Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

'Haven't seen him in years,' I replied, separating myself deftly from my one-time mentor as fast as I could. 'Ha ha . .

Rested and ready after a day off, the chef is going to put his best foot forward on Tuesday; he's got his best-quality product coming in and he's had a day or two to think of creative things to do with it. He wants you to be happy on Tuesday night.

stock items — herb oils, crushed spices, chiffonaded parsley, pureed starches and veggies —

Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is invaluable. As is Nicolas Freleng's The Kitchen, David Blum's Flash in the Pan, the Batterberrys' fine account of American restaurant history, On the Town in New York, and Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel. Read the old masters: Escoffier, Bocuse et al as well as the Young Turks: Keller, Marco-Pierre

with them or finding them entertaining. This business grows assholes: it's our principal export. I'm an asshole. You should probably be an asshole too.

If you need instruction on how to handle a knife without lopping off a finger, I recommend Jacques Pepin's La Technique.

Like a pro, you should use the tip of the knife for the small stuff, and the area nearer the heel for the larger.

Aspirins are called crunchies because we eat them like candy.

fomenting

almost everybody in the meat business is funny — just as almost everyone in the fish business is not.