Posted: July 16th, 2010 | Filed under: - Usable Tools - | Tags: food | No Comments »
I’ve just finished reading “Medium Raw” by Anthony Bourdain, the sequel to “Kitchen Confidential”. It’s an excellent read if you love food and think it’s important. There’s a passage I thought worth sharing in its entirety; its his (and now my) view on the basic techniques that everyone should master. If you don’t know how to do these things, or you a bit rusty, I’ve added some good links for each technique. Enjoy the book and enjoy yourself in the kitchen.
“What specific tasks should every young man and woman know how to perform in order to feel complete?
What simple preparations, done well, should be particularly admired, skills seen as setting one apart as an unusually well-rounded, deceptively deep, and interesting individual?
In a shiny, happy, perfect world of the future, what should man, woman, and teenager know how to do?
They should know how to chop an onion. Basic knife skills should be a must. Without that, we are nothing, castaways with a can – but no can-opener. Useless. Everything begins with some baseline with a sharp-bladed object, enough familiarity with such a thing to get the job done without injury. So, basic knife handling, sharpening, and maintenance, along with rudimentary but effective dicing, mincing, and slicing. Nothing too serious. Just enough facility with a knife to be on par with any Sicilian grandmother.
Everyone should be able to make an omelette. Egg cookery is as good a beginning as any, as it’s the first meal of the day, and because the process of learning to make an omelette is, I believe, not just a technique but a builder of character. One learns, necessarily, to be gentle when acquiring omelette skills: a certain measure of sensitivity is needed to discern what’s going on in your pan – and what to do about it.
I have long believed that it is only right and appropriate that before one sleeps with someone, one should be able – if called upon to do so – to make them a proper omelette in the morning. Surely that kind of civility and selflessness would be both good manners and good for the world. Perhaps omelette skills should be learned at the same time you learn to fuck. Perhaps there should be an unspoken agreement that in the event of the loss of virginity, the more experienced of the partners should, afterward, make the other an omelette – passing along the skill at an important and presumably memorable moment.
Everyone should be able to roast a chicken. And they should be able to do it well.
Given the current woeful state of backyard grilling, a priority should be assigned to instructing people on the correct way to grill and rest a steak. We have, as a nation, suffered the tyranny of inept steak cookery for far too long. There’s no reason that generation after generation of families should continue to pass along a tradition of massacring perfectly good meat in their kitchens and backyards.
Cooking vegetables to a desired doneness is easy enough and reasonable to expect of any citizen of voting age.
A standard vinaigrette is something that anyone can and should be able to do.
The ability to shop for fresh produce and have at least some sense of what’s in season, to tell whether or not something is ripe or rotten might be acquired at the same time as one’s driving licence.
How to recognise a fish that’s fresh and how to clean and fillet it would seem a no-brainer as a basic survival skill in an ever more uncertain world.
Steaming a lobster or a crab – or a pot of mussels or clams – is something a fairly bright chimp could do without difficulty, so there’s no reason we all can’t.
Every citizen should know how to throw a piece of meat in the oven with the expectation that they might roast it to somewhere in the neighbourhood of desired doneness – and without a thermometer.
One should be able to roast and mash potatoes. And make rice – both steamed and the only slightly more difficult pilaf method.
The fundamentals of braising would serve all who learn them well – as simply learning how to make beef bourguignon opens the door to countless other preparations.
What to do with bones (namely, make stock) and how to make a few soups – as a means of making efficient use of leftovers – is a lesson in frugality many will very possibly to learn at some point in their lives. It would seem wise to learn earlier rather than later.
Everyone should be encouraged at every turn to develop their own modest yet unique repertoire – to find a few dishes they love and practice at preparing them until they are proud of the result. To either respect in this way their own past – or express through cooking their dreams for the future. Every citizen would thus have their own speciality.
Why can we not do this? There is no reason in the world.
Let us then go forward. With vigour.”
Buy “Medium Raw” by Anthony Bourdain; it’s a great read.
Techniques
Basic knife skills
How to make an omlette
How to grill a steak
How to roast a chicken
How to make a vinaigrette
What’s in season
How to fillet a fish
How to steam a crab
How to roast meat
How to roast potatoes
How to make mash
How to cook rice
How to braise
How to make stock
Posted: October 20th, 2009 | Filed under: - Usable Tools - | Tags: personal development | 1 Comment »
Just do something. ANYTHING. Action is usually the ultimate solution to any dilemma. It makes things happen and it makes you feel better because you are taking ownership of the situation and making progress to move it on.
“But my situation is unique,” I hear you say “there’s just this particular set of circumstances that mean I can’t get on to it until…”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Repeat after me – “Procrastination is unsexy, doesn’t make my life or the lives of the people around me any better, and means that I never quite live up to my potential.”
You do know what you need to do in a situation most of the time, you do have a hunch, or a rough idea of the action you need to take. So take action on this hunch or rough idea and do what feels to be right.
- Find an hour today that you can totally dedicate to the situation you want to address and take some action – any action – to move it on.
