THE PROFESSIONAL COOK

Or rather: how a chef should be

According to Bartolomeo Scappi, secret cook of the pope, who lived between 1500 and 1577, the professional cook must have many personal skills. In addition to knowing how to distinguish the ingredients and knowing how to make the most of each one, knowing how to cook meat to perfection, knowing how to keep the kitchen tidy and giving air to the environment, using the correct utensils and the right pans, the professional cook must be able in the art of conversing and being able to speak on all subjects and in different languages, in such a way as to be able to converse with the guests of an important table, understand their tastes, their possible illnesses and be able to favor them in every aspect, making the meal a pleasant and safe experience.

As I have said many times, there is a big difference between the cook, the chef and the cooking teacher. They are three very different professions.

The cook – needless to say – cooks. Sometimes the cook is better than the chef in his profession, that is, in the “profession of the kitchen”. He must make sure that everything is in order, from the “line” – mise en place – to the care of hygiene in every phase of his work. Being a cook represents great value. Some of Italy’s starred chefs, including Carlo Cracco, like to define cooks rather than chefs. Carlo Cracco hires chefs in his premises. He “feels like a cook” attributing knowledge, passion, ability, creativity to this profession
The chef directs, coordinates the work, has a sense of “times”, acts as an intermediary with the maître . It is his responsibility that each dish is ready at the right time, that everything – ingredients, utensils, cooks, assistant cooks, helpers, dishwashers – is ready and available for service.
The teacher – obviously – teaches and must have all the qualities of a teacher: certainly the knowledge of the subject, but also the ability to make it understood and the generosity in bestowing tricks, secrets, the hows and whys.

There are also huge differences in the teaching of these professions.

Teaching how to be a cook means teaching the raw materials, the nutrients, the chemical transformation during cooking. It means teaching the health and hygiene aspect, the healthy and nutritional aspect; teach which foods and which combinations of foods are suitable for particular diets, allergies; how to substitute certain ingredients. It means teaching how to compose a dish and how to present it.

Teaching to be a chef is a more complicated undertaking. Often it is about having an innate attitude. The chef must know how to be calm and how to keep (the workers) calm. He must know the menus and individual recipes by heart, in order to issue orders authoritatively but without authority. In the kitchen of a capable chef, one must not shout, mortify or humiliate. In the kitchen of a good chef, problems that arise in the service must be solved with coordination criteria, almost as if it were a tactic, a military strategy. Although there shouldn’t be anything military in a kitchen – contrary to what the French-style “brigade” might lead us to believe. There are no “chiefs” in a kitchen. You have to cook and as Bartolomeo Scappi wrote in 1500, the chef must be capable of many other things.

Natural obbligo tra gli huomini, illustre Signor mio, di giovarli l’un l’altro, a beneficio di questo commun vivere mettre ogn’un le sue fatiche, mostrando a gli altri quel tanto, ch’egli ò con la considerazione delle cose, ò l ’isperienza hà ritrovato….”

Which we could understand, in modern Italian, as follows: A natural obligation among men, my illustrious Lord, is to benefit one and the other, for the benefit of the common (good) life (we should) each put aside our own efforts, showing them only as much as we think is right based on experience.

Bartolomeo Scappi was a Scalco, the Master who cut the meat in front of the guests, assigning each guest the right piece, also based on the importance of the guest. The carver served as what we would today call the kitchen manager. So Bartolomeo Scappi, in his theoretical writings, refers above all to the profession of cook: the cook must be able to put aside his own personal worries and make sure to benefit his guests.

How to teach to be a teacher? In addition to the bureaucratic process – i.e. obtaining the qualification to teach – established with the legislative decree n. 59 of 2017 – there are generic methods and personal characteristics that should coincide. In reality, there are no schools that teach how to teach. Each school, also on the basis of the main field of study, has its own directives. The good director of the school, academy, institute, university establishes meetings of the teachers to discuss the progress of the students and set teaching methods. The ability to teach comes with experience and cannot be improvised. It is necessary – even more than what our Bartolomeo Scappi anticipated – to relate to the students and each of them has different abilities and inclinations. More than a teacher who teaches how to teach, psychologists are needed. The methods developed by the various schools are then applied in each single class and to each single individual. In this post we are talking about cooking teachers, which is notoriously a potentially dangerous environment: boiling water, fires, sharp knives, electrical outlets. A place where more than anywhere else you need to keep calm (which doesn’t mean slowness). Here: perhaps this is what a future cooking teacher needs to be taught: knowing how to keep calm.

I have been teaching for 22 years. In reality, even though my experience began in a professional institute, where cooks and chefs are trained, what I found was not a real desire to work in a kitchen. Figure out doing it with the attitude of humility and dedication described above!

If 20 years ago the inclination was rather to become food photographers and journalists, a few years later the desire was to open a gastronomic blog, now the aim is to become influencers. No one wants to touch food, handle it, observe it, smell it. It’s tiring work, everyone knows that. This is why nobody, or very few, wants to do it anymore. But really! How do you recognize food if you don’t “talk to it”?

Maybe, and I conclude here, it’s not so much about being cooks, chefs, teachers or teaching how to be such. Maybe we need to start teaching how to eat, taste, understand food and love it.

Let’s hope it’s not too late.