Kitchen Confidential

My notes

The food that comes in Tuesday is fresh, the station prep is new, and the chef is well rested after a Sunday or a Monday off.

You need, for God’s sake, a decent chef’s knife.

Numero uno – the indispensable object in most chefs’ shtick – is the simple plastic squeeze bottle.

A proper sauté pan, for instance, should cause serious head injury if brought down hard against someone’s skull. If you have any doubts about which will dent – the victim’s head or your pan – then throw that pan right in the trash.

You need a nice thick non-stick pan, and not one with a thin veneer of material that peels off after a few weeks. And when you buy a non-stick, treat it nice. Never wash it.

Shallots. You almost never see this item in a home kitchen, but out in the world they’re an essential ingredient.

Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.

Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbones and Pernod.