I am not a talented cook. In professional speak, I don’t have a good palate. What’s a “good palate?” I live with a very talented cook. She knew what go together, what do not. She knew how much to season, which spices to use. She knew how long to cook, at what temperature. She can literally whip together whatever in the fridge and it will be delicious. I cannot. And this piqued my curiosity (which is easily piqued). Michael Ruhlman’s book depicted, somewhat, on the making of good palates.
First is the attention to detail and a good memory. A cook cannot be sloppy (like me). If 15 minutes are the right time, 14 or 16 would be wrong. And details are many. An organized and high-capacity brain that can hold them is critical, particularly when the kitchen is frenzy, obviously quite common for restaurants.
Good chefs put things together and season them almost magically and most likely unexplainable. Every cooks relies on his/her instinct and experiences. Of course there are cookbooks and recipes; they are merely guidelines. The cook must adjust and adapt to the condition of the ingredients and environment; they are never the same as the cookbooks or recipes. They are also rarely consistent.
This book demystified cooking and, at the same time, mystified the chefs: Brian Polcyn, Michael Symon, and Thomas Keller. It also did a great job depicting the working condition of restaurant kitchens: the non-relenting pressure, the long hours, and the impossible standards behind “delicious goods.”
The concept of CIA (Culinary Institute of America) came up a lot. This is the premiere cooking school of America yet Mr. Ruhlman repetitively hinted it getting irrelevant. You must be a very good cook before you entered CIA to survive the program whose tuition is out of reach for most professional cooks. The program is based on classical French cooking that pigeon-holes the graduates. The famed CMC (Certified Master Chef) tests are essentially, again, irrelevant: you are certainly a good cook if you are a CMC, but vice is not versa. CMC only certifies a very narrow kind of cooks: those who are mechanically perfect. If you are not robotic enough, you won’t pass, even if you can cook better than those who will.
Michael Ruhlman actually attended CIA, as a research for his writing. The attempt to become a good cook changed him, so he stated. I wondered what would happen if he had studied at Julliard instead. In fact, the attempt to become the best in any profession — painting, plumbing, software, or sport — changes a person. I am glad to have glimpsed at that for cooking. The chefs were lucky to have an excellent writer passionate at their crafts.