Rice

Had a lunch time meeting and enjoyed a box of impressive rice from our canteen. The grains were so much alive that you could take them as seeds and use for farming.

I remember very well the story of a food critics going to a local restaurant. Before any elaborated dish is ordered, he asks for a bowel of plain rice.

"Rice is the most basic thing."

You may say rice is usually prepared by subordinates rather than the main chef. Nonetheless it is exactly this kind of minor thing that we could tell how well the chef train - and supervise - the juniors, and how serious the whole team is when it comes to the details.

Alas, the difficult bit is not to be successful in a complicated dish on a remarkable day, but to be unrelentingly consistent in doing a simple basic thing everyday - and do it well.

PS. Of course that's not my most memorable experience with this canteen. On one occasion half of the rice on a dish was raw, while the other half had the texture close to puree. (And I was sure both came from the same rice pan !) This is certainly against the law of physics and, other than a legendary Korean chef, I have never heard of anyone who could do it: the chef was Dae Jang-geum (大長今).