Chef Michael Kitts, consultant and former Culinary Art Director of The Emirates Academy, is my admired teacher until today. He won over 40 gold medals with his phenomenal cooking, one of them from the British Royal Family. It was Prince Philip who stuck it on his chest.
When I met him first, in my very first culinary class, he taught us 14 ways to slice a lemon. Imagine 50 shades of grey… only better. I learned that every slice tasted different. Cheese, meat, bread, spices: shape or cut make a difference. In later years, I shoul learn that this also holds true in baking.
There is no recipe for me without his light shining through. There is no major event without me calling him. My victories count double with his "I am proud of you" because he wouldn't say it unless he means it.
WHY KITCHEN CHEFS ARE NOTORIOUSLY CHALLENGING
He made all of the guys in our culinary classes cry... every time, in every lecture. I don't know until today how I escaped those moments when his voice rose and his head turned red. Chefs are notorious for their rough attitude, for their impatience, for their unforgiving demand for perfection. You won't know the extent unless you're working in a high class professional kitchen. He made us search, run, reach, grab ingredients we had never heard of before, boys even less than girls. He taught them high speed cutting and there was blood.
In real cooking, seconds matter. And for a true kitchen chef, ingredients are the holy grail. Every meal is a kind of prayer. While you are working under maximum time pressure, you cannot skip a beat and you need zen like attention to detail. That kind of frenzy totally reflects my character.
Impatience is totally justified.
I was captured on day 1. Not seeing, sensing, smelling or, even worse, daydreaming instead is no option whatsoever if you ever want to earn merits! Few of the worlds' chefs reach to the top. Many of them die early. Their brain is all about food and what you can make out of it and how it is the crib of human existence. For them, it's a question of life or death. You can cook what's on your kitchen table into a full experience of life itself… or you can cook it to death. The difference happens on a razor's edge. If you choose that type of career be aware that (your) life is at stake. In the beautiful movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi you learn that Jiro let his son boil rice for 20 years. Only rice.
For the rest of my life, I will be encompassed by the standards of the man who I am allowed to call Mick now. He has set them in my professional life like no one else. Without him, my baking adventure would produce just another gluten free range nobody would eat if they didn't have to. But with his guidance it turned into a beautiful encounter of culinary art.
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