Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

We saute in a mixture of butter and oil for that nice brown, caramelized color,

Some of the best cuisine in the world — whole roasted fish, Tuscan-style, for instance — is a matter of three or four ingredients. Just make sure they're good ingredients, fresh ingredients, and then garnish them. How hard is that?

There are a lot of ways to make demi-glace, but I recommend you simply take your already reduced meat stock, add some red wine, toss in some shallots and fresh thyme and a bay leaf and peppercorns, and slowly, slowly simmer it and reduce it again until it coats a spoon.

rouille — that's a garlic pepper mayonnaise garnish, for the newbies.

I can break down line cooks into three subgroups. You've got your Artists: the annoying, high-maintenance minority.

chicanery.

the fact that it resembles what it is: a familiar, worn, old-school brasserie of the Parisian model.

A cook might ask for an all-day, a total number of a particular item both ordered and fired, with temperatures, meaning degrees of doneness.

You need, for God's sake, a decent chefs knife.