I recently encountered the phrase “mental mise en place” while reading Michael Ruhlman’s book The Making of a Chef. Great book, by the way, it takes you step by step through the entire curriculum at the CIA as Ruhlman goes through the school himself – getting granular to the point of explaining the very techniques learned but also staying far enough removed to allow a healthy amount of observation and reflection. Anyway, Ruhlman discusses this idea of “mental mise en place” and how a chef working a restaurant needs to, in short, be sure all his mental ducks are in a row.
Stepping back a bit, mise en place means simply that all of your ingredients and preparations are set and you are ready to begin cooking. Literally translated, it means “putting in place.” In restaurant terms, a chef’s mise is his diced vegetables, his spices, his tools, cuts of meat or fish, everything he will need to use to work his station throughout the service.
Mise en place is not often something the home cook really needs to concern themselves with, as in most instances where a home cook is going to work they will only be preparing a very limited number of a certain dish (two for a couple, or perhaps a few more for a family) – and even then it usually only needs to be done once to serve many, family-style. It can be useful if you find yourself with extra prep time (cause we all know that happens often), or if you’re expecting lots of guests and have an elaborate meal planned. Other than that though, it’s usually not all that necessary.
But this idea of mental mise en place kind of struck me, and it’s been turning over in my head for a couple weeks now. Though I’ve never worked as a cook in a professional kitchen, I have worked in the front of house and I’ve had my experience working with kitchen staff – I can understand the significance of needing to know that you, and everything about you, is in the right place to do the right job before the job starts. It’s a matter of getting your head straight.
For a professional chef’s mental mise en place to be in order, he needs to know that, first of all, his physical mise is there, but also that he can rely on himself for the focus, the foundational skills, and the clarity of thought to take him through a hectic service – regardless of what might be thrown his way. It’s knowing that the staff he has to rely on will show up for him, and for his restaurant, and that the choices that he’s made leading up to the moment before a service have been the correct ones – thinking everything through from the start and being ready to take it through to it’s conclusion.
I found myself being able to relate to this idea in a lot of different ways, despite the fact that I’ve never actually been a restaurant cook. As a project manager in my “real life,” it’s all about planning and prep work. Collecting requirements, setting objectives, creating work task structures. But what interested me was thinking about the idea of mental mise en place in terms of what it means for the cook in a home kitchen. The differences between a home cook and a restaurant cook are endless, but I saw some certain similarities here when approached from this perspective.
Mental mise en place for the home cook is of utmost importance. It seems to me, that being a home cook is always very much about balance – the balance of life, of passion for food and cooking, of time management, of family, and everything else that comes into play. Without a doubt, it takes some significant effort to cook at home on a regular basis. And a lot of times, even the smallest little thing can throw you off your groove and it can be hard to recover sometimes.
I would imagine that this is a bit different for every home cook but revolves around a few consistent things. I have different feelings towards my kitchen on different days, as I’m sure most of us do.
In order for me to be really on my game, I need energy. Weeknights tend to suffer, of course – I think without a doubt I make my best meals on the weekends. Apart from just the energy itself, it can be hard to come home from work and get a clear head and focus on the tasks in front of me without being distracted. Although there are some days, admittedly, where the kitchen is the perfect escape. Music definitely helps.
I need to know that I’m going to have the time and the resources I need available to me. This one is rare – even in just a two person household, it seems like someone is always starving, and there’s *always* something else that needs doing. As far as resources go, there’s nothing my cookbook collection and my netbook can’t handle.
I need to have a plan, or, barring that, I need to have a well stocked kitchen. For me, again, the weekends work best for this. I rarely tend to plan more than one meal in advance, and in fact, I often find myself coming to the kitchen – even on weeknights – without much of a plan at all. But if I know my kitchen has food – protein, starch, vegetable – then I know I can make a dinner out of it. Sometimes this spawns creativity, sometimes it spawns failure (in the form of creativity, of course).
We get food from our CSA every other Thursday and I hit the market pretty much every Saturday morning now. It has become routine. Then that’s supplemented by the Whole Foods which is, thankfully, only a couple blocks away.. because I find myself there pretty often to fill in the gaps. Grocery shopping, the finances behind it, and the scheduling of it, are absolutely aspects of the greater mise en place picture.
And then there’s the emotional element, intricately linked to our diet and our food. This is maybe one of the biggest things – when you’re upset, or depressed, or just not “right,” it’s really hard to motivate yourself to cook a good meal. This is when the frozen pizza comes out, or the Chinese food gets ordered. What’s tough about this is that it’s a self-perpetuating thing – the more crap food you eat, the worse you’re going to feel emotionally, and the less you’re going to feel like cooking your own food. It easily turns into a cycle that you then need to break back out of.
I know that when my family is larger than just the two of us, there will be all kinds of additional things I have to deal with before my mental mise en place can be where it needs to be. I look forward to the challenges that that will bring to me as a home cook, but of course there is a healthy dose of trepidation in play, too. I know without a moment’s doubt that there will be times I reminisce about the past.
So what does mental mise en place mean for you? What is your ideal cooking situation, in a perfect world? What do you need in order for you to really do your best?
