Work Clean by Dan Charnas Page B

you were willing to give in on one thing, the others would soon follow.
    Ruhlman wrote his next book with the man some have called the greatest chef in the world, Thomas Keller. During their time together at The French Laundry in California, Ruhlman saw the concepts of mise-en-place played out to their ultimate manifestation with Keller and his crew. All were there because they wanted to become great chefs themselves (and quite a few of them, like Grant Achatz, have indeed done that).
    Ruhlman asked Keller:
What did it take to become great?
    â€œMake sure that your station is clean,” Keller said.
    Ruhlman paused, thrown off by the simplicity of the statement. “And?”
    â€œAnd everything that follows from that,” Keller replied.
    For Thomas Keller, working clean isn’t just about cleanliness, or order, or minimalism. It is about practicing values.
What are your standards? What habits make you successful? How strongly are you willing to hold on to your regimen of good habits in a world that will tempt you to ditch them, often without any immediate consequence? How much are you willing to keep your own focus despite the chaos around you?
    This is what it means to work clean.
    And with this understanding we examine the elements of mise-en-place that can apply anywhere: a set of values, and a group of behaviors that flow from them.
THE THREE VALUES OF MISE-EN-PLACE
    Mise-en-place comprises three central values: preparation, process, and presence. When practiced by great chefs, these three mundane words become profound. They have formed the core of the conscious chef’s work since the time of the tenzo, and they still drive the lives of contemporary chefs. The by-product of these values may indeed be wealth or productivity, but the true goal is excellence.
Preparation
    Chefs commit to a life where preparation is central, not an add-on or an afterthought. To become a chef is to accept the fact that you will always have to think ahead, and to be a chef means that thinking and preparation are as integral to the job as cooking. For the chef, cooking comes second. Cooking can’t happen without prep coming first.
    The fundamental respect of preparation results in a few things: Chefs and cooks expect to do it, and thus, in many cases, they welcome and enjoy it. Their prep will be thorough. They will prep “before” things rather than “during,” so it won’t be rushed. And that preparation happens all the time, in ways small and large.
    Though outside the kitchen we lack many of the imperatives that make preparation and planning crucial—dinner service starts at 6:00 p.m. and you can’t “push it back” if you’re not ready—we can export the value and gain its benefits: a life where we have availed ourselves of every resource and advantage and have the satisfaction of having done all we can to set ourselves up for success.
    Embracing preparation also means jettisoning the notion that prep work is somehow menial, beneath us. No chef is above its rigor. In mise-en-place, preparation is royal—except that, as a chef, it is you who is serving and being served at the same time. Your preparation—and its intellectual cousin, planning—thus becomes a kind of spiritual practice: humble, tireless, and nonnegotiable.
Process
    Preparation and planning alone are not enough to create excellence. Chefs must also execute that prepared plan in an excellent way. So they ensure excellent execution by tenacious pursuit of the best process to do just about everything.
    Chefs have a certain way of standing, a certain way of moving. They’ve determined where to place their tools and ingredients to make their work easier and better and faster. They’ve memorizedthe best way to execute the dishes they create and determined the best way to handle their equipment. The most successful ones have figured out the best way to handle their people. For the processes that