Use Microwaves
It was and still is a popular act for chefs to sneer at microwaves and look down their noses at those who do.
Let us put this nonsense to bed, immediately.
Thomas Keller uses microwaves at the French Laundry, one of the finest restaurants in the history of the culinary world. At one point ranked the best restaurant in the world, the French Laundry frequently appears on the list of the Top 50 restaurants in the world, bar none.
If Thomas Keller can publish a recipe, several recipes calling for the use of a microwave, you surely can find a way to use this magnificent tool as well.
Let's clear up why people sneer at this machine.
The microwave is tied to many stereotypes including fast food, reheating food vs. fresh food, cheap, easy, etc. In short, the microwave on the surface does seem to stand on the opposite side of everything that is fine dining or even simply fresh dining. It's often seen as the tool used in the kitchen when you stumble home from a long day at work and likely an even longer commute home and you simply want to get food into your body as quickly as possible. Food that requires as little thought as possible, as little effort as possible because the idea of whipping up a multi course meal in front of the hob after a typical 9-5 plus a trip to the gym, and a few meetings, sounds awful.
But here's the funny thing, and let's set aside the fact that Gordon Ramsay - whom I've never heard say anything positive or negative about employing the microwave - a famous 3 star Michelin chef, has created a TV dinner line of foods. Now, one can, if one chooses, preheat their oven for a good 5-15 minutes, toss in the packaged food for a good 50 minutes and then wait 5 minutes for it to cool down thus avoiding the microwave and getting a packaged, but not zapped dinner onto the table in roughly an hour and ten minutes give or take.
Or you could toss it into the microwave for seven minutes and be well on your way toward your third episode of whatever before individual B gets their dinner.
But I digress.
Restaurants pre-cook their food. A majority of it. If you've worked BOH, then you know this. Part of the ritual to working in the kitchen is to arrive and get your mise in place - yes, I am playing on that word. You start the stocks, you start larger portions of food, you chop, slice, mince, etc. everything so that when the order comes to the pass, you're ready to go.
If you've ever made risotto, then you know that the idea of creating a plate for you and one other is likely going to take you 45 minutes. Creating that dish for dozens of individuals, all whom order at different times and some with different customizations is not feasible in the restaurant setting.
Most restaurants pre-cook their risotto, toss it onto a sheet pan to cool, and so when an order comes in, thei scrape up a portion and finish the last 10 minutes or so. Slam bam, and that shit on the plate that smells delicious and set you back $24.50? That's been sitting in the fridge for the last three hours.
Fresh indeed.
Steam tables. A lot of restaurants use them. Nothing coming from the steam table is technically fresh. The steam warms up already cooked food. Pasta and veg is often found around the steam table or in a similar state as your fresh risotto.
A sweet potato, not pre-cooked, will take a good 20+ minutes to saute to the point where it's tender. Nuke that same potato for 10 minutes in a microwave, you're looking at less than 5 minutes to get a similar result.
The point here is that as with many things, we need to take our standard association of an item and step back from it and see the item as is intended. The microwave wasn't meant to be seen as a cheap alternative to cooking. It was meant to be a tool to make cooking more accessible to those without the hours in a day to stand in front of a stove. I know how to cook, and how to cook well, and even I would not have the patience for a clone of me to make dinner outside of either a pasta dish, or something using leftovers after work, especially if it's cold, raining, or it's just been one hell of a day.
What does this have to do with coaching?
The same idea. There are tools out there that many will turn their nose up to. "That's not how I was taught," is something I've often heard. It wasn't that long ago we were using slide rulers, and while I do have an affinity for them, and a small collection of them, and know how to use them, if I break out the slide ruler at the boathouse to start crunching numbers while rigging, I'm either turning an already long day into a three to five day slog, or I'm going to be asked to kindly walk until I step off the dock.
I was taught how to rig back when you had to dodge flying dinosaurs while coaching. Take your standard tape measure - no cheating, you better know what each line represents - measure the width, divide the number using your head or a piece of paper, remeasure again, and now you're ready to start.
A cheap TI-36 calculator, a tape with metric markings made life significantly easier, and then this lovely invention hit the market.
I can still do things the old fashioned way if I truly want to impress absolutely no one. In fact I could breakout the protractor and work through sin, cosine, and all of that to find footboard angles as well if I truly want to feel as though George Pocock is standing beside me.
With all due respect, I don't and I believe even he would smack me with a wooden lathe upon discovering that I'm ignoring modern advances.
You are more than welcome to live your life in the manner you choose to provided you're not harming anyone else through your choices and actions. I would argue that there are those who might harm you should you choose to head down certain paths outlined above. But the employment of modern technology doesn't make someone lesser than you or have them searching for a shortcut or a way to cheat the experience. As much as I enjoy a fresh baked potato with crispy salted skin from the oven or even a campfire, I prefer to have my dinner or portions of my dinner within a reasonable amount of time, and I don't make enough money to go back to the 1900s and stay in a kitchen all day preparing everything from scratch. While I do enjoy knowing how to get rigging measurements from a shell should the moment ever arise - I sincerely hope it does not - being able to go through three to five racing shells instead of one means not living at the boathouse or having a crew staring at me as I'm trying to recall which line means what.
I would find a clever way to finish this, but the 49ers are driving with under 5 minutes to go.
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