classroom, but I'd say he has a fairly good “culinary education.”

The traditional European model for a “culinary education” is based on apprenticeship. Even the world's first “celebrity chef,” Marie-Antoine Carême, started out as a kitchen boy in a cheap Parisian chophouse. His heir apparent, Auguste Escoffier, began his celebrated career working as an apprentice at his uncle's restaurant in Nice at age thirteen. Jacques Pepin, Wolfgang Puck, and Heston Blumenthal are just a few of the many current European chefs who have no “formal culinary education.” But if you count the awards and the Michelin stars they've accumulated, you'd have to admit they've done okay without one.

Culinary schools are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. In the 1870s, the Women's Educational Association of Boston created the Boston Cooking School, America's first school dedicated solely to a culinary education. You may recognize the name Fannie Farmer, one of the school's top students who later became its director and gained worldwide acclaim for her work on “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book,” most often called “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook,” still in print and still in demand today.

There are currently about five hundred cooking schools of one sort or another in operation in the United States. One of the more famous, the Le Cordon Bleu school, modeled after the historic institution of the same name that opened in Paris in 1895, recently announced that it was shuttering all sixteen of its American campuses. According to Eater.com, “Le Cordon Bleu and other culinary institutes in the U.S. have come under increasing scrutiny for their outrageous tuition costs, high drop-out rates, and dismal job prospects. Eater analyzed the data this summer and found overwhelming evidence that culinary school isn't worth it. These for-profit centers have even been sued for their deceptive recruiting tactics and falsified rates of post-school job placement. Career Education Corporation [Le Cordon Bleu's parent company] settled one class action lawsuit from former students to the tune of $40 million.”

Now, if you want to talk about bang for your buck, consider this: a formal culinary education can set you back as much as $100K for a full four year program. That equals about twice what a graduate can expect to make, assuming they land a top job as an executive chef at a high end restaurant, a position that yields between $50K and $60K per year. If they don't quite make the top spot, they can expect to rake in between $35K and $40K as a sous chef. My young student can figure on slightly less, about $32K, as a pastry chef, and if a culinary grad winds up working the line, they'll get by on somewhere around $25K per year.

The biggest problem facing the industry right now is that prospective culinary students watch too much TV. They all want television contracts handed to them along with their diplomas so they can all be the next Bobby Flay. And it just doesn't work that way. None of them want to start in the trenches. They expect to start at the top. They blow $100K on an education that will net them $25K, if they're lucky, and often wind up walking away from the industry bitter, disillusioned, and deeply in debt.

The funny part is that most food service jobs don't require a degree of any kind. Check your newspaper listings: “experienced line cook wanted,” “hiring experienced sous chef,” “looking for experienced cook.” So go ahead and show up in your starched whites with your shiny blue ribbon diploma, but be aware that the grubby guy who's been prepping veg in a restaurant basement for the last four years probably has a better shot at the job than you do.

So what, exactly, do they teach you at culinary school? Technique. Lots and lots of fancy French technique. You'll be able to brunoise and julienne with the best of them after graduation because you'll be schooled and drilled in prep technique until you can do it in your sleep. You'll also learn more about butchery than you ever thought you'd need to know. Not only will you be able to efficiently hack your own steaks from a side of beef, you'll be able to disassemble a chicken blindfolded. You'll become proficient at sauces after they hammer the Mother Sauces and their derivatives into your skull. Same goes for making stocks. You'll learn the importance of mise en place, French for “everything in place,” an absolutely essential concept that stresses the necessity of organization throughout the cooking process. And you'll learn tips and tricks to enhance your creativity. But be aware: like acting, singing, dancing, and other creative endeavors, cooking is both a skill and an art. If you have raw talent and natural ability, going to culinary school will develop and enhance it, enabling you to attain greater success in the field. If, however, you simply suck in the kitchen, you'll still suck after cooking school, except you'll have the added burden of being broke. Star Trek's Jonathan Frakes once told me his acting degree (a BA from Penn State) was just an expensive piece of worthless paper. Either you are an actor or you aren't. Going to acting school won't turn somebody with no talent into an actor. Neither will going to cooking school make a chef out of a person who can't boil water. They might be able to pound enough technique into such a person as to enable them to function in a kitchen, but the art part, the creative process necessary to be truly successful, simply can't be taught.

