This is the great challenge: to maintain passion for the everyday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane.
Thomas KellerRead
When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Cooking is about bringing happiness, not about achieving perfection in food.
This quote emphasizes that the essence of cooking lies not in creating perfect dishes but in the joy and satisfaction that food brings to people. By recognizing that perfection in food is an unattainable ideal, chefs can focus on the true purpose of their craft: enhancing the happiness of those who enjoy their meals.
Themes
CookingHappinessPerfectionFoodJoy
In practice
Example use cases
In a cooking class, to inspire students about the joy of cooking.
More from Thomas Keller
All quotes →Once you understand the foundations of cooking - whatever kind you like, whether it's French or Italian or Japanese - you really don't need a cookbook anymore.
Thomas KellerRead
It wasn't about mechanics; it was about a feeling, wanting to give someone something, which in turn was really gratifying. That really resonated for me.
Thomas KellerRead
I think that you’ve got to make something that pleases you and hope that other people feel the same way.
Thomas KellerRead
I hope the cooks who are working for me now are getting that kind of experience so they can use what they're learning now as a foundation for a great career.
Thomas KellerRead
Its not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it's about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then u'll be a great cook.
Thomas KellerRead
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It's still possible to savor the remarkable foods that millennia of human ingenuity have teased from milk. A sip of milk itself or a scoop of ice cream can be a Proustian draft of youth's innocence and energy and possibility, while a morsel of fine cheese is a rich meditation on maturity, the fulfillment of possibility, the way of all flesh.
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Another thing cooking is, or can be, is a way to honor the things we're eating, the animals and plants and fungi that have been sacrificed to gratify our needs and desires, as well as the places and the people that produced them. Cooks have their ways of saying grace too... Cooking something thoughtfully is a way to celebrate both that species and our relation to it.
Michael PollanRead