I’ve met some incredible home and professional chefs in my life. What unifies them is their knowledge and understanding of flavors and textures in a dish and the ability to apply the correct cooking technique to transform those ingredients into something delicious. This means that most great home cooks possess the foundation to become great professional chefs.
I like to tell people that where I’m different from you as a cook is that I can cook for 300 or even 3000 people, and they’re all going to enjoy the same experience. It’s a skill that can be taught, but like most skills, it takes a bit of time and commitment to become proficient in, and it is quite different from cooking at home, even for a big group of friends.
The tools that I use are also different as well. Bigger, more powerful, and often more advanced than is available for most home cooks, you can use the same resources we use for inspiration. Professional cookbooks can be very different from what you may be used to from the cooks on television or the local church group, but they offer great tips and are written in culinary language that offers concise and exact details, which I greatly prefer vs. a “for home” recipe. When I was a culinary student, I approached many of my faculty with this question: When you are in the field, and you need inspiration, what are your go-to sources, and which books would you recommend every working chef have on their shelf? I was offered hundreds of responses, but here are the ten most popular in no particular order:
1. Le Repertoire de La Cuisine: A Guide to Fine Foods by Louis Saulnier
2. La Patisserie de Pierre Hermé by Pierre Hermé
3. Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen
4. Larousse Gastronomique by Prosper Montagne and Larousse Gastronomique
5. Entremets Petits Gâteaux Fusion by Jean-Michel Perruchon
6. Escoffier: Le Guide Culinaire by Georges Auguste Escoffier
7. Modern Gastronomy: A to Z by Ferran Adria
8. Lenotre’s Desserts and Pastries by Gaston Lenotre
9. The Essential Mosimann by Anton Mosimann
10. Le Bernardin Cookbook: Four-Star Simplicity by Eric Ripert and Maguy LeCoze
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the sources you should possess, but it is a solid foundation for any professional chef’s library. You can easily find new copies of all these titles online, many of which you can get used for a few dollars. Hopefully, you’ll give one a try. I’d recommend Escoffier; it provides excellent history and details on how to operate a professional kitchen and has some exciting techniques.
Let me know what you think!
Chef Matt
