DutchClick

A Dutch television programme is about a Dutch chef and owner of several restaurants (Herman den Blijker – Le Cordon Blue – 1982) who is trying to find a chef to run his newest restaurant in Amsterdam.

We’ve had the Jamie Oliver programs about non-cooks becoming cooks, programs about chefs who try to get restaurants out of their self caused misery.
Now people running restaurants and cooks who have been working in restaurants for ages are tested to become the chef in this new restaurant of Den Blijker.

Every episode I get shocked more and more. The hobby cooks (one woman!) who take part in the test lack basic knowledge and therefore have difficult times. That is something I understand. It is just a matter of education.
But the guys that are in professional kitchens for 10 to 20 years now aren’t doing much better or maybe even worse.
They don’t recognize the different sorts of meat, can’t make fresh mayonnaise or a choux pastry, can’t open an oister properly.
As a veggie it isn’t about the sort of food, but just the fact that these cooks and chefs don’t know enough of the food they are preparing. “Most of the time we get these things ready-to-use from the supplier” is their answer.
They just have basic knowledge about food, their main product!

I thought about sending them back to school, but that is not a good solution.

Get them out of the kitchen and let them become bus drivers!!!