So, do you really need to impoverish yourself (or, more likely, your parents) and mortgage your firstborn in order to acquire a decent, functional “culinary education?” Not really. Witness the aforementioned Pepin, Puck, and Blumenthal. Add Thomas Keller to the list. And Tom Colicchio. And Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Jose Andres, and the late Charlie Trotter. Ina Garten didn't go to culinary school and neither did Rachael Ray, but it doesn't seem to affect their TV ratings or earning potential. Many chefs, like Mario Batali, gave culinary school a shot, but dropped out. Not because they couldn't hack it, but because they found it too structured and limiting. Batali advises young people to “attend college while cooking in high-end restaurants; after graduating you'll have enough experience you won't need to go to culinary school.”

I say again, I'm not a “chef.” And I don't want to be one. I'm a very good cook and that's good enough for me. I can more than function at home cooking for friends and family and I can hold my own in my somewhat limited professional capacity. I don't cook with rarefied ingredients that I can't pronounce, but I defy you to beat my lasagne. When faced with a side of beef or pork, maybe I don't have the chops to break down my own chops, but I do know a great butcher and I can still strike fear into the hearts of chickens. I may not be as fast or fancy with my knife skills as a Le Cordon Bleu student, but my strip cuts and cube cuts are just as good thanks to the free “Knife Skills” class I went to at a nearby kitchen store and the follow-up online course I took for twenty dollars. The fifty bucks I spent on a “Basic Sauces” course at a local cooking school taught me everything I need to know to turn out a bechamel as well as any Johnson and Wales grad. Give me some herbs and aromatics and a chicken carcass and I'm your stock man. Learned that one on You Tube or someplace. Marcella Hazan taught me a kick ass tomato sauce – or at least one of her cookbooks did. Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is a bible to nearly every professional chef. I have an autographed copy that Dr. McGee signed after I drove halfway across the state and shelled out a few bucks to sit in on one of his presentations. Amazon and my local bookstore are loaded with textbooks from the CIA and other institutions and my kitchen is as good a place to study them as theirs is. In fact, I've spent hundreds of hours studying with some of the most noted Italian chefs in the world. My extensive instruction at the hands of Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich, Michael Chiarello, Giada De Laurentiss, Mary Ann Esposito, Rocco DiSpirito, David Rocco, and a host of others didn't cost me any more than the price of basic cable. I'm $100K richer and I can still make risotto with my eyes closed. And, of course, I've spent years learning from the very best: my mom, my grandmother and a host of family and friends in home and restaurant kitchens everywhere. So, am I a formally trained and educated “chef?” No, but I sure as hell can cook.

Bottom line, if you've got the talent, the dream, and the drive, but not the big bucks, here's how to make it in the food business without culinary school:

1. Have passion. If you don't eat, sleep, and breathe food, don't bother. You can't half-ass it or make cooking a part-time hobby.
2. Get your act together. Figure out where you want to go. Classic French, Italian, Hispanic, Asian, American, or wherever your passion leads. Then gather your resources and get into it. I am part Italian, but the only “foreign” language I was exposed to as a kid was French. It's a long story. But when I decided that Italian food was my passion, I boned up on Italy and learned Italian in order to better understand that culture and its cuisine.
3. Study. Everything. Cookbooks, food magazines, local classes, online courses. Don't overlook the value of TV cooking shows. Just ignore the dreck and drivel that Food Network puts out and find some real cooking shows on PBS. You might still learn a little from some of the less egregiously stupid network shows like Chopped or Top Chef, but don't waste your time with the vast desert of idiotic food-themed game shows that the chowder heads at Scripps seem to think represent America's taste. Work especially on technique: that's 90% of a “formal” culinary education. Seek out knife skills classes and technique classes pertinent to your particular passion. Take a food safety course. Restaurants snap up ServSafe certified people practically on sight.
4. Find a kitchen. Unless you just want to be a better home cook, at some point you're going to have to venture out into the bigger, badder culinary world. And, for cryin' out loud, be realistic in your expectations. Unless you're a real prodigy, you're not going to waltz into a fancy restaurant after watching Bobby Flay cook a steak on TV and land a head chef job right out of the box. Don't be afraid to be a dishwasher. I did it. I also hated it, but it got me exposed to a professional kitchen environment at an early, formative stage. Just being around a kitchen when I was a kid helped me understand what I was getting into. Wait tables. A lot of European culinary programs make their trainees work both sides of the house. Again, you may not be cooking, but you'll increase your food knowledge. Offer to stage (stazh) or apprentice in a local restaurant kitchen. Free labor for them, free education for you. Win-win. And once you land that kitchen job, work your ass off. Reality check: not every kitchen is “Hell's Kitchen,” but every kitchen is hot, sweaty, grueling, repetitive, and prone to long hours with short breaks and endless cycles of high-pressure intensity alternating with periods of mind-numbing boredom. Get used to it. Don't bitch and complain. You'll get marked as a whiner and made to suffer for it accordingly. Just keep your head down and chop the veg, stir the sauce, scale the fish, flip the burgers, sear the steaks, and......
5. Don't Ever Stop Learning. Guess who learned something new today? Me. And I've been cooking for more than a half-century. Check your ego at the kitchen door because you will never know it all. Cuisines evolve, techniques change, equipment improves, innovations abound every day. And if you don't keep up, you'll be left behind. If you ever reach the point where you're no longer challenged, where you no longer care to be creative or innovative, where cooking no longer excites you or stirs your passion, just hop on the first delivery truck that pulls up to the back door and ask them if they need a driver.

