Could I use some butter and cheese and eggs in my cooking without going down some kind of hippie shame spiral? Yes. Of course I could.
Believe me, I understand the need for easy and speedy. After a 12-hour day of shooting 'Chopped,' say, I'm talking stir-fry, spaghetti, heck, peanut-butter sandwiches. But that's not about the joy of food. That's survival.
One of the things I've found now, not just for television, but in the restaurant, is that you have many anxious chefs, who know how to cook twenty recipes really well, but they don't have a good foundation for other things.
Chefs don't eat at normal hours, so the only time you feel like you really need a meal is after service, when you're exhausted and just crave something to help you wind down.
The hardest thing about being a full time chef is leaving my work behind when I go home at night. I'll toss and turn about a menu item or forget to order produce and wake up at 4 A.M. in a cold sweat over some artichokes.
Like most people, I cook about a dozen dishes, over and over again, and to stretch the menu has meant stretching my competence to breaking point.
I'm really obsessed with 'Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares.' I really don't know why.
Pressure's healthy. It becomes stressful when you can't handle that. I mean, if you don't want to become pressurized in this environment, then don't be a chef.
There's way more pressure cooking for cooks than rowing at the Olympics.
