What is your Culinary Philosophy ?

Ingredient driven, mostly New American Bistro and Boy Food Steakhouse -- both with a "California accent." 

 

"Ingredient driven" not only means that I seek the best ingredients but that I "organize" my dishes so that a single ingredient stars, while the others play supporting roles.  

 

My start was in "Barbeque" (both Southern and Californian), "Continental," Nouvelle and "California" -- and I use the techniques, the flavor profiles and other basics I learned so long ago for all my current cooking.  I've always bopped around a lot of styles, and lately I'm going pretty retro with the American stuff I mostly do.  I'm also getting simpler, although you wouldn't necessarily believe it from the recipes I write.

 

BDL

I think my "philosophy" is based on some simple ideas. 

 

~ I try to put the best plate of eats on the table, made of the highest quality ingredients that I can economically source (afford, lol). 

~ I try to give the best value for money while earning the most profit possible. 

~ I try to give whoever I am feeding an experience that they will want to come back to. 

 

I hate eating food that I have made. Too much of the time I eat as I go, making whatever I'm making, and never really enjoy it properly when I sit down to eat it. 

I don't have a concrete food philosophy. A lot of my cooking is about feeding the family and making the associated family time a good time. We eat together for breakfast on school days and dinner every night. I try to  minimize waste which means recycling and re-purposing leftovers. And certainly the family budget enters into it.

 

Last night I took the potato masher to some meatballs we had leftover from a pasta bar party. Used that to be the sausage in some baked ziti (penne really that was also leftover from the pasta party).

 

I enjoy eating and want to make the best of what I have available.

Cook Well, Make them Happy Charge them for it. Make a good living.

not sure if i have a 'philosophy' per se but i'm with you margcata...simple, simple. simple...i challenge myself to stay within 5 ingredients or less, and let each ingredient court and marry... in m.k.f fisher's words...."sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly"....it is fragile and beautiful, like love ....so whether i am cooking for 2 or 100, i strive to bring that to the table...i buy the best ingredients that i can afford and go from there...it's amore!....

joey

Well ... to answer your question ...... I don't have a clue what may drive other chefs to eat or not eat what they cook. For me, it's the idea that after a shift where I've been "X" amount of any given dish, that is just the last thing that I want to eat. On the other hand, I have passions for both cooking and eating. When I'm eating, I really don't want to eat what I have worked at cooking. There are a few exceptions to that, such as I don't mind at all grilling my own steak. I'm just not all so thrilled having to work cooking my own meal. 

Ultimately the single purpose of consuming food it to live longer. All philosophy must not violate that fundamental imperative.

 

Eating healthy deliciously is mine.

 

dcarch

ooh, dharch 'fundamental imperative' sounds so disconnected to me..i'm not so sure about that single purpose thing you're thinking.....nourishment and nurturing your body while so very important and essential, to me,the whole connection and intimacy of food and people is so so much more important..it's like love/is love...you must give it everything..why would you just want to live longer without love, food ,wine ..our connection to one another...isn't that what makes you smile real big..how you connect through your food?

joey

No disagreement, duragojo.

 

Eating healthy and eating deliciously need not be mutually exclusive.

 

Eating not heathy is never "love".

 

dcarch

I also like to keep it simple. The main ingredient should always be the star. Love the way you put it BDL. Personally, I stick to comfort foods, hot peppers, and anything smoked. The wife does pretty much all of the cooking at home. I'll cook for special occasions and parties, or when I get a bug to try something specific. Fortunately for me she'd rather that I relax and enjoy dinnertime with the family rather than have to cook, again, on my day off. We buy as much minimally processed/ organic/ natural foods as our budget can handle.

Professionally, I believe that there is only one correct way of doing anything: whatever your current chef or guest says. Also our success, artistically, is dependant upon opinions. There is nothing objective about it and sometimes your ego makes that very difficult to remember. I'm tired of hearing people talk about " the right way" of doing things and chefs trying to teach people how to eat. Now, if you'd like to discuss the roots of a particular dish or the science behind a technique, I'm game. Otherwise, the culmination of my experiences and education is the knowledge of how to use a given technique to achieve a specific result. It is not on me to judge or tell you how to eat, just to use what I know to give you what you want.

"---It is not on me to judge or tell you how to eat, ----"

 

Not in the wine world. You are told all the time what is right or wrong, good or bad.

 

dcarch

LOL. At my table, whoever pays makes the rules. I'm a wine-geek, sorta. My lips, my money, my choice. 

Not sure if I really have a philosophy ....