Okay, now that I've pointed you in the right direction and saved you thousands of dollars, go out and get a job. Open a nice Italian restaurant. And if you look through the pass someday and see some cranky, gray-haired old fossil giving your waitstaff a hard time for mispronouncing “marinara” and “bruschetta,” just step out and shake my hand and say, “thanks.”

Everbody Should Learn How to Cook

In the delightful animated feature film “Ratatouille,” fictional chef Gusteau writes a cookbook based on the premise that “Anybody Can Cook.” Better Homes and Gardens magazine has actually published a cookbook of a similar name. So it must be true, right?

Well, let’s define and refine the term “cook.” Webster’s definition of the intransitive verb “cook” says: “to prepare food for eating especially by means of heat.” Sounds pretty simple. So, essentially, anybody with a box of matches can cook?

It’s easy! You open a soup can, you pour the contents into a pan or bowl, add water and either turn the knob that activates the burner or set the time and press “start”, and, viola, by strict definition, you’re cooking! But are you really?

In the last fifty years or so, we have become a culture of non-cooks. Open the blue box, dump the dried pasta in the water, add milk and butter to the orange cheese-flavored stuff, stir it all together and serve it to your family under the guise of macaroni and cheese. Or, if you’re too busy to go to all that trouble, they make the same stuff in a little cup that you can simply pop into the microwave. Unless, of course, you’d rather just take it out of the freezer and warm it up. And do notice that on most frozen food packages, they admonish the stupidest among us to “cook before eating.” (See Webster’s definition of “cook.”)

But is this cooking? No. It’s minimal preparation of food or food-like substances in order to achieve basic sustenance. “Cooking” is about taking the time and making the effort to prepare and blend ingredients for flavor and balance. It’s more than satisfying the body’s basic nutritional requirements – and most of what is prepackaged today barely meets that criterion. Cooking is a creative art, and, like most art forms, it edifies both the creator and the consumer.

Anybody can cook? I don’t know. But everybody should learn. Learn for the sake of self-sufficiency, if for no other reason. I am bone weary of hearing about men who expect – nay, demand – that their women have their food on the table waiting for them. Whatsamatta, Goomba? Something wrong with your hands? You wanna eat? Cook! I can cook as well as any woman and better than most. And I started doing it when I was seven years old. I have never in my adult life had to depend on anybody to put a meal, and a damn good one, on my table for me. You want to be a big, macho man who can do anything? Learn how to cook.

And then there’s economy. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with going out to eat once in awhile. But, with food and gas prices being what they are these days, you’re going to need a second (or third?) job if eating out is the only way you’re going to get fed. The two of us went out for pizza the other day. Large pizza, breadsticks and a couple of drinks. Thirty bucks! Do you know how many pizzas I could make at home for thirty bucks? I could feed the two of us and most of the neighbors for a week! You want to save some money? Learn how to cook.

Everybody complains about being fat. They complain all the way to McDonald’s and all the way back from Baskin-Robbins. Maybe as an overreaction to the deprivations of war and depression, somewhere, fifty or sixty years ago, we got this idea that more is better. Value, you know. More for your money. So, we started super sizing, jumbo sizing, Hungry Man-sizing. We went from nine-inch plates to twelve-inch plates to platters! “All you can eat” screams the sign over the buffet. And yet, we seem to be at a loss to explain the epidemic of obesity. The ability to cook brings with it the ability to choose healthful ingredients and to prepare them in a flavorful manner. It also allows you, the cook, to adjust the portion size, a key ingredient in weight management. You want to control your weight? Learn how to cook.

