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MICHAEL RUHLMAN

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By JEFF HOUCK, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 24, 2007

Cleveland author Michael Ruhlman has written with some of the world's best chefs. He wrote 'The French Laundry Cookbook' with Thomas Keller and 'A Return to Cooking' with Eric Ripert. He went to culinary school as part of writing a definitive trilogy of books about the making of chefs and about how culinary celebrity is affecting food culture. His latest book, 'The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen' (Scribner, $24), is intended to be a manual for anyone who wants to learn the culinary basics.

But what really lights him up? Chicken Caesar salad. He despises the dish.

'Does anyone know who first put cooked chicken breast on a Caesar salad and called it a chicken Caesar? I wish I did,' he wrote in August on his food blog at Ruhlman.com.

To him, the dish 'represents an embrace of the misinformed and unimaginative American diner, who for better or worse continues to shape our menus.'

'I'll have a salad, the reasoning goes, because it's healthy (let's disregard what it's slathered with), and I'm hungry, so let's pile on some chicken breast, the skim milk of the protein world. I'm not saying it's not healthy, that I don't like salad or that I think it would only be laudable were it a deep-fried pork belly Caesar (though I'd definitely give it a go if I ever saw that at a Cheesecake Factory - we could batter it and call it the Chicken Fried Pork Belly Caesar!).

'All I'm asking is for the corporate bodies that determine the menus of our mass-market sit-down restaurants to consider a few more options beyond the mediocre chicken Caesar,' Ruhlman writes. 'Put a little imagination into it!'

If that sounds too judgmental, consider that he's serving as a judge on the Food Network series 'The Next Iron Chef.'

He spoke recently from his home in Cleveland about what makes chefs different from the rest of us:

Q: What did you learn by going to culinary school that surprised you or was a revelation to you about the process of becoming a chef?

A: There were many revelations along the way, but the big one was that being a chef changes who you are. In order to be a good chef, you have to change who you are and how you live and how you think. That's a hard thing to convey to people, but chefs live by different rules than most of the rest of the world. That's why chefs seem crazy to the outside world. They sort of bring their chef expectations to the outside world, and they seem a little bit nutty in their demands for timeliness and efficiency, organization and commitment and taking responsibility for your actions. If a chef ever worked as a contractor works, the kitchen just wouldn't operate. You couldn't eat there.

To be a chef is to really adopt a frame of mind.

Q: How good did your knife skills get?

A: I've got good knife skills. I've got very good knife skills. But you can lose them if you don't use them.

Q: It's like learning music.

A: Absolutely.

Q: 'The Elements of Cooking' was modeled on Strunk and White's guide to writing, 'The Elements of Style.' What did you try to accomplish with this book?

A: Basically, what I wanted to write was the book I needed to have when I was entering culinary school, all these things that people seemed to take for granted that I didn't know. What exactly does blanched mean? People are using it in all kinds of different ways. I'm confused.

We've got all these different kinds of marinades. I'm hearing all this conflicting information. Do they really work? If so, why? I wanted to answer some of those questions. I wanted to set down what I thought were the most important facts about cooking, which are the fundamentals of cooking. In eight short essays in the front, I write about the basics: how to use salt, how to apply heat. What tools do you really need? That kind of thing.

Q: When I was going through the book, I was thinking back to 2000, when Dennis Miller was on 'Monday Night Football.' He would throw out these arcane references, and the next day, Encyclopædia Britannica would do 'The Annotated Dennis Miller,' where they would explain what the hell he was just saying the night before.

A: [laughs]

Q: I have to tell you that I think a book like yours is essential. I watch shows like yours or 'Top Chef,' and everything is great until they go to describe the dish. Invariably, they do it at 1,000 mph, and they use technical terms. I wind up being the person in the room who has to be the United Nations interpreter while Ahmadinejad is up at the podium. I have to explain the basic, rudimentary knowledge of what they're saying. Even I only catch part of it.

A: Sure.

Q: Do chefs use terminology as a badge of honor? Do they like the terminology they use? Do they do it to sound cooler?

A: No. Like any work-related vernacular, it's done to make the work more efficient. For very specialized tasks, we need our own language for that. Then, once we have that language, it often gets abbreviated. So that's how these things come about.

We'd say aromats instead of aromatic vegetables. We'd say aromatic vegetables rather than thyme and onion and things other than mirepoix. We say mirepoix because it's easier than saying carrots, onions and celery. It's really just a shorthand that has developed over time in this trade.

I think the American public is ready, finally, for what they've always needed, which is a great understanding of the fundamentals of cooking. Once you have the fundamentals, you can do anything. You can go anywhere.

Q: You talk about the basics, and you list five things that are absolutely vital for chefs to have: chef's knife; large cutting board; large saute pan; flat-edge wood spoon; large, nonreactive heatproof bowl. And if you take any one of these things away, you are all but out of commission as a cook.

A: Basically, I wanted to reduce it down to the bare essentials. I can cook anything given those five items. I can't make waffles, say, but I could make a batter or breakfast preparation. I could do pancakes, certainly. I could bake bread in the bowl. I could do anything.

You know, this is a time when we have this kitchen tool fetish. People fill up their kitchens with countless ridiculous gadgets and fetish items, like really expensive knives and beautiful copper pans and the most expensive 48-inch-wide range and things like that. It's just not necessary.

Q: As the culinary world has become sort of a lifestyle, people use it as just another trophy.

A: Yeah. I don't get it. And I don't like it because it has nothing to do with cooking.

Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at (813) 259-7324 and jhouck@tampatrib .com. Keyword: Stew, to listen to the rest of this interview at Jeff Houck's blog.

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