I cook a lot. Maybe obsessively. I would really like to become good at it. Really, classically, years of humiliation and discipline, good. I don’t just want one or two signature dishes, or be able to cobble together something delicious from the fridge. I want to be able to produce perfect, photogenic golden chicken breasts from copper pans in the french countryside.
At this point, I’m a little part of the way there. I can confidently knock up a sauce that will hold together on a plate, I can deliver a well cooked piece of fish, on top of a salad that will make you forget that you’re on a diet. I can plate up a decent meal from a few different national cuisines, and I’m finally happy with the way I roast a chicken. Also, I can make a beautiful rose from a tomato skin.
One - potentially concerning - aspect of this obsession is that I’m mostly doing it alone. Without a mentor, I’m trying to learn how become a classical chef from books. I’ve learned that most cookbooks follow a standard formula - probably set down by Julia Child. She explains how to cook, and encourages anyone to follow suit. Her recipes are complicated, and unforgiving, but she’s helpful, and through the prose, you have the sense that she wants you to succeed.
But I don’t really believe that i’ve learned anything until it’s been humiliated and drilled into me through failure - nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. Jamie Oliver grinning and gently reminding me to throw a glug of olive oil onto a pan while I’m knocking up ‘Jamie’s Gorgeous Slow Cooked Duck Pasta’ doesn’t give me the full operatic range of emotions I’m looking for.
Last year, I found a book - or maybe it found me - called The New Complete Techniques, by Jacques Pepin.
Jaqcues Pepin is a french chef. The inside jacket of his own book (his own book!) says the following: “Jacques Pepin is universally lauded as the grand master of culinary technique”. The Complete Techniques is 734 pages of step by step techniques to produce exactly the kind of precise, perfect food that I’m looking to feed to people I like. It isn’t just recipes, but basic skills, like how to Prepare Marrow or how to Eviscerate a Chicken or Other Poultry. (For when you have someone coming over in twenty minutes, and only a pigeon full of viscera in the fridge)
Pepin has made me a better cook. This book has provoked huge changes to our small apartment kitchen. Brunch went from bacon sandwiches to eggs benedict, with homemade hollandaise. Duck breasts went from intimidating to perfectly seared. Chickens were boned, apples cored and carrots were julienned in ways and at speeds never before seen.
Pepin is the printed mentor I’ve been looking for. When I’m making a dinner, always, I’m thinking ‘What would Pepin do?’ Am I skimming my coq au vin correctly? (by the way - skim your coq au vin, trust me - actually, don’t trust me, trust Pepin!)
But like every good mentor, he’s not just looking to help me cook better. He’s trying to help me grow as a person.
Dotted throughout the book, Pepin has decided to stick in photos of himself, overlaid with hints and tips. This isn’t sensible, Julia Child advice - ‘Make sure all the ingredients for your mayonnaise are the same temperature before beginning’. These are small sermons from Pepin, instructing the reader on living a better life. For instance, under Pepin’s recipe for Fast Brown Stock, he says "Any good cook knows that good cooking and good health are inseperable".
So, with Pepin ringing in my ears, I have been trying to jog more. I’ve found that taking exercise every day, either walking to the train, cycling to work, or going for a jog has allowed me to be more focused and clear. This translates into the confidence with which I pan fry a sea bream.
Pepin is quick to praise and criticize, encourage and discipline - after all, in his own words: “There is nothing more exhilarating than a great chef in action. There is nothing so frightening as a bad chef in charge of the stove”.
Even when I’m pouring milk onto cereal, I can feel Pepin looking at me, and i wonder if he’s exhilarated, or frightened.
And then, sometimes, Pepin’s advice seeps into my real life. When I’m cycling, or talking to a client at work, or If i’m thinking about changing the brake pads on my car, I can hear Pepin. Most of his advice is very clearly based on one principle. Learn the basics. Build on a strong foundation. In fact, in Pepin’s words - “You may be very imaginative and creative in the kitchen, but you cannot take advantage of those qualities if you don’t know the basics’.
And then, on one page, Pepin casually gave me advice I would nearly have tattooed across my back, on how to deal with the chaos of a difficult year - Advice I came back to again and again. Pepin’s version of ‘Keep on keeping on’.
"Creation in the kitchen follows your mood. Somedays are clear and sunny, some dark and cloudy. The only control is technique."
PS - Pepin had the following to say about Thing a week: To have talent in the kitchen without technique is like being a great writer without possessing the mechanics of language - an impossible struggle.
Pepin is saying that I need to re-read Elements of Style, and study up on story structure before throwing together another chapter on hitmen in run-down hotels.
