I hope to retire from my engineering job that I'm just about to start in 2020, and either go back to college or open a restaurant with my younger sister, the business major who loves food. I have a radical approach to cooking--or perhaps just an engineer's approach. See, most cooks just suck, and most chefs just suck. They are not analyical problem solvers, they cannot queue things in their mind in a good way, and so on. So I have often wondered how I could find and hire overachievers in the field, and I finally came up with a method.

Hiring would consist of a test. I'd provide ingredients, and ask the prospective chef to do all these things as quickly as possible:

• make five gallons of soup
• make hollandaise
• cooks 10 racks of ribs
• cut a top sirloin butt into steaks
• make a cheese tray
• make a fruit tray
• clean a griddle
• sharpen a knife
• cook an omelet
• cook a pasta dinner
• cook a fish dinner

Now, this might seem like a lot--but it's a trick! I expect 90% of the applicants would be disqualified instantly. See comments for the reason--but think about it just a little bit first!

The 10% passing "the trick" would then be judged on their quality and speed.

I haven't had much time nor inspiration to post as I wind into my new second career, but I do hold the Rules of Cooking sacred and continue to try to build on them. I would love to get to 100, but sadly I think I might have to settle for 50. Perhaps I can get a book out of it someday!

New rules:

61. Never place a skillet or pot onto a cutting board--you'll melt or stain the board.

62. Wearing gloves protects your hands, and that's reason enough to wear them.

This is from a little booklet I wrote entitled "A Guide for the Professional Cook." This illo is of a manager-in-training (Laura H for those who know her) as she learned to cook. Eventually, she would get down to where she only had about one square foot of working space. (She went on to become a fine, fine manager.)

We are taught in school that 90% is good, or in fact, excellent. But 90%-ers are the standard and the bane of the restaurant industry.

90%-ers:

• By definition, do 90% of their job, leaving 10% for someone else to pick up.
• Include almost everyone in the restaurant industry--managers, servers, bartenders, chefs and cooks, busboys, and dishwashers.
• Don't stock their station well, don't restock it until it's too late, and call for help at every opportunity.
• Force management to schedule more people--four 90%-ers leave 40% of the work they should do undone, forcing another to pick up where they left off.
• Infuriate those who open and close by increasing their workload.
• As you can see, seriously inflate labor cost and deflate morale.
• Generally all think they're 110%-ers.

The opposite of the 90%-er is the 110%-er. They are very rare--I've only known a handful in my whole 33 year career. 110%-ers:

• Act, rather than react.
• Tend to overstock (though not to the point of waste).
• Take ownership of their station and job.
• Tend to infuriate 90%-ers.
• Leave it like they'd like it left them, even though that never happens.
• Tend to work in the background, and only get noticed by other 110%-ers.

I have only worked in two places that defeated the 90%-er. Of course, these were the best two places I worked. Both of these places had the same ingredient--a chef with hire/fire/raise power who worked day-in, night-out with his or her subordinates, who was a 110%-er him/herself, and who showed the 90%-er how he or she was deficient.

As stated above, all 90%-ers think they're 110%-ers--they have to be shown. I've seen this exchange plenty of times:

Chef: "So, are you all set up?"

Cook: "Yes."

Chef: "You sure?"

Cook: "Yes."

Chef begins to check station.

Chef: "You need this, and you need that, and you need the other thing. How could you tell me you were set up?"

Cook looks at the floor.

I had a great boss once--who might just read this. I got this story secondhand about him, but it sounds true enough. He had a cook wanting to leave early, so he went up to check out his station for cleanliness.

Boss: "So, you want to go. Are you all cleaned up?"

Cook: "Yes."

Boss looks around, and says: " Well, that's not clean, and that's not clean, and that's not clean."

Cook looks at the floor.

Boss: "Damn boy, when you take a shit, do you wipe your ass?"

Cook looks at floor.

Unfortunately, most kitchens run under the guidance of 90%-ers, and therefore can never really succeed. They don't exactly fail, but everything is a struggle and everyone is unhappy.

I'm very thankful I spent almost 14 years in two places where the 90%-er could not survive. In truth, it all boils down to one man (with later reinforcement) for me, the first chef I ever worked for who left behind him a legacy of 110%-ers. His name was Seth Simmerman--what a great name for a chef, eh?

Every chef has their kit...this is mine.

I used to think this was all you really needed--and there's some truth to that. This is the bare minimum (and all I carried for about 15 years).