I am
. . . the sum of my career. At this point. . . . the sum of my choices. I am the person that I am today because of them. As I work through my day, I follow procedures based on those of chefs I've worked with, the kitchens I've worked in. My pastry education, post culinary school, is a culmination of the information those people-chefs, both savory and pastry, fellow cooks-have chosen to give to me. I understand why ingredients work the way they do because someone else learned it and taught it to me. I remember by effect, the chemical reactions between heat and ingredients, time, air, cold. When something goes wrong, I can make corrections based on this knowledge. I choose to pass this information on to the staff I now supervise, and am not afraid of not having an answer-in fact it makes me want to learn so that I can better understand and answer the next time. I tell my staff where this information comes from. I'll say tha...