Creating deluxe cuisine is like playing a sport. Always competitive. Always challenging. And if you slow down a bit, you can no longer return to the top level.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's not really the life of cooking that's hard - it's what you make of it and what level you push yourself to.
I like complicated dishes but also appreciate simple foods.
It's one thing to execute dishes on your own time for family and friends, but quite another to perform and be judged in a competition. And that's what cooking in a high profile restaurant is. It's a competition. You're up against every other three-star restaurant in your city, and if you want to stay in business, you'd better deliver.
I do a lot of recipe creation. Translation: cooking tempting dishes that must be eaten.
As I mature as a chef, I no longer aim to pack multiple techniques and ingredients into a single dish. Realizing that restraint is more difficult, I find it often renders incredibly beautiful results.
The hardest part of anything is making a dish consistently great - you order it seven years later, if it's still on the menu, and it's still as good as what you remember.
You don't have to stick with these recipes. They're guides. As I say, they're a way in. Have fun with them. It's an easier way to cook in a busy life, once you get the hang of it.
I have this concept that I call 'Combo Meals.' The idea is that I start with the kids' meal and then add a few more ingredients, and it becomes the adult meal. This way I'm not making two entirely separate dishes. I'm just simply adding on to what I'm already making.
The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.
The thing with food is that you can give 20 people the same recipe and the same ingredients, and somebody's going to make it better than somebody else, and that's the creativity of it. It's like music. You could have a bunch of people playing the same piece, and somebody's gonna play it better.