49.2021 Edition

What's up Reader?

Linked below in this newsletter is a great piece from friend of the channel, Ray Delucci who has had a fantastic run writing for Plate Magazine lately.

He asked me to contribute to the piece, and I was excited to say yes. However, the restriction was that it could only be 150 words.

I'm (for better or for worse) incredibly introspective and look back at experiences I've had with a ton of curiosity because I'm a teacher now. My job is to extract lessons and share them with you folks so that you can progress your careers. So it's hard for me to just pick ONE lesson out of an early mistake of mine.

Read Ray's whole piece so that you can get other stories too (linked below), but I wanted to share my full, unedited post here, in case it helps provide more context or ends up being an entertaining read for you. Enjoy 👇

I’ve never told this story publicly so here it goes:

I made a mistake in 2010 as an extern at Per Se in New York City. It happened with morel mushrooms, and the lessons I learned from that moment stuck with me for eight more years in restaurants.

I was instructed to wash the dirt and forest debris out of 9-10 pounds of foraged morels for a mushroom side dish meant for large Private Dining Room event that night. A sous chef taught me to use fresh water to wash them five or six times so I was sure that every last piece of grit was out of them.

But I was young and wanted to prove myself. After only 4 rounds of washing, I picked a reasonably clean looking mushroom, gave that to my sous chef to try as a showing of the entire batch. He confirmed it tasted clean, and to slice them for the dish they were meant for.

Five hours later, service was about to start for that private dining room event. I was called into the kitchen and swiftly handed a morel mushroom to taste. My stomach knotted up as grit twinged between my teeth.

I stood over the hotel pan of tediously prepped, mixed mushrooms, and used tweezers to pick out every single piece of morels. In the hour and a half that took, I felt embarrassed and defeated.

Looking back now, here are the lessons:

Be proud of your contribution - I was one small element of that entire dinner. A component, in a dish, as a side, to a presentation. And even though it’s easy to feel like you don’t matter, my mistake actually contributed to a negative outcome for the entire dinner service.

Don’t hide unwanted things in the fog - I didn’t want to show off the hundreds of mushrooms that might not be squeaky clean, so I hid them and showed off a clean one. This comes from author Jordan Peterson but I believe in the concept so much that I teach it in my cohort-based course, The Demi Skills. He shares in his initial writings that you’ll trip on the things that you hide, and that certainly happened to me.

Accuracy first, speed later - How many times do we rush things because we’re frustrated that we aren’t as fast as someone else? By nature, tedious kitchen tasks are slow and laborious, and accepting that fact makes prep something that you can just sink into. I wanted to be zippy and crush the project, not understanding that I was entrusted with a very important job that was crucial to get right. I prefer to teach this principle, because I find it’s the more productive side of “if you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?”

Highlights from the week to share 💥

To Read 📚

​About that time at Per Se where I royally screwed up - The abbreviated piece from the monologue above, plus other people's stories!

​Ideas in Food - An oldie but a goodie. I flipped through a few pages of this as I was re-organizing my book shelf this week and it reminded me how solid Aki and Alex's work is.

To Binge 📺

​Anna and I are HOOKED on Foundation on AppleTV+ - Friends of ours have been suggesting it for ages. It's an amazing mix of Game of Thrones "world" complexity with plenty of "scene switching" to keep things exciting, mixed with the sci-fi and drama from The Expanse. We just finished the first season (10 episodes).

​The stoic idea that will make you unstoppable - No surprise to long-time readers that I'm sharing a Stoicism video here, but this is from a creator you might not be familiar with. A quote that I think makes this worth your time: "There's almost no utility to being rattled about situations outside of your control."

To Peep 👀

​A Reel of me at a Private Chef gig - My friend Conner and his wife hired me for a small Friendsgiving and he made a reel about it!

​Town Cutler's Holiday Sale is STILL on - with 20% off knife sets and 10-15% off individual tools, it's a pretty solid time to snag and support one of my favorite makers. Not affiliated, just great prices for great gear. PS: if you've been looking for one of their offsets, as of sending this there are still a few Ergo grip ones!!

ICYMI

​Culinary Student looking to upgrade your knife? - I shared an unboxing of the Korin Royal Blue Mahogany line and I'd love your questions because this knife is getting a full review on the channel soon.

​New Episode with Vincent went live this week - - We talk all about knife recommendations for different stages in your career and I'd love to have you give it a listen & share

Current experiment I'm running 🧪

I already know the (disappointing) results of this one so I'll cut to the chase with this week's experiment: I suck at exercising in the afternoon.

I tried it this week because we've had some construction work happening at our place, and I wanted to be here during the morning in case I was needed. It disrupted my typical routine of going to the gym early and I just wasn't willing to do the 5am wake up all week.

Procrastination kicked in, other priorities superseded the trip to the gym, and the 1-2 days this week that I tried an afternoon work out, I just felt sluggish and wasn't performing at a satisfactory level. It doesn't mean I'll never be an afternoon-exerciser; it just means I'll be taking this experiment into context the next time that I know my mornings start to get infringed on.

Update on a previous experiment: We've crossed 100 subscribers on the new podcast YouTube Channel! 🎉 I'm enjoying a huge peace of mind from the transition, and it wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

Quote I'm Pondering 🤔

If you got value from me this week, I'd appreciate...

...a share of this newsletter! Links are below and I'd love to provide some value to a friend or colleague you think this would be perfect for.

👊Justin

Throwback ⏳

​Surprise throwback video - Let's try something new this week, shall we? I'm gonna share some old videos from the channel because we're coming up on almost 5 years of creating content online. Expect a throwback video at the bottom of the next few newsletters, and it'll be a surprise with what you might find 😉

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