Chapter One. Marco Pierre White, when his maitre d’ fucks up a cheese plate:

I picked up the first cheese. “Not right!” With all my might I threw it against the wall.  It stuck to the tiles.  I picked up the second cheese “Not right! I chucked it at the wall.  Then I hurled the remaining cheese, one after another, at that wall.

Nicolas and a couple of cooks raced over to the wall, ready to pry off the cheese and clear up the smelly mess.  I shouted, “Leave them there. Leave them there. Leave them fucking there all night. No one is allowed to touch them.” The cheese had to stay on that wall all night so that whenever Nicolas came into the kitchen, he would see them glued to the white tiles and would never, ever make the mistake again.

What makes a great cook, who becomes a great chef?  What drives someone to work 17 hour days, 6 days a week?  Marco Pierre White’s memoir, Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, and Madness answers these questions. Read it if you want to be a better cook. Read it if you want a career in the restaurant industry.  Read it if you’re stupid enough to consider quitting your well paying job to pursue your “dream” of owning a restaurant. Read it if you want to enter the mind of the Devil. Read it if you want to be the Devil.

White is considered the first post-modern “rock star chef,” and the youngest ever, at age 33, to win three Micheline stars. He’s Big Daddy O, a big fucking deal. We owe him (and Japanese food shows) the Food Network (otherwise we’d be stuck with Julia Child version 4.0 and Giada’s tits). He trained some of the guys we watch on TV: Gordon Ramsay (White claims to be the only person to break him); Mario Batali (quit after White threw hot risotto at him); Curtis Stone; Heston Blumenthal, the list goes on. Lots of Micheline stars.  So how does he do it? His words:

You have to deliver the message that they must never take a shortcut. You can’t just say, “Come on, boys, let’s try to get it right.” That just won’t work. If you are not extreme, then people will take shortcuts because they don’t fear you. And to achieve and retain the very highest standards, day after day, meal after meal, in an environment as difficult and fast as a restaurant kitchen, is extreme, well, in the extreme.

Put simply: Fear, Respect, Love.  In that order.

Fear
White is a master at instilling fear because he’s able to  enter people’s spirit.  He has extraordinary observation skills. White biographer Bill Buford notes that though White dropped out of school at 16 — he was labeled a dumbass because of his dyslexia — and has always had difficulty reading, he found that White comprehends everything that’s read to him:”genius level comprehension ability.” What separates White from the mediocre is that he pays attention, and is able to do so for long stretches.  White is thus able to learn faster and to get to know people more deeply. He’s able to enter another’s spirit, understand what another perceives.

Here’s a rough Buford example of how White enters the spirit of an employee. White will ask him about his family, past, hopes, aspirations. From that he figures out his fears. Here’s how it goes down when this employee makes excuses or complains (some artistic license):

White: I knew you’re going to be just like your father, you fucking cunt. You’re going to beat your wife just as your father beat your mother.  You’re going to beat your children just as he beat you.  You’re going to be another drunk, useless, cunt.  Stand in that corner.

But psychological terror and humiliation (he really did make employees stand in the corner, even ran out of corners once) wasn’t enough.  He used the threat of physical punishment to cement their fear. He turned off the AC when employees complained about the heat.  He cut up the shirt and pants of an employee who complained about the heat. He threw all sorts of stuff at people, including hot risotto at Mario Batali.

Most didn’t last a week in White’s kitchen.  But enough stayed and some of them, like Gordon Ramsay, became great chefs.

Respect
White earned respect of employees, customers, and reviewers because he didn’t let any of them fuck with him.  Employees respected him because he was quick to eject pain in the ass customers. Customers respected him because his employees had his back, always ready to brawl. Reviewers respected him because he didn’t give a shit what they thought — returned all his Micheline stars and told them to fuck off.  He stuck to his convictions and learned to not let employees, customers, and reviewers run his business. He believed in himself. He stood for something.

Love
“Those bastards can come any day and take it all away.”  White doesn’t count on anyone to love him and resists the urge to mistake adulation for love. That’s why he never lets his guard down and is always trying to improve. White also understands love as an act, not as a feeling.  “Every man should build a monument to his mother” (his mum died when he was 6).  For White, words of love are meaningless.  There must be proof, and the proof is in the monument.

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While Devil in the Kitchen is primarily a story about how White reached the pinnacle of his profession, throughout there are snippets of advice for amateur cooks.  Not recipes, he’s primarily interested in teaching the proper mindset and methods.

Cook’s brain.  It’s that ability to visualize the food on the plate, as a picture in the mind, and then work backwards.  There’s no reason why domestic cooks can’ do the same thing.  Cooking is easy: you’ve just got to think about what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Apply the cook’s brain and visualize that fried egg on the plate.  Do you want it to be burned around the edges? Do you want to see craters on the egg white? Should the yolk look as if you’d need a hammer to break into it? The answer to all these questions should be no. Yet the majority of people still crack an egg and drop it into searingly hot oil and continue to cook it on high heat.  You need to insert earplugs to reduce the horrific volume of the sizzle.  And the result, once served up in a pool of oil, is an inedible destruction of that greatest ingredient — the egg. Maybe that’s how you like it, in which case carry on serving your disgusting food.

This is the kind of advice that amateur and professional cooks need to improve results. For White, cooking isn’t about following recipes.  Cooking is reverse engineering whatever it is one wants.  It’s about entering another person’s spirit — understanding how someone experiences what you make for them. It’s about serving and pleasing other people, never the affirmation of one’s ego.

