Anthony Bourdain

Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch. It's a high-speed collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance. A properly organized, fully loaded line cook, one who works clean, and has 'moves' - meaning economy of movement, nice technique and, most important, speed - can perform his duties with Nijinsky-like grace. The job requires character - and endurance. A good line cook never shows up late, never calls in sick, and works through pain and injury.

What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that it is not at all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.

You want loyalty from your line cooks. Somebody who wakes up with a scratchy throat and slight fever and thinks it's okay to call in sick is not what I'm looking for. While it's necessary for cooks to take pride in their work - it's a good idea to let a good cook stretch a little now and again with the occasional contribution of a special or a soup - this is still the army. Ultimately, I want a salute and a 'Yes, sir!'. If I want an opinion from my line cooks, I'll provide one. Your customers arrive expecting the same dish prepared the same way they had it before; they don't want some budding Wolfgang Puck having fun with kiwis and coriander with a menu item they've come to love.

Women line cooks, however rare they might be in the testosterone-heavy, male-dominated world of restaurant kitchens, are a particular delight. To have a tough-as-nails, foul-mouthed, trash-talking female line cook on your team can be a true joy - and a civilizing factor in a unit where conversation tends to center around who's got the bigger balls and who takes it in the ass.

I've been fortunate enough to work with some really studly women line cooks - no weak reeds these. One woman, Sharon, managed to hold down a busy saute station while seven months pregnant - and still find time to provide advice and comfort to a romantically unhappy broiler man. A long-time associate, Beth, who likes to refer to herself as the 'Grill Bitch', excelled at putting loudmouths and fools into their proper place. She refused to behave any differently than her male co-workers: she'd change in the same locker area, dropping her pants right alongside them. She was as sexually aggressive, and as vocal about it, as her fellow cooks, but unlikely to suffer behavior she found demeaning. One sorry Moroccan cook who pinched her ass found himself suddenly bent over a cutting board with Beth dry-humping him from behind, saying, 'How do you like it, bitch?' The guy almost died of shame - and never repeated that mistake again.

Another female line cook I had the pleasure of working with arrived at work one morning to find that an Ecuadorian pasta cook had decorated her station with some particularly ugly hard-core pornography of pimply-assed women getting penetrated in every orifice by pot-bellied guys with prison tattoos and back hair. She didn't react at all, but a little later, while passing through the pasta man's station, casually remarked. 'Jose, I see you brought in some photos of the family. Mom looks good for her age.'

If you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you'll quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for back-up. I worked with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook's station in the middle of the rush to explain why the offending cook was falling behind. He'd press his palm down on the cutting board, which was littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, breadcrumbs and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if not constantly wiped away with a moist side-towel. 'You see this?' he'd inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and scraps sticking to his chef's palm, 'That's what the inside of your head looks like now. Work clean!

And chicken is boring. Chefs see it as a menu item for people who don't know what they want to eat.

A proper saute pan, for instance, should cause serious head injury if brought down hard against someone's skull. If you have any doubts about which will dent - the victim's head or your pan - then throw that pan right in the trash.

There are also some ingredients that separate food at home from food in a restaurant - stuff that we in a professional kitchen have on hand that you probably don't - and I'll tell you now which of these make all the difference in the world.

Shallots. You almost never see this item in a home kitchen, but out in the world they're an essential ingredient. Shallots are one of the things - a basic prep item in every mise-en-place - which make restaurant food taste different from your food. In my kitchen we use nearly 20 pounds a day. You should always have some around for sauces, dressings and saute items.

Chiffonaded parsley. Big deal, right? Restaurants garnish their food. Why shouldn't you? And parsley tastes good, too. Just don't chop it in a machine, please. Dip the picked sprigs in cold water, shake off excess, allow to dry for a few minutes, and slice the stuff, as thinly as you can, with that sexy new chef's knife I inspired you to buy. I promise you, sprinkled over or around your plate it'll give your chow that striking professional touch it's been missing.

What exactly is this mystical mise-en-place I keep going on about? Why are some line cooks driven to apoplexy at the pinching of even a few grains of salt, a pinch of parsley? Because it's ours. Because we set it up the way we want it. Because it's like our knives, about which you hear the comment: 'Don't touch my dick, don't touch my knife.'

A fairly standard mise-en-place is a pretty extensive list. A typical one would be composed of, for instance:

kosher or sea salt

crushed black peppercorns (hand-crushed - not ground in the blender)

ground white pepper

fresh breadcrumbs

chiffonade parsley

blended oil in wine bottle with speed pourer

extra virgin olive oil

white wine

brandy

chervil tops in ice water for garnish

chive sticks or chopped chives

tomato concassee

caramelized apple sections

garlic confit

chopped or slivered garlic

chopped shallots

softened butter

favorite ladles, spoons, tongs, pans, pots

all sauces, portioned fish, meat, menu items, specials and back-ups conveniently positioned for easy access