Mission: Professional Chef: More than you can chew

The early stages of any project are marked with vast ambition. Last year I planted about ten different tomato plants of four or five varieties, and three kinds of peppers in our friends' back yard.

Professional Chef was no different. I saw no reason that every part of my meal couldn't contribute to my ultimate goal. Sooner begun, sooner done, right?

What I'd forgotten since my university days is that everything has a process and laying the foundation is the most labor-intensive part of learning. In the case of Professional Chef, taking notes about steaming vegetables, braising lamb and making chicken stock would be terribly disjointed if I neglected to cover the details of mis en place and prep technique. I decided this after buying for our dinner and starting the meal.

The lamb stew was good, the steamed sweet potato and rutabaga played nicely with it, and the brown rice pilaf was...edible. I'm allowing myself some do-overs in the name of perfection. I've gotten about halfway through the relevant sections of the text, finishing the veg mis en place chapter the other day.

Veg mis en place was really helpful. That's where I found the basic knife skills, information that isn't complex or difficult to remember, but is vital. It made for easy and highly productive note-taking, and even found me, Ms. anti-superfluous garnish, fluting a mushroom the other night when we were slow.

I still need to cover the actual cooking of the veg, and the mis and method for the rice. Since then I've cooked quickbreads (notes taken), bechamel (not yet), and I'm finding it much easier to cook through the book than to keep up with the notes.

But the slog continues. There are only so many mise chapters after all. Surely my pen will catch up with my pans eventually.