{"id":1174,"date":"2008-12-11T00:57:18","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T00:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2008-12-11T00:57:18","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T00:57:18","slug":"the_soul_and_the_reach_of_a_ch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=1174","title":{"rendered":"The Soul and The Reach of a Chef"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re interested in food writing, I’d recommend Michael Ruhlman’s books ‘cos after having read two of them, The Soul of a Chef: The Pursuit of Perfection<\/i> and The Reach of a Chef: Professional Cooking in the Age of Celebrity<\/i>, I’ve found his writing very succinct, appropriately descriptive, insightful, informative and well-researched.
\nRuhlman is an American author and journalist who is primarily known for his writing about food. The Soul of a Chef<\/i> is divided into three parts. The first describes how Brian Polcyn, chef-owner of Five Lakes Grill outside Detroit takes the Certified Master Chef exam conducted by the Culinary Institute of America. We are given an insight into the gruelling process of the exam which lasts for 10 days, testing knowledge, skill, creativity, organisation and inherent qualities like flair and personality.
\nThe second part puts the spotlight on Michael Symon, chef-owner of Lola Bistro and Wine Bar in Cleveland, at his restaurant. We are led to see how this chef-owner dominates the restaurant with his presence and big personality. We learn how he makes ingenious use of food to minimise wastage and maximise profit without compromising on quality and taste.
\nThe last part features Thomas Keller, chef-owner of The French Laundry, among the most celebrated chefs in the world, at work in his Napa Valley restaurant. Ruhlman writes of how Keller succeeded against all odds by believing in himself and his cooking. Though untrained professionally, he has an innate talent in food plus the requisite skills and knowledge to go along with it.
\nThe Reach of a Chef<\/i> examines the celebrity chef phenomenon which has pervaded the world in recent years. In Ruhlman’s words:
\n“The book is an attempt to get my arms around the expanding nature of the chef in America and what it means to be one today. The chef in the age of celebrity, the chef in the midst of a restaurant-as-theater bonanza, the chef in the middle of an American food revolution. Chefs today can do amazing things\u2014from cooking great food to helping farmers raise it to improving school lunches for kids\u2014but there are also chefs who expect adoration is due them simply for walking into a room with a chef coat on. We simultaneously adore and denigrate Rachael and Emeril, television icons\u2014why? How did we become such a food neurotic country\u2014cherishing carbs then fearing them (and just as we learned how to bake decent bread in this country). We are a fat country, so what do we do to lose weight? We embrace a high-protein, high-fat diet! We gorge on high-calorie, low-nutrition, sodium-saturated fast food. We’ve debased our hogs and polluted our chickens by breeding them in factories.”<\/i>
\nRuhlman questions if it’s a good thing for chefs to leave their kitchens and engage in things that do not actually involve cooking and serving food to customers. To describe some of the changes in the American culinary scene, Ruhlman returned to the Culinary Institute of America to speak to the chefs he had written about when he wrote The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America<\/i> and The Soul of a Chef<\/i>, to see if changes there reflected those in the industry. In the midst of his research, he discovered new kitchens and new chefs to watch out for.
\nCheck out Michael Ruhlman at his blog<\/a> for more of his informative writing about food and the culinary scene in the US. For the books he’s worked on, go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re interested in food writing, I’d recommend Michael Ruhlman’s books ‘cos after having read two of them, The Soul of a Chef: The Pursuit of Perfection and The Reach of a Chef: Professional Cooking in the Age of Celebrity, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-literature-writings","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}