Jacques Pepin, unlike other celebrity chefs, will actually teach you how to cook
slate.com
slate.com
He invited me and my project partners to his house, gave us a tour of his TV production kitchen, let us film a segment for our video, and signed a copy of his book for or teacher.
Needless to say we got an A+ but more importantly we got to spend time with an incredibly intelligent and empathetic master. Forever grateful that he took the time to meet with us silly but curious kids.
Last year, KQED did a radio interview with JP, and people kept asking him what was his favorite knife brand, type, etc. He said "the sharp one". And he showed amazement at how chefs are now celebrities. "After all, we are just food preparers". His humility is the real teaching here.
But a question: all those TV cooks trade convenience in front of the camera for hygiene, do they?
Jamie Oliver is my favorite offender, always mixing all kinds of dressings and sauces with his bare hands, then, without even touching a towel, grabbng the refridgerator door.
Here in that video Pépin has just been handling chicken, his hands are covered in grease, and he picks up a pinch of salt from a bowl where the rest theoretically remains for the next five days.
Am I just too extreme?
But no part of his technique depends on how casual he is with his proteins. I'm pretty careful about chicken and cross-contamination, and I can execute Pepin's deboning technique in under a minute. I use paper towels, for instance, instead of side towels when breaking down birds.
I thought I had already learned that lesson: Proper tool and good technique is important. Obviously not.
Of course accidents will happen, I just see that as a philosophical point; I should be in full control of the blade, not being fancy or hurrying.
In my experience, the only use for a serrated knife is for bread, especially hard crusty bread.
A big chef's knife should be able to do most things in the kitchen.
But in the home kitchen, things change some. Cheaper knives don't always take well to sharpening and most folks don't know how to sharpen knives. Taking this into consideration, a serrated - or partially serrated knife, as is popular with cheaper knife sets - becomes a better and probably safer choice with some items.
Take tomatoes, for example. Most home cooks get a easier slice with a serrated blade than the smooth, simply because the smooth-edged knife must be sharp to slice through the skins. Celery can be a similar thing - the serration cuts through the strings better than a dulled chef's knife.
Some of this is likely technique as well. I was lucky enough to be taught some knife skills from a chef, who I worked in a small establishment with. Lots of others don't put any practice into it, nor can the home cook generally build up the skills as quickly simply because the volume is less.
I'm sort of a sharpening fanatic (I have an apex sharpener) so I just generally reach for my big chef's knife, or my little paring knife for detail work.
Sharpening serrated knives is quite unpleasant though, I don't like doing it at all.
> Most home cooks get a easier slice with a serrated blade than the smooth, simply because the smooth-edged knife must be sharp to slice through the skins.
But a smooth-edged knife actually slices, the serrated knife pulls and tears. I usually have a couple of tomatoes on hand when I'm sharpening my knives, just to make sure I'm happy with the edge I put on them.
It's actually really hard to get any sort of biological contamination going in salt, as long as you have enough salt. Oddly enough, sugar has the same properties.
The class was remarkable for a number of reasons. He would cook two recipes each week, and in the two years that I attended, I think there were only one or two repeats.
Also, there was a period that you couldn't leave the class unless you were pregnant.
He prepared a special dish called "Auspicious Beginnings" when a couple in the class got married. The bulk of the dish was chicken knees. And goodness! I just realized he has a facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Gabriel-Chin-Students-and-Fans-1042.... His main business was catering. He would bring his own propane-fueled wok to your house and prepare the meal in your kitchen. We once had 70 folks to one of our dinners.
Just a truly impressive level of skill.
(IIRC, the cleaver is actually a Chinese chef's knife, different in construction from western meat cleavers which are thicker and heavier to chop through bone.)
As a result, I arrived at college in a little better shape than most of my peers, who could barely work a microwave. Driven partially by necessity, they watched a lot of food network back when it was mostly how-to shows and the only "competition" they aired was late-night translations of the Japanese iron chef show.
A decade later, food network was nearly all competition and food-tour shows. They stood up a sister network -- cooking channel or something similar, which seemed to be mostly re-runs of their old how-to shows, some of which are surprisingly good. Unfortunately, it too is falling to the competition tv genre, and if you want actual cooking instruction you have to catch it early morning or late night, when the remaining non-competition shows are still on.
It would be nice if, along with cookbooks, some of those shows were available in complete collections that I could purchase.
PBS has a secondary channel here called Create that runs a lot of the older cooking shows during the evening and prime-time hours. Maybe take a look and see if it available in your area.
The "in search of perfection" series is pretty good in this vein, because he takes routine dishes (eg fried chicken, pizza) and analyses how to optimise them, which gives you an insight into the most important parts of the preparation.
My boiled eggs always come out perfect and more importantly easy to peel thanks to him.