While we’re on the subject, how about nutrition? As I said, the ability to cook brings with it the ability to choose healthful ingredients and to prepare them in a flavorful manner. “Choose healthful ingredients” is the operative phrase in that sentence. When you can cook, you are no longer at the mercy of the food processors who load up everything they package with enough chemicals and artificial additives to ensure that, long after we die an early death because of the junk they feed us, we will be beautifully preserved. Doesn’t matter whether I’m cooking burgers and fries or an eight course Italian dinner, I know what’s in it because I put it there. I like knowing that if I don’t use something in my refrigerator or pantry within a few days or a week, I’ll have to replace it. I’m not really all that keen on using food that was packaged in the last century for use in the next. I’m not saying everything has to be “organic,” and fresh is not always practical or best. Canned and fresh-frozen ingredients are great. But the point is, when you can cook, you can make those healthy decisions. Move out of the chem lab and into the kitchen. You want to ensure good nutrition for yourself and your family? Learn how to cook.

I can come up with another ten paragraphs of reasons, but the bottom line is everybody should learn how to cook. And I don’t mean learn how to open a box or a can. Learn – how – to – cook!

But how? What if you’re like my dad, who truly could not boil water? One of the funniest memories of my childhood is of watching my father trying to fry eggs on our stove’s flat-top griddle. You should have seen him chasing eggs with a spatula until they disappeared down the little hole into the griddle’s grease trap. We lost about a dozen eggs that way. Maybe somebody in your family has programmed the speed dial on your kitchen telephone with the number for the fire department. Right below the numbers for the ER and the poison control center. You want to learn how to cook? Here are a few of my recommendations, in no particular order:

Read a cookbook or two, or four, or six. Get a couple of good general cookbooks that have lots of basic terms, techniques and recipes. If you really think you’re challenged, they publish “Dummies” cookbooks, too. After you get the basics down, get some cookbooks specific to your tastes. Italian, Oriental, Mexican, French – whatever. They’re out there.

Watch and learn. Buddy up with somebody whose cooking you really enjoy. Find out how they do it. Don’t just ask your mom to fix that special casserole for dinner. Put on an apron and help her make it! And while we’re on the subject of watching and learning, don’t discount those cooking shows on TV. Yeah, everybody likes to make fun of poor old Julia Child. She was a little eccentric, but she taught a lot of people how to cook. Celebrity chefs like Mario Batali don’t just teach you how to cook a particular dish; they break down the ingredients and tell you why things should be cooked a particular way. So rather than slapping a gob of sticky, overcooked spaghetti on a plate and pouring a jar of bland sauce over it, watch and learn from somebody like Mario who will educate you about types of pasta, cooking times, tomatoes, oils, spices, herbs, cheeses. You’ll be amazed at what goes into a good dish. But you’ll be even more amazed at what comes out.

Go to school. Not for a culinary degree, but there are tons of places that offer cooking classes of every imaginable kind. Check out your local community college or vocational school. Many of them offer short courses. Most of them have one night classes on various topics. A lot of shops and stores that sell gourmet foods and cookware also offer classes and instruction. You may not learn how to operate an upscale restaurant, but I’ll bet you’ll be more comfortable in your kitchen at home.

Join a club. You’d be surprised by how many recipe clubs there are out there. Or cooking clubs, food appreciation groups, or similar social gatherings. It’s a great way to share what you’ve learned and to get some new ideas. It’s also a wonderful way to meet new people and to get together with folks who know what you’re talking about when you say things like, “my reduction is too thin.”

Seek out and absorb knowledge. If you’re a car or a sports enthusiast or a hobbyist of any kind, you probably read and subscribe to dozens of magazines about your interest. Or you go online and bone up on all the latest. Same thing applies to cooking. Bookseller’s shelves positively groan with cooking magazines and books about cooking. Not just cookbooks, but books about cooking. History, theory, technique, style; it’s all available at whatever skill level you’re comfortable with. And the resources on the web are almost innumerable.

To really learn how to cook is to acquire a passion. If cooking is something you have to do because you have to eat, then it’s a chore. But if cooking becomes a passion, then it’s something you can look forward to and enjoy for a lifetime. Learn how to cook for yourself; it’s an indulgence. Learn how to cook for others; it’s a gift. Learn how to cook just because you can.