Technique...

When it comes to preparing food, it's all in the technique. I've spent the last 13 years of my life trying to seek out the best techniques in regards to cooking. Between culinary school and the badass chefs I've gotten to work for I've seen a lot. They say there's a million ways to skin a cat, but I have noticed a symmetry in the method of the masters. Which led me to believe that yes, there are a million ways to skin a cat, but only one of those is the right way. So I want you to look at this picture:

I could launch into a 3 hour long debate with myself about how and why I took these 3 simple ingredients: a hamlin orange, turkish un-sulphured apricots and fresh mint, and left them alone... until it was time to eat them. Here's the issue, and this is something that I am consistently confronted with as I try to make my own decisions about how I feel about food: All my training tells me that the orange segments you looked at should have been supremes, meaning that the pithe (the white flesh) should have been removed. Here's a great example of one:

The reason is because it has a slight bitterness to it. It's a valid point. And I have to admit, I take a lot of pride in the fact that I can correctly supreme citrus, because most young cooks out there do a really shitty job at it. It takes finesse and attention to detail. I really enjoy a job well done, and I appreciate the merits of having good knife skills. It makes me sad to find that someone was proud enough of this terrible supreme to publish it online:

But what's best for the citrus, the salad, and more importantly, my health? While standing in my kitchen tonight I had nothing but the ghost of my previous employers poofing onto my shoulder, telling me to cut the damn fruit and do it well. But I am in my kitchen now, and I have to decide what I want to do. And I want the pithe. First of all, that's where most of the nutrients lie. Second of all, I like the slight bitterness. I have matured beyond the palate of a four year old, and I enjoy the slightly bitter flavors of some foods. I also find that it helps balance the acid in citrus. And the apricots are as close to candy as you can get without eating sugar, so a little bitterness isn't going to hurt.

But what about presentation? It does count for a lot in life. My answer to that is that I love the way the whole segment of orange looks. It's complete, whole, un-manipulated for the most part. I even like the fact that one of the mint leaves has a blemish on it. It's nature. It happens.

I think the only way to become great is to learn from the best and then define your own opinion about things. Learn everything you can, and then make an informed decision. It's not that what I learned was wrong. It's just that I'm viewing the same thing from a different set of eyes, that have different priorities, a different viewpoint. The orange is really the tip of the iceberg here. I care way more about nutrition in regards to cooking than any good chef does or probably should. But here's the thing: it's my own idea, and it isn't what everybody else is doing; and as far as I know, those are two essential ingredients when it comes to being a future leader in your field, a trendsetter.