Something I’ve come to learn and love OR hate about myself depending on the day is that I seem to have turned into the guy that everyone tells everything to.
It’s the part of working on yourself that I think broadcasts to everyone around you. As you learn to become kinder and safer for yourself, you radiate that out and become kinder and safer for others, and others respond.
Part of it is that, barring imminent danger, I’ve developed a pretty solid vault. I don’t pass along what people tell me, even when someone else comes along and I find myself biting my tongue- “If I could tell this person what so-and-so told me earlier, it could make things so much easier.” I’m no one’s messenger pigeon though, and I’m not gonna break trust for something as trivial as those conflicts usually are (in the grand scheme, anyway.)
It’s not that I’m really good at keeping a secret- it’s that I often either quickly forget or say “you do you” and figure it doesn’t concern me. I’m not a snitch, but I’m also no schoolyard hero.
The bigger part of it is something my therapist described to me, an idea in Tibetan Buddhism called drala– an energy that can infuse people, places and even things that isn’t “good” or “bad”- it simply is, and all it means is “take a breath, you are safe here.”
Here’s a bit of news that might be upsetting to some of my readers- or comforting, depending on how you look at it: Nothing the universe does is personal. The world isn’t out to get you, “everyone’s” not out to screw you. The universe and the world are neither cruel nor kind, they just are– and thank God for that.
Understanding and acting on this won’t suddenly make life easier or more manageable either, but it will let you focus your attention, energy, and will on what you can do about it, rather than wishing it wasn’t so. Again, it’s not personal- the universe doesn’t care how you feel about it. It’s waiting for you to decide what you’re gonna do about it.
Dandelions don’t register an opinion about where those jackass humans put cement. They just grow. Photo by George Becker on Pexels.com
When you work in a restaurant, experiencing growth in your skills or knowledge is often a humbling but pretty neat experience.
Imagine for a minute you are a capable chef. You’ve been at it for awhile and a couple cooks reporting to you. You’re not in charge of the restaurant, but the executive chef trusts you to work their will and keep the team performing. You’ve got techniques in your hands and recipes/formulas you trust to get the job done.
One day, one of your cooks- younger or maybe just newer- looks at a method and recipe you just handed them and says, “Hey, why do we do it this way?”
In a moment, a wave of responses flash through your mind: “That’s my method. Who does this little shit think they are? Kids these days are so fucking lazy…that’s the way we’ve always done it…”
You might feel enraged, exasperated, or at the very least annoyed… but there’s something else behind it all. We don’t wanna look at it. We can’t always afford to honor or accept it, so we spend a lot of time pushing it down or numbing it.
Doubt.Doubt and Questions.
It can seriously suck to feel Doubt when you are so used to the meritocracy of the kitchen. Doubt is the mind killer. Doubt is the little death that brings total clusterfuckery. You can’t afford the time or space to doubt.
But, in a moment, you realize “I never asked that question… I just did as I was told.” You look at the cook and finally say “That’s the way we do it here… why? Do you know another way?”
Maybe that cook suggests a method you know (from your knowledge and experience) won’t get the result you need. “We roast the squash rather than steaming because we don’t want the added moisture in the recipe.” “We coddle the eggs so they won’t be so cold the butter seizes when we add them to the batter.”
Maybe they don’t and it’s an honest question. It seems like a wasted step. It seems redundant. In all your knowledge and experience, you can’t explain why that method is so important. “It’s the way we’ve always done it…” it made sense to someone some time ago and no one’s ever been bothered to check their work.
That’s where the growth happens. You either figure out the reason, or you figure out it HAS no reason and it’s a waste. In a meritocracy, you are judged by what you accomplish and are capable of- not what you were, who you know, or how long something as been done your way.
By choosing Curiosity and Humility over Hubris, the answer is found. Dispassionate and clear as a failed sauce or a botched bake. It’s either “this is why’ or “this is a waste.”
Curiosity weaponizes Doubt against itself.Curiosity is powered by Humility. We can’t know everything, or everyone’s experiences.
For me, Curiosity and Humilty are crucial to leading well. If my staff are watching me and hoping to see their future in the field, I need to show them that asking questions and having doubts are good.
They need to see that even the pastry chef, with knowledge and experience, still has a lot to learn and can even learn from them. It’s been a tenet of mine for a long time that if one of my apprentices comes up with a new way to do something that renders a better product, does a job more efficiently, or both, that’s how we do itnow.My ego takes a backseat, and if it turns out there’s a problem with that new method, we all learn why.
Imagine what you will learn when you admit you don’t know everything.
No one likes wasting their time, or feeling like their time is being wasted. If you can’t explain the impact of a task, why does the task need to be done by anyone?
I’ve been silent on here for the last few weeks. Between a very compressed event schedule at the winery, Yom Kippur, and the anniversary of October 7th, I haven’t had the energy or the will to do much at all. With the arrival of a slow period, though, I finally have time to rest, think clearly, and put something on this blog worth reading.
I also have time to take on some of the more… “long-form” projects that come through the kitchen. One of these was a process I’ve come to call “Quinceageddon.” It began last year when my chef bought about 40 lbs of locally-grown quince, dropped it in our walk-in fridge, and told me to do something with it.