- At the end of that hour write down your next steps and commit to a time to have achieved them by.
You mean you can’t find an hour; are you seriously telling yourself it’s not that important?
It really is that simple.
And the best bit about this exercise?
- Reward yourself at the end of the day with whatever floats your boat.
You deserve it because you made something happen you action hero you.
Posted: October 12th, 2009 | Filed under: - Usable Tools - | Tags: personal development | No Comments »
I came across the book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity” by David Allen as a summary on Wikisummaries. So I suppose I am being super-productive by giving you the key concepts here.
Central to becoming more productive is the idea that you need to clear your head of all the “to do” things that you are trying to remember or prioritise and that are getting in the way of actually doing stuff. The comparison is drawn with RAM, the active memory of a computer. Overload the “RAM” and you’ll run sluggishly.
Another key idea is that of visualising the outcomes you want to achieve. Time and time again I have seen the linkage between a clear vision of what you want to achieve and your ability to make it happen; this “Law of Attraction” I’ll cover at a later date.
There are 5 stages of mastering your own productivity: collection, processing, organising, reviewing and doing.
1. COLLECT
Get it all down on paper in as few categories as possible.
2. PROCESS
The flowchart below neatly summarises how best to process. I particularly like Allen’s golden rule that if it will take less than 2 minutes to do, do it now; more than that you need to schedule it in.
3. ORGANISE
There are only 7 ways you really need to organise yourself:
1. Projects list
2. Project support material
3. Calendared actions and information
4. Next actions lists
5. Waiting for list
6. Reference material
7. Someday/maybe list
4. REVIEW
Go through your lists at least once a week.
5. DO
There are 3 ways to decide what to do at any point in time
Choosing actions in the moment – consider the context, time available, energy available, and priorities.
Evaluating daily work – in your day you will do 3 things: predefined work, work as it shows up, define your work. Knowing the time to do work as it shows up in preference to what you intended to do can give you an edge
Reviewing your own work – imagine you are on a plane and use these criteria:
50,000 + feet: Life
40,000 feet: Three- to five-year visions
30,000 feet: One-to two-year goals
20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility
10,000 feet: Current projects
Runway: Current actions
Although priorities are driven from the highest altitude, in order to achieve what you want you should take off from the runway and climb. However in deciding what to do in any given moment the most compelling way to choose is to trust your intuition.
This flowchart neatly summarises the 5 stage action process.
In his book Allen says that mastering your time enables you to live in the present moment. Anything that’s about getting more out of now gets my vote. What do you think?
Posted: September 30th, 2009 | Filed under: - Usable Tools - | Tags: social media | No Comments »
This morning I attended an interesting seminar hosted by the Word Of Mouth UK Association in which The Guardian shared some research they have recently conducted on what makes one person more influential than another.
You can find out more by visiting their website (shame about the cheesy music) and I have put the flyer that was handed out at the bottom of this post.
They introduced 4 concepts which I will share here:
- Weak Ties
- Bridging Capital
- Status Bargain
- ACTIVE – measurable characteristics of influencers
WEAK TIES
Having an abundance of Weak Ties gives an individual access to new sources of information and the ability to spread that information.
Weak Ties are either Social Glue or Social Oil:
Social Glue
- Strong ties: close family and friends
Social Oil
- Weak ties: colleague, friend of a friend, extended family, person met through hobby activity or online
Strong ties help you get by – they provide you with emotional support.
Weak ties help you get on – they give you the power of amplification through the size of your networks and cross-network sharing.
BRIDGING CAPITAL
Bridging Capital enables influencers to package this information in a away that makes it easier for other people to take it on board.
It is a combination of Social and Cultural Capital:
Social Capital
- size & diversity of your network
- ability to spread messages
Cultural Capital
- accumulated knowledge
- ability to influence others
The ability to spread a variety of information in a variety of contextual settings is vital. If all you do is bang on about fishing wherever you are, you will soon get ignored.
STATUS BARGAIN
Individuals will modify their views to take on the opinions of others; the bargain is that they gain enhanced status by being more knowledgeable. Influencers feed this.
We trust the opinions of people we know who make Status Bargains.
ACTIVE – measurable characteristics of influencers
Evident in a higher incidence amongst influential people are a set of shared characteristics:
- Ahead in Adoption
- Connected
- Traveller
- Information-Hungry
- Vocal
- Exposed to Media
Whilst none of this is really new thinking, what is interesting is that there is data you can play with – the Guardian’s Word of Mouth database – with results fused to TGI, it enables agencies and brands to identify and understand key players active in word of mouth.
Check out – http://www.guardian.co.uk/adinfo/wom/ – and share any of your insights and comments on this.
Posted: July 17th, 2009 | Filed under: - Usable Tools - | Tags: personal development | No Comments »
The first two steps in changing your reality to the reality you want it to be are:
- Facing up to that reality, no matter how unpleasant it may be
- Being clear about your responsibility in creating it
Do this and you will have a firm foundation to change your world.
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