Thomas Keller
Thomas Keller
Thomas Kelleris an American chef, restaurateur, and cookbook writer. He and his landmark Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry in Yountville, California, have won multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation, notably the Best California Chef in 1996, and the Best Chef in America in 1997. The restaurant is a perennial winner in the annual Restaurant Magazine list of the Top 50 Restaurants of the World...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth14 October 1955
CityPendleton, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I have no formal culinary training, right.
We rely on our purveyors to tell us what's available and what's good.
We go through our careers and things happen to us. Those experiences made me what I am.
The law of diminishing returns is something I really believe in.
They know what my standards are. They know what I need and how to get it to me, and they know how to communicate with me if for some reason they can't get it.
I think that's the important thing - being aware of that inspiration and being able to interpret it into something that's meaningful for you.
And don't forget music - music in the kitchen is an essential ingredient!
You have to be driven. You have to be focused. You have to be aware.
Repetition is the mother of perfection. If there is true perfection, it's about doing something over and over again. I truly think that if somebody does a recipe they've never done before and gets it right, they're probably more lucky than they are talented.
Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention.
A cookbook must have recipes, but it shouldn't be a blueprint. It should be more inspirational; it should be a guide.
You don't know when inspiration is going to come. But you have to be aware of what's going on around you, so that at any moment, when inspiration happens, you're ready for it and you interpret it.
For me, thats one of the important things about cooking. What was good enough yesterday may not be good enough today.
It's not about perfection; it's about the joy of striving.