Eating well — tasty meals that are nutritionally dense and balanced — costs less than eating junk food.  Tap water is cheaper than soda.  An eight quart crockpot worth of curry (culturally appropriated from India) brown rice and beans (culturally appropriated from Latin America)  costs less than a Costco pizza.     

We use brown rice instead of white rice because the former has four times more fiber than does the latter.  The low fiber count in white rice makes it a quickly digested carb that can cause spikes in blood glucose levels.  The fiber in brown rice makes it a slowly digested carb, and it’ll help you poop better.        

Equipment

• Rice cooker
• Crockpot (this recipe is for 8 quart size)

Ingredients (costs us ~$6 to make)

• Two cups of dry pinto beans ($.50/lb at business Costco)
• Four cups of dry brown rice, Homai brand ($.50/lb at business Costco).  
• Four cups of chopped onions, roughly the size of your thumbnail.  
• Two cups of curry powder, we use the Olde Thompson brand found at residential Costco.  
• Two cups of olive oil.  
• One cup of salt.

Instructions (takes us ~8 minutes of prep time, 1 hour of cook time)

1. Use a rice cooker to cook four cups of brown rice in eight cups of water.  (1:2 ratio)
2. Use a crockpot, turned on high, to cook four cups of onions in two cups of olive oil. They can be cooked for as long as you want, as long as they’re not burned.  Twenty minutes works for those who cook with a timer.       
3. Add two cups of curry powder and one cup of salt to onions.  Add four quarts of water to the crockpot.  
4. Remove rice from the rice cooker.  Use the rice cooker to cook two cups of beans in 6 cups of water.  
5. Transfer cooked beans to the crockpot.  Cook beans until they’re soft to bite.
6. Add the cooked brown rice to the crockpot.  Stir until the rice and beans are mixed to your liking.  
7. Turn the crockpot to warm.  Serve.    

You can serve the rice and beans mixed with a protein.  Like meatballs, or salmon.  Whatever you want.  And don’t hesitate to cook it on high longer if you prefer your rice to be meatier from soaking up the water.  Add more water if you prefer the dish to be wetter.  We usually serve it wet after it’s made, and then it gets dryer throughout the day as the rice soaks up the water.  We add water and stir when it gets too dry.  

Most rice and beans are served dry.  Our version is served wet, as if gravy was poured on it, making it easier and more comforting to eat.   

The best way to improve one’s diet isn’t to use discipline to control one’s cravings, it’s more effective to improve one’s palate and gradually adjust one’s sense of correct portions.

One of the reasons why 92% of New Year’s resolutions are broken by Valentine’s Day is due to overreliance on discipline to build new habits.  When stress hits, discipline goes, comfort food returns.  Easier to train one’s palate to need less sugar and less salt, and to reduce portion.

Training the Palate

Try this:

A bite of bacon, followed by a bite of sausage.
(clear palate with water and ginger)
A bite of unsalted sauteed zucchini, followed by a bite of sausage (same as above).

Which sausage tastes better?

If you eat a piece of bacon and then a piece of sausage, you’ll end up eating more sausage than if you had preceded bite of sausage with bite of zucchini (which ends with slightly bitter note).  Your mind is expecting is certain amount of pleasure from the sausage and if it doesn’t get it, it’ll ask for more of it.  Or you’ll be tempted to add more salt, maybe gravy. This is why I ask you to manage carefully your holiday potluck meals, to make sure there are proper contrasts.  You guys tell me to chill out, that it’s just one day.  No, it is not because people’s palates are getting fucked up by ridiculous meals. Meaning people are going to be eating more until they try to correct their palate.

Try this:

Bite of glazed donut, followed by coffee, cream no sugar.
(clear palate)
Bite of glazed donut, followed by Mountain Dew

Which donut tastes better, assuming same donut?

The person who washes donut with Mountain Dew is going to need more and more sugar to attain feeling he craves.

Eating well is about contrasts and delay of gratification.  This is true of good music, literature, film, sex, etc., all about contrasts and delay of gratification, acceptance of frustration and pain. Train taste in all areas of art and life to develop a more sophisticated palate and to enjoy eating more.  The harder one works for something, the more enjoyable it is.

We can better develop ability to delay gratification by NOT giving kids (and adults) what they want until they accomplish something new; by teaching kids to embrace frustration and pain instead off protecting them from such emotions.  If they don’t learn how to work through such feelings, they’ll be trapped in fantasy or break down when reality bites hard.  The source of binge eating isn’t so much desire for food, it’s need for escape from the pressures of life.  Eating is a psychological act.  Put simply, we need to stop coddling each other if we’re going to beat this obesity epidemic.

Portion Control

Some American restaurants have reduced portions and are training its customers to recognize more appropriate portions. So we’re moving in the right direction. But typical American portions are still excessive and restaurants are to blame because they help define what’s normative to consumers.  Restaurants train consumers to eat in a certain way.

Here’s a money saving method to reduce portions (nothing new, this method can be found in magazines). At home, salad plates should be used as entree plates. At most restaurants, two should share one entree.  Or two share four appetizers.  That should be enough for 80 percent of the population.

Eating should be, overall, a pleasurable experience.  That’s why I tell New Year’s resolution customers to pick something they think they’ll like, not what they think they ought to have.  I’ve noticed that those who eat only things they don’t enjoy break their resolutions, while those who gradually change their palates remain customers throughout the year.  Don’t deny yourself, enjoy your food.  Happy New Year!