I just like to eat good food and preferably healthy as well. And I like to cook for other people. Like Margcata I like the social part of it, sitting down for a meal, eating, chatting, enjoying a good glass of wine etc.

When cooking at home, I'm not the most organised person. I tend to change my mind about what to cook plenty times! I might start off thinking of cooking something Italian and then changing to Thai while cutting up onions or garlic or so.

 

I do the specials at the restaurant at the lodge and in that case I'm much more organised !

"If you don't like the food....have more wine."

...i challenge myself to stay within 5 ingredients or less, and

 

Joey, would you explain why this is particularly important to you?

 

I ask because I do not understand the facination with this concept. There seems to be, among the proponents, the belief that only using 5 ingredients is automatically simple. And that's just not true. Nor is the opposite: that more ingredients make a dish complex. 

 

I wonder, too, about the proponents who do not include salt, pepper, water, and oil in their ingredients count, in order to force a dish into the 5-ingredient rubric. And those who use herb- and spice-mixes but count them as only one ingredient.

 

Ultimately the single purpose of consuming food it to live longer

 

That, my friend, is the difference between eating and dining. But most of us are as concerned with the latter as with the former.

 

 

ky,

yes, the 5 ingredient rule is a loose one which has many holes and is totally open to interpretation..... and there are many exceptions...paellas, tagines, spice rubbed meats, salsas.... if i make fresh pasta and toss it with some basil pesto,i count the basil pesto as one ingredient even though it's made up of several. if i grill a piece of spice rubbed salmon or pork and pair it with a mango salsa i count both the spice rub and salsa as one ingredient even though again, it contains several. i suppose the better word would be component rather than ingredient....hmmmm, semantics?....

i like to simplify recipes and i like straightforward food....somewhere along the line it seems to me that people started to overcomplicate cooking in thinking that the more sophisticated the ingredients they used the better the dish would be...so not true...gourmet magazine helped to perpetrate that for awhile. some of the best most honest food on the planet comes from third world or undeveloped countries where there are no truffles or pomegranate oil or etc....simple good food has nothing to hide behind....it stands alone on its own.....

joey

oh, and no garlic does not count...it is a food group!...nor does salt and pepper......

oh, just curious though...if you truly only concern yourself with eating to live longer...why would you consume any animal or animal byproducts at all when eating them has clearly been linked to diseases and cancers?

Edited by durangojo - 1/7/12 at 1:40pm

Joey, you're kind of proving my point.

 

Seems to me your philosphy is one of simplifying food, rather than counting ingredients. Of itself that's a laudible goal. But a rubric such as "five-ingredients" isn't a philosophy; it's a straightjacket. And it's always bothered me that the major proponents of it do so with the implication that the ingredient count determines simplicity or complexity. And that's far from the truth.

 

I recently recommended, on another thread, a pan-fried fish filet topped with tapenade. I don't think you could ask for anything much simpler than that. But lets start counting ingredients: fish filets, butter or oil, salt, pepper, black olives, garlic, anchovies, olive oil. Eight ingredients for a very simple dish of only two components.

 

Last night I made the Winter Quiche, from Sandra Bowens' wonderful Spice Right; Flavorful Cooking with Herbs and Spices. I'm sure you'll agree that a quiche is not a complex dish. Yet, her recipe, even considering herbes de Provence as only one, requires ten ingredients. Twice the rubric for a simple dish.

 

On the other hand, if I were to count the way the five-ingredient proponents do, my Seafood Lollipops recipe also has only ten ingredients. But it's one of the most complex dishes I make---which is one reason I don't do it too often.

 

The key to using few ingredients, as you well know, is in their quality. The less you fancy things up, the more the basic ingredients have to stand on their own. And that requres the best ingredients available.

 

oh, just curious though...if you truly only concern yourself with eating to live longer...

 

Not me, Darlin'. The bloke I was responding to.

 

You could live a long, healthy life on nothing but a bowl of rice and beans twice a day----if you didn't die of boredom.

ky,

point taken...glad i could help prove it!

yes, if i indeed had a philosophy, it would be to uncomplicate dishes by using less but more stellar ingredients, or combining them differently and more importantly using less steps. it drives me batty the way some people go to the store to buy ridiculous and expensive ingredients to make a dish they may or may not make again...i say bypass, eliminate or create another dish. usually i can make quite a great meal out of what is in my fridge at any given time.... things you may not think of when you first look inside your 'empty' fridge...it's a great challenge and kind of like a mystery basket! 

joey

Edited by durangojo - 1/10/12 at 6:07am

ky,

point taken

 

My work is done.