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Cooking Lessons: Part Two

I once had the privilege of sitting at a chef's table.


A chef's table is often small (two or four seats) and is located directly inside the kitchen of a restaurant.


If you sit there, you get to see everything.


What struck me the most about the particular experience I had, was the way that the entire team cleaned up after the service was finished.


We were the last guests to be served our meal that evening, and so we watched our desserts get made (the last dish of the night) and then watched the entire team clean down the kitchen.


What struck me about it was the clean-slated-ness of it all.


If you were to walk into the kitchen the next morning, you would have no idea of the chaos and pure magic that took place the night before.


Yet, if you work there, you would know that the potential exists for both of those things (chaos and magic) to happen again. And again.


This potential, is why I love cooking.


You start with almost nothing. Raw ingredients. Perhaps a recipe. Perhaps just an idea.


Then you go through a period of chaos, and hopefully by the end you have magic.


That magic then gets consumed, you clean down, reset, and do it all again.


The speed and completeness of this cycle, is also why I love cooking.


There is something immensely satisfying about starting and finishing something.


This satisfaction gets dialled up a few notches when there is a chance you may screw it all up by trying something you've never tried before.


What makes cooking different from other things you may start and finish—laundry, shovelling, a workout—is that something gets created and consumed, as opposed to just completed. In the act of creation and consumption, there is potential for magic.


In choosing to cook, we are choosing to practice an art that is critical for our survival.


Try cooking something.


Purple background with some cooking utensils in the middle

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