Think like a Chef: Keep it Simple

BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT! We harvested our first tomato today, an organic Burbank variety grown in our window box. Realize I'm not the first person ever to grow produce in New York City, but this was our first -- my 10-year-old son and I started our tiny garden in the Spring. We couldn't be more thrilled.

Before.

Now, just days before he leaves for summer camp (and on the very day he got the cast off his arm) we brought our debut tomato in, sliced it, and ate it with basil (also from the garden) olive oil (Greek lately, because it seems like their economy could use the boost) and Maldon salt. "It tasted," said my son thoughtfully, "like... a tomato."

After.

Because he's going to be away for the next two weeks, I've promised to keep whatever ripens during his absence in the form of tomato sauce. But it is hard to beat a great fresh-cut tomato, eaten with little fuss.

Here's what Thomas Keller had to say on the topic, when I spoke with him for my book: "The best ingredients you can get will result in the best food you can cook—as long as you don't screw them up." He likes a salad of tomato, salt, olive oil, plus a good vinegar. "It's a really simple thing and you go, 'My god, that's just incredible!' Four components, but done right, when the tomatoes are amazing, it's compelling and impressive."  It's a good lesson: Buy (or grow!) the best you can, don't screw it up.

Our little tomato was gone in a flash. Fortunately, there are some more out there starting to blush, including a tiny silver fir tree tomato. Stay tuned.

Think like a Chef: Stocking your menu items

The first (and to my mind perhaps the most important) lesson in Smart Chefs is to EAT WHAT YOU LOVE. If that seems an obvious point -- don't we all eat the foods we love? -- take a look in your refrigerator and cabinets and see if  most or many of the foods you really love and want in your diet on a regular basis are on-hand.  If you want to eat great food, you have to have great ingredients available. Forget about ever acquiring the cooking skills of your favorite chef -- you probably won't and you don't need to. But think about how they shop. It helps to imagine your home kitchen a bit like a restaurant, not in terms of preparing fancy meals, but rather in stocking your basics. Rick Bayless: chef, yogi, healthy eater, Mexican food savant

During our interview for the book, the wonderful Chicago chef Rick Bayless told me, "What I want to eat is the stuff that is going to keep me the size I am." Me too. So that means this week I'm probably going to eat at least one meal that includes salmon, another with beans (probably a salad since it's warm right now), a few that include salad or spinach and I'm going to want Greek yogurt and fruit most mornings, and I'll be grumpy if I can't have it. 

In the extremely exclusive restaurant that is my apartment dining room, these are the usuals.  If I don't have the components, I can't make the dish (even if the "dish" is just bananas in yogurt). You know how you feel when you go to a real restaurant and they have 86'ed your favorite item? Don't do that to yourself. Know the foods you love and keep them around.