For those who don’t know, a quince is thetsundere version of a pear. Historically called the “fragrant pear,” a quince looks like a giant lumpy pear that has a positively wonderful fragrance- floral, sweet, and sharp all at the same time- but is utterly inedible by itself. The fruit is so rich in pectin and tannin that it’s like biting into a rock-hard raw potato, but painfully bitter in addition to being actually painful.
The single most popular- and arguably the best- thing to do with quince is to make quince paste, or membrillo. The striking red color and tart/sweet flavor makes it a staple pastry filling in Latin America and Spain, as well as a classy addition to cheese boards. Membrillo can be bought from specialty stores, but it tends to be expensive because making it takes hours of work. First comes peeling, coring, and chopping the rock hard fruit. Then braising the fruit with water and citrus to soften it. Then milling, blending, mixing and cooking it slowly for hours until the puree turns crimson red, and finally blending and cooling… but if you (or the pastry chef you hired) have a bit of a blank day to spend, it’s easy enough to make it yourself.
*Frenchy SpongeBob Voice* “8 Hours Later…”
The other project I found myself working on this week was seeing to the end of our tomato supply. All summer, we had an excellent supply of local tomatoes that we worked into sauces, salads, jams, platters, platings, and the like. With autumn in full swing and tomatoes leaving the markets, it was time to similarly see them off our menu.
That meant we had about 20 pounds of beautiful (if somewhat wrinkly) multicolored cherry tomatoes that would soon be attracting more fruit flies than customers if we didn’t deal with them soon, turning them into jam that could be reliably frozen for a future time… which meant they were handed over to me and my team.
Slowly, individually plucking the green stems and leaves off the tomatoes as I dropped them into a bucket on a scale, I realized, would probably make a cook fresh out of school (or a younger me, for that matter) go mad and question their life choices… if I just told them to do it.
While I was plucking through these tomatoes, my assistant Marisah was taking another crack at piping the gouger cheese puffs we use for events. As I plucked stems, I called back advice over my shoulder as she mixed the sticky pate au choux batter until I realized what I was doing and said “Augh, sorry… you’ve literally made this before, I’m preaching to the choir here.” To which Marisah graciously laughed and said “It’s alright, I enjoy the teaching.”
That’s when I looked back down at my tomatoes and realized a mistake that too many chef make and that I do my very best not to make- they don’t give the context for a task.
For too many “old school” chefs and cooks, when you are given an instruction, the correct answer is “Yes, chef” and then you do it. Maybe the almighty Chef will give you a reason or some instruction, but the key in that task is obedience. When the boss says “jump,” you ask “how high” on the way down. That was what made a good cook. “Kids these days with their questions and their ideas and their entitlement…”
Karen fixed that for me relatively quickly in my career over a batch of pastry cream.
“Your custard always gels too hard, Matt. What are you… wait, are you done mixing it already?” “Um, yeah Karen- that’s what I was taught, mix it until the butter melts…” “Matt, if you just put the butter in there, it’ll melt and then you’ll have brick. You move it until the butter melts and it’s cool. If you want a custard pie filling, that’s fine, but if you want it smooth and pipeable, you need to mix it longer.” “Always ask questions, Matt.”
If I told Marisah or anyone else “peel and chop 40 pounds of quince” or “individually pull the green bits off 16 pounds of cherry tomatoes” without any other information, or if I answered questions with “because I said so,”why wouldn’t I expect shitty results? That’s stupid, capricious, annoying, and a massive waste of goddamned time.
If, on the other hand, I was honest and said “Peel, core and chop these quince. We’re making a shit-ton of quince paste for the year, and peels and seeds will make the milling more difficult” and “We’re throwing all these into jam and we don’t want the green bits,” suddenly there’s a reason to do a good job of it beyond “I have authority and you don’t.”
What’s more, being open to questions can help, change, or eliminate the task altogether. I think of it as “keeping me honest’ in the face of culinary orthodoxy, because if someone else says “why can’t we just food mill or process the tomatoes as they are” suddenly I, as a teacher and leader, have to think the task through.
In the case of the tomatoes, I need to be able to say “The food processor will chop up the green bits, and we don’t want them at all. The food mill will strain out the seeds which we do want.” The same logic applies for why we don’t process the parsley.
Occasionally, however, it gives me pause to say “Hey, why DON’T we do the task that way?” If I can’t find a reason, we experiment. If it works, voila- a useless task as been eliminated because I was able to say “Huh… let’s try it!” Instead of getting butt-hurt over my orders being questioned, an apprentice feels validated, labor has been reduced, and efficiency increased.
Put your ego aside, get your head out of your ass, and invest the tiny amount of time it takes to feed your employees curiosity. Create enjoyable teaching moments, and reap the benefits of ideas beyond your own.
You can absolutely love what you do and still be fucking tired.
Compared to a lot of folks, I’m lucky. I have a wonderful wife. I live in a decent town, and between the two of us we manage to make enough to live comfortably working in fields we love and trained for.
I’m going to go ahead and toot my own horn a bit here (my therapist said I need to improve my self-talk) and share that I am objectively very good at my job. The work of being a pastry chef, running and training a small team, and developing recipes is not an unmanageable burden for me. My team and I deliver excellent work for our employers and our customers.
Just because someone carries a burden well doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy, and even people who perform well at work they enjoy feel the need to put down their tools, scream into the void for a bit, and then take a nap.
The Black Hat Baker 