Understanding in a Veloute

This last weekend I went to a well done cooking class. It was an awesome experience. I learned a lot about the concepts surrounding the creation of food. My problem has always been dancing outside of the recipe and experimenting with new combinations. I never felt that I had any kind of road map. That’s beginning to change.

I made my take on a Veloute sauce for the meal I had tonight and I added some cheap white wine as a flavor enhancer. The sauce apparently tasted good to others, but I was displeased as the cheap wine flavor came through in the sauce. It was sort of tacky.

And as I stirred and stirred and got the sauce to taste I thought about the tie in between cooking and life. (Of course I over analyze, it’s what I do) In cooking regardless of how good of a chef you are; you are limited by what you put into it. If your ingredients suck then your food will suck. To have a great dish you need good ingredients. You also need talent. I’m sure a better chef could have made a much better dish, but even still if he used the white wine the cheap flavor would be there. Life is sort of the same way. We get results based on both effort and talent. Some of us are more talented then others. With practice that talent can develop, but our ingredients or effort will always limit our results. If our effort sucks then the end product will suck.

At my client there have been a lot of changes and thus opportunities. I have the option now of increasing my responsibility dramatically. I want this opportunity, but I need to improve in a big way. I have the talent, but I have to put in the effort. I haven’t at times in the past and my work hasn’t been as good. Even though I have the talent I was limiting my product by not putting forth my best effort. I used bad ingredients and got bad results.

I’m working very hard right now because I know that I can’t achieve excellent results with mediocre effort. I can have the talent, but I need the ingredients to make a great dish. Mediocrity is a waste of everyone’s time.