Some things we're picking up and putting down a lot lately

marco pierre white, 1990.

"Having stepped away from the stove, my understanding of food is far greater. It sounds odd, but when you've been engrossed in cooking, you become, to a certain extent, lost in what you're doing. Seventeen or eighteen hours a day in the kitchen not only stunts your growth socially; it can also stunt your growth in cooking terms. You become blinded. You are just working, working, working. Routine. Standards, standards, standards. Now that I'm no longer under that pressure, I find I can look at a dish, mentally dissect it and see a way of improving it far better than I could then. I can sit down and work things out more easily. I reflect well and am better at simplifying, working out concepts and understanding food.

A young chef has a habit of overworking things and it takes great confidence to believe in your produce and yourself. I have discovered that I didn't need to put that much effort in. For instance, in the old days I would have put a huge amount of effort into designing a Dover sole dish, but now that I'm out of the kitchen, I know that it should be served plain and simple, with only a little bit of lemon juice and perhaps a splash of olive oil. Delicious. I no longer want complicated food. If I decided to cook again tomorrow, I would do uncomplicated dishes. My menu would contain things I like to eat, and if that's whelks with a bit of malt vinegar and white pepper, then that's what I'd do. It might be fresh crab, seasoned nicely, with a bit of olive oil and some hot toast. Or red mullet with sauce vierge—olive oil, lemongrass seeds, tomatoes and basil. {...} The problem with a lot of chefs today is that they don't have a classical foundation. If food is that good, you don't have to do that much to it."

— Marco Pierre White, The Devil in the Kitchen

Marco Pierre White.

Marco Pierre White, British Chef

Cookbook White Heat, photos by Bob Carlos Clarke

Rudeness is not having fun, and if it is, it’s at the expense of another person.

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-Marco pierre white

Having three Michelin stars doesn't mean you are a good cook; it means that you understand the system.

“At this moment in time, I haven’t found myself as a cook. I’m still sort of in the middle of a revolution of myself. I don’t know what my ideas of cooking are. Every so often I make a new dish and then I think, that’s me. I don’t know what my abilities are yet, and that's what I’m still trying to understand is myself.”

-Marco Pierre White (1988)

parents @ their infant children

Here's a test for people: are you the kind who thinks Marco Pierre White is a boss for returning all 3 of his Michelin stars or the kind that thinks he's an idiot.

Marco Pierre White "White Heat" ©️ Bob Carlos Clarke

marco pierre white's lemon tart

marco pierre white's lemon tart

I recently got hold of a copy of Marco Pierre White’s White Heat book from the library. It is a cookbook but really it’s a capture of a time and a place: when Marco was on top of the culinary world and the absolute hottest thing in chefs and cookery. I hadn’t read it before; I devoured it an hour and immediately ordered a copy for myself. The photography, all black and white, is still crisp,…

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