Two summers ago, my wife decided to host a party in our backyard for a bunch of her girlfriends. “Cool,” I said. “Can I cook something for you guys?”
Well...yeah. Turns out I wouldn’t be cooking anything. Simone had already reached out to my then-assistant (and now BA assistant editor), Amiel Stanek. In Simone’s eyes, I might have been her food-loving husband, but Amiel was a pro.
Before coming to Bon App, Amiel had cooked at a bar in Philadelphia, deftly running its small kitchen as a one-man show. He had something to offer that I didn’t: experience.
I remember the day he arrived at our apartment. He unloaded a stack of plastic quart containers, each neatly labeled and portioned out with all sorts of dips and dressings and toppings and garnishes. He produced a stack of well-worn dish towels. A pile of sheet trays. A to-do list and a Sharpie. He tied on an apron.
I’m not going to say he was ready for combat, but he was ready for service.
Because if you want to “cook like a pro,” as this issue encourages, it’s just as much about strategy and preparation and presentation as it is about actual cooking.
Go ahead and peek into a professional kitchen. You’ll notice the men and women on the line don’t cook the way the rest of us do—glancing at a recipe, carefully measuring ingredients, sneaking a sip of that Sauvignon Blanc. They assemble. Quickly. Their mise en place is neatly laid out in front of them, meaning every component of a dish is at arm’s reach, ready to be aggressively tossed in a banged-up sauté pan over blazing heat.
Amiel fired up our grill that day, so he didn’t treat us to any line-cook pyrotechnics. Instead, he focused his pregame efforts on what Simone refers to as his “hipster crudités,” a selection of visually stunning farmers’ market vegetables, set out with inventive dips, like a Greek-yogurt riff on ranch dressing and a fuchsia beet tahini.
Or, in the case of the carrots pictured above, accompanied by nothing at all. Amiel picked up the idea for this hors d’oeuvre platter from Martha’s Vineyard chef Chris Fischer, who makes everything look easy. Amiel calls them his Bugs Bunny Carrots—as in, that’s all folks!
You just buy some market-fresh carrots (none of those bagged nubs, thank you very much), scrub ’em clean, leave the tops on, and soak ’em in the fridge in salted water for about an hour. Then you simply set them out atop crushed ice. They make people rethink how wonderful an unadorned, if slightly doctored, vegetable can be. And that crushed ice looks so pro.
As Amiel admits, arranging a tray of Bugs Bunny Carrots isn’t exactly cooking. But neither is so much of what goes on in a restaurant. At the good ones, it’s about being prepared, executing a meal on time, and, most important, making your guests happy. And really, isn’t that what you want to do in your own home?