I have spent two years almost to the day working as a Sous-Chef, the work is grueling and dangerous, however; there is a philosophy woven into it by the French phrase "Mise en place" or "everything in it's place". The mind of a Chef is organized by necessity in a certain manner. You're often required to track the cooking times of eight or more items as well as plating up to ten as well as juggle hundreds of recipes, not to mention tracking food costs as the night progresses, your mind thrives in the chaos.
Adaptability becomes obsolete, replaced instead by the expectation of that which is unexpected. For example, you're on the line on a Friday night, you have 12 steaks cooking behind you, 4 salads in front of you, and 7 other orders just rang in. Traditionally one tends to navigate obstacles by stopping at each one and resolving it.
Mise en place works a little differently. By taking a small amount of time before each shift and calculating in your mind all of the things that can go wrong, whether it be running out of cucumbers or saute pans to burning your hands or cutting yourself, you have the time to plan for each possibility, thus reducing the amount of time and energy spent trying to solve a problem as it occurs. Instead you solve it before it occurs.
This is useful in every day life as well, simply by assuming at the start of each day that what ever can go wrong will, and then creating a mini plan for each possibility, you streamline your chances for success.
Adaptability becomes obsolete, replaced instead by the expectation of that which is unexpected. For example, you're on the line on a Friday night, you have 12 steaks cooking behind you, 4 salads in front of you, and 7 other orders just rang in. Traditionally one tends to navigate obstacles by stopping at each one and resolving it.
Mise en place works a little differently. By taking a small amount of time before each shift and calculating in your mind all of the things that can go wrong, whether it be running out of cucumbers or saute pans to burning your hands or cutting yourself, you have the time to plan for each possibility, thus reducing the amount of time and energy spent trying to solve a problem as it occurs. Instead you solve it before it occurs.
This is useful in every day life as well, simply by assuming at the start of each day that what ever can go wrong will, and then creating a mini plan for each possibility, you streamline your chances for success.
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@Nicholas - Wonderfully articulated my friend! In fact, I feel I should work as sous chef myself to get even more acquainted with this philosophy. To my knowledge, many quality assurance frameworks already recommend this approach - Assume everything that can go wrong will go wrong on a rainy day! :-) On the other hand, this philosophy only works for repetitive jobs... sort of. How should one prepare for a task ... where he is completely clueless about his path or course of action?
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@Praveen- That my friend is where it gets fun. I like to think of it as being the main character in an role playing game, or an adventurer. The best method to ensure success is to create your center of gravitation, where all of your necessities such as phone charger, wallet, keys, ect all live, but make its a backpack, or something else thats mobile. Now included in this Mise en place kit should be things like a spare change of clothes, perhaps some dry snacks, and a portable phone charger, ect.
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I tend to think of this concept as a bug-out bag for 21st century survival, containing things that might not seem like a big deal at the beginning of each day but that if something were to happen, like say you get stranded in the rain and your phone dies, boom spare change of clothes and a portable charger that doesn't need an outlet.
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@Praveen- side note, If you do decide to work as a sous-chef, be prepared to get hurt. A lot. I've sustained 3rd degree burns on both my hands at the same time, full coverage, and lost many a chunk of finger to my knives. The rule is basically when you buy a new knife, it's not yours until it draws your blood lol
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@Nicholas - I always loved cooking but never got a chance to work in a full service kitchen. May be someday I can make time for it. Coming to my comment about preparing for unpredictable circumstances - I meant to highlight the importance of handling things as they unfold rather than preparing for hypothetical situations. When we started working on Talkonomy, it was a completely different ball game to what we were exposed to previously. Its life by the hour and having our priorities right.
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