I’m all about mind-set.  With food, cooking especially, the right mind-set is crucial simply because the wrong mind-set is discouraging, even detrimental to one’s health.  The mind-set we strive to inculcate in our professional students on day one is that of a craftsman, someone completely dedicated and devoted to continuously better his/her skills.  For the home cook, a similar type of mind-set is essential, especially since the average home cook struggles with the discipline of devoting the time to put one’s head down and just cook and try things even if they fail, and try again, take note, and make adjustments to get better.  The quick and easy is the cop-out mind-set.

So how does the average person commit to their kitchen, their knife, pots and pans, range, sink, cutting board, and tools?  There’s an instant rice commercial with this semi-dressed (or semi-nude) girl racing down the stairs to her microwaved rice dish and just as  quickly she scrambles back up the stairs.  What’s interesting about this add is the set:  the kitchen is absolutely beautiful with an island that can host at least a half dozen cooks.  Obviously the message is about time and convenience; the kitchen is a fashion accessory, almost superfluous.  The mind-set propagated here is one that convinces you that time is never on your side when it comes to food, your kitchen a place of toil and off-producing smells.  The ideal mind-set is one where you want to devote time when it comes to food, like one wants to devote time to a hobby, a craft, a passion, a métier, even an indulgence like on-line poker, tweeting, reading a book, yoga, or a sport.  The ideal mind-set treats the kitchen as a studio, a place of chemistry, physics, sculpting, art, experimenting, playing, and doing serious yet fruitful work.  Your kitchen as your studio is your place of ideas, thinking, developing skills and senses, developing instinct and confidence, deciphering food lore and culture, and creating your own repertoire, essentially writing your own cookbook.  Gadgets are now tools, plates are now canvasses, and the dining room is now a gallery – no, more like a classroom, a round table of post-production discussion, of learning.

Food is important.  It deserves a serious workplace.  It’s not the granite countertop, Wolf gas range, or Sub-Zero fridge that makes a kitchen a kitchen:  it’s the cook